US Capitol riots: Trump lashes out at congressional committee

Former US president Donald Trump has lashed out at the congressional committee which is investigating the attack by his supporters on the US Capitol on January 6th last year.

However, he did not say whether he would comply with a subpoena issued by the committee for him to provide testimony under oath in relation to the riots.

Mr Trump, in a 14-page letter issued to the chair of the committee Bennie Thompson, a Democrat, described the investigation as a “show trial” and a “witch hunt”.

He again argued that the 2020 election which he lost to his Democratic opponent Joe Biden was “rigged and stolen”.

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He called it the “crime of the century”.

Mr Trump’s legal challenges to the results of the presidential election all failed in court and several of his own top justice and security officials have testified that there was no evidence of widespread fraud.

Mr Trump argued that he had received millions more votes in 2020 than he had in 2016. He maintained that no incumbent president had gained votes and lost a re-election bid.

He said in the days before the January 6th rally he “recommended and authorized thousands of troops to be deployed to ensure that there was peace, safety, and security at the Capitol and throughout Washington DC because I knew, just based on instinct and what I was hearing, that the crowd coming to listen to my speech, and various others, would be a very big one, far bigger than anyone thought possible.” Mr Trump said the committee had “wilfully ignored” this.

“The massive size of this crowd, and its meaning, has never been a subject of your committee, nor has it been discussed by the fake news media that absolutely refuses to acknowledge, in any way, shape or form, the magnitude of what was taking place. In fact, for such a historic event, there are very few pictures that accurately show the event, or how many people were really there. Incredibly, it seems that pictures showing the size of the event were perhaps cancelled, scrubbed, deleted or, in any event, not available, but we still have some.”

In his letter to Mr Thompson, Mr Trump attached photographs of the crowd who attended the rally he convened on January 6th, 2021.

The former president blamed the speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi and the mayor of Washington DC Muriel Bowser — both Democrats — for failing to bring in the troops he had authorised on the day of the rally.

Mr Trump contended that the committee had decided that the actions of Ms Pelosi in relation to January 6th would be “off limits”.

Referring to the committee’s work, he argued that there was no due process, no cross-examination and no “real Republican” members.

He said the process had “no legitimacy since you do not talk about election fraud or not calling up the troops”.

Two anti-Trump Republicans, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, sit on the January 6th committee.

On Thursday, members of the House of Representatives select committee unanimously decided in a dramatic televised roll-call vote to issue a subpoena to Mr Trump to provide testimony under oath as well as any relevant documentation.

The committee at the hearing painted a picture of how Mr Trump, enraged and embarrassed that he had lost the election and unwilling to accept that fact, sought to join the crowd he had summoned to Washington on January 6th, 2021, as it marched to the Capitol — knowing that some of his supporters were armed and threatening violence as Congress met to certify his defeat.