Former President Donald Trump issued a video response to the release of the Jan. 6 report Friday, claiming the committee investigating the riot omitted evidence, made false statements and “did not produce a single shred of evidence” that he “intended” violence on the Capitol.
The House Select Committee released its final 845-page report Thursday, ending their 18-month investigation into the Jan. 6 riot. The committee cast blame on Trump as the “central cause” of the riot, and recommended he be banned from running for office in 2024. The Jan. 6 Committee recommended Monday that Trump be charged with obstructing an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the government, conspiracy to make a false statement and inciting or assisting an insurrection. The recommendation was directed at the Department of Justice, and the committee itself can not file charges. (RELATED: Jan. 6 Committee Recommends Four Charges For Trump)
In an exclusive video provided to the Daily Caller, Trump responded to the report, saying that for two years, “the American people have been besieged with lies from the partisan witch hunt known as the Unselect Committee on January 6.”
The former president said the committee omitted the part of his speech where he encouraged “protesters to make their voices heard peacefully and patriotically,” the part of his tweet where he told protesters to “go home with love and in peace” and where he called for “law and order.”
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Trump claimed he urged the deployment of 10,000 to 20,000 National Guard troops days before the protests at the Capitol, but that “Nancy Pelosi and the D.C. mayor refused.”
“If they had listened to me, my recommendation, none of this would have happened, and you wouldn’t have heard about January 6 as you know it,” he added.
He then called the allegations from former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson about him lunging for the steering wheel to get to the Capitol an “absurd and discredited story.”
“The committee barely discussed the catastrophic security failures at the Capitol, and they didn’t discuss the other thing, the reason why everybody went there: the election, which was a corrupt disaster. They did not discuss why the doors were flung wide open … and they didn’t discuss the role of federal informants,” he continued.
“The events of January 6 were not an insurrection. They were a protest that tragically got out of control, and which the left has been weaponizing ever since, to censor, spy on and persecute American citizens. The entire phony hoax is about taking away your speech, taking away your vote and taking away your freedom,” Trump said.
“The Unselect Committee will go down in history as a con job and a disgrace. They want to stop us from taking back our country, but they will fail, they will not win. We will make America great again,” he concluded.