Former President Donald Trump released video bashing the Jan. 6 “witch hunt,” in one of his first public addresses of the Jan. 6 Committee since the release of its final report.
In the video, Trump derided the committee itself, Vice Chairwoman Liz Cheney, President Joe Biden, and the Democratic Party, among others. Trump claimed that the committee was intended to distract from other issues, and that it was deceptively editing information while ignoring evidence favorable to him.
“For two years as inflation skyrocketed, crime soared, the border was erased, Afghanistan was a disaster, and Joe Biden destroyed our country, the American people have been besieged with lies from the partisan witch hunt, known as the unselect committee on January 6,” he began. “The committee cut the part of my speech out where I encouraged protesters to make their voices heard, peacefully and patriotically, but no one ever says that.”
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He quickly shifted to bashing Cheney, who has become perhaps the most vocal Trump critic in the Republican Party. He claimed that she, “lost her congressional race in Wyoming by the largest margin ever for a sitting congressperson, that’s 40%.”
Cheney lost her seat by 37%, rather than 40%, the Washington Post reported, to pro-Trump challenger Harriet Hageman in August. The outlet claimed that depending how you cut it, her margin of defeat may have been the largest in the 21 century.
The former president went on to dispute the findings of the committee that laid primary blame on himself for the riot, claiming that he had taken multiple steps to ensure that the protest didn’t get out of hand.
“There was no insurrection, and there wasn’t going to be an insurrection,” Trump fumed. “It was made up by these sick people. 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 went on to claim that Twitter and the committee had “covered up” some of his tweets., possibly alluding to the recently released “Twitter Files,” part of which detailed exchanges between Twitter and the FBI over Jan. 6 and Trump’s banning from the platform.
Trump then brought up the report that he had lunged for the steering wheel on Jan. 6 in an attempt to wrestle it from his Secret Service driver, as was originally claimed by former aide Cassidy Hutchinson during her testimony in front of the panel.
“And then they pushed an absurd and discredited story, where I supposedly lunged for the steering wheel in an attempt to commandeer a presidential limousine,” he said. “Think of it, I lunged for a steering wheel. And they believe that story! No one believes that story.”
The former president continued to say that the 2020 presidential election was a “corrupt disaster.” He also suggested that federal informants had instigated the riot.
Trump summed up his view of the Jan. 6 riot, despite his previous claim about federal informants, by saying, “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.”
“These are sick people, these are dangerous people. These are Marxists,” he added. “From the day I came down the escalator, it has been one witch hunt after another.”
Trump then switched to talking about the raid on his Mar-a-Lago resort and the investigation surrounding the classified documents found in the former president’s possession, calling it a “big hoax.”
“They put a major Trump hater, and his family is (sic) a major Trump hater, and his friends are all Trump haters, and he’s in charge of this investigation. The people aren’t going to stand for it,” he said.
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While it was not immediately clear who trump was referencing, the former president was likely referring to special counsel jack Smith, who he has previously bashed as a “Trump hater.”
