Former President Donald Trump criticized the 1/6 Committee hearings that launched on Tuesday as a partisan effort set up by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to reach a pre-ordained conclusion: That he was responsible for the Jan. 6 breach of the U.S. Capitol Building.
Trump made a statement suggesting that Pelosi may be partly responsible for the events that occurred because she failed to deploy tighter security before Congress met to count electoral votes. Trump also held a rally in Washington, D.C. that attracted thousands.
“Nancy Pelosi is spending a great deal of time, effort, and money on the formulation of a Fake and highly partisan January 6 Committee to ask, ‘what happened?’” Trump said in a statement issued through his Save America PAC.
“Will Nancy investigate herself and those on Capitol Hill who didn’t want additional protection, including more police and National Guard, therefore being unprepared despite the large crowd of people that everyone knew was coming?” he stated.
The former President also requested that the Justice Department release approximately 14,000 hours of surveillance video from Jan. 6 riot. This could indicate that there were left-wing activists among the crowds.
“Will Nancy release the thousands of hours of tapes so we can see the extent to which ANTIFA and Black Lives Matter played a role?” he asked.
Trump continued by stating that the Democrats’ latest initiative to smear him and his administration and his supporters is the 1/6 Committee. It does not deal with legitimate crimes.
“Will Nancy look into the vicious partisan investigations of Conservatives and Republicans that are taking place by prosecutors all over the Country?” he said.
“The five-year investigation of me, and all that so many have been through, including the fake Russia Russia Russia charge, and including the local Democrat-controlled New York prosecutors who work around the clock to get President Donald Trump, while murderers, drug dealers, and human traffickers go free!” Trump added.
Earlier, other Republican lawmakers leveled similar allegations against Pelosi, namely that she was ultimately responsible for improving security ahead of the Trump event and the counting of ballots but failed to act.
“Why don’t they want to answer the fundamental question, which is, why wasn’t there a better security posture on that day?” Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, whom Pelosi blocked from serving on the 1/6 Committee along with GOP Rep. Jim Banks, asked at a press conferencing Tuesday morning before the hearings began.
He pointed to a February report, which he summarized: “Pelosi’s office had previously impressed upon the Sergeant-at-Arms Paul Irving that the National Guard was to remain off Capitol grounds. Irving told House Administration the discussion centered around, quote, ‘optics.’
He said, “Why were Democrats so concerned about optics?”
“Why were they so concerned about how it would look? Because of what happened last summer,” he said.
“It’s all driven by what happened last summer, where Democrats normalized anarchy, normalized political violence, raised bail money for the very rioters and looters who destroyed small businesses, attacked innocent civilians, and maybe most importantly, attacked police officers,” Jordan continued.
Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), House Minority Leader, reiterated a similar theme.
“December 14, the leadership knew there was a problem,” he said.
