(NEW YORK) — Former President Donald Trump responded publicly Friday night to the final report released by the House Jan. 6 committee, attacking the committee and refuting its findings that he was ultimately responsible for the insurrection at the Capitol.
“The unselect committee [sic] did not produce a single shred of evidence that I in any way intended or wanted violence at our Capitol,” Trump said of the voluminous report in a video posted to Truth Social. “The evidence does not exist because the claim is baseless and a monstrous lie.”
Trump, in the five-minute video, repeatedly downplayed the deadly events of Jan. 6 and pushed multiple unproven conspiracy theories surrounding it — including that the doors to the Capitol were “flung open for people to walk in” and that “federal informants” played a role in the violence.
“The events of Jan. 6 were not an insurrection,” Trump said. “They were a protest that got tragically out of control.”
Trump also continued to push the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen.
The former president also pushed back on the committee’s conclusion that he did not respond to the riot for 187 minutes, saying he issued two tweets “within 25 minutes of the Capitol bridge, and another statement 30 minutes after that.”
The committee’s report, however, said that “evidence showed that neither of these tweets had any appreciable impact on the violent rioters.”
“Neither the 2:38 nor the 3:13 tweets made any difference,” the report said.
Trump also repeated his claim that he had “urged the deployment of 10,000 to 20,000 National Guard troops” before the riot — a claim that the committee directly refuted in its summary report released on Monday.
“The select committee found no evidence of this,” the report said. “In fact, President Trump’s own acting secretary of defense Chistopher Miller directly refuted this when he testified under oath.”
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