In letter to Jan. 6 committee, Trump again says 2020 presidential election was ‘STOLEN’

In a letter to the US House of Representatives committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on Capitol Hill, former US President Donald Trump has repeated his claim that the 2020 presidential election was rigged.

Trump opened the letter, dated October 13, by claiming that the election that he lost to Democratic Joe Biden was “RIGGED AND STOLEN,” and called the members of the committee investigating the attack and Trump’s role in it “highly partisan political Hacks and Thugs.”

He said the committee had “not spent even a short moment on examining the massive Election Fraud that took place during the 2020 Presidential Election, and have targeted only those who were, as concerned American Citizens, protesting the Fraud itself,” referring to the mob of his supporters that attacked the Congress building on January 6 last year, as the Congress members were in the process of confirming Biden’s victory.

To back up his claim that he had been the victim of a conspiracy, Trump referenced a February 4, 2021 article by Time Magazine that described an alleged campaign “to shore up America’s institutions as they came under simultaneous attack from a remorseless pandemic and an autocratically inclined President” — referring to Trump himself. The article did call that effort “a conspiracy” and “a shadow effort,” though, wording that Trump apparently took too literally, as his Thursday letter indicated.

Trump also defended his actions before January 6, claiming that he had “recommended and authorized” the deployment of thousands of troops to the Capitol Hill to defend the Congress “days before” the mob attack.

“[T]he Unselect Committee has willfully ignored the fact that days before January 6, 2021, I recommended and authorized thousands of troops to be deployed to ensure that there was peace, safety, and security at the Capitol and throughout Washington, D.C. on January 6th 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,” he wrote.

Trump’s own acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller has formerly denied that claim in testimony before the January 6 Committee.

Earlier on Thursday, the January 6 committee voted unanimously to subpoena the former president for sworn testimony. Trump’s letter was seen as a response. But Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said later on Friday that the letter was deemed no substitute for the former president’s requested testimony.

“Trump’s unsworn ‘statement’ about the work of @January6thCmte is not a substitute for testimony under oath. We await a serious response from the former president,” Schiff wrote on Twitter.

On January 6, 2021, Trump gave a provocative speech to his supporters, refusing to concede his election loss, and the crowd proceeded to march on Capitol Hill, breaching the perimeter, attacking security guards, and sending US Congress members running for their safety.

If an individual subpoenaed by the committee refuses to appear for testimony, the committee will be able to hold them in contempt of Congress, a matter that the full House will have to take up. A criminal referral could then potentially be made to the Justice Department.

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