It took two years, but a section of Congress finally tried to formally hold Donald Trump accountable for the Jan. 6 riot. On Monday, the House select committee investigating that fateful held its final hearing, which not only summed up their findings but offered some criminal referrals to the Justice Department. One of them was for Trump himself, who they accused of four separate crimes. No doubt there was plenty of ketchup stains on Mar-a-Lago walls, but eventually he pulled himself together to write a sober — if fact-challenged — response.
Yeah, so I have no doubt his MAGA cultists will buy this, and every confidence a jury won’t. pic.twitter.com/LKvzt59s1E
— Ron Filipkowski
(@RonFilipkowski) December 19, 2022
“These folks don’t’ get it that when they come after me, people who love freedom rally around me,” Trump wrote on his rinky-dink Twitter clone. “It strengthens me. What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.”
He then made some pretty questionable claims. “Americans know that I pushed for 20,000 troops to prevent violence on Jan 6, and that I went on television and told everyone to go home,” he said, referring to a not entirely sincere video he released hours after his violent supporters stormed the Capitol, leading to multiple deaths.
Trump then moved into pity party/conspiracy mode. “The people understand that the Democratic Bureau of Investigation, the DBI, are out to keep me from running for president because they know I’ll win and that this whole business of prosecuting me is just like impeachment was — a partisan attempt to sideline me and the Republican Party.”
Those who paid attention to the Jan. 6 committee hearings know the middle section is misleading at best. He never signed an order to deploy tens of thousands of troops, and he refused to call off his hordes until they were already dispersing — and then praised them. The video is one of the reasons he was permanently suspended from Twitter: because he was in danger of inciting more violence. That was undone by its new (and possibly vacating) owner, who’s surely peeved that Trump can’t even use his old Twitter account lest he add yet more bit of trouble to his towering woes.