Trump defends Capitol rioters

Probe ‘a mockery’

WASHINGTON: Donald Trump has decried the congressional probe into the riot by his supporters last year at the US Capitol as a “mockery of justice”, and repeated his view that the violent rioters were upstanding Americans rightly trying to overturn an “obviously” fraudulent election result.

In a rambling, 12-page missive, Mr Trump said instead of focusing on the country’s larger problems, the Democraticled panel was “a Kangaroo Court, hoping to distract the American people from the pain they are experiencing”.

The former president also reiterated the same conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election that earlier in the day the congressional probe had argued were a key motivating factor for his supporters to riot – leading to the death of five people.

“Democrats created the narrative of January 6 to detract from the much larger and more important truth that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen,” he said.

There is no evidence to support his claims, and even his own advisers and his daughter Ivanka say he is lying.

Mr Trump, fuming that the committee was one-sided in its approach, said the panel “is making a mockery of justice”.

And he doubled down on his debunked election lie in his statement. “The truth is that Americans showed up in Washington, DC in massive numbers … on January 6, 2021, to hold their elected officials accountable for the obvious signs of criminal activity throughout the election,” Mr Trump wrote.

As part of the televised hearing on Monday (Washington time), the congressional panel – which is composed of seven Democrats and two Republicans – showed videos in which former aides to Mr Trump testified they repeatedly told the then president his assertions of widespread fraud in the election were false.

Former attorney-general Bill Barr said he feared the president was “becoming detached from reality” as he persisted with “crazy” claims he had been cheated.

“When I went into this and would tell him how crazy some of these allegations were, there was never an indication of interest in the actual facts,” Mr Barr said in testimony – as he likened addressing Mr Trump’s avalanche of false allegations with playing the game “whack-a-mole”.

Mr Barr was among several senior White House figures who repeatedly debunked the “idiotic claims”, but Mr Trump “continued to push the stolen election narrative” that “lit the fuse” of the riot, the congressional committee said.

Mr Barr said he quit after becoming demoralised by Mr Trump’s determination to ignore voices of reason. “I thought, boy, if he really believes this stuff … he’s become detached from reality,” he said.