Trump calls Jan 6 hearings ‘disgrace to America’ as committee builds indictment against him

The select committee has said it has enough evidence to indict Trump

Donald Trump blasted the select committee investigating the assault on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 on his social media platform just hours before lawmakers were scheduled to begin the second public hearing on the violent insurrection.

“This one sided Witch Hunt is a disgrace to America,” the ex-presidet wrote on Monday morning on Truth Social, the former US president’s social media platform for “free expression”. “Should never have been allowed to happen!”

The twice impeached president has been taking to his alternative social media platform in the lead up to the prime-time public hearings, which have been delving deeper into what the select committee has called Trump’s “the big lie” of false claims of voter fraud that fueled his relentless effort to overturn the 2020 election and led a mob of his supporters to lay siege to the US Capitol.

Just hours before last week’s first hearing, Trump claimed the violent attack on the Capitol perpetrated by his supporters was “not simply a protest” but actually “the greatest movement” in US history.

This incendiary statement that praised the rioters who sacked the Capitol in hopes of keeping him in the White House for a second term also appeared on his own Truth Social platform, which is where the former president has been posting since earlier this year because of his ban from most mainstream social media sites.

(Truth Social)

Trump’s remarks on the House select committee’s investigation arrived a day after two members of the panel told reporters they believe they have sufficient evidence to warrant a criminal indictment of the one-term president.

Reps Adam Schiff and Jamie Raskin, two Democrats on the panel, made the comments in separate interviews this weekend on CBS’s Face the Nation and CNN’s State of the Union.

“Once the evidence is accumulated by the Justice Department, [the DOJ] needs to make a decision about whether it can prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt the president’s guilt or anyone else’s,” Mr Schiff said on CBS. “But they need to be investigated if there’s credible evidence, which I think there is.”

The second public hearing, which is expected to focus on Trump’s so-called “big lie”, is scheduled to start at 10am ET on Monday and will include testimonies from the 2020 campaign manager for the former president, Bill Stepien.