Trump promotes ‘peaceful’ Jan 6 tweets on Truth Social ahead of final House committee hearing

Former president attempts to dodge responsibility for inaction during riot

Donald Trump has "truthed" a compilation of two tweets he sent urging “peace” among his supporters during their 2021 attack on the Capitol, likely driven by his fears of a criminal referral by the January 6 committee.

The former president has not returned to Twitter since CEO Elon Musk unbanned his account as part of a "free speech" campaign that quickly dissolved into Mr Musk giving preferential treatment to conservatives while banning liberals and journalists on totally arbitrary grounds.

But that hasn’t stopped Mr Trump from seeking to use his obviously half-hearted statements on the platform prior to his ban in an attempt to show that he does not bear responsibility for the deadly siege that his supporters launched on police and lawmakers at the US Capitol.

On Sunday he resurfaced two tweets sent from his account on the afternoon of January 6, after violence had begun following his demand that his supporters fight efforts to certify the 2020 election.

But the timing and wording of the messages he highlighted may be the reason that his protestations are not taken seriously.

A riot was declared outside of the Capitol at 1.50pm. However, the first security lines were overrun about 20 minutes before that, a full hour before Mr Trump’s first tweet urging that his supporters “stay” peaceful. In his second tweet, sent well after the shocking violence began, he again dishonestly called on his supporters to “remain” peaceful.

The two tweets were notably his only efforts, besides a video message released at 4.17pm, to call off his supporters or help the beleaguered members of law enforcement at the Capitol. Despite dozens of injuries and a woman being fatally shot while attempting to breach a secure area, Mr Trump is now known to have ignored direct pleas to call in reinforcements for police as well as calls to issue more forceful denunciations of the violence from lawmakers in his own party for several hours.

That refusal is being pointed to by lawmakers on the panel as a dereliction of duty, and may be the basis for a criminal referral targeting the ex-president. Lawmakers are also considering whether his team adequately worked to prepare law enforcement ahead of time given that it is known that his advisers expected the scene to get violent.

Notably, the January 6 committee (or any congressional committee) cannot formally bring criminal charges against an individual or entity. And the Department of Justice is not likely to be moved in one direction or the other by a request from the lawmakers, no matter how formal.

Still, the DoJ is pursuing its own investigation into the attack on Congress and the effort to overturn the 2020 election in Mr Trump’s favour, and may end up using some of the evidence gathered by the committee in its criminal probe which could very well result in Mr Trump or others in the Trump White House being charged.

The Justice Department has named a special counsel, Jack Smith, to make the final determination of whether the former president will be criminally charged as he prepares to run for president again in 2024.