The January 6 committee has devoted two televised hearings to making the case that President Trump is to blame for the events that are its raison d’être, and now the former commander-in-chief has responded in the form of a 12-page rebuttal to a tribunal he labels “treasonous.”That rebuttal very well could be a rough draft of a legal defense even as it also offers a lengthy excursus on Mr. Trump’s widely discredited theories regarding the 2020 election. He invokes “illegal ballot harvesting operation,” and “mules” trafficking fraudulent votes, and terms state-level opponents “the little dictators our Constitution was designed to prevent.”These claims have been widely discredited in the press, by subsequent electoral audits, courts nationwide, and, in effect, by Congress itself when it certified the vote. During the hearings, a former attorney general under Mr. Trump, William Barr, accused the president of being “detached from reality” in respect of this line of thinking. Mr. Barr labeled claims of fraud “complete nonsense.”Yet, in giving no quarter, Mr. Trump appears to be setting himself on a trajectory of taking a hard line in any prosecution of him and his associates that might follow from the committee hearings. Members of the committee have begun to openly discuss the possibility of a prosecution, and Attorney General Garland noted that he is tuned in and “that the January 6 prosecutors are watching all the hearings.”One section of Mr. Trump’s statement, under the heading “Zuckerbucks,” accuses the founder and chief executive officer of Meta of using donations to election initiatives, ostensibly in the name of ensuring that the vote was held despite Covid challenges, to undermine Mr. Trump’s prospects. After prime time and mid-morning sessions that centered on footage from that day and testimony from Mr. Trump’s inner circle, the 45th president begins his statement by discussing not the events of January 6, but a present moment in which he asserts that “our nation has no hope of change for the better under Democrat leadership.”Mr. Trump calls the investigation “an attempt to stop a man that is leading in every poll, against both Republicans and Democrats by wide margins, from running again for the Presidency.” He appears to tease a possible second bid for the White House. Two members of the committee, Representatives Adam Schiff and Jamie Raskin, led the first and second impeachment trials against Mr. Trump, respectively. Both ended with the Senate declaring the former president on all charges “not guilty.” Mr. Trump’s statement begins with an assertion about a discontented union. “Our nation is SUFFERING. Our economy is in the gutter. Inflation is rampant. Gas prices have reached an all-time high.” He goes on to label America “an embarrassment around the world.” In light of the dire state of affairs, Mr. Trump insists that “rather than solving problems, Democrats are rehashing history in hopes of changing the narrative” with the aim that “these hearings will somehow alter their failing prospects.”Mr. Trump accuses what he calls the “January 6th Unselect Committee” of “disgracing everything we hold sacred about our Constitution.” Previewing a legal defense, he notes that if Democrats “had any real evidence, they’d hold real hearings with equal representation.”While the committee does include two Republicans in addition to seven Democrats, those two — Representatives Elizabeth Cheney and Adam Kinzinger — are avowed antagonists of Mr. Trump. Speaker Nancy Pelosi had previously rebuffed Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s suggestions that Representatives Jim Banks and Jim Jordan join the committee, citing their opposition to certifying the results of the 2020 vote.While the next hearing was slated to be televised Wednesday morning, it has been abruptly postponed until Thursday. Tomorrow’s affair was expected to focus on the pressure Mr. Trump brought to bear on the Department of Justice in the days following the 2020 election.
