Donald Trump put out a statement Monday blaming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol that was carried out by his own supporters.
“There would have been no January 6, as we know it, if Nancy Pelosi heeded my recommendation to bring 10,000 Soldiers, or the National Guard, into the Capitol,” the former president said. “End the Unselect Committee January 6th Witch Hunt right now. Pelosi and the Dems are responsible!”
“This has been fact-checked literally to death as completely made up,” Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill told HuffPost. “It never happened.”
As a refresher, thousands of Trump supporters marched to the Capitol, at the encouragement of Trump, to try to stop Congress and Vice President Mike Pence from certifying the 2020 election for Joe Biden. They had just come from a rally with Trump, and they were acting on the big lie of Trump that the presidential election was rife with fraud and stolen for Biden.
Trump resisted pleas from his inner circle to help stop the riot once it started. He was reportedly enjoying the footage and did not want to tweet a message urging his supporters to stop and remain peaceful. He was also less concerned about the attack than he was about getting the election results overturned in a call with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).
Trump ended the day with a tweet that repeated his big lie about the election and sympathized with “great patriots.”
“These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!” he tweeted that day.
Meanwhile, Capitol Police evacuated Pelosi on the day of the riot because her life was at risk. Federal officials arrested a man who broke into her office, rifled through papers and took pictures of himself with his feet on a desk.
Republicans have long tried to blame Pelosi for the pro-Trump Capitol riot, centered on inaccurate claims that she was personally responsible for the failure in security on Jan. 6.
But Pelosi is not in charge of the Capitol Police and does not control security for the building. And any responsibility she has for the Capitol is shared by the Senate majority leader. At the time of the attack, that was Republican Mitch McConnell, and Republicans have made no attempt to blame him at all. Pelosi also has no authority to call up the National Guard.
Pelosi pushed for the creation of a bipartisan commission to study the Jan. 6 attack, including the security failures of that day. Republican leaders, however, blocked it, and they have continued to oppose the separate one that Pelosi established instead.
On Friday, the Republican National Committee voted to declare the Capitol attack, and the events leading up to it, “legitimate political discourse.”