A year and a half after the storming of the Capitol, the US judiciary is working on the background to the unprecedented incident - and gives ex-President Trump a significant share of the blame. He's fighting back now. In a twelve-page letter of anger, he also repeated his allegations of voter fraud.
Former US President Donald Trump has denied allegations by the investigative committee about the storming of the US Capitol in a multi-page document. Trump accused the committee of excluding exonerating witnesses. He described the public hearings as a "parody of the judiciary". In the twelve-page letter, which also contains a number of footnotes, Trump repeated his unsubstantiated allegations of election fraud and fantasies of election victory.
He accused the Democrats and US President Joe Biden of destroying the country. "The Democrats (...) are doing everything in their power to stop me - but we cannot be stopped," it said. At the second public hearing of the committee of inquiry on Monday, several high-ranking people from Trump's environment had firmly contradicted his allegations of voter fraud. Former members of the government and campaign advisors have clearly distanced themselves from Trump's actions.
Ex-Attorney General William Barr and others called Trump's fraud allegations "insane." Barr said Trump had increasingly "lost touch with reality". To this day, Trump claims without evidence that he was deprived of victory in the 2020 presidential election by electoral fraud. Resistance to the outcome of the election culminated in the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, which the committee of inquiry in Congress is working on.
The nine members of the investigative committee - seven Democrats and two Republicans - had started their work almost a year ago. For months, the panel viewed around 140,000 documents and interviewed hundreds of witnesses behind closed doors - including Trump's daughter Ivanka. In her recorded statement, she said: "It became obvious that the election would not be decided that evening".
The panel is now revealing its findings in a series of public hearings. The committee's senior investigative adviser, Amanda Wick, said Monday Trump's associates raised $250 million from the allegations between election night and the rioting. "The big lie was also a big rip-off," she said. Some Trump confidants, such as former chief strategist Steve Bannon, refused to cooperate with the committee.
