by Sharon Rondeau
(Dec. 18, 2022) — On Saturday, 45th President of the United States and 2024 candidate Donald J. Trump posted on TruthSocial that he has learned the “Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United State Capitol” intends to send a criminal referral to the Justice Department, reportedly citing Trump’s January 6, 2021 address to a one-million-strong crowd at the Washington, DC Ellipse in which he urged supporters to “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard” at the U.S. Capitol as the Electoral Vote count proceeded from the November 3, 2020 election which Trump believes he won.
“They say that the Unselect Committee of Democrats, Misfits, and Thugs, without any representation from Republicans in good standing, is getting ready to recommend Criminal Charges to the highly partisan, political, and Corrupt ‘Justice’ Department for the ‘PEACEFULLY & PATRIOTICLY’ speech I made on January 6th,” Trump wrote on Saturday night. “This speech and my actions were mild & loving, especially when compared to Democrats wild spewing of HATE. Why didn’t they investigate massive Election Fraud or send in the Troops? SCAM!”
Off and on Sunday morning, the hashtag “PATRIOTICLY” was trending on Twitter.
“We’re going to walk down, and I’ll be there with you — we’re going to walk down…to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them, because you’ll never take back our country with weakness; you have to show strength, and you have to be strong,” Trump told his supporters that day.
He said Congress should count only “electors who have been lawfully slated.”
Earlier Sunday morning, Yahoo! News reported:
The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection and former President Donald Trump’s failed effort to overturn his 2020 election loss is expected to end its work this week by issuing an extensive report of its findings and a series of criminal referrals — potentially against Trump himself.
The House panel plans to meet Monday to vote on criminal referrals and, possibly, present new evidence. It also plans to issue its findings in a report and release transcripts from the hundreds of interviews they conducted with Trump aides, allies, family members and others.
The lawmakers are wrapping up 18 months of work with just weeks left until Republicans take control of the House and end the historic probe.
As The Post & Email reported last week, the committee is scheduled to conduct a “business meeting” on Monday at 1:00 p.m., and its final report is scheduled for release two days later, according to the committee’s website.
The committee comprises seven Democrats, all of whom voted to impeach Trump over the January 6 incident, and two Republicans, both of whom will leave Congress on January 3, 2023. On Sunday, Trump termed the members “political hacks.”
On December 9, CNN reported that in addition to Trump, the committee is considering criminal referrals for former Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Attorney John Eastman, and a former Justice Department lawyer, Jeffrey Clark.
On November 18, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced he appointed former Justice Department Public Integrity unit head Jack Smith to investigate Trump’s alleged involvement in the January 6 “insurrection” and alleged attempt to “overturn the 2020 election.”
According to Trump on Friday, Smith “has found NOTHING” on those two fronts and is now “snooping around the PERFECT PHONE CALL I made to the Georgia Sec. of State challenging the corrupt Presidential Election results, my absolute right to do!”
Trump’s claim is supported by media reports.
Since November 7, 2020, the mainstream media has repeatedly insisted Joe Biden’s win was “legitimate” and Trump’s claims of massive fraud “baseless” despite conducting no investigations of its own into Trump’s allegations.
Garland has called the January 6 incursion at the Capitol “a risk for our democracy,” a theme Trump invoked on Saturday evening, referring to “the Radical Left Democrats” in general.
“They are the ones who are the REAL THREAT TO DEMOCRACY,” Trump wrote on TruthSocial. “Remember, the Democrat’s [sic] policies are destroying our Country, they ‘stink,’ DISINFORMATION & WEAPONIZATION of ‘Justice’ is all they’ve got, but someday it will all come back to haunt them. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
At approximately 8:30 Sunday morning, Trump wrote that “The Unselect Committee of political hacks are the same group that came up with the RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA HOAX, not to mention many others. They are Corrupt cowards who hate our Country!!!” That was shortly followed by his urge to “Republicans and Patriots all over the land” to “stand strong and united against the Thugs and Scoundrels of the Unselect Committee. It will be a dark period in American history, but with darkness comes light!!!”
In other comments over the weekend, Trump decried the FBI’s now-exposed collaboration with Twitter during the months leading up to the 2020 election, which he said “was only one of MANY ways that the 2020 Election was Rigged & Stolen!!!”
