The Washington Post REFUSES to publish Trump's full response to its investigation that found warning signs were ignored ahead of the Capitol riot
The Washington Post has refused to publish former President Donald Trump's full response to its three-part investigation finding that warning signs were ignored ahead of the January 6 insurrection.
In its decision not to publish the former president's entire response, The Post noted that Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich 'provided a lengthy written response' to its investigation 'that included [a] series of unrelated inflammatory claims that The Post is not publishing in full.'
The decision comes just a few days after the Wall Street Journal faced backlash for publishing an op-ed by the former president without fact-checking it.
The Post wrote that Budowich said Trump 'greatly objected' to all of the 37 findings reported as part of its investigation, and dismissed the stories as 'fake news,' which 'falsely cast people who entered the Capitol on January 6 as "agitators not associated with President Trump".'
'The media's obsession with the January 6th protest is a blatant attempt to overshadow a simple fact: there is no greater threat to America than leftist journalists and the Fake News, which has avoided a careful examination of the fraudulent 2020 election.
'The media, just like the Democrats, do not want to see secure and honest elections,' read the one part of the statement the Post published on Sunday.
'Instead of reporting the facts, outlets like the Washington Post sow division, hate and lies, like it is doing with this story.
'The media has failed to do its job, including truly exposing Silicon Valley for its role in illegally rigging the election with hundreds of millions of dollars in dark money - which is probably a gross underestimate.
'America is furious at the results of November 3rd and deserve answers,' the statement continues. 'They deserve to protest and demand the truth from their representatives. However, since the media isn't asking the questions, it's being left up to the people to seek the truth.'
The Washington Post has refused to publish former President Donald Trump's response to its three-part investigation, which found that law enforcement agencies ignored warning signs about potential violence at the Capitol ahead of the January 6 insurrection
The editorial board said that Trump's response included a number 'of unrelated inflammatory claims' and repeated his unfounded claim that the 2020 presidential election was rigged
Trump's statement comes in response to the Washington Post's three-part investigation, which examined law enforcement's failure to heed warnings of violence ahead of the Capitol insurrection on January 6.
As part of the investigation, the Post notes, it interviewed 230 people and reviewed thousands of pages of court documents and internal law enforcement reports, along with hundreds of videos, photographs and audio recording.
It found that the FBI and other law enforcement agencies failed to act on tips and other information it received about potential violence at the Capitol ahead of the January 6 riots, when a group of Trump supporters descended on the Capitol in an effort to force Congress to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
On December 20, for example, the FBI received a tip that Trump supporters were discussing in online forums how to sneak guns into Washington to 'overrun' police and arrest members of Congress, according to internal bureau documents obtained by the Post.
The tip reportedly included details showing that those who were planning violence believed they had orders to infiltrate the Capitol from then-President Trump and used code words like 'pickaxe' to describe guns.
They also reportedly posted the times and locations of four places around the country for caravans to meet up the day before the joint session to certify the results of the 2020 election.
And on one site, a poster reportedly mentioned Senator Mitt Romney, of Utah, as a potential target.
An FBI official who assessed the tip noted also noted that its criminal division had received a 'significant number' of alerts about threats to Congress and government officials in the days leading up to the insurrection, and passed the information onto law enforcement agencies in D.C.
But the FBI reportedly did not follow up on these threats, writing, 'the individual or group identified during the assessment does not warrant further FBI investigation at the time.'
The January 6 insurrection occurred when a group of Trump supporters descended on the Capitol in an effort to force Congress to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election
They scaled the walls to break into the building as proceedings were going on
The Washington Post found that pro-Trump supporters were discussing in online forums how to sneak guns into Washington to 'overrun' police and arrest members of Congress
They also reportedly posted four locations across the country where supporters could meet up the day before Congress was set to certify the election results
The Post's investigation also exposed an extensive, coordinated plot by Trump's allies to overturn the election while they were holed up in a 'war rom' at the Willard Hotel in downtown DC.
There, the former president and his top associates reportedly set up a command center made up of multiple rooms and suites at DC's Willard hotel where they mapped out strategies to try and reinstate Trump for a second term despite losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden.
The team was led by Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and included Trump's former chief White House strategist Steve Bannon as an adviser and former NYPD police commissioner Bernard Kerik, who attended as an investigator.
Also involved in the strategizing was scholar John Eastman, who in an Oval Office meeting on January 4 with Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, pressured the VP to try to use his powers to delay or potentially block the certification of the election on January 6 to help Trump's efforts.
He reportedly sent an email to Pence's aides as the two men were hiding from the rioters at the Capitol - some of whom were calling for Pence to be hanged.
From the command center, Trump allies went to work, calling lawmakers in swing states including Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona, to encourage them to convene special sessions to investigate fraud and to reassign electoral college votes from Biden to Trump, the Post reported.
On January 2 alone Trump, Giuliani and Eastman spoke to 300 state legislators in a conference call that provided them with so-called evidence of fraud and called on them to take action to 'decertify' their election results, the Washington Examiner reported.
'You are the real power,' Trump told the state lawmakers. 'You're the ones that are going to make the decision.'
This call appeared to persuade some and on January 5 dozens of lawmakers from Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin wrote to Pence, asking that he delay certification of Biden's victory for 10 days to allow 'our respective bodies to meet, investigate, and as a body vote on certification or decertification of the election.'
These efforts were confirmed by several of the Trump loyalist present at those meetings.
A special House committee is now investigating the January 6th MAGA riot on the Capitol.
They have subpoenaed Steve Bannon, who has been held in criminal contempt for failing to appear before the committee last week, as well as organizers of the Stop the Steal rally, former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, communications director Dan Scavino and Pentagon chief of staff Kashyap Patel.
Trump is now asking a federal court in Washington, D.C. to enjoin the National Archivist from handing over troves of information about the inner workings of the White House as part of its probe into the riot.
The Post also exposed an extensive, coordinated plot by Trump's allies to overturn the election while they were holed up in a 'war rom' at the Willard Hotel in downtown DC (pictured)
Meanwhile, the president is repeating his claim that the 2020 presidential election was rigged.
He wrote in a letter to the editor to the Wall Street Journal last week laying out a number of conspiracy theories that are part of the so-called 'big lie' including that the Keystone State processed '10,515 mail-in votes from people who do not exist on the Pennsylvania voter rolls at all.'
Trump also accused his Attorney General Bill Barr of pressuring U.S. Attorney Bill McSwain not to investigate election irregularities.
'And so much more! This is why Democrats and the Fake News Media do not want a full forensic audit in Pennsylvania. In reality, 80,555 ballots are nothing when there is this much corruption or voter irregularities,' Trump concluded.
Overall, Trump listed 20 bullet points to make his argument.
The letter was signed by a 'Donald J. Trump' of Palm Beach, Florida - where the ex-president relocated after leaving Washington.
The Wall Street Journal was soon criticized for failing to fact check the president's letter, and on Thursday, just one day after the letter was published, the paper's editorial board defended the decision to print Trump's letter in its entirely.
They wrote that they trusted their readers 'to make up their own minds about his statement, and added, 'We think it's news when an ex-President who may run in 2024 wrote what he did, even if (or perhaps especially if) his claims are bananas.'
The editorial board also justified their actions by claiming that 'Mr. Trump is making these claims elsewhere, so we hardly did him a special favor by letting him respond to our editorial' backing Pennsylvania Republican state Supreme Court nominee Judge Kevin Brobson.
Editors also noted the paper offers 'the same courtesy to others we criticize, even when they make allegations we think are false,' and derided attempts by the media to censor the former president by saying journalists should 'examine their own standards after they fell so easily for false Russian collusion claims.'
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