Trump Lashes Out at Jan. 6 Committee Ahead of Hearing | National News

Former President Donald Trump preemptively lashed out against the Jan. 6 committee Thursday ahead of a prime time hearing where his actions in his final days of office will likely be front and center.

Once again referring to the group as the “unselect committee,” calling its members “political thugs,” Trump wrote on his social media platform that Jan. 6 represents “the greatest movement in the history of our country to Make America Great Again.” And in what has become a common refrain, he again called the 2020 election “rigged.”

The former president’s comments come nearly a year and a half into President Joe Biden’s term, as the select committee prepares to embark on a month-long series of public hearings beginning Thursday to make even more public the details of the coordinated effort to disrupt Congress’ certification of Biden’s victory.

Trump will be among the major players in the hearings, after being impeached for his handling of Jan. 6 in his final days in office and later acquitted in the Senate. But in his Thursday comments, Trump claims that the committee – which pored over thousands of hours of depositions and over 100,000 documents in its year-long investigation – “refused to report on the massive amount of irrefutable evidence” that he says shows that the 2020 election was “stolen.”

Republican lawmakers have criticized Thursday’s hearing, pointing to issues such as gas prices and an infant formula shortage that they say should be prioritized.

“I don’t see any prime time hearings set for gas price, for battling inflation, for feeding our children, for making the streets safer,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said Thursday during a news conference, adding that Republican lawmakers are committed to conducting a counter-investigation into Jan. 6.