Jose Luis Magana/AP
- Former President Donald Trump said the Capitol siege was a day of protest for what he claims was a fake election last year.
- In a statement, he said the "real insurrection" happened on November 3, when he lost the 2020 presidential election.
- He swung out at the lawmakers investigating the attack, calling them an "Unselect Committee."
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Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday downplayed the US Capitol siege that's being probed by Congress, pointing instead to what he claims was a "fake election" as the real threat.
The storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6 by pro-Trump supporters is currently under investigation by a bipartisan select House committee, which includes seven Democrats and two GOP lawmakers.
Trump took aim at the committee in a statement, calling it "the Unselect Committee of partisan Democrats and two very weak and pathetic RINOs," the latter term standing for "Republicans In Name Only."
He added that nine lawmakers "should come to the conclusion after spending many millions of dollars, that the real insurrection happened on November 3, the Presidential Election, not on January 6."
The attack on the Capitol, he also said, was a "day of protesting the Fake Election results."
Trump has repeatedly pushed unproven claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, despite top government and industry officials saying that the election was "the most secure in American history."
Last month, a Republican-commissioned audit on the Arizona vote by Cyber Ninjas found no significant discrepancies in the ballot results. Cyber Ninjas instead found 261 fewer votes for Trump and 99 more votes for incumbent President Joe Biden in Maricopa County, Arizona's most populous county.
The former president's insistence that the election was rigged has been dubbed his "big lie." It's a concept that's been adopted by many of his supporters and by other politicians, such as Larry Elder, a GOP candidate for the California gubernatorial recall election who positioned himself to claim election fraud before results of his election were even in.