Just hours before the House select committee was to begin its third televised hearing on the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, former president Donald Trump took to his Truth Social account to demand he be given air time on the same networks to lay out what he described as his evidence of "massive Voter Fraud & Dem Security Breach!"
He followed that up moments later with "I DEMAND EQUAL TIME!!!"
On Thursday, viewers are reportedly going to be presented with evidence of Trump's attempts to bully former vice president Mike Pence into overturning the will of the voters in the 2020 presidential election that one retired federal judge called, "tantamount to a revolution."
On the precipice of more damaging information coming out about his attempts to steal the election, Trump jumped on Truth Social to rage at the "Fake News Networks."
"The Fake News Networks are perpetuating lies, falsehoods, and Russia, Russia, Russia type disinformation (same sick people, here we go again!) by allowing the low rated but nevertheless one sided and slanderous Unselect Committee hearings to go endlessly and aimlessly on (and on and on!)," he wrote. "It is a one sided, highly partisan Witch Hunt, the likes of which has never been seen in Congress before. Therefore, I am hereby demanding EQUAL TIME to spell out the massive Voter Fraud & Dem Security Breach!"
He then added, "I DEMAND EQUAL TIME!!!"
Liz Cheney, vice chair of the House committee investigating the Capitol riot, said its third June hearing would address Trump's "relentless effort" on January 6 2021 and in the days beforehand to cajole Mike Pence into rejecting Joe Biden's victory.
"As a federal judge has indicated, this likely violated two federal criminal statutes. President Trump had no factual basis for what he was doing and he had been told it was illegal," Cheney said on Twitter.
"Despite this, President Trump plotted with a lawyer named John Eastman and others to overturn the outcome of the election on January 6."
An aide to the committee said the hearing would look at Eastman's role in developing a plot for Trump to pressure Pence into subverting the election, backed by a bogus legal theory that represented a "grave danger to American democracy."
Cheney's tweet featured a clip of testimony from Trump White House attorney Eric Herschmann who told Eastman the day after the insurrection: "Get a great effing criminal defense lawyer. You're going to need it."
