Mr Trump is venting frustrations on his Truth Social platform since he remains banned from most major social media platforms

With only hours from the commencement of the House select committee’s first prime-time hearing on January 6, former President Donald Trump is now claiming that his supporters’ violent attack on the Capitol was “not merely a protest,” but rather “the greatest movement” in US history.

Mr Trump made the explosive statement on Thursday, praising the rioters who ransacked the Capitol in the hopes of keeping him in office for a second term.

It was posted on his own Truth Social platform, which he began using earlier this year after he was banned from Twitter and most other prominent social networking platforms.

The twice-impeached ex-president also claimed that the House select committee “didn’t spend one minute studying the reason that people went to Washington, D.C. in massive numbers,” despite the fact that a group of committee investigators is looking into the link between the lies he began telling about the 2020 election and the riot that occurred on January 6, 2021.

Mr Trump also made speeches in which he aired a series of unfounded complaints about previous Democratic and Justice Department investigations into his conduct. In one, he expressed his disappointment that the select committee “refused to analyse and report on the huge quantity of undeniable evidence, most of it just produced, that demonstrates the 2020 Presidential Election was Rigged and Stolen.”

While it’s true that the select committee hasn’t looked into any of this information, that’s because it doesn’t exist. Despite the fact that officials in Mr Trump’s own administration have repeatedly stated that the 2020 election was the safest in American history, the defeated ex-president has continued to lie about it and claim that he was unfairly denied a second term.