Former President Donald Trump, in an interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker that aired Sunday on “Meet the Press” continued to make false claims around a variety of subjects including the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection.
Trump looked to place blame on then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for the violence on January 6, 2021 – when his own supporters stormed the US Capitol, claiming she “was in charge of security. She turned down 10,000 soldiers. If she didn’t turn down the soldiers, you wouldn’t have had January 6.”
Facts First: This is false. The speaker of the House is not in charge of Capitol security. That’s the responsibility of the Capitol Police Board, which oversees the US Capitol Police and approves requests for National Guard assistance.
Trump’s former acting defense secretary, Chris Miller, also told lawmakers that he was never given a formal order by Trump to have 10,000 troops ready to be sent to the Capitol on January 6. “There was no direct, there was no order from the president,” Miller said.
Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows sent an email saying the National Guard would be present to “protect pro Trump people” in the lead up to the US Capitol insurrection, according to the report released by the January 6 committee.
Trump referred to the two federal indictments against him as “Biden indictments,” claiming President Joe Biden directed the Justice Department to charge the former president in the cases brought by special counsel Jack Smith in Washington, DC.
Facts First: This claim is not supported by any evidence. There is no sign that Biden has been involved in the decision to criminally investigate or prosecute Trump; ordinary citizens on a Florida grand jury voted to indict Trump in June, and the prosecution is led by a special counsel, Jack Smith. Smith was appointed in November 2022 by Attorney General Merrick Garland, a Biden appointee, but that is not proof that Biden was involved in the prosecution effort.
Biden said in June that he had not spoken to Garland on the subject and was “not going to speak with him.”
Trump repeatedly argued that the 2020 election was “rigged” against him, and he claimed that “there’s no questions about it.”
Facts First: This claim is false. The election was not rigged, and there is no evidence of any fraud large enough to have changed the outcome. Officials from the Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security, along with state election officials, said in a statement after the 2020 election: “The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history.”
This story will updated with additional fact checks.
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