Former president Donald Trump, on Monday, accused House lawmakers of levelling 'fake charges' against him, saying it is a bid to prevent him from running for the White House again.
"The Fake charges made by the highly partisan Unselect Committee of January 6th have already been submitted, prosecuted, and tried in the form of Impeachment Hoax #2," Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform. "I WON convincingly."
"This whole business of prosecuting me is just like impeachment was -- a partisan attempt to sideline me and the Republican Party," he added.
The House Jan. 6 committee urged the Justice Department on Monday to bring criminal charges against Donald Trump for the violent 2021 Capitol insurrection, calling for accountability for the former president and a time of reflection and reckoning.
After one of the most exhaustive and aggressive congressional probes in memory, the panel's seven Democrats and two Republicans are recommending criminal charges against Trump and associates who helped him launch a wide-ranging pressure campaign to try to overturn his 2020 election loss. The panel also released a lengthy summary of its final report, with findings that Trump engaged in a multi-part conspiracy to thwart the will of voters.
The four felonies Trump is likely to be charged with include obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress, conspiracy to defraud the United States, making false statements, and aiding or inciting an insurrection.
"An insurrection is a rebellion against the authority of the United States. It is a grave federal offence, anchored in the Constitution itself," Representative Jamie Raskin, a Democratic select committee member, told Reuters.
The nine-member panel met over a period of 18 months to investigate Trump supporters' unprecedented attempt to prevent the peaceful transfer of power, inspired by an impassioned speech by Trump, where he said his 2020 election loss to Biden was the result of widespread fraud.
--With PTI inputs.
