Trump says Jan. 6 probe no big deal, lawmakers should investigate the Nov. 3 ‘insurrection’

Former President Donald Trump says he's not concerned by the prospect of his former advisers testifying before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riots.

Lawmakers, Trump argued, should instead investigate the "insurrection" that changed last year's election rules and committee chairman Bennie Thompson's ties to a black separatist group whose members killed cops decades ago.

Trump told Just the News that he questions why his lawyers want him to invoke executive privilege to block testimony and documents from going to Thompson's committee.

"I'm mixed, because we did nothing wrong," Trump said during an interview Tuesday with the John Solomon Reports podcast. "So I'm sort of saying why are we hiring lawyers to do this? I'd like to just have everybody go in and say what you have to say."

Trump said the real insurrection occurred in connection with the Nov. 3 election when liberals managed to change the rules for elections in key states to, among other things, treat mail-in ballots like "junk mail," use insecure drop boxes to collect votes, and extend counting deadlines, all in the name of battling the COVID-19 pandemic.

While officials in key battleground states have insisted they have found no widespread evidence of systematic fraud in last November's election, several states have since acknowledged irregularities, illegalities and mismanagement.

Wisconsin's Supreme Court, for instance, has concluded tens of thousands of voters in that state were unlawfully allowed to declare themselves invalid due to COVID and skip photo ID requirements for absentee voting. Arizona's Senate just completed an audit that flagged more than 50,000 ballots for problems and further investigation by the state attorney general, a cache of ballots that is five times the margin of Biden's victory.

And Georgia officials belatedly acknowledged that mismanagement and irregularities were so widespread in the state's largest county of Fulton, where Atlanta is located, that the state elections board has taken the first steps to put the county's election system in receivership and run the county's elections going forward. That action was taken after Just the News obtained a 29-page memo by a state observer chronicling serious irregularities ranging from double scanning of ballots to possible voter privacy violations.

Last week, Georgia's secretary of state announced an investigation of a second heavily Democrat county, DeKalb, over improper chain of custody documentation and mishandling of ballots deposited in drop boxes.

Trump said the mounting evidence of irregularities warrants a pivot by the Jan. 6 committee to investigating election issues.

"We did nothing wrong," America's 45th president said. "They did something wrong. The investigation should be on the election of November 3, on the presidential election of 2020. That's what the committee should be set up for. And that should be a select committee, not an unselected committee."

"The insurrection took place on November 3," Trump added, referring to all the rules changes made by states. "That was the insurrection, when they rigged the election, the big insurrection, the real insurrection, really the crime of the century."

Trump said he is continuing to press litigation to investigate and expose what happened last November even though many advisers suggest he pivot to 2022 and beyond.

"We are pressing it, and we're going to continue to press it," he said. "And a lot of very good people say, 'Sir, we should think to the future. Think to the future.' I said, 'Well, you're not going to have a future if you don't solve the past. And we don't want the same thing to happen in 2022 and 2024."

The former president also called on the Jan. 6 committee to investigate documents unearthed in a Just the News story on Tuesday showing that the committee chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), sympathized with a violent separatist group known as the Republic of New Africa, whose members killed at least two police officers, among other violent crimes.

"Now if he has a record like that, I think it's something that should be actually brought up and studied by the unselect committee," Trump said.

Trump also addressed Biden's foreign policy failures, saying the bungled exit from Afghanistan has invited international aggression by adversaries like China, which has stepped up pressure on U.S. ally Taiwan in recent days with a surge of incursions by war planes into the defense zone of the island nation.

"I will tell you that I can guarantee you that If I were president, they would not have done it," Trump said of China. "They wouldn't be sending planes over right now. For four years, you never heard anything. Taiwan wasn't even mentioned."

Trump also denounced the Justice Department for asking the FBI to investigate or monitor parents who are pressuring school boards to stop teaching critical race theory, saying it was part of a larger leftist agenda to sideline moms and dads from having a say over their children's future.

"It's very tough because the parents are very wounded by what's taken place by, in many cases, radical left school boards," Trump said. "And you would certainly think they have a voice — and they have a voice — as to how their children are going to be educated, brought up and educated."

DOJ's instruction to the FBI amounts to a "very tough stance," the former president said during a wide-ranging interview. "There's no question about it. I heard that late last night. And I was somewhat surprised by it. But nothing surprises me too much anymore."