Media

WaPost won’t publish full Trump response due to ‘unrelated, inflammatory claims’

by Dominick Mastrangelo - 11/01/21 8:36 AM ET

The Washington Post said it will not publish former President Trump’s response to a new investigative series it published this week about the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol because the statement contained irrelevant and unfounded claims about the attack and election integrity.

“The Post investigation was based on interviews with 230 people and thousands of pages of court documents and internal law enforcement reports, along with hundreds of videos, photographs and audio recordings,” the newspaper said in an introduction to the three-part series published on Monday. “The Post provided Trump a list of 37 findings reported as part of its investigation.”

A Trump spokesman, Taylor Budowich, provided the outlet a statement. The Post said the statement was “a lengthy written response that included series of unrelated, inflammatory claims that The Post is not publishing in full.”

The Post noted that Budowich said the former president “greatly objected” to all of the newspaper’s findings, dismissing it as “fake news” and describing people who carried out violence at the Capitol that day as “agitators not associated with President Trump.”

The full statement the Post decided not to include also stated the 2020 presidential election was rigged, an assertion that has been widely debunked by government officials and office holders from both parties.

The Post’s investigation examined the weeks leading up to the Jan. 6 riot. It said Trump, his legal representatives and his political allies pushed misleading claims about electoral fraud that contributed to the events that day. It also looked at the extent to which law enforcement officials failed to adequately prepare for the attack on the Capitol.

Critics of the former president in Congress and in media have said his claims about a “rigged” election directly led to the violence on Jan. 6.

“The media’s obsession with the January 6th protest is a blatant attempt to overshadow a simple fact: there is no greater threat to America than leftist journalists and the Fake News, which has avoided a careful examination of the fraudulent 2020 election,” a portion of the statement from Budowich that the Post did publish reads. “The media, just like the Democrats, do not want to see secure and honest elections. Instead of reporting the facts, outlets like the Washington Post sow division, hate, and lies, like it is doing with this story.”

Last week, The Wall Street Journal defended publishing a letter to the editor from Trump that alleged widespread voter fraud in Pennsylvania, but called his claims “bananas.”

“The progressive parsons of the press are aflutter that we published a letter to the editor Thursday from former President Trump, objecting to our editorial pointing out that he lost Pennsylvania last year by 80,555 votes,” the Journal said. “We trust our readers to make up their own minds about his statement. And we think it’s news when an ex-President who may run in 2024 wrote what he did, even if (or perhaps especially if) his claims are bananas.”

A poll conducted in June found one-third of Americans believe the election was not conducted fairly and a majority of Republicans have indicated in other polls they firmly stand behind Trump, with many saying they wish to see him run for president again.

“As for the media clerics, their attempts to censor Mr. Trump have done nothing to diminish his popularity,” the Journal wrote in its defense. “Our advice would be to examine their own standards after they fell so easily for false Russian collusion claims. They’d have more credibility in refuting Mr. Trump’s.”

Tags Donald Trump Donald Trump United States Capitol attack United States presidential election