Trump's comments about violence during Jan. 6 attack on Capitol

Trump's comments about violence during Jan. 6 attack on Capitol

Former President Donald Trump asserted Wednesday night that “a couple” of the January 6 rioters “probably got out of control,” comparing the insurrection to left-leaning protests that turned violent in other cities.

Facts First: This statement is false. Hundreds of rioters have been charged with violence toward police on January 6 and Trump downplaying of the violence and equivocating the insurrection with social justice protests fails to recognize the severity of the attack on the Capitol.

The January 6 riot of by Trump supporters who overran the Capitol has resulted in the largest law enforcement response in modern history – because of the sheer amount of violence on the ground, especially toward police, that day.

The number of rioters who’ve been charged with violence toward police is in the hundreds.

According to the Justice Department this week, 346 people face federal charges for assaulting, resisting or impeding officers or other employees. That includes more than 100 people charged with using a weapon or causing serious injury to an officer. About five dozen have pleaded guilty to felony charges for these types of crimes.

And the FBI is still seeking information to identify more than 220 others who may have committed violent crimes on the Capitol grounds.

Even Trump-appointed federal judges have countered claims that left-leaning rioters in Portland, for instance, acted similarly to the pro-Trump crowd on January 6.

Judge Trevor McFadden wrote when handling a January 6 rioter’s case in 2021: “Although both Portland and January 6 rioters attacked federal buildings, the Portland defendants primarily attacked at night, meaning that they raged against a largely vacant courthouse. In contrast, the January 6 rioters attacked the Capitol in broad daylight. And many entered it.”

And another federal judge in DC, Carl Nichols, wrote: “The Portland rioters’ conduct, while obviously serious, did not target a proceeding prescribed by the Constitution and established to ensure a peaceful transition of power. Nor did the Portland rioters, unlike those who assailed America’s Capitol in 2021, make it past the buildings’ outer defenses.”

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Trump's claims about E. Jean Carroll and the civil trial jury verdict

A day after a Manhattan federal jury found former President Donald Trump sexually abused and defamed the writer E. Jean Carroll, Trump claimed that the jury in the civil trial found he did not rape her and said he “didn’t do anything else either.”

“They said 'he didn’t rape her,' and I didn’t do anything else either,” Trump said.

Facts First: This statement requires more context. While the jury did not find that Carroll had proven rape, it did find that she proved Trump committed sexual abuse, sufficient to hold him liable for battery.

Carroll alleged Trump raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store in the mid-1990s and then later defamed her when he denied her claim.

In the civil suit, the jury had to determine whether Carroll’s legal team proved that Trump committed battery against Carroll by a preponderance of the evidence.

While it did not determine that Carroll’s team had proven rape – the state’s law says that a person is liable for rape when a person forces sexual intercourse with another person without their consent – it did find that they proved Trump committed sexual abuse.

The jury had been instructed that a person is liable for sexual abuse when they subject another person without consent to sexual contact, which under New York law means “any touching of the sexual or other intimate parts of a person for the purpose of gratifying the sexual desire of either party.”

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Some New Hampshire voters say Trump focused too much on 2020 election and should instead look forward

Undeclared and Republican voters from New Hampshire, who were in the audience for the CNN town hall with Donald Trump, said that the former president should have focused more on the future instead of the 2020 election.

CNN asked voters about their thoughts on Trump's overall performance as well. Out of eight audience members participating in the post-town hall discussion, only one said that they would vote for Trump in 2024. The rest said they remain undecided.