Washington Post refuses to print Trump reply to story because it’s so inflammatory

Former president cites ‘fake news’ in ‘unrelated’ statement about paper’s 6 January investigation

A full response from Donald Trump and his spokesperson regarding a Washington Post investigation into the Capitol riot will not be printed because it was reportedly too “inflammatory”.

Responding to an investigation published last week, Mr Trump told The Post that all allegations were “fake news” and refused to accept any of the paper’s findings.

The paper wrote in an article on Sunday that it would not print all of Mr Trump’s reply because of a “series of unrelated, inflammatory claims that The Post is not publishing in full.”

Instead, his spokesperson Taylor Budowich told the paper that January’s riot inside the US Capitol was carried out by “agitators not associated with President Trump”.

The former US president also repeated his “Big Lie” about losing the 2020 election because of alleged fraud, despite his own justice department finding this to be false.

Mr Budowich argued that Mr Trump “greatly objected” to all of findings in The Post’s investigation into January’s riot, which included revelations about his allies being holed-up in a “war room”.

The paper argued that it had interviewed more than 200 people for its report into 6 January, as well as looking at thousands of pages of court documents and reports from investigators.

In a three-part investigation, The Post alleged that there were breakdowns in law enforcement, which failed to adequately prepare for the violence that was seen on 6 January, and that Mr Trump’s response in the riot’s immediate aftermath was flawed.

It also revealed how the former president’s allies watched the rioting from a “war room” at the Willard Hotel in Washington DC – and that the figures around Mr Trump wanted Mike Pence to flip the results of the 2020 election.

The Post printed a small segment of Mr Trump’s reply to its findings, which alleged that “there is no greater threat to America than leftist journalists and the Fake News”.

Mr Trump and his allies, as well as many Republican voters, refuse to accept his electoral defeat almost a year later.