US CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATORS probing last year’s deadly attack on the US Capitol have asked conservative television host Sean Hannity to provide information about his communications with Donald Trump.

Legislators said in a letter that they have obtained “dozens of text messages” that Hannity, a host at Fox News channel and a regular guest at Trump rallies, sent to the former president and his entourage before the attack.

On 6 January 2021 thousands of Trump supporters stormed the seat of US democracy in a bid to prevent lawmakers from certifying President Joe Biden’s victory.

Five people were killed in the melee and scores were injured.

“Im very worried about the next 48 hours,” Hannity wrote in one of those text messages on the eve of the attack, according to the legislators’ letter to Hannity.

“Why were you concerned about the next 48 hours?” Representatives Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney, who head the investigative committee, asked Hannity in their letter.

They asked Hannity to schedule a time for a transcribed interview with the committee.

Tomorrow, Biden will deliver a speech commemorating the attack, in which he is expected to warn of a significant threat to political freedoms that until now most Americans took for granted.

Yesterday, Trump called off a planned press conference to mark one year since the attack on the Capitol. 

Trump said in a statement he was cancelling the event at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida “in light of the total bias and dishonesty” of the congressional committee probing the assault by his supporters, and of the media.

 © AFP 2022