More than 300,000 Trump supporters plan to join virtual ‘second inauguration’ event on 20 January

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Donald Trump’s supporters, who continue to believe in the outgoing president’s claims of election fraud, have planned a “second inauguration” event for him online on the day Joe Biden is due to take his oath of office.

The event called “Donald J Trump 2nd presidential inauguration ceremony” planned on Facebook is supposed to be held on 20 January and already more than 325,000 people have shown interest in attending it. Out of those, more than 60,000 say they are definitely going, according to the Daily Dot.

One of the hosts of the event is Evi Kokalari, also known as Evi Kokalari-Angelakis, according to her Twitter profile, who was part of the Trump campaign in the 2020 elections and appears on right-leaning news networks, including One America News Network (OAN), a channel often promoted by Mr Trump as he turned hostile towards Fox News.

Ms Kokalari’s latest post on the event’s page points towards Facebook’s election information system that she deems as “fake” and says: Our voting rights are under attack! So is our freedom of speech! And FB’s disclaimer on this post, proves just that.”

The page is full of comments supporting the president’s claims of rigging during the election and links to articles to conservative news websites containing information that has been debunked in the past.

The event page itself was marked by Facebook with the disclaimer: "Joe Biden is the President-elect. He will be inaugurated as the 46th US President on January 20, 2021."

So far there has been no confirmation from the Trump team whether the president endorses this event or is planning to attend it himself.

Mr Trump was reportedly planning attempting to outshine Mr Biden with a rally on the day of inauguration announcing his 2024 run. His team had started working on the preparations but there has been no formal announcement as Mr Trump and his staff continue to maintain that the president could get a second term. However, most of the lawsuits filed by Mr Trump’s legal team have so far been of no consequence in any of the states.

The Facebook event is being seen as another antic aimed to please the support base  of the outgoing president.