Four Oath Keepers found guilty of seditious conspiracy in latest January 6 convictions – as it happened

Joe Biden is on the defensive again after investigators found more classified material at his Delaware home over the weekend, prompting some Democrats to express disappointment with the president. The House GOP is demanding information about visitors to Biden’s home from the Secret Service, though there are divisions within the party over how aggressive to be in their investigations.

Here’s what else happened today:

• A jury found a January 6 rioter who kicked back at Nancy Pelosi’s desk guilty of all counts brought against him, while another defendant pleaded guilty to charges related to attacking police at the Capitol.

• Four members of the Oath Keepers extremist group were convicted of seditious conspiracy by a jury in Washington DC.

• We may find out more tomorrow about the legal hot water Donald Trump is facing in Georgia, when a judge determines whether to make public a special grand jury’s report into his campaign to meddle in the state’s 2020 election result.

• Democrat Ruben Gallego announced he will run for the Arizona senate seat currently occupied by independent Kyrsten Sinema.

• House Republicans want to kick three Democratic lawmakers from committee posts, but their leader Hakeem Jeffries wants to know why the GOP won’t do the same to admitted liar George Santos.

A familiar scene is playing out in the White House briefing room, as press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre bats away questions from reporters wanting to know more about the classified documents found at Joe Biden’s Delaware home and former Washington DC office.

The Guardian’s David Smith is there to see it for himself. Here’s Jean-Pierre trying to divert the press’s attention:

And responding to complaints from Democrats:

And generally not commenting:

Donald Trump’s attorneys have no plans to attend a hearing in Georgia tomorrow where a judge will determine whether to release a special grand jury’s report into the former president’s election meddling campaign in the state.

“On behalf of President Trump, we will not be present nor participating in Tuesday’s hearing regarding the possible release of the special purpose grand jury’s report,” Trump’s attorneys Marissa Goldberg and Drew Findling said in a statement.

“To date, we have never been a part of this process. The grand jury compelled the testimony of dozens of other, often high-ranking, officials during the investigation, but never found it important to speak with the President. He was never subpoenaed nor asked to come in voluntarily by this grand jury or anyone in the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office. Therefore, we can assume that the grand jury did their job and looked at the facts and the law, as we have, and concluded there were no violations of the law by President Trump.”

Tomorrow’s hearing will determine whether the report from the special grand jury tasked with looking into Trump’s attempts to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election win in Georgia is made public. The investigation is seen as potentially a major legal threat to the former president.

Democrats have seized on the House GOP’s protection of admitted fraudster George Santos to argue that the Republicans have no standing to kick three lawmakers off committees.

House speaker Kevin McCarthy has threatened to remove Democratic representatives Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell from the intelligence committee, and representative Ilhan Omar from the foreign affairs committee. According to Axios, Schiff earned McCarthy’s ire for promoting the “Steele dossier”, Swalwell for his association with a Chinese spy and Omar for comments that were seen as antisemitic.

On Saturday, Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries announced he would appoint Schiff and Swalwell back to their points on the intelligence committee, noting that McCarthy plans to seat Santos on unnamed committees in the House.

“At the same time that Republicans have threatened to deny seats on the Intelligence Committee to clearly qualified democratic members, serial fraudster George Santos has been placed on two standing committees of the House and welcomed into your conference,” Jeffries wrote. “The apparent double standard risks undermining the spirit of bipartisan cooperation that is so desperately needed in Congress.”

Because it’s a select committee, McCarthy can remove Schiff and Swalwell from the intelligence panel unilaterally. Ousting Omar from foreign affairs would require a vote in the House, and it’s unclear if that would be successful.

Four members of the Oath Keepers extremis group have been found guilty of seditious conspiracy and other charges for the involvement in the January 6 insurrection, Politico reports:

The verdict, handed down by a federal jury in Washington DC, comes after the group’s founder Stewart Rhodes and co-defendant Kelly Meggs were convicted of seditious conspiracy in November, however three other defendants were acquitted of the charge.

Elsewhere in Washington, five members of the Proud Boys extremist group are in the middle of a trial over the January 6 attack that the Guardian’s Ramon Antonio Vargas reports is raising uncomfortable questions about the government’s strategy of seeking accountability for the insurrection:

While federal prosecutors are casting the Capitol insurrection trial of five far-right Proud Boys leaders as an attempt to bring participants of an attack on US democracy to account, the members of the group are using the proceedings to ask one question even some of their opponents on the political left agree is valid.

Why have prosecutors so far only focused their energy on the supporters of Donald Trump who are accused of a coordinated invasion of the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent the congressional certification of his defeat to Joe Biden in the previous year’s presidential election? Is it because they regard the former Republican president himself – who urged his supporters to “fight like hell” that deadly day – as too formidable and them as easier targets?

Attorneys for the ex-Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and four of his lieutenants have sought to ingrain that question in the minds of jurors chosen after a particularly turbulent selection process which began last month and gave way to opening arguments and witness testimony beginning 12 January.

They do so even as the strategy has not proven effective in other cases where it has been suggested that it is really Trump who is culpable for the Capitol attack – not his less powerful sycophants and camp followers.

He’s an admitted liar, but House Republicans nonetheless refuse to dump newly elected representative George Santos. Why? The Guardian’s David Smith tries to figure it out:

“He didn’t just steal from a service dog. He didn’t just steal from a dying service dog. He stole from a disabled homeless veteran’s dying service dog. Oh my God. You evil and stupid!”

That was how Leslie Jones, guest host of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, summed up just one of this week’s revelations about US congressman George Santos, whose shameless fabulism has stunned Washington, a capital that thought it had smelt every flavour of mendacity from politicians.

“What does this man have to do get thrown out of Congress?” Jones asked, echoing the thoughts of many. “He’s a fucking liar.”

Yet the answer is that, far from being expelled from the House of Representatives, Santos, 34, was rewarded with assignments on two of its committees. The vote of confidence appeared to be an expedient calculation by the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, aware Republicans have such a slim majority that even losing one seat would make it much harder to pass legislation.

But it was also a decision, critics said, that showed the party of Abraham Lincoln and Dwight Eisenhower has lost its moral compass. Stuart Stevens, a political consultant and author of It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump, said: “Santos is a perfect example of the collapse of the Republican party.

“It shows that the party stands for nothing. It seems like a million years ago but there was a time when we said character was destiny. Nobody even knows who this guy is. We literally don’t know his real name.”

Joe Biden is on the defensive again after investigators found more classified material at his Delaware home over the weekend, prompting some Democrats to express disappointment with the president. The House GOP is demanding information about visitors to Biden’s home from the Secret Service, but there are divisions within the party about how aggressive to be with their investigations.

Here’s what else has happened today so far:

• A jury found a January 6 rioter who kicked back at Nancy Pelosi’s desk guilty of all counts brought against him, while another defendant pleaded guilty to charges related to attacking police at the Capitol.

• We may find out more about the legal hot water Donald Trump is facing in Georgia on Tuesday, when a hearing is held to determine whether to make public a special grand jury’s report into his campaign to meddle in the state’s 2020 election result.

• Democrat Ruben Gallego announced he will run for the Arizona senate seat currently occupied by independent senator Kyrsten Sinema.

The Democratic leader in the House Hakeem Jeffries has weighed in on gun control following this weekend’s mass shooting in California that left 10 people dead:

Police today made public the identities of two victims of the shooting, but have yet to give a motive for attack.

Another January 6 rioter has pleaded guilty to charges related to attacking the police, CBS News reports:

Richard Barnett, who during the January 6 insurrection was pictured sitting in a chair with a foot on then-House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s desk, has been found guilty of all charges against him, Politico reports:

As CBS News reports, Barnett testified in his own defense during the federal trial and directly addressed the jury, with no apparent effect:

Arrested two days after the insurrection, Barnett was often combative during his case’s lengthy journey through the court system.