Kevin McCarthy claimed Trump had no idea his supporters carried out Capitol attack – as it happened

If the GOP wins the House in the upcoming midterms, they will investigate Hunter Biden and attempt to turn a blind eye towards the January 6 insurrection, according to an interview with a top lawmaker and the memoir of a police officer wounded in the insurrection. But that hasn’t happened yet, and today brought news that a key witness before the January 6 committee is cooperating with a probe into election meddling in Georgia, while a lawmaker on the panel signaled its Thursday hearing may include more details of the Secret Service’s actions around the attack.

Here’s what else happened today:

• Joe Biden condemned Russia’s missile strikes across a swath of Ukraine, including the capital Kyiv, and said the country has Washington’s support. Later, he spoke with the country’s leader Volodymyr Zelenskiy about Kyiv’s need for more air defenses.

• Republican senator Tommy Tuberville resorted to racism at a rally for Donald Trump.

• In a column for the Guardian, Senator Bernie Sanders warned Democrats of the perils of campaigning on abortion rights alone.

The White House has now released its version of president Joe Biden’s phone call with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

The readout largely matches Zelenskiy’s tweet from earlier this afternoon:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}President Joseph R. Biden, Jr., spoke today with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine. He expressed his condemnation of Russia’s missile strikes across Ukraine, including in Kyiv, and conveyed his condolences to the loved ones of those killed and injured in these senseless attacks. President Biden pledged to continue providing Ukraine with the support needed to defend itself, including advanced air defense systems. He also underscored his ongoing engagement with allies and partners to continue imposing costs on Russia, holding Russia accountable for its war crimes and atrocities, and providing Ukraine with security, economic, and humanitarian assistance.

Last week, Nebraska’s Republican senator Ben Sasse announced he would leave Congress to take over as president of the University of Florida.

As documented by The Tampa Bay Times, he did not get a particularly warm reception from some students today during his visit to the campus in Gainesville:

Some of the biggest revelations from the January 6 committee’s public hearings came from the testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson, a White House aide who witnessed and overheard shocking behavior by Donald Trump and others in his administration.

CNN reports she is now cooperating with the special grand jury empaneled by a county prosecutor in Georgia to investigate the effort by Trump’s allies to interfere with the state’s backing of Joe Biden in the 2020 election.

Here’s more from CNN:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The former top aide to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows could offer Georgia prosecutors insights about what she witnessed in the West Wing, as well as steps her former boss took specifically when it came to Georgia.

Prosecutors have called for Meadows to testify before the special grand jury, but they are still working to secure his testimony. A hearing on the matter is scheduled for late October.

Meadows was among the participants on the January 2021 call between Trump and Georgia’s secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, and Meadows also made a surprise visit to a Cobb County location in December 2020, where officials were conducting an absentee ballot signature audit.

Hutchinson has also been cooperating with the Justice Department, which also faces a pre-election quiet period, in its criminal investigation into efforts to subvert the 2020 election.

An attorney for Hutchinson did not respond to CNN’s requests for comment.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy says he has spoken with Joe Biden after the Russian missile attacks on his country.

The topics of conversation included Ukraine’s need for air defenses and today’s United Nations general assembly vote on a resolution condemning Russia’s annexation of four Ukrainian regions:

The White House hasn’t yet provided their own readout of the call.

The same day that Moscow barraged Ukraine with missiles, Russian-speaking hackers have taken down the websites of several US airports, Gloria Oladipo reports, but flight operations do not appear to have been impacted:

Websites for more than a dozen US airports were temporarily brought offline by cyberattacks on Monday morning, with Russian-speaking hackers claiming responsibility for the disruption.

About 14 public-facing websites for a number of sizable airports, including LaGuardia airport in New York City, were targeted and inaccessible to the public. Most have since been brought back online.

A senior official told ABC News that the attacks did not affect air traffic control, internal airport communication or other key operations. But the official said that the interruption caused an “inconvenience” for travelers attempting to access information.

The January 6 committee’s hearing on Thursday will probably center on evidence collected over the summer, including the Secret Service’s actions around the insurrection, a lawmaker on the panel said over the weekend.

In a Sunday interview with MSNBC, Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat serving on the committee, also downplayed the importance of its interview with Ginni Thomas, the wife of conservative supreme court justice Clarence Thomas who has lobbied state lawmakers nationwide to support efforts to overturn the 2020 election. “I don’t think she was a major player in this personally,” Lofgren said.

The committee hasn’t held a public hearing since late July, and Lofgren said the upcoming session will likely focus on evidence collected by investigators during the break. “I think it will shed some light on the events of the day and the events leading up to it, the connections between the extremists and the Republicans,” she said.

You can watch the interview here. The January 6 committee will hold its next hearing beginning at 1pm eastern time on Thursday.

Here’s more from the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell about what Christina Bobb, a lawyer for Donald Trump involved in the Mar-a-Lago secrets case, told the justice department:

Donald Trump’s lawyer Christina Bobb was instructed to certify to the justice department that all sensitive government documents stored at his Mar-a-Lago resort subpoenaed by a grand jury had been returned, though she had not herself conducted the search for the records.

The certification of subpoena compliance appears to be at the center of a criminal investigation into obstruction of justice surrounding the former US president after the assurance was proved to be untrue when the FBI’s search of the property turned up more than 100 more documents marked classified.

The saga around the Mar-a-Lago documents has become increasingly mired in the courts as Trump has repeatedly claimed the FBI search and resultant investigation is politically motivated. Meanwhile, the justice department and Democrats have portrayed the taking of the documents as a potentially serious national security breach.

The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports that Christina Bobb, a lawyer for Donald Trump, spoke to the justice department as it investigates the government secrets discovered at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in August.

Bobb was one of two attorneys who are considered as potential witnesses or targets in the case, after the justice department alleged the Bobb and Evan Corcoran had lied about complying with a grand jury subpoena.

The Guardian will soon have more on this developing story.

Top White House adviser Jake Sullivan is set to talk about the Biden administration’s national security strategy in a speech Wednesday at Georgetown University:

American presidents periodically release the document spelling out their security concerns and how they intend to deal with them. Biden released an interim strategy last year, but was late getting the full report out because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, The New York Times reports:

The GOP lawmakers poised to take over the House of Representatives in the upcoming midterm elections will investigate Hunter Biden and downplay January 6, according to recent interviews and the memoir of a police officer wounded in the insurrection. While it’s a quiet day in Washington – where federal offices are shut for Columbus Day – candidates nationwide are scrambling to make their pitch to voters before the 8 November polls.

Here’s what has happened today so far:

• In a column for the Guardian, Senator Bernie Sanders warned Democrats of the perils of campaigning on abortion rights alone.

• Joe Biden condemned Russia’s missile strikes across a swath of Ukraine, including the capital Kyiv, and said the country has Washington’s support.

• Republican senator Tommy Tuberville resorted to racism at a rally for Donald Trump.

President Joe Biden has condemned Russia’s missile strikes on a number of Ukrainian cities today, including the capital Kyiv, and said they reinforce America’s commitment to help the country fend off Moscow’s invasion.

Here’s the full statement from the White House:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The United States strongly condemns Russia’s missile strikes today across Ukraine, including in Kyiv. These attacks killed and injured civilians and destroyed targets with no military purpose. They once again demonstrate the utter brutality of Mr. Putin’s illegal war on the Ukrainian people. We offer our condolences to the families and loved ones of those who were senselessly killed today, as well as our best wishes for the recovery of those who were wounded. These attacks only further reinforce our commitment to stand with the people of Ukraine for as long as it takes. Alongside our allies and partners, we will continue to impose costs on Russia for its aggression, hold Putin and Russia accountable for its atrocities and war crimes, and provide the support necessary for Ukrainian forces to defend their country and their freedom. We again call on Russia to end this unprovoked aggression immediately and remove its troops from Ukraine.

The Guardian has a separate live blog with the latest on the global reaction to today’s attacks:

Another of Donald Trump’s allies is on trial in New York over charges he acted as an unregistered foreign agent for the United Arab Emirates in order to access its vast investment pool, J Oliver Conroy reports:

“Trump is the man,” Thomas “Tom” Barrack, a wealthy investor friend of Donald Trump’s, wrote to someone in a foreign government, in 2016, as Trump’s likelihood of being named the Republican nominee for president began to become a certainty. Barrack added, cryptically, that someone called “HH” should be ready to travel.

The meaning of those words, and the intent behind them, are at the center of the latest court case to roil Trump’s circle. Prosecutors have said that the “HH” in Barrack’s email referred to His Highness Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the current leader of the United Arab Emirates, and that Barrack was trying to secretly and illegally trade his access to Trump’s ear for the graces of the Emirati government and its vast pool of investment money.