Eliana Willis

Marjorie Taylor Greene: Capitol attack ‘would’ve been armed’ if I was in chargeFar-right congresswoman says the violent crowd would have won on January 6 if she and Steve Bannon had planned it The far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has bragged that had she and the former Donald Trump White House strategist Steve Bannon been in charge of organizing the insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, the violent crowd would have won, and everyone in it “would’ve been armed”.The notorious provocateur made her comments about the deadly January 6 attack during a speech to a gala of the New York Young Republicans Club on Park Avenue in Manhattan on Saturday night. Hatewatch monitored the event on behalf of the Southern Poverty Law Center.Greene, who entered the US House as a newly elected representative from Georgia last year, said: “January 6 happened, and next thing you know, I organized the whole thing, along with Steve Bannon here. And I will tell you something, if Steve Bannon and I had organized that, we would have won. Not to mention, it would’ve been armed.”She went on: “See that’s the whole joke, isn’t it? They say that whole thing was planned and I’m like, are you kidding me? A bunch of conservatives, second amendment supporters, went in the Capitol without guns, and they think that we organized that? I don’t think so.”The audience – which included Bannon, Donald Trump Jr, and prominent figures on the far right – met Greene’s incendiary remarks with cheers and whoops of affirmation. Among the attendees were the founders of Vdare, a white nationalist website that opposes immigration.Greene’s speech was recorded, and parts of it were posted on Twitter by Patriot Takes, which monitors far-right extremism.The congresswoman has a long track record of controversial statements, including racist comments and expressions of support for the far-right conspiracy theory QAnon. In April, she was forced to testify about her actions in the run-up to the Capitol insurrection in a court hearing in Georgia in which opponents attempted to bar her from Congress.The hearing was presented with text messages between Greene and Trump’s White House chief of staff Mark Meadows less than two weeks after January 6. In one text, she told Meadows that other Congress members were telling her that “the only way to save our Republic is for Trump to call Marshall [sic] law … They stole this election. We all know that.”Greene told the court she had done nothing wrong and was a “victim” of the Capitol breach, which has been linked to nine deaths, including the suicides of traumatized law enforcement officers. She said she had no memory of sending the martial law text.Other speakers at the Park Avenue event also deployed contentious rhetoric. The president of the Young Republican hosts, Gavin Wax, called for “total war” against liberals.“We want total war,” he said. “We must be prepared to do battle in every arena. In the media, in the courtroom, at the ballot box. And in the streets.”Wax added: “This is the only language the left understands. The language of pure and unadulterated power.”TopicsUS Capitol attackRepublicansSteve BannonUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Biden rebukes Trump for saying constitution should be ‘terminated’Former president must be ‘universally condemned’ for comments, says White House The Biden White House rebuked Donald Trump after the former president said the US constitution should be “terminated” over his lie that the 2020 election was stolen.DeSantis and Pence lead Republican wave – of presidential campaign booksRead moreAndrew Bates, a White House spokesperson, said: “Attacking the constitution and all it stands for is anathema to the soul of our nation and should be universally condemned.”Bates called the constitution a “sacrosanct document”, saying: “You cannot only love America when you win.”Trump lost to Joe Biden in 2020, by more than 7m votes and by 306-232 in the electoral college, a result he called a landslide when it was in his favour in 2016, against Hillary Clinton.Trump continues to claim that Biden won key states through electoral fraud, a lie that fuelled the deadly attack on the US Capitol by his supporters on 6 January 2021. Nine deaths have been linked to the riot, including suicides among law enforcement. More than 950 people have been charged. This week, two members of the far-right Oath Keepers militia were convicted of seditious conspiracy. Other members of far-right, pro-Trump groups face similar charges.Trump was banned from Facebook and Twitter after the Capitol attack. He has not yet returned to the latter, despite its new owner, Elon Musk, saying he is free to do so. On Saturday, Trump used his own social media platform, Truth Social, to say of the 2020 election: “A massive fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the constitution.”Trump also said an “unprecedented fraud requires an unprecedented cure”.He was writing after Musk claimed he would show that Twitter was guilty of “free speech suppression” by releasing evidence of how the platform responded to requests from campaigns in the 2020 election.Trump is the only declared candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 but he has faced increased criticism from Republicans and Republican-supporting media since midterm elections in which many of his endorsed candidates were defeated, including election deniers running for governor and key elections roles in battleground states. Republicans took the House, but only by a narrow majority, and failed to retake the Senate.On Saturday, Trump also criticised the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, and “all of the weak Republicans who couldn’t get the presidential election of 2020 approved and out of the way fast enough”. Even after the Capitol riot, 147 Republicans in Congress objected to results in key states.Senior Republicans have recently criticised Trump over his decision to have dinner at his home in Florida with Nick Fuentes, a known white supremacist and antisemite. But though the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, has surged in polls regarding possible 2024 contenders, few in the party have broken decisively with Trump and those who have have largely been forced out.On Saturday, Brian Schatz, a Democratic US senator from Hawaii, pointed to such hard political reality, saying: “Trump just called for the suspension of the constitution and it is the final straw for zero Republicans, especially the ones who call themselves ‘constitutional conservatives’.”One such conservative is Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader battling to become House speaker. Not long before Trump said the constitution should be terminated, McCarthy said that when his party took control in January, it would demonstrate its constitutionalist bona fides by reading “every single word” of the hallowed document on the floor of the House.On Sunday, Hakeem Jeffries, the newly elected Democratic leader in the House, told ABC’s This Week Trump had made “a strange statement, but the Republicans are going to have to work out their issues with the former president and decide whether they’re going to break from him and return to some semblance of reasonableness or continue to lean in to the extremism, not just of Trump, but of Trumpism”.‘It’s on the tape’: Bob Woodward on Donald Trump’s ‘criminal behavior’Read moreTrump and Trumpism are becoming more and more of a headache for McCarthy, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and other senior Republicans.On Saturday, Mehdi Hasan, who hosts a show on the TV channel MSNBC, tweeted: “Do you support Donald Trump’s demand to ‘terminate’ the constitution? Doesn’t his demand disqualify him for running for the presidency? Two questions that every single Republican member of the House and Senate needs to be asked, again and again, in the coming days.”Hasan also pointed to Trump’s dinner at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, with Nick Fuentes, saying that in just two weeks the former president had “said or done things that would be lifelong scandals for other politicians … he truly knows how to flood the zone”. Trump critics on the political right did condemn the remark.John Bolton, George W Bush’s UN ambassador who became Trump’s third national security adviser, said: “No American conservative can agree with Donald Trump’s call to suspend the constitution because of the results of the 2020 election. And all real conservatives must oppose his 2024 campaign for president.”TopicsDonald TrumpJoe BidenUS politicsUS elections 2020US elections 2024RepublicansDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

The January 6 House panel investigating the Capitol attack, and Donald Trump’s insurrection, is set to meet in private on Friday as it prepares to mull criminal charges against the former president.The “walls closing in on Trump” headline has been written often, but this time with an elevated degree of peril for a man who recently announced his third run at the White House as a Republican.A subcommittee formed in October to make recommendations will present its report to the full panel today, according to NPR, and a determination on recommending any particular action will follow in short order.“We’ll just accept the report, and probably one day next week, make a decision one way or another,” Mississippi Democratic Bennie Thompson, the committee’s chair, told the network.The committee is expected to release its final report around the middle of this month, and it is expected to focus heavily on Trump’s involvement in the Capitol attack and his potential culpability.The Guardian reported last week that it has provoked something of a rift between panel members, with some believing it concentrates too much on Trump himself, and not enough of alleged intelligence failures by the FBI that resulted in the Capitol being overrun by supporters he incited.New: Jan. 6 committee chair Bennie Thompson tells me the full committee will receive the subcommittee’s recommendations tomorrow at 8:30a but likely wont make a decision on referrals and what to do about subpoenaed GOP members until next week.— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) December 1, 2022
Members of the subcommittee, which is chaired by Democrat Jamie Raskin, and includes Republican Liz Cheney alongside other Democrats Adam Schiff and Zoe Lofgren, all have a legal background, or, in Schiff’s case, prosecutorial experience.As well as making recommendations on criminal charges, the subcommittee was also tasked with resolving how to respond to Trump’s lawsuit against his subpoena.Read more:January 6 report expected to focus on Trump’s role and potential culpabilityRead moreLate on Thursday, a federal appeals court delivered a major blow to Donald Trump by knocking down the appointment of a special master to look at documents seized by the FBI from the former president’s Florida resort.The court also sternly rebuked Aileen Cannon, the Trump-appointed judge who assigned the special master, for meddling in a justice department investigation. Here’s my colleague Hugo Lowell’s report:A federal appeals court on Thursday terminated the special master review of documents seized from Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago property, paving the way for the justice department to regain access to the entirety of the materials for use in the criminal investigation surrounding the former president.The decision by the US court of appeals for the 11th circuit marked a decisive defeat for Trump in a ruling that said a lower-court judge should never have granted his request for an independent arbiter in the first place and is unlikely to be overturned in the event of appeal.“The law is clear,” the appeals court wrote in an unanimous 23-page opinion. “We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant. Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so.”The ruling removed the lower-court judge’s order, allowing federal prosecutors to use the unclassified documents – in addition to the documents marked classified they previously regained in an earlier appeal – in the criminal investigation examining Trump’s mishandling of national security materials.Trump can only appeal to the US supreme court, according to local rules in the 11th circuit, though it was not immediately clear whether he would do so. The former president has lost multiple cases before the supreme court, most recently including whether Congress can get access to his tax returns.In a statement, a Trump spokesman said: “The decision does not address the merits that clearly demonstrate the impropriety of the unprecedented, illegal and unwarranted raid on Mar-a-Lago. President Donald J Trump will continue to fight against the weaponized Department of ‘Justice.’”Read the full story:US court strikes down appointment of special master to review Trump recordsRead moreWhile we’re looking at the machinations of the January 6 House committee, we’re certainly not the only ones. Republicans, already committed to shutting down the panel when they assume control of the House next month (assuming it hasn’t done so itself by then) appear dead set on investigating the investigators.MSNBC’s MaddowBlog, from the Rachel Maddow show, takes a closer look at would-be Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s role in the plan, in an article published Friday.The House minority leader, if he wins enough party support to get the gavel of course, appears eager not to find answers about the 6 January Capitol attacks, or Donald Trump’s desperate efforts to retain the presidency despite his defeat by Joe Biden.Instead, he wants to cast shade on the integrity of the bipartisan panel. In a letter last week, reported by the New York Times, he wrote to the committee chair Bennie Thompson, ordering him to preserve all documents, including transcripts of more than 1,000 interviews. It’s being seen purely as a political display, as it’s something the panel would have to do anyway.This from a man who resolutely refused to cooperate with the panel last year when he received a subpoena.According to MSNBC, the tactics of McCarthy and the Republicans are “intended to discredit probes they consider politically inconvenient”. You can read the MSNBC report here.The January 6 House panel investigating the Capitol attack, and Donald Trump’s insurrection, is set to meet in private on Friday as it prepares to mull criminal charges against the former president.The “walls closing in on Trump” headline has been written often, but this time with an elevated degree of peril for a man who recently announced his third run at the White House as a Republican.A subcommittee formed in October to make recommendations will present its report to the full panel today, according to NPR, and a determination on recommending any particular action will follow in short order.“We’ll just accept the report, and probably one day next week, make a decision one way or another,” Mississippi Democratic Bennie Thompson, the committee’s chair, told the network.The committee is expected to release its final report around the middle of this month, and it is expected to focus heavily on Trump’s involvement in the Capitol attack and his potential culpability.The Guardian reported last week that it has provoked something of a rift between panel members, with some believing it concentrates too much on Trump himself, and not enough of alleged intelligence failures by the FBI that resulted in the Capitol being overrun by supporters he incited.New: Jan. 6 committee chair Bennie Thompson tells me the full committee will receive the subcommittee’s recommendations tomorrow at 8:30a but likely wont make a decision on referrals and what to do about subpoenaed GOP members until next week.— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) December 1, 2022
Members of the subcommittee, which is chaired by Democrat Jamie Raskin, and includes Republican Liz Cheney alongside other Democrats Adam Schiff and Zoe Lofgren, all have a legal background, or, in Schiff’s case, prosecutorial experience.As well as making recommendations on criminal charges, the subcommittee was also tasked with resolving how to respond to Trump’s lawsuit against his subpoena.Read more:January 6 report expected to focus on Trump’s role and potential culpabilityRead moreThe White House has announced that Joe Biden will deliver live remarks at 10.15am as he signs legislation averting a national rail strike.The Senate voted 80-15 on Thursday to progress an imposed settlement on rail workers, one day after the House did the same.Biden, who became known as Amtrak Joe for his days riding the railroad to and from the Capitol when he was a senator, is likely to praise the speed at which Congress moved to avoid the planned 9 December shutdown. Biden’s pushing of the settlement, however, is not without controversy. Read more here:Biden just knifed labor unions in the back. They shouldn’t forget it | Hamilton NolanRead moreGood morning politics blog readers, and happy Friday. It’s a big day for the January 6 House committee investigating Donald Trump’s insurrection as it meets to mull potential criminal referrals for the former president, and those in his inner circle.The bipartisan panel’s closed-doors meeting follows a massive setback late on Thursday for Trump’s tactics of obstructing a parallel justice department inquiry into his improper handling of classified documents at his Florida resort. A federal appeals court struck down the assignment of an independent special master reviewing the documents, and delivered a direct rebuke for the Trump-appointed judge who engaged him.We’ll have plenty more about those developments coming up.Here’s what else we’re watching Friday on what promises to be a busy day:
Joe Biden has picked up an unexpected fan in the form of Republican firebrand Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker who says the president is getting things right and enjoyed one of the best first-term midterm elections in history.
Biden will meet the Prince and Princess of Wales later today at the John F Kennedy presidential library in Boston.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre will brief reporters at lunchtime aboard Air Force One en route to Boston.
It’s the last day of early voting ahead of next Tuesday’s crucial Senate run-off in Gerogia. Latest polls give Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock a 3-4% lead over Republican challenger Herschel Walker. More

Lachlan Murdoch alleges Crikey hired marketing firm to turn legal threat into subscription driveNews Corp co-chair’s lawyer tells federal court she intends to show Crikey did not republish article for public interest reasons

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Crikey hired a marketing company to capitalise on a legal threat from Lachlan Murdoch in order to drive subscriptions, the co-chair of News Corporation has alleged in the federal court.Murdoch launched defamation proceedings in August against the independent news site over an article published in June that named the Murdoch family as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the US Capitol attack. The trial has been set down for March 2023 but the parties are in dispute over pretrial matters.One of the matters heard by justice Michael Wigney in a brief hearing was an allegation by the Murdoch team that a marketing campaign, run by brand strategists Populares, undermines the public interest defence on which Crikey publisher Private Media was relying.Lachlan Murdoch’s legal team loses bid to have parts of Crikey’s defamation defence dismissedRead moreIn response to a concerns letter from Murdoch in June, Crikey initially agreed to take down the article but after failing to reach agreement it was reinstated on 15 August.Sue Chrysanthou SC, for Murdoch, said she intends to show that republication of the article was not for public interest reasons but for a marketing campaign.She said Populares produced a “significant report” titled “Lachlan Murdoch Campaign” about how “a dispute with my client could be marketed for the purposes of attracting new readers and gaining subscriptions”.“The purpose of the re-posting was not for the public interest, it was for the media campaign,” she said.
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In his statement of claim in August Murdoch alleged that the placement of a New York Times advertisement inviting him to sue Crikey over the alleged defamation was “seeking to humiliate” the executive chair and chief executive of Fox Corporation.Chrysanthou said social media was “the modern-day grapevine” and alleged Crikey had paid for some posts about her client “to be promoted and advertised”.She sought orders for Crikey to provide further information in response to questions because the submitted outlines of information did not address anything after the 29 June publication of the article by Crikey’s politics editor, Bernard Keane. Wigney said the request for written answers to about 180 questions, including sub-questions, could delay proceedings and he repeatedly asked Chrysanthou: “Do you want this to go to trial in March?”“I would withdraw those interrogatories you can cross-examine them,” he said.‘Lachlan gets fired the day Rupert dies’: Murdoch biography stokes succession rumorsRead morePrivate Media’s lawyer, Clarissa Amato, said Chrysanthou’s request would result in a “a catastrophic waste of time and money”.“Some of those may be things simply left out of the discovery list by accident … there are other requests that are effectively new categories of documents,” Amato said.Chrysanthou said the social media posts about her client had spread “like a virus”, and she would call a social media expert to give evidence explaining the reach.“We want the expert to address that issue, and the effect of promoting particular posts and how that then causes those posts to appear in different people’s feeds,” Chrysanthou said.She said the expert would be asked to explain a few essential posts, relevant to claims of serious harm from the publication.Murdoch is seeking damages because through the publication and republication of the article he alleges he “has been gravely injured in his character, his personal reputation and his professional reputation as a business person and company director, and has suffered and will continue to suffer substantial hurt, distress and embarrassment”.The parties will return to court on Thursday.TopicsLachlan MurdochAustralian mediaLaw (Australia)Defamation lawMedia businessNews CorporationMedia lawnewsReuse this content More

Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes found guilty of seditious conspiracyJury convicts leader of rightwing group which supported Trump’s attempt to overturn 2020 election Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the rightwing Oath Keepers militia, has been found guilty of seditious conspiracy, a charge arising from the attack on the US Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump.Rhodes and co-defendant Kelly Meggs are the first people in nearly three decades to be found guilty of the rarely used civil war-era charge at trial. The trial was the biggest test yet for the US justice department in its efforts to hold accountable those responsible for the attack that shook the foundations of US democracy.US courts ruling in favor of justice department turns legal tide on TrumpRead moreOn social media, Harry Litman, a former US attorney turned legal analyst, said the guilty verdicts represented “a huge huge victory for the US [justice department] in a challenging and deeply important, even historic, case”.Rhodes is a Yale Law-educated former paratrooper and disbarred attorney. In an eight-week trial, he and four associates were accused of fomenting a plot to use force to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.It was the most significant trial arising from the Capitol riot of 6 January 2021, which has been linked to nine deaths including suicides among law enforcement officers. A US district judge, Amit Mehta, presided. The 12-member jury deliberated for three days.Rhodes’ four co-defendants were Meggs, Kenneth Harrelson, Jessica Watkins and Thomas Caldwell.Meggs was convicted of seditious conspiracy. Harrelson, Caldwell and Watkins were acquitted.During the trial, Watkins admitted impeding police officers, and apologized. All five defendants were convicted of obstruction of an official proceeding, with mixed verdicts on a handful of other charges. Rhodes was acquitted of two other conspiracy charges.Rhodes intends to appeal, defense attorney James Lee Bright told reporters. Another Rhodes lawyer, Ed Tarpley, described the verdict as a “mixed bag”, adding, “This is not a total victory for the government in any way, shape or form.”“We feel like we presented a case that showed through evidence and testimony that Mr Rhodes did not commit the crime of seditious conspiracy,” Tarpley said.Rhodes, who wears an eye patch after accidentally shooting himself in the face, was one of the most prominent defendants of around 900 charged so far in connection with the Capitol attack.He founded the Oath Keepers, whose members include current and retired military personnel, law enforcement officers and first responders, in 2009. Members have showed up, often heavily armed, at protests and political events including demonstrations following the May 2020 murder of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis.Prosecutors said Rhodes and his co-defendants planned to use force to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s win.Rhodes did not go inside the Capitol but was accused of leading the plot. Through recordings and encrypted messages, jurors heard how he rallied followers to fight to keep Trump in office, warned of a “bloody” civil war and expressed regret that the Oath Keepers did not bring rifles on 6 January.Meggs, Watkins and Harrelson entered the Capitol wearing tactical gear. The defendants were accused of creating a “quick reaction force” positioned at a Virginia hotel and equipped with firearms that could be quickly transported to Washington.Fifty witnesses testified. Rhodes and two others testified in their own defense. They denied plotting an attack or seeking to stop Congress from certifying results. Rhodes insisted that his followers who went inside went rogue.Prosecutors sought to paint Rhodes as a liar, showing him his own inflammatory text messages, videos, photos and recordings. These included Rhodes saying he could have hanged the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, from a lamppost.Watkins, a transgender woman who fled the US army, and Caldwell, a disabled navy veteran, were the others who chose to testify.Watkins admitted “criminal liability” for impeding officers inside the Capitol but denied any plan to storm the building, instead describing being “swept up” in the moment, just as enthusiastic shoppers behave when they rush into stores to purchase discounted holiday gifts.Caldwell, who like Rhodes did not enter the Capitol, never formally joined the Oath Keepers. He tried to downplay inflammatory texts he sent in connection with the attack, saying some of the lines were adapted from or inspired by movies such as The Princess Bride or cartoons such as Bugs Bunny.Four other Oath Keepers members charged with seditious conspiracy are due to go to trial in December. Members of another rightwing group, the Proud Boys, including its former chairman Enrique Tarrio, also are due for trial on seditious conspiracy charges in December.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsDonald TrumpUS crimeThe far rightnewsReuse this content More

January 6 report expected to focus on Trump’s role and potential culpabilityFinal report by House select committee is scheduled for release in December – but fixation on Trump has opened a rift on the panel The House January 6 select committee’s final report into its investigation is expected to focus heavily on Donald Trump’s involvement in the Capitol attack and his potential culpability, opening a rift on the panel weeks before its scheduled release in the middle of December.Justice department asks Pence to testify in Trump investigationRead moreThe nature of the final report – alongside criminal referrals to the justice department – is expected to be the defining legacy of the investigation that brought into sharp relief Trump’s efforts to stop the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s election win and return to the White House for a second term.As the final report is currently drafted, an overwhelming focus is on the findings of the “gold team” that has been examining Trump and White House advisers’ roles in orchestrating a multi-part strategy to overturn the 2020 election, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.The move to home in on Trump, principally driven by the select committee’s vice-chair, Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney, was in part because the actions of the former president – which a federal judge has said probably violated several criminal statutes – were particularly compelling, multiple sources said.But that fixation on Trump has exposed in recent weeks a deepening rift on the panel, with the since-departed lawyers on the other teams, including the “blue team” examining issues like intelligence failures by the FBI, angered that their findings were set to be relegated to appendices.The simmering discontent from some of the current and former staff has since reached the panel’s members, and an NBC News story earlier this month has since prompted discussions about changing some of the eight chapters in the final report, though they were already broadly complete.‘Trump should be held accountable’: Guardian readers on the Capitol attack hearingsRead moreThe members, one of the sources said, have discussed inserting some of the findings of the non-gold team investigators in the January 6 narrative. But the members have been reluctant to highlight conduct by Trump’s allies that might have been unsavory but probably not criminal.The final report is still scheduled to be released in the middle of December, and after the Senate runoff election in Georgia, where the Trump-backed candidate Herschel Walker trailed the Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock in the general election in a disappointing midterms for the GOP.At the same time, the select committee is weighing what potential criminal and civil referrals to the justice department might involve; the panel was scheduled on Tuesday to receive a briefing from a special subcommittee led by congressman Jamie Raskin examining the matter.The subcommittee, which also involves Cheney, Adam Schiff and Zoe Lofgren – members with a legal background, or, in the case of Schiff, prosecutorial experience – has also been tasked with resolving other outstanding issues including how to respond to Trump’s lawsuit against his subpoena.A spokesman for the panel could not immediately be reached for comment.The question of whether and what referrals to make to the justice department has hovered over the investigation for months since the select committee’s lawyers came to believe that Trump was involved in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstruct Congress over January 6.‘Devoid of shame’: January 6 cop Michael Fanone on Trump’s Republican partyRead moreThe select committee won a substantial victory in March when the US district court judge David Carter ruled that Trump “likely” committed multiple felonies in his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and stop the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s election win.But some members on the panel in recent months have questioned the need for referrals to the justice department, which has ramped up its investigation into the Capitol attack and issued subpoenas to Trump’s allies demanding appearances before at least two grand juries in Washington.The attorney general, Merrick Garland, last week appointed Jack Smith to serve as special counsel overseeing the probe into whether Trump mishandled national security materials and obstructed justice, as well as key elements of the criminal inquiry into the Capitol attack.And even before the appointment of Smith as special counsel, the department asked former vice-president Mike Pence whether he might voluntarily testify to a grand jury hearing evidence about efforts to stop the certification on January 6, the New York Times earlier reported.TopicsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpJanuary 6 hearingsUS politicsLiz CheneynewsReuse this content More

Justice department asks Pence to testify in Trump investigationEx-vice-president considering the request, according to sources, but said last week he would not testify to the January 6 panel The US Department of Justice has asked Mike Pence to testify in its investigation of Donald Trump’s election subversion and the former vice-president was considering the request, sources with knowledge of the situation have told the Guardian.So Help Me God review: Mike Pence’s tortured bid for Republican relevanceRead moreLast week, Pence said he would not testify to the House January 6 committee, telling CBS: “Congress has no right to my testimony on separation of powers under the constitution of the United States. And I believe it will establish a terrible precedent for the Congress to summon a vice-president of the United States to speak about deliberations that took place at the White House.”Pence also said the committee, made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans, was too partisan. The chair and vice-chair of the panel, Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney, rejected that charge.The New York Times first reported the news of the approach to Pence and said he recognised that the Department of Justice investigation could not be dismissed.The newspaper said the request to Pence was made before the attorney general, Merrick Garland, announced last Friday the appointment of a special counsel to oversee the justice department investigation.Garland said the appointment of the career prosecutor Jack Smith would not slow the investigation of Trump’s attempt to stay in power despite losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden, culminating in the deadly Capitol attack on 6 January 2021.Smith will also oversee the investigation of Trump’s retention of White House records.Trump has tried to stop other senior aides testifying to the Department of Justice, claiming executive privilege. Many aides have been served with subpoenas.Pence and the Department of Justice did not immediately comment on the Times report.On Sunday, Pence was asked if he thought Trump committed a crime in connection with the events of January 6, when some Trump supporters who attacked the Capitol chanted “Hang Mike Pence”.Pence told NBC: “I don’t know if it is criminal to listen to bad advice from lawyers.”Eyeing his own presidential run in 2024, Pence must pursue a balancing act as he seeks to distance himself from Trump while appealing to Republican voters.In that spirit he has published a memoir, So Help Me God, which deals in detail with his version of events during his time at Trump’s side. The book includes an extensive account of Pence’s role in and views of Trump’s attempts to stay in office.Pence ultimately refused to block certification of electoral college results, a process over which he presided. Trump, he writes, said he was “too honest” to take part in a plot based on claims of widespread electoral fraud. But Pence also says Republicans were right to lodge objections to results in key states, as it “meant we would have a substantive debate”.Either way, it seems Trump would have reason to fear testimony to the Department of Justice by his former vice-president. In his book and in interviews to promote it, Pence has made clear he blames Trump for the Capitol riot.Earlier this month, Pence told ABC Trump’s words and actions “angered me”.“But I turned to my daughter who was standing nearby. And I said, ‘It doesn’t take courage to break the law. It takes courage to uphold the law.’ The president’s words were reckless. It’s clear he decided to be part of the problem.”TopicsMike PenceDonald TrumpLaw (US)US Capitol attacknewsReuse this content More

The Oath Keepers don’t dispute that some of their members were around the Capitol on January 6, but jurors need to believe they entered the building in an attempt to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election win. Whether prosecutors have succeeded at this will be key to determining if they win a conviction in the seditious conspiracy case. Here’s more from the Associated Press on what’s come out of the trial so far:As angry supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the US Capitol, ready to smash through windows and beat police officers, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes extolled them as patriots and harked back to the battle that kicked off the American revolutionary war.“Next comes our Lexington,” Rhodes told his fellow far-right extremists in a message on 6 January 2021. “It’s coming.”Jurors will begin weighing his words and actions on Tuesday, after nearly two months of testimony and argument in the criminal trial of Rhodes and four codefendants. Final defense arguments wrapped up late Monday. Hundreds of people have been convicted in the attack that left dozens of officers injured, sent lawmakers running for their lives and shook the foundations of American democracy. Now jurors in the case against Rhodes and four associates will decide, for the first time, whether the actions of any January 6 defendants amount to seditious conspiracy – a rarely used charge that carries both significant prison time and political weight.The jury’s verdict may well address the false notion that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, coming soon after 2022 midterm results in which voters rejected Trump’s chosen Republican candidates who supported his baseless claims of fraud. The outcome could also shape the future of the justice department’s massive and costly prosecution of the insurrection that some conservatives have sought to portray as politically motivated.Failure to secure a seditious conspiracy conviction could spell trouble for another high-profile trial beginning next month of former Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio and other leaders of that extremist group. The justice department’s January 6 probe has also expanded beyond those who attacked the Capitol to focus on others linked to Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.In the Oath Keepers trial, prosecutors built their case using dozens of encrypted messages sent in the weeks leading up to January 6. They show Rhodes rallying his followers to fight to defend Trump and warning they might need to “rise up in insurrection”.“We aren’t getting through this without a civil war. Prepare your mind, body and spirit,” he wrote shortly after the 2020 election.Jury deliberations begin in January 6 sedition trial of Oath Keepers founderRead moreDemocratic incumbent Raphael Warnock has a slight lead over his Republican challenger Herschel Walker ahead of the 6 December run-off election for Georgia’s Senate seat, a poll released today finds.The survey by AARP Georgia finds Warnock has 51% support over Walker’s 47%. The Democrat has an edge among young voters, while Walker is more popular among people older than 50, which are a large part of the electorate.Walker and Warnock are battling for a Senate seat that Democrats took control of only last year in a special election. While Joe Biden’s allies have secured a majority in Congress’s upper chamber for another two years, a victory by Warnock would pad their margin of control. Republicans, meanwhile, hope Walker’s victory would put them in a better position to retake the chamber in the next elections set for 2024.Top House Republican Kevin McCarthy will make a “major” announcement about homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas today, Fox News reports:NEW: GOP Minority Leader/Speaker elect Kevin McCarthy tells me he will be making a “major” announcement regarding DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas at a press conference in El Paso, TX this afternoon. McCarthy is here w/ a GOP delegation touring the border & meeting w/ BP agents.— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) November 22, 2022
The announcement will come during McCarthy’s visit to El Paso, Texas, where he will probably draw attention to the surge in migrant arrivals at the US-Mexico border since Joe Biden took office. Republicans have criticized the White House for its handling of the situation, and rightwing lawmakers in Congress have reportedly called for impeachment proceedings against Mayorkas, a rare step to take against a sitting cabinet secretary.McCarthy is hoping to be elected speaker of the House when Republicans take control next year, after winning a majority of seats in the 8 November midterms. But he is scrambling to find the votes after several of the chamber’s most conservative lawmakers said they would not support him.Republican Senator Lindsey Graham will today appear before a special grand jury investigating efforts by Donald Trump’s allies to meddle with Georgia’s election result, Fox 5 Atlanta reports.Graham has fought the subpoena from Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis for months, but exhausted his legal options when the supreme court turned down his challenge earlier this month. The South Carolina lawmaker’s appearance before jurors in an Atlanta courthouse will not be public, but Willis could use evidence he provides to bring charges in the case.The district attorney has said she wants to ask Graham about two calls he made to Georgia’s secretary of state Brad Raffensperger and his officials following the 2020 election, in which he alleged voter fraud in the state and asked about the possibility of “reexamining certain absentee ballots,” Fox 5 reports. Georgia was one of several states whose votes for Joe Biden proved crucial to his election victory two years ago.The Oath Keepers don’t dispute that some of their members were around the Capitol on January 6, but jurors need to believe they entered the building in an attempt to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election win. Whether prosecutors have succeeded at this will be key to determining if they win a conviction in the seditious conspiracy case. Here’s more from the Associated Press on what’s come out of the trial so far:As angry supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the US Capitol, ready to smash through windows and beat police officers, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes extolled them as patriots and harked back to the battle that kicked off the American revolutionary war.“Next comes our Lexington,” Rhodes told his fellow far-right extremists in a message on 6 January 2021. “It’s coming.”Jurors will begin weighing his words and actions on Tuesday, after nearly two months of testimony and argument in the criminal trial of Rhodes and four codefendants. Final defense arguments wrapped up late Monday. Hundreds of people have been convicted in the attack that left dozens of officers injured, sent lawmakers running for their lives and shook the foundations of American democracy. Now jurors in the case against Rhodes and four associates will decide, for the first time, whether the actions of any January 6 defendants amount to seditious conspiracy – a rarely used charge that carries both significant prison time and political weight.The jury’s verdict may well address the false notion that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, coming soon after 2022 midterm results in which voters rejected Trump’s chosen Republican candidates who supported his baseless claims of fraud. The outcome could also shape the future of the justice department’s massive and costly prosecution of the insurrection that some conservatives have sought to portray as politically motivated.Failure to secure a seditious conspiracy conviction could spell trouble for another high-profile trial beginning next month of former Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio and other leaders of that extremist group. The justice department’s January 6 probe has also expanded beyond those who attacked the Capitol to focus on others linked to Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.In the Oath Keepers trial, prosecutors built their case using dozens of encrypted messages sent in the weeks leading up to January 6. They show Rhodes rallying his followers to fight to defend Trump and warning they might need to “rise up in insurrection”.“We aren’t getting through this without a civil war. Prepare your mind, body and spirit,” he wrote shortly after the 2020 election.Jury deliberations begin in January 6 sedition trial of Oath Keepers founderRead moreGood morning, US politics blog readers. A Washington federal jury is starting deliberations in the trial of five members of the Oath Keepers militia, including its founder Stewart Rhodes. The group stands accused of seditious conspiracy, a rarely used charge that prosecutors say is an appropriate way to describe the alleged plot they attempted to carry out on January 6 to stop Joe Biden from taking office. The trial will be an important indicator of if the government can win convictions against the most violent actors in the insurrection, and a verdict could come at any time.Here’s what else is happening today:
Top House Republican Kevin McCarthy is visiting border patrol personnel in El Paso, Texas. Expect him to talk up the GOP’s plan to address the surge of migrant arrivals at the US-Mexico border when they take control of the House next year, and criticize Joe Biden’s handling of the situation.
Biden is heading to Nantucket, Massachusetts, this afternoon for the Thanksgiving holiday.
Anthony Fauci and Covid-19 response coordinator Ashish Jha will appear at the daily White House press briefing at 11.30am eastern time, where they’ll likely talk about the threat of coronavirus during the holiday season. More