Eliana Willis

Jason Van Tatenhove, a former spokesperson for the Oath Keepers, testified before the US House committee investigating the Capitol riots, saying there was potential for more injuries and deaths on 6 January 2021.
‘I think we’ve gotten exceedingly lucky that more bloodshed did not happen, because the potential has been there from the start,’ Van Tatenhove said. The hearing looked at links between rightwing militant groups, including the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys and the QAnon internet conspiracy movement, with Trump and his allies. Van Tatenhove called the Oath Keepers a ‘very dangerous organisation’

Capitol attack panel examines Trump’s ‘summoning a mob’ on January 6
Trump allies ‘screamed’ at aides who resisted seizing voting machines, January 6 panel hears More

Trump sought to mount ‘armed revolution’, militia ex-spokesman saysWitness Jason van Tatenhove testifies at seventh public hearing, ‘This could have been the spark that started a new civil war’ More

The January 6 committee was originally expected to hold another hearing on Thursday detailing Donald Trump’s response to the insurrection as it unfolded.But a committee aide said yesterday that the panel would hold only one hearing this week, and members are instead expected to reconvene next week.The aide said the delay was meant to give committee members an opportunity to review “new and important information” that has been received “on a daily basis” as the hearings unfold.But the committee has not provided any further details about the next hearing, which could be the panel’s last hearing for the time being.Donald Trump’s former top strategist, Steve Bannon, suffered heavy setbacks in his contempt of Congress case on Monday after a federal judge dismissed his motion to delay his trial, scheduled for next week, and ruled he could not make two of his principal defences to a jury.The flurry of adverse rulings from District of Columbia district judge Carl Nichols – a Trump appointee – marked a significant knock back for Bannon, who was charged with criminal contempt after he ignored a subpoena last year from the House January 6 select committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol by extremist Trump supporters in 2021.Nichols refused in federal court in Washington DC, to delay Bannon’s trial date set for next Monday, saying that he saw no reason to push back proceedings after he severely limited the defences that the former Trump aide’s lawyers could present to a jury.The defeats for Bannon stunned his lead lawyer, David Schoen, who asked, aghast: “What’s the point of going to trial if we don’t have any defences?”Read the Guardian’s full report:Bannon suffers setback as judge rejects delaying contempt of Congress trialRead moreToday’s January 6 hearing is expected to feature clips from the select committee’s interview last week with Pat Cipollone, who served as Donald Trump’s White House counsel.Cipollone met with investigators behind closed doors for more than eight hours on Friday, after he was subpoenaed by the committee last month.Jamie Raskin, who will co-lead today’s hearing with Stephanie Murphy, said Cipollone corroborated key elements of the testimony already heard by the committee. That includes the testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Trump’s White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows.“Cipollone has corroborated almost everything that we’ve learned from the prior hearings,” Raskin told NBC News today. “I certainly did not hear him contradict Cassidy Hutchinson. … He had the opportunity to say whatever he wanted to say, so I didn’t see any contradiction there.”Hutchinson’s explosive testimony at a committee hearing last month included detailed descriptions of Trump’s outrage on January 6 and in the weeks leading up to the Capitol attack, as he peddled lies about widespread fraud in the 2020 election.According to Hutchinson, Trump was informed that some of his supporters were carrying weapons on January 6 and still told them to march to the Capitol, as lawmakers met to certify Joe Biden’s victory in the election. Hutchinson said that Trump planned to go to the Capitol with his supporters and tried to grab for the steering wheel of his car when his team told him that he would instead return to the White House after his speech on January 6.Ex-White House aide delivers explosive public testimony to January 6 panelRead moreAn aide to the January 6 committee said the members would focus on a meeting held on 18 December 2020, with Donald Trump and members of his legal team, including Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell.At that point, there was a growing schism within Trump’s inner circle between those who believed it was time for the president to accept his electoral defeat and those who pushed even more radical actions such as seizing voting machines or appointing a special counsel to investigate the election.Hours after the meeting, Trump sent a tweet that Murphy perceived as a “siren call” to militia groups that 6 January 2021 would be the “last stand” in a sprawling effort to overturn the results of an election he lost.“Big protest in DC on January 6th,” Trump wrote in that December tweet. “Be there, will be wild!”The tweet was a “pivotal moment that spurred a change of events including a pre-planning by the Proud Boys”, the aide said.Capitol attack panel to examine role of far-right groups in January 6 violenceRead moreGreetings from Washington, live blog readers.The House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol will hold its next public hearing this afternoon.The panel will examine Donald Trump’s links to far-right extremist groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, whose members participated in the January 6 insurrection.Committee members have said the hearing will particularly focus on Trump’s 19 December tweet urging his supporters to come to Washington for a “wild” event on 6 January, the day that Congress was scheduled to certify Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.Committee member Stephanie Murphy, who will lead today’s hearing alongside Jamie Raskin, said Sunday that Trump’s tweet served as a “siren call” to far-right extremists.“People will hear the story of that tweet and then the explosive effects it had in Trump world and specifically among the domestic violence extremist groups, the most dangerous political extremists in the country at that point,” Raskin said on Sunday.The hearing will get under way at 1pm ET, so stay tuned.Here’s what else is happening today:
The Senate judiciary committee is holding a hearing on the end of Roe. The lieutenant governor of Illinois, Juliana Stratton, will testify alongside four other witnesses.
Biden is meeting with the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The two leaders will discuss “their visions for North America and their efforts to address global challenges such as food security, continued cooperation on migration, and joint development efforts”, per the White House.
The White House will host the Congressional Picnic this afternoon. After the picnic, Biden will fly from Washington to Jerusalem.
The blog will have more updates and analysis coming up. More

Joe Biden has been heckled by the father of a mass shooting victim during a White House event celebrating the passage of a federal gun safety law. The US president was delivering a speech when he was interrupted by Manuel Oliver, whose 17-year-old son, Joaquin, was among 14 students and three staff members killed at a high school in Parkland, Florida, in 2018. ‘We have to do more than that!’ Oliver shouted, among other remarks.

Biden heckled by Parkland father during event to celebrate new gun law More

Bannon suffers setback as judge rejects delaying contempt of Congress trialFederal judge also rejects claim by former Trump strategist that he thought his non-compliance was excused by executive privilege Donald Trump’s former top strategist, Steve Bannon, suffered heavy setbacks in his contempt of Congress case on Monday after a federal judge dismissed his motion to delay his trial, scheduled for next week, and ruled he could not make two of his principal defences to a jury. Bannon initiates talks with January 6 panel on testifying over Capitol attackRead moreThe flurry of adverse rulings from District of Columbia district judge Carl Nichols – a Trump appointee – marked a significant knock back for Bannon, who was charged with criminal contempt after he ignored a subpoena last year from the House January 6 select committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol by extremist Trump supporters in 2021.Nichols refused in federal court in Washington DC, to delay Bannon’s trial date set for next Monday, saying that he saw no reason to push back proceedings after he severely limited the defences that the former Trump aide’s lawyers could present to a jury.The defeats for Bannon stunned his lead lawyer, David Schoen, who asked, aghast: “What’s the point of going to trial if we don’t have any defences?”Nichols stripped Bannon of two of his main defences for defying the select committee’s subpoena, ruling he could not present evidence to the jury that he had relied on the advice of counsel, and could not rely on entrapment by estoppel, the argument that a defendant was advised erroneously by an official that certain conduct was legal.The decision, Nichols said, came in large part because he was bound by the controlling case law at the DC circuit level, which ruled in Licavoli v United States 1961, that advice of counsel was no defence against contempt of Congress charges.Nichols also rejected Bannon’s claims that he thought his non-compliance was excused by executive privilege, and narrowed the arguments Bannon could present to mainly whether he was aware of the deadlines for testimony and producing documents established by the select committee.The decision not to allow Bannon to pursue executive privilege arguments came after the US prosecutors said in a filing that Trump’s own attorney, Justin Clark, told the FBI last month that Trump never invoked privilege for specific materials compelled in the subpoena.But Nichols went further and said Bannon could not make an executive privilege claim because none of the justice department’s internal guidelines he supposedly relied on to determine he was immune from the congressional inquiry applied to non-White House officials, such as Bannon was at that time.The judge, in refusing to delay the trial date, ruled in favour of prosecutors who urged him to look past Bannon’s “sudden wish to testify” to the House select committee – a development first reported by the Guardian – as nothing more than a last-ditch move to avoid trial.It was not clear whether Bannon still intended to testify and produce documents to the select committee after Nichols’ rulings.Nichols handed down additional defeats for Bannon, rejecting the interpretation by Bannon’s lawyers of “willful non-compliance” which they took to include an element of intent. Nichols said prosecutors needed only to show his default was deliberate and intentional.He quashed Bannon’s motion to subpoena top Democrats – including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – and select committee members, and denied a motion to introduce evidence about the justice department’s decision not to charge other Trump White House officials referred for contempt.The judge, who served in George W Bush’s justice department, also reaffirmed that the select committee was properly constituted and served a legitimate legislative function, in a significant signal undercutting claims by some House Republicans.While some Republican congressmen have complained that the panel was illegitimate, Nichols said the House voting on contempt referrals from the panel meant it had been repeatedly ratified, and he would defer to the House to interpret its own rules.TopicsSteve BannonUS politicsUS Capitol attackJanuary 6 hearingsDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

Joe Biden’s approval rating has been struggling mightily for a year and the US president’s popularity is now shockingly low even among his own supporters across America, with 64% of Democratic voters saying they want someone else to be the party’s presidential nominee in the 2024 election, according to a new opinion poll carried out by the New York Times and Siena College and published by the newspaper this morning.It describes Biden “hemorrhaging support” amid a bleak national outlook on life and politics, and only 26% of Democratic US voters telling pollsters that they want the party to renominate the current president to run for a second term.The results make shocking and grim reading for the White House this morning.The report laments a “country gripped by a pervasive sense of pessimism” and notes that voters across the nation gave the president a dismal 33% approval rating amid, overwhelmingly, concern about the economy.More than 75% of registered voters think the US is “moving in the wrong direction” with a pessimism that “spans every corner of the country, every age range and racial group, cities, suburbs and rural areas, as well as both political parties,” the NYT reports..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Only 13% of American voters said the nation was on the right track — the lowest point in Times polling since the depths of the financial crisis more than a decade ago. Biden had earlier as the presidential nominee signaled that he regarded himself as preparing the way for a new guard of Democratic leaders, but since he became president and has been pressed on whether he would seek a second term he has repeatedly said he would.At 79 he is the oldest US president in history and, alarmingly, the Times reports that among Democratic voters under the age of 30, a staggering 94% would prefer a different presidential nominee for their party going into the 2024 presidential election.Three quarters of voters surveyed said the economy was “extremely important” to them but only one percent think that current economic conditions are excellent.Kamala Harris is hailing the recent bipartisan gun reform legislation, even though it only enacts a fraction of what gun control advocates want in the US, with the vice president noting that “for 30 years our nation failed to pass meaningful legislation” addressing what she noted have been repeated calls for “common sense action to protect our communities”.The legislation will toughen background checks for the youngest gun buyers, keep firearms from more domestic violence offenders and help states put in place red flag laws that make it easier for authorities to take weapons from people adjudged to be dangerous.Most of its $13bn cost will help bolster mental health programs and aid schools, which have been targeted in Newtown, Connecticut, and Parkland, Florida, and elsewhere in mass shootings.At the time of the bill’s signing last month, Joe Biden said the compromise hammered out by a bipartisan group of senators “doesn’t do everything I want” but “it does include actions I’ve long called for that are going to save lives”.“I know there’s much more work to do, and I’m never going to give up, but this is a monumental day,” said the president, who was joined by his wife, Jill, a teacher, for the signing.US president Joe Biden and vice president Kamala Harris are now approaching the podium in the garden of the White House at an event to mark the bipartisan gun reform legislation passed last month, called the Safer Community Act.The first speaker is Uvalde pediatrician Roy Guerrero, who speaks of “a hollow feeling in our gut” in the south Texas community where a teenage shooter gunned down 19 children and two teachers in the tiny city in May.Guerrero said he hopes that the legislation just passed is just “the start of the movement to ban assault weapons” in the US.Guerrero said: “I spend half my days convincing kids that no one is coming for them and that they are safe—but how do I say that knowing that the very weapons used in the attack are still freely available?” Uvalde pediatrician Roy Guerrero at White House event: “I spend half my days convincing kids that no one is coming for them and that they are safe—but how do I say that knowing that the very weapons used in the attack are still freely available?” https://t.co/GmgmvSw9oQ pic.twitter.com/qv6ArIZWgF— ABC News (@ABC) July 11, 2022
Harris is speaking now.House January 6 panel member and senior Democrat Zoe Lofgren has explained that the committee intends to present evidence “connecting the dots” about how different extremist groups rallied to the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, to form a violent mob that perpetrated the deadly insurrection as they sought in vain to overturn Donald Trump’s 2020 election defeat by Democrat Joe Biden.The panel is holding its next hearing tomorrow afternoon and the subsequent one is expected on Thursday evening..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We are going to be connecting the dots during these hearings between these groups and those who were trying – in government circles – to overturn the [2020]election. So, we do think that this story is unfolding in a way that is very serious and quite credible,” Lofgren of California told CNN yesterday.Jason Van Tatenhove, a former spokesman for the right-wing group the Oath Keepers will reportedly testify tomorrow, KDVR of Colorado and CNN have said.Panel member and Florida Democrat Stephanie Murphy told NBC yesterday about a vital tweet by Donald Trump in late 2020 and far-right groups such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers that:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Without spoiling anything that comes this week and encouraging folks to tune in to the specifics, what I will say is that we will lay out the body of evidence that we have that talks about how the president’s tweet on the wee hours of December 19th of ‘Be there, be wild,’ was a siren call to these folks. And we’ll talk in detail about what that caused them to do, how that caused them to organize, as well as who else was amplifying that message. The House January 6 select committee is expected to make the case at its seventh hearing Tuesday that Donald Trump gave the signal to the extremist groups that stormed the Capitol to target and obstruct the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s electoral college win.The panel will zero in on a pivotal tweet sent by the former president in the early hours of the morning on 19 December 2020, according to sources close to the inquiry who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the forthcoming hearing.“Big protest in D.C. on January 6th,” Trump said in the tweet. “Be there, will be wild!”The select committee will say at the hearing – led by congressmen Jamie Raskin and Stephanie Murphy – that Trump’s tweet was the catalyst that triggered the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers groups, as well as Stop the Steal activists, to target the certification.And Trump sent the tweet knowing that for those groups, it amounted to a confirmation that they should put into motion their plans for January 6, the select committee will say, and encouraged thousands of other supporters to also march on the Capitol for a protest.The tweet was the pivotal moment in the timeline leading up to the Capitol attack, the select committee will say, since it was from that point that the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers seriously started preparations, and Stop the Steal started applying for permits.The select committee also currently plans to play video clips from former White House counsel Pat Cipollone’s recent testimony to House investigators at Tuesday’s hearing.Raskin is expected to first touch on the immediate events before the tweet: a contentious White House meeting on 18 December 2020 where Trump weighed seizing voting machines and appointing conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell as special counsel to investigate election fraud.The meeting involved Trump and four informal advisers, the Guardian has reported, including Trump’s ex-national security adviser, Michael Flynn, ex-Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell, ex-Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne and ex-Trump aide Emily Newman.Once in the Oval Office, they implored Trump to invoke executive order 13848, which granted him emergency powers in the event of foreign interference in the election – though that had not happened – to seize voting machines and install Powell as special counsel.The former president ultimately demurred on both of the proposals. But after the Flynn-Powell-Byrne-Newman plan for him to overturn the election fell apart, the select committee will say, he turned his attention to January 6 as his final chance and sent his tweet.Read the full report here.In the quirky world of opinion polls, there is a “glimmer of good news” for Joe Biden, the New York Times notes, in its survey conducted in conjunction with Siena College.Even though almost two thirds of US Democratic voters don’t want him to be the nominee in 2024, if Biden does fight the election and his Republican opponent is Donald Trump again, the Democrat will win, according to this morning’s newly-published poll.Biden would beat Trump in that hypothetical match-up by 44% to 41% if those questioned in the survey had their way.The Times notes that “the result is a reminder of one of Mr. Biden’s favorite aphorisms: ‘Don’t compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative.’ The poll showed that Democratic misgivings about Mr. Biden seemed to mostly melt away when presented with a choice between him and Mr. Trump: 92 percent of Democrats said they would stick with Mr. Biden.”Its report details the discontent with Biden’s presidency and outlook, however, adding:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Jobs and the economy were the most important problem facing the country according to 20 percent of voters, with inflation and the cost of living (15 percent) close behind as prices are rising at the fastest rate in a generation. One in 10 voters named the state of American democracy and political division as the most pressing issue, about the same share who named gun policies, after several high-profile mass shootings.
More than 75 percent of voters in the poll said the economy was “extremely important” to them. And yet only 1 percent rated economic conditions as excellent. Among those who are typically working age — voters 18 to 64 years old — only 6 percent said the economy was good or excellent, while 93 percent rated it poor or only fair.
The White House has tried to trumpet strong job growth, including on Friday when Mr. Biden declared that he had overseen “the fastest and strongest jobs recovery in American history.” But the Times/Siena poll showed a vast disconnect between those boasts, and the strength of some economic indicators, and the financial reality that most Americans feel they are confronting….
On the whole, voters appeared to like Mr. Biden more than they like his performance as president, with 39 percent saying they have a favorable impression of him — six percentage points higher than his job approval.
In saying they wanted a different nominee in 2024, Democrats cited a variety of reasons, with the most in an open-ended question citing his age (33 percent), followed closely by unhappiness with how he is doing the job. About one in eight Democrats just said that they wanted someone new, and one in 10 said he was not progressive enough. Smaller fractions expressed doubts about his ability to win and his mental acuity. Joe Biden’s approval rating has been struggling mightily for a year and the US president’s popularity is now shockingly low even among his own supporters across America, with 64% of Democratic voters saying they want someone else to be the party’s presidential nominee in the 2024 election, according to a new opinion poll carried out by the New York Times and Siena College and published by the newspaper this morning.It describes Biden “hemorrhaging support” amid a bleak national outlook on life and politics, and only 26% of Democratic US voters telling pollsters that they want the party to renominate the current president to run for a second term.The results make shocking and grim reading for the White House this morning.The report laments a “country gripped by a pervasive sense of pessimism” and notes that voters across the nation gave the president a dismal 33% approval rating amid, overwhelmingly, concern about the economy.More than 75% of registered voters think the US is “moving in the wrong direction” with a pessimism that “spans every corner of the country, every age range and racial group, cities, suburbs and rural areas, as well as both political parties,” the NYT reports..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Only 13% of American voters said the nation was on the right track — the lowest point in Times polling since the depths of the financial crisis more than a decade ago. Biden had earlier as the presidential nominee signaled that he regarded himself as preparing the way for a new guard of Democratic leaders, but since he became president and has been pressed on whether he would seek a second term he has repeatedly said he would.At 79 he is the oldest US president in history and, alarmingly, the Times reports that among Democratic voters under the age of 30, a staggering 94% would prefer a different presidential nominee for their party going into the 2024 presidential election.Three quarters of voters surveyed said the economy was “extremely important” to them but only one percent think that current economic conditions are excellent.Good morning, US politics blog readers, it’s summer time but the living isn’t easy in Washington whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican. It’s going to be a busy day at the start of a busy week, so let’s get going.
A new opinion poll in the New York Times this morning makes stomach-dropping reading for the US president, Joe Biden, reporting that 64% of Democratic voters don’t want Biden to be their presidential candidate in the 2024 election. The newspaper says: “With the country gripped by a pervasive sense of pessimism, the president is hemorrhaging support … [the majority of Democratic party voters would] prefer a new standard-bearer in the 2024 campaign,” according to a NYT/Siena College poll, “as voters nationwide have soured on his leadership, giving him a meager 33% job-approval rating.”
The House January 6 committee investigating the insurrection by extremist Trump supporters at the US Capitol in 2021 is due to hold two hearings this week, tomorrow and Thursday. It will spell out tomorrow afternoon the connections between the leading rightwing domestic extremist groups in the US as they planned to descend on Washington to try to overturn Donald Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election and, ultimately, will set about “connecting the dots” between those groups and the then Republican president himself and his role in inciting their actions.
Joe Biden and US vice president Kamala Harris will speak at the White House this morning at an event to mark the passing, against the odds on Capitol Hill these days, of the gun reform bill that followed the mass shootings in New York and Texas but before the Fourth of July massacre in Illinois.
The January 6 panel is expected to hold a primetime hearing on Thursday evening as its grand finale after setting out vivid and potent testimony and evidence about the attack on the US Capitol in the dying days of the Trump administration.
A court filing this morning has revealed that Justin Clark, an attorney to former president Donald Trump, was interviewed by the FBI late last month. The interview is ostensibly linked to the criminal contempt case against Steve Bannon for refusing congressional demands for his testimony in relation to the Capitol attack. But details are sparse so far and we’ll keep you abreast of developments. More

January 6 hearing to focus on Trump’s tweet to extremist groupFormer president’s notorious ‘Be there, will be wild!’ tweet was catalyst for violent protests, congress members will argue The House January 6 select committee is expected to make the case at its seventh hearing Tuesday that Donald Trump gave the signal to the extremist groups that stormed the Capitol to target and obstruct the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s electoral college win.The panel will zero in on a pivotal tweet sent by the former president in the early hours of the morning on 19 December 2020, according to sources close to the inquiry who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the forthcoming hearing.“Big protest in D.C. on January 6th,” Trump said in the tweet. “Be there, will be wild!”Trump lawyers feel heat as legal net tightens on plot to overturn electionRead moreThe select committee will say at the hearing – led by congressmen Jamie Raskin and Stephanie Murphy – that Trump’s tweet was the catalyst that triggered the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers groups, as well as Stop the Steal activists, to target the certification.And Trump sent the tweet knowing that for those groups, it amounted to a confirmation that they should put into motion their plans for January 6, the select committee will say, and encouraged thousands of other supporters to also march on the Capitol for a protest.The tweet was the pivotal moment in the timeline leading up to the Capitol attack, the select committee will say, since it was from that point that the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers seriously started preparations, and Stop the Steal started applying for permits.The select committee also currently plans to play video clips from former White House counsel Pat Cipollone’s recent testimony to House investigators at Tuesday’s hearing.Raskin is expected to first touch on the immediate events before the tweet: a contentious White House meeting on 18 December 2020 where Trump weighed seizing voting machines and appointing conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell as special counsel to investigate election fraud.The meeting involved Trump and four informal advisers, the Guardian has reported, including Trump’s ex-national security adviser, Michael Flynn, ex-Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell, ex-Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne and ex-Trump aide Emily Newman.Once in the Oval Office, they implored Trump to invoke executive order 13848, which granted him emergency powers in the event of foreign interference in the election – though that had not happened – to seize voting machines and install Powell as special counsel.The former president ultimately demurred on both of the proposals. But after the Flynn-Powell-Byrne-Newman plan for him to overturn the election fell apart, the select committee will say, he turned his attention to January 6 as his final chance and sent his tweet.The response to Trump’s tweet was direct and immediate, the panel will show, noting that Stop the Steal announced plans for a protest in Washington set to coincide with Biden’s certification just hours after the former president sent his missive. Bannon initiates talks with January 6 panel on testifying over Capitol attackRead moreThe Proud Boys – whose top members has since been indicted for seditious conspiracy over the Capitol attack – also started to crystalize what their plans were for January 6 the following day, according to federal prosecutors prosecuting the case.On 20 December 2020, prosecutors have said, the former Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio created an encrypted group chat called “MOSD Leaders Group” – described by Tarrio as a “national rally planning” committee that included his top lieutenants.The day after Tarrio started the MOSD Leaders Group – the Monday after Trump’s tweet that came on a Saturday – the leaders of Stop the Steal applied for a permit to stage a protest on “Lot 8” near the Capitol, and around that time, sent live the WildProtest.com website.Through the rest of December and spurred on by Trump’s tweet, the select committee will say citing the Proud Boys indictment, the Proud Boys leaders used the MOSD chats to plan a “DC trip” and tell their members to dress incognito for their operation on January 6.Top members of the Oath Keepers militia group led by Stewart Rhodes, who have also been indicted for seditious conspiracy, made similar plans as they prepared to obstruct the congressional certification of Biden’s election win, the panel intends to show.The select committee will then focus on how the Oath Keepers stockpiled weapons and created an armed quick reaction force ready to deploy to the Capitol, and how the group ended up as the security detail for far-right activist Roger Stone and other Trump allies.One of the witnesses providing public testimony at the hearing is expected to be Jason van Tatenhove, a former spokesperson for the Oath Keepers who left the group around 2017 but is slated to discuss their motivations and how they operated.The 1st Amendment Praetorian, Flynn’s paramilitary group, is also expected to get a brief mention at the hearing, as will the various “war rooms” at the Willard hotel, where both Stone and Flynn, as well as Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, were spotted ahead of January 6.The select committee, through Raskin’s portion of the hearing, will run through the effects of Trump’s tweet on preparations for January 6 right up until the morning of the Capitol attack and Trump’s speech at the Save America rally on the Ellipse.Congresswoman Murphy is then expected examine the Ellipse rally itself, and Trump’s incendiary rhetoric where he told his supporters that he would march with them to the Capitol, giving the pro-Trump crowd the ultimate incentive to storm Biden’s certification.TopicsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Trump lawyers feel heat as legal net tightens on plot to overturn election Jeffrey Clark, Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman face escalating legal threats amid expanding DoJ investigation and explosive testimonyAn accelerating justice department investigation into a “fake electors” scheme to help Donald Trump overturn the 2020 election, plus explosive testimony from January 6 hearings, have created intense legal heat for the lawyers Jeffrey Clark, Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, who were key players in the abortive effort, say ex-prosecutors.Trump White House counsel to cooperate with January 6 committeeRead moreWhile Giuliani and Eastman were key lawyers for Trump and his campaign, respectively, and Clark was a senior justice department official, the trio played big roles in a brazen multi-front drive not to certify some Biden electors but bogus ones for Trump. That could fuel charges against Trump, who they collaborated with, for obstruction of an official proceeding, or defrauding the US.Recent justice department actions, including seizing electronic devices of Eastman and Clark, coupled with more evidence at committee hearings, are increasingly likely to spur charges against the three lawyers related to the drive to replace electors Biden won in seven states with fake ones for Trump, say legal experts.The justice’s expanding criminal inquiry became palpable on 22 June when FBI agents raided Clark’s home, and separately seized Eastman’s cellphone, as grand jury subpoenas involving the scheme were served on top Republican figures and Trump allies in Georgia and Arizona.In another stark sign of the legal jeopardy Giuliani and Eastman face, recent House committee hearings into the attack on the Capitol offered evidence that both lawyers sought pardons from Trump, presumably tied to plotting strategies to block Biden’s certification by Congress on 6 January, and fiery speeches they gave along with Trump at a rally on the Ellipse before a mob of his allies attacked the Capitol.The legal threats facing Clark were underscored at a 23 June panel hearing by scathing testimony from former top justice officials about Trump’s plotting with Clark to elevate him to acting attorney general to push the fake electors scheme by falsely claiming in a proposed letter to Georgia officials that the department had “significant concern” about election fraud there and in other states.The former acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue was scalding as he detailed Trump’s efforts to replace the acting attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, with Clark in late December 2020, and to pressure state legislators to reject Biden electors by promoting baseless charges of widespread fraud.Donoghue recounted how he warned Trump at a bizarre 3 January White House meeting – that was attended by Rosen, Trump counsel Pat Cipollone and other top lawyers – that elevating Clark to be acting AG would spark mass resignations, and Clark would be “left leading a graveyard”, at the department. Cipollone, who was recently subpoenaed by the House panel, also threatened to resign if Clark replaced Rosen.Further, according to shocking testimony on 28 June by Cassidy Hutchinson, a top aide to the ex-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, Cipollone warned her early on 6 January of potential criminal liability for Trump and others if Trump went to the Capitol as he had discussed doing, and asked Hutchinson to “please make sure we don’t go up to the Capitol”.All of it adds up to potentially grave consequences for the three lawyers.Michael Zeldin, an ex-DoJ prosecutor, said: “The strong evidence presented about the fake electors scheme at recent House committee hearings, including testimony by senior justice department officials, laid the foundation for charging Trump’s legal advisers, Eastman and Giuliani, and possibly Clark, with multiple state and federal crimes including obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, false statements in connection with the fake electors scheme, and election fraud.”He added: “The cumulative evidence presented over the course of the hearings paint a picture of a president who was told explicitly by multiple people that he lost the election and that once he exhausted his judicial remedies (losing nearly 60 cases) his continuing pressure campaign to prevent the orderly transfer of power was illegal.“Yet Trump and his attorneys persisted.”Other ex-prosecutors stress that the FBI raids to obtain Clark and Eastman’s phones indicate the investigations of the two lawyers have escalated.“Search warrants of Clark and Eastman’s phones means that a judge found probable cause to believe that evidence of a crime would be found on each of those devices,” Barbara McQuade, a former US attorney for eastern Michigan, told the Guardian.Eastman’s exposure to criminal charges has been palpable and growing for months. In March, a federal judge, David Carter, in a crucial court ruling involving Trump’s legal adviser Eastman, stated that Trump “more likely than not” broke the law in his weeks-long drive to stop Biden from taking office.“Dr Eastman and President Trump launched a campaign to overturn a democratic election, an action unprecedented in American history,” Carter wrote in a civil case which resulted in an order for Eastman to release more than 100 emails he had withheld from the House panel.Other revelations damaging to Trump and Eastman emerged at a mid-June House panel hearing when Greg Jacob, the ex-counsel to former vice-president Mike Pence, provided detailed testimony about how Eastman and Trump launched a high-pressure effort to persuade Pence to unlawfully block Biden’s certification by Congress on 6 January.The Eastman pressure included the scheme to substitute pro-Trump fake electors from states that Biden won for electors rightfully pledged to Biden. Jacob testified that Eastman acknowledged to him that he knew his push to get Pence on 6 January to reject Biden’s winning electoral college count would violate the Electoral Count Act, and that Trump, too, was informed it would be illegal for Pence to block Biden’s certification.In mid-December 2020, at least 59 Republicans from states Trump lost falsely asserted and signed legal documents that they were “duly” chosen electors for Trump in the electoral college.Former prosecutors say potential charges against Trump and his top lawyers have increased in part due to the powerful details that ex DoJ leaders testified about on 23 June involving how “Trump pushed to weaponize the justice department to facilitate the [fake electors] scheme,” McQuade said.McQuade noted too that the deputy attorney general, Lisa Monaco, months ago confirmed “DoJ had received evidence from state AGs about alternate slates of electors and was investigating. It appears that DoJ is now issuing subpoenas regarding this episode … One could imagine each link leading to the next and possibly all the way to Donald Trump.”On top of Trump’s involvement in the fake electors ploy, ex-deputy attorney general Donald Ayer, who served in the George HW Bush administration, told the Guardian that overall “the evidence is increasingly showing Trump’s culpability. Trump had extensive involvement in long conversations where he was personally working intently to overturn the election.”Ayer’s point was bolstered by Hutchinson’s eye-popping testimony about Trump’s knowledge of, and indifference to, the large cache of dangerous weapons that were being carried by his supporters.Paul Pelletier, a former acting chief of DoJ’s fraud section, said that for prosecutors the powerful testimony of Hutchinson “might be the final nail in the legal jeopardy coffin of Trump’s coterie of lawyers and enablers”.“Hutchinson’s testimony has lifted the curtain on the false narrative that the violent Capitol confrontation was spontaneous,” he added.The Democratic senator Sheldon Whitehouse sees a need for coordination of criminal investigations between the DoJ and others into the multiple efforts by Trump and key allies to block Biden’s win in Georgia, including Trump’s call to Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, which is under scrutiny by the Fulton county district attorney and a special grand jury.“Phoney electors, the Clark memo, and Trump’s phone calls all converge on Georgia,” Whitehouse told the Guardian. “I hope and expect that the investigations are coordinated. The raid on Clark shows how serious this is, and false electors could make great witnesses.”Looking ahead, former federal prosecutor Dennis Aftergut told the Guardian prosecutors appear to be amassing growing evidence to pursue charges against the three lawyers who were central actors in various parts of the fake electors scheme.“Giuliani and Eastman seeking pardons is powerful evidence of ‘consciousness of guilt’,” Aftergut said.In a potential legal twist, Aftergut pointed out that if charges are filed against one of the three, prosecutors will seek their help in going after the others. “The earliest cooperators generally get the best deals from prosecutors … any of them could potentially provide damaging evidence against the other two and Trump.”TopicsUS Capitol attackJanuary 6 hearingsDonald TrumpUS politicsnewsReuse this content More