Eliana Willis

Ex-Trump aides move step closer to being held in contempt of CongressPeter Navarro and Dan Scavino have refused to cooperate with House panel investigating January 6 insurrection Two of Donald Trump’s top former advisers, Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino, are facing mounting legal peril after the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol moved a step closer to recommending criminal charges against them.Capitol attack panel expects to hear how militia groups coordinated plans before insurrectionRead moreThe members of the committee were expected to meet on Monday night to discuss whether to hold Navarro, Trump’s former trade adviser, and Scavino, his former deputy chief of staff, in criminal contempt of Congress.A contempt report released on Sunday accused the two men of ignoring subpoenas that require them to hand over documents and face questions from the committee.The committee is expected to vote unanimously to recommend charges, triggering a House vote. The recommendation would then pass to the Department of Justice, which would decide whether to prosecute.Scavino, 46, and Navarro, 72, were intimately involved in efforts to subvert the results of the 2020 election so Trump could hang on to power. The contempt report says Scavino attended “several meetings with the president in which challenges to the election were discussed”.It also refers to Scavino having monitored a website, TheDonald.win, on which individuals planned violence in the run-up to January 6.Navarro was a prominent advocate of false claims of voter fraud. He has openly talked about a plan known as the “Green Bay Sweep”, which involved attempting to persuade lawmakers in battleground states to object to Joe Biden’s victory, in the hope of delaying certification in Congress.Both former Trump aides are accused by the committee of having failed to meet the demands of their subpoenas. Scavino, who was subpoenaed in September, has been granted six extensions but has yet to produce a document or testify, the contempt report said.Navarro, who was issued a subpoena last month, has declined to discuss any issues with the committee despite having addressed several in his own book, In Trump Time, published last November. The committee argues that his voluntary disclosures as an author make a mockery of his claim of executive privilege as justification for non-cooperation.Scavino also insists he is not able to testify because Trump has invoked executive privilege. The Biden administration has said it will not use executive privilege to shield individuals from having to provide documents and other information.The supreme court in February rejected Trump’s request to block the transfer of thousands of documents from the National Archives. Scavino and Navarro argue that the wider question of executive privilege is unsettled.The Capitol riot erupted after Trump exhorted supporters to “fight like hell” to stop Congress certifying Biden’s victory. The US Senate has linked seven deaths to the riot, in which more than 100 law enforcement officers were injured. Nearly 800 people have been charged in connection with the attack, some with seditious conspiracy.Contempt referrals have been sent to the DoJ for two other central Trump figures. Steve Bannon, Trump’s former strategist, was charged in November by a federal grand jury. He has pleaded not guilty. Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff at the time of the Capitol assault, was referred to the DoJ. It is still reviewing the evidence.The January 6 committee also made a contempt referral for Jeffrey Clark, a former DoJ official who promoted an attempt to delay certification of results in key states. He was spared a vote in the House after he agreed to appear before the committee – though he went on to invoke his right to silence more than 100 times.TopicsUS Capitol attackTrump administrationnewsReuse this content More

House January 6 panel members weigh seeking cooperation from Ginni ThomasWife of supreme court justice Clarence Thomas sent texts to Trump’s chief of staff urging overturning of 2020 election result Members of the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack are weighing whether to demand that Ginni Thomas, the wife of the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, cooperate with the inquiry, according to two sources familiar with the matter.A move to request cooperation from Ginni Thomas, who was revealed to have pushed in text messages to Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows to overturn the results of the 2020 election, would mark one of the most aggressive steps taken by the panel.Ginni Thomas texts spark ethical storm about husband’s supreme court roleRead moreThe select committee did not formally decide on whether to summon Thomas after a series of private deliberations on Friday, the sources said, even as the members discussed whether to request her voluntary cooperation or compel documents and testimony with a subpoena.But the renewed discussions – the panel weighed the matter for weeks after it first obtained the text messages – are likely to continue in huddles and on the House floor on Monday before the select committee moves to hold two Trump aides in contempt of Congress, the sources said.The hesitation to date about demanding that Thomas cooperate with the inquiry appears to have centered in part from concerns that she likely has scant interest in assisting the panel and could seek to create a political spectacle to distract from the investigation.Thomas, for instance, remains a close friend of prominent rightwing political operatives including Trump’s former strategist Steve Bannon, who last year openly defied a subpoena as he sought to undermine the legitimacy of the select committee.The other principal concern among some members on the panel is whether it would be worth it to pursue testimony from Thomas at potential political cost if she appears for questioning but then stonewalls the inquiry, one of the sources said, for instance by asserting the fifth amendment.At least one member on the select committee also appeared to only just learn about the content of the text messages after reading them in news reports on Thursday, one of the sources said.Justice Thomas remains an icon among the Republican base and some members have warned that a move against his wife would almost certainly be perceived as a partisan attack by Democrats trying to tarnish his reputation, the sources said.The worries about political backlash has increasingly become a point of contention for the select committee in recent months. The Guardian first reported in January the panel had similar reservations about issuing subpoenas to House Republicans.The select committee could yet demand cooperation from Thomas, seeking information on whether Thomas knew about the scheme to have then vice-president Mike Pence stop the certification of Joe Biden’s win or plans for Trump supporters to descend on the Capitol January 6.Other lines of inquiry might include whether she connected lawyer John Eastman, who drew up the Pence scheme and clerked for Justice Thomas, to Trump, and whether she communicated with Meadows during a gap of unexplained correspondence between 24 November and 10 January.The select committee would then find itself in the bizarre position of having John Wood, also a former clerk for Justice Thomas who now leads the “gold team” examining Trump’s role in the Capitol attack, questioning the senior justice’s wife.A spokesperson for the select committee declined to comment.Thomas is facing heightened scrutiny for working as a Republican activist while her husband sits on the supreme court after the Washington Post and CBS reported that she pushed Trump’s most senior White House aide to overturn the 2020 election results.In one of 29 text messages from Ginni Thomas that Meadows turned over to the select committee, Thomas also pressured the former White House chief of staff to have Trump appoint the conspiracy theorist and lawyer Sidney Powell to lead his post-election legal team.The communications are significant as they represent the first evidence that she was advising the White House on how to return Trump to office by any means, while her husband ruled on cases attempting to change the outcome of the election.But Meadows did not turn over any text messages between 24 November and 10 January, the Washington Post and CBS reported – a gap in communications that overlaps with the Capitol attack and would almost certainly be an area of interest to the panel.TopicsUS Capitol attackHouse of RepresentativesnewsReuse this content More

Ginni Thomas texts spark ethical storm about husband’s supreme court roleStash of messages from Clarence Thomas’s activist wife released to January 6 committee have raised conflict-of-interest concerns Calls have erupted for ethical conflict-of-interest rules on America’s top court after it was revealed that Ginni Thomas, wife of the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, pressed Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.The Washington Post reported that it had obtained a stash of 29 text messages between Ginni Thomas and Mark Meadows, then Trump’s top White House aide, which were exchanged in the tumultuous days after the November 2020 election. In the texts, Thomas blatantly urged Meadows to do anything he could to subvert the democratic result so as to frustrate Joe Biden’s victory and keep Trump in power.Ginni Thomas urged Trump’s chief of staff to overturn election resultsRead moreEthics groups, members of Congress, law professors, media pundits and a slew of other interested parties have responded to the revelations with astonishment and concern. The Thomas-Meadows texts were contained in a trove of 2,320 digital communications that Meadows has handed to the House select committee investigating the storming of the US Capitol by Trump supporters on 6 January.Those communications were only obtained by the committee after the supreme court ordered them to be transferred to Congress, rejecting claims by Trump that they were covered by executive privilege. The court forced disclosure of the material, including the Ginni Thomas texts, by a vote of 8 to 1 – with Clarence Thomas providing the only dissent.Norman Ornstein, a senior emeritus fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, called the development “a scandal of immense proportions”. Branding Ginni Thomas a “radical insurrectionist”, he said it was time for the January 6 committee to subpoena her texts and emails to see what other incriminating evidence was out there.Laurence Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard law school, called on the justice department to investigate the apparent conspiracy between Thomas, Meadows and Trump. “Hard to see Justice Thomas not recusing when that reaches” the supreme court, he said.Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, which campaigns for reform of the supreme court, told the Guardian that the rule of law depended not just on impartiality, but on the appearance of impartiality.“There is a lack of moral authority on the supreme court right now, there is a lack of trust, and the court needs to acknowledge it and take steps to ameliorate it,” Roth said.The commotion has come at a torrid time for the supreme court. On Friday Clarence Thomas himself was discharged from hospital having been treated for days with an infection.Millions of Americans also viewed the televised spectacle of the first Black woman to be nominated for the highest court, Ketanji Brown Jackson, being subjected to bizarre and hostile questioning by Republicans in her confirmation hearings. Senators including Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley pressed her on her sentencing record of sex offenders in child-abuse imagery cases, and on anti-racist teaching in schools in ways that at times came closer to dog-whistle politics than a solemn constitutional process.That Ginni Thomas was using her considerable network of contacts to try to subvert democracy came as little surprise to close observers of US politics. For decades she has acted as a prominent champion of ultra-rightwing causes, heading her own lobbying firm, Liberty Consulting, since 2010.In recent months, concern about apparent conflicts of interest relating to Clarence Thomas, who is the longest-serving of the nine justices on the supreme court, and his wife has been intensifying. Investigative articles by Jane Mayer in the New Yorker and by the New York Times have raised red flags about the interplay of such a leading rightwing lobbyist and her powerful judicial husband.The direct connection between Ginni’s texts and Clarence’s dissent in the supreme court’s ruling over disclosure of those same texts to Congress takes the issue to a new level. It raises the question of whether Clarence Thomas had any awareness of what was in the material that the January 6 committee demanded to see.As Dan Rather, the former CBS News anchor, put it: “What does Clarence Thomas know? And when did he know it?”The Thomases have always denied that they discuss each other’s work. In one of her texts, however, written three weeks after the 2020 election, she responded to Meadows – who described the attempt to overturn Biden’s win as “a fight of good versus evil” – by saying:“Thank you!! Needed that! This plus a conversation with my best friend just now … I will try to keep holding on.”“My best friend”, although veiled, was beyond doubt a reference to her husband, according to Mayer of the New Yorker, who tweeted: “‘best friend’ is how the Thomases refer to one another”.Mayer is one of many commentators who are now wondering whether it is time for an ethics code to be imposed on the supreme court – which is the only federal judicial panel in the country not to be governed by any such safeguards against corruption or conflict of interest.All other federal judges, including appeals court judges, are subject to a rule that says that they must recuse themselves in any matter in which “he or his spouse” is a party to, or has an interest in, the proceedings.Supreme court justices are required to recuse if their impartiality “might reasonably be questioned”. But as the constitutional law expert Steve Vladeck noted, there is no effective enforcement mechanism, underlining the need for a more solid set of ethics rules.The exposure of Ginni Thomas’s texts was revealed by Bob Woodward, of Watergate fame, and his Washington Post colleague Robert Costa, adding a patina of journalistic royalty to the furore, which has left even observers well versed in Thomas’s extreme politics astounded by how far she was willing to go in espousing a political coup on behalf of Trump.In her Meadows texts she regurgitated a conspiracy theory embraced by QAnon supporters that Trump had watermarked ballots sent by mail supposedly in order to detect voter fraud.She also sent Meadows a video – backing Trump’s big lie that the election was stolen from him – created by a far-right “truther”. The video maker had previously claimed that the 2012 gun massacre at Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut, in which 20 children were murdered, was an invention cooked up by gun-control advocates.Before the text messages emerged, Thomas’s links to Trump’s big lie were already known. She attended the January 6 “Save America” rally in Washington hours before the Capitol insurrection, posting on Twitter: “LOVE MAGA people!!!!” GOD BLESS EACH OF YOU STANDING UP or PRAYING!”“This is a really sad state of affairs,” Roth told the Guardian. “That a longtime political operative like Ginni Thomas should go down such a rabbit hole saddens me deeply.”TopicsUS supreme courtUS Capitol attackClarence ThomasnewsReuse this content More

Ginni Thomas urged Trump’s chief of staff to overturn election resultsIn texts to Mark Meadows, the wife of supreme court justice Clarence Thomas pushed Trump’s ‘big lie’ In the weeks following the 2020 election, the conservative activist Ginni Thomas – who is married to the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas – repeatedly implored Donald Trump’s chief of staff to help overturn the results, according to text messages obtained by the Washington Post and CBS News.In one of 29 messages seen by the news outlets, Thomas wrote to Mark Meadows on 10 November: “Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!! … You are the leader, with him, who is standing for America’s constitutional governance at the precipice. The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History.”Republican says Trump asked him to ‘rescind’ 2020 election and remove Biden from officeRead moreThe messages shed light on Thomas’s direct line to the White House and how she used it to push the “big lie” that Trump had won the election – with Meadows’ apparent support, the Post reported. The exchanges are among 2,320 texts Meadows handed to the House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.“This is a fight of good versus evil,” Meadows wrote in a 24 November message. “Evil always looks like the victor until the King of Kings triumphs. Do not grow weary in well doing. The fight continues. I have staked my career on it. Well at least my time in DC on it.”Meadows’ lawyer, George Terwilliger III, acknowledged the messages’ existence to the Post but said they did not raise “legal issues”.Thomas did not respond to the newspaper’s requests for comment. She has previously said that she does not discuss her activist work with her husband, and the messages do not mention him or the supreme court, according to the Post.Terwilliger and Thomas did not immediately reply to requests for comment from the Guardian. Messages left for the supreme court’s public information office were not immediately returned.When the supreme court rejected Trump challenges over the election in February 2021, Clarence Thomas dissented, calling the decision “baffling”, the Post notes.The text messages – 21 of which are from Thomas and eight from Meadows – contain references to conspiracy theories. Thomas, for instance, highlighted a claim popular among QAnon followers that the president had watermarked certain ballots as a means of identifying fraud.She also suggested the Bidens were behind supposed fraud. “Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators … are being arrested & detained for ballot fraud right now & over coming days, & will be living in barges off GITMO to face military tribunals for sedition,” she wrote.Thomas seemed to condemn some Republicans in Congress for being insufficiently loyal to Trump. “House and Senate guys are pathetic too… only 4 GOP House members seen out in street rallies with grassroots,” she wrote in a 10 November message, adding later that night: “Where the heck are all those who benefited by Presidents coattails?!!!”Other messages refer to conservative commentators and lawyers who supported Trump’s cause, including Sidney Powell, whom Thomas apparently wanted to be “the lead and the face” of Trump’s legal team. Powell was behind a slate of lawsuits seeking to overturn the election and faces investigation by the Texas State Bar Association over alleged false claims in court. Thomas expressed repeated support for Powell even as she became a divisive figure in pro-Trump circles, the Post notes. “Sidney Powell & improved coordination now will help the cavalry come and Fraud exposed and America saved,” she wrote on 13 November.“Listen to Rush. Mark Steyn, Bongino, Cleta,” Thomas urged Meadows in another message, apparently referring to the commentators Rush Limbaugh, Mark Steyn and Dan Bongino, along with Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who backed Trump’s claims in Georgia.“I will stand firm. We will fight until there is no fight left,” Meadows replied. “Our country is too precious to give up on. Thanks for all you do.”Thomas has acknowledged attending Trump’s rally prior to the Capitol attack on 6 January 2021, though she says she left before the then president spoke. She condemned the ensuing violence.TopicsUS elections 2020Clarence ThomasDonald TrumpMark MeadowsUS Capitol attackUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

House January 6 committee to consider holding two Trump aides in contemptPanel to meet next week after former senior White House advisers Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino refused to appear for depositions The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack will consider holding in criminal contempt of Congress next week two of Donald Trump’s most senior White House advisers, Dan Scavino and Peter Navarro, the panel announced on Thursday.The move to initiate contempt proceedings against the two Trump aides amounts to a biting rebuke of their refusal to cooperate with the inquiry, as the panel deploys its most punitive measures to reaffirm the consequences of noncompliance.House investigators said in a notice that it would consider a contempt report against Scavino and Navarro in a business meeting scheduled for next Monday on Capitol Hill, after they defied subpoenas compelling them to provide documents and testimony.Republican says Trump asked him to ‘rescind’ 2020 election and remove Biden from officeRead moreThe select committee is expected to vote unanimously to send the contempt report for a vote before the House of Representatives, according to a source close to the panel, so that the Trump aides can be referred to the justice department for prosecution.The select committee took a special interest in Scavino, since, as Trump’s former deputy chief of staff for communications, he was intimately involved in a months-long effort by the Trump White House to overturn the results of the 2020 election.Scavino was also closely involved in the scheme to pressure then vice-president Mike Pence to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election at the joint session of Congress on January 6, according to his subpoena, first issued in October last year.The select committee sought information from Navarro since he knew of that scheme to have Pence return Trump to office, through his contacts with the former president and the Trump “war room” at the Willard hotel in Washington that oversaw its implementation.Navarro was briefed on the scheme – called the “Green Bay Sweep” – by the political operatives responsible for the operation at the Willard, including former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, who was also indicted for contempt last year for subpoena defiance.The Guardian has reported that Trump discussed ways to stop Biden’s certification from taking place with the Willard war room hours before the Capitol attack, based on unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud that originated in part from Navarro’s aides.However, the select committee’s move to consider contempt reports against the two Trump aides indicate neither one complied with their subpoena. Their contempt reports are expected to be made public Sunday, said a source familiar with the matter.The panel had sought to negotiate Scavino’s testimony for months, suggesting House investigators hoped he might be prepared to shed light on the nexus between the Willard operation and the White House in the days leading up to the Capitol attack.But the abrupt termination of talks suggests that the select committee now has enough information from more than 750 depositions with other witnesses that Scavino’s cooperation is no longer essential, and can now refer him for prosecution.The much shorter timeline between Navarro’s subpoena on 9 February and the contempt report may similarly indicate the panel no longer has a burning need for his testimony – or that it was worth spending time negotiating to get his insight.Navarro entirely skipped his deposition, scheduled for 2 March, claiming that as a former top White House aide, he enjoyed immunity from congressional subpoenas after Trump, as the former president, asserted executive privilege.A spokesperson for the select committee did not respond to a request for comment.Once the select committee adopts a contempt report, it is referred to the full House for a vote. Should the House approve the report, Congress can then send the request for a criminal referral to the US attorney for the District of Columbia.The move to initiate contempt of Congress proceedings against Scavino and Navarro marks the third time the panel has pursued such action. Bannon was held in contempt last October, and former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows was referred in December.TopicsUS Capitol attackHouse of RepresentativesTrump administrationnewsReuse this content More

Madeleine Albright, who fled the Nazis as a child in her native Czechoslovakia and rose to become the first female US secretary of state and, in her later years, a pop culture feminist icon, died on Wednesday at the age of 84, her family said. Colleagues across the US state department and the UN have remembered Albright as a ‘trailblazer’ whose impact is felt ‘every single day’

Madeleine Albright, first female US secretary of state, dies aged 84
Madeleine Albright obituary
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US man charged in Capitol attack gets asylum in BelarusEvan Neumann, accused of hitting police with metal barricade, tells Belarusian state TV he has ‘mixed feelings’ about the move A former San Francisco Bay Area resident facing federal criminal charges from the January 6 attack at the US Capitol has been granted asylum in Belarus, the former Soviet nation’s state media reported on Tuesday.Evan Neumann, 49, was charged a year ago with assaulting police, including using a metal barricade as a battering ram during the riot last year. In an interview with the Belarus 1 channel that aired last year, he acknowledged being at the building that day but rejected the charges and said he had not hit any officers.The move comes a month into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Joe Biden was heading to Europe to talk with allies about possible new sanctions against Russia and more military aid for Ukraine.“Today I have mixed feelings,” Neumann told the state-owned television network BelTA in the report aired on Tuesday, the Washington Post reported. “I am glad Belarus took care of me. I am upset to find myself in a situation where I have problems in my own country.”The Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, and Russian president, Vladimir Putin, have used the riot as evidence of a supposed double standard by the US, which often condemns crackdowns on anti-government demonstrations elsewhere.Belarus is a Russian ally and neighbor to Ukraine. It does not have an extradition agreement with the US.Neumann told Belarus 1 that he had traveled to Italy in March 2021 and eventually arrived in Ukraine before crossing over illegally into Belarus. He owns a handbag manufacturing business.Police body-camera footage shows Neumann and others shoving a metal barricade into a line of officers before he punches two officers and hits them with the barricade, according to court papers. Court documents state Neumann stood at the front of a police barricade wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat in support of Donald Trump.TopicsUS Capitol attackBelarusEuropenewsReuse this content More