US Politics

Did ‘good’ Republicans save us from the ‘bad’ ones on January 6? I don’t buy itMoira DoneganA person of integrity wouldn’t have found himself in the position that Mike Pence was in on the day of the Capitol attack, because he would have stood up to Trump sooner – or never worked for him in the first place Who is the January 6 committee talking to? Over the past week, the committee has held three public hearings that offer a lucid, convincing and thorough account of Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election and the events leading up to the violent insurrection at the Capitol. The hearings have been choreographed and precise, scripted down to the word, building a clear case that Trump intentionally broke the law in the pursuit of perpetual power. The hearings, compelling as argument and surprisingly successful as television, betray a vision and discipline that is rare in congressional proceedings, and which would have been impossible if it were not for the absence of nearly all Republicans on the panel.Trump brought US ‘dangerously close to catastrophe’, January 6 panel saysRead moreAnd yet, over the course of the committee’s three hearings to date, viewers have heard almost exclusively from Republicans. The public presentation of the committee’s findings relies heavily on videotaped depositions from members of the Trump campaign and the Trump administration. During the hearings’ opening night, last week, we heard from a montage of Trump-world figures, who testified under oath that they knew the 2020 election had been fairly conducted even as Trump told the public that it was stolen. It was two on-the-ground witnesses to the violence, a Capitol police officer and a British documentarian, who spoke about how brutal and chaotic the scene at the Capitol was. When it was the committee’s turn to characterize their findings, it was Liz Cheney – a rightwing ideologue from Wyoming – who did most of the talking.On Tuesday, the committee’s presentation focused on how Trump loyalists searched for evidence of election fraud, with campaign attorneys and justice department staff investigating every implausible account of irregularity that crossed the president’s desk – from fairy tales of a leaking pipe and mysterious suitcases in Atlanta – to darker conspiracies about nefarious functionaries in Philadelphia. These allegations were all investigated with surprising seriousness, and they were all found to be baseless, even by inquisitors who were sympathetic to Trump’s authoritarian cause. Trump and his allies pressed the false fraud claims anyway. Here, too, the committee used only Republicans’ testimony, giving Trump and his insurrectionist faction just enough rope to hang themselves.In the story the January 6 committee is telling about the attempted coup and its violent climax, Republicans are the bad guys and Republicans are also the good guys. The Republicans are the ones who plotted a coup, searched for a legal rationale, invented lies about fraud and wasted taxpayer money investigating them, and then descended on the Capitol in a mob. But it was also Republicans who privately said the election was fair, who told the president the election fraud claims were lies, and who frantically texted the White House as violence erupted and people started getting killed, asking Trump to call the whole thing off.It’s not a plausible story: the idea that the Republican party are both the heroes and the villains of January 6; that their private, whispered discomfort and hasty condemnations of violence should excuse their cooperation and complicity all the way up to 5 January. It’s particularly implausible now, a year and a half after the attack, as Republicans who once distanced themselves from the January 6 mob have moved to embrace it. But that’s the story that the committee is telling.They kept on telling it on Thursday, as they presented extensive and disturbing evidence about the increasingly threatening attempts by Trump and his fringe campaign lawyer, John Eastman, to persuade Pence to refuse to certify the election results. The Committee heard from two rightwing legal experts: Pence’s in-house legal advisor, Greg Jacob, who was with the vice-president at the Capitol on January 6 and counseled him in the weeks proceeding; and the former federal judge John Michael Luttig, a jurist with considerable respect in rightwing legal circles, for whom John Eastman once worked as a clerk.The two men clearly enjoyed hearing themselves talk, and their testimony featured some tedious and indulgent bickering over the supposed “inartfulness” or “perfection” of the 12th amendment’s language. But together, they told a story of an alarming campaign of pressure on the vice-president to either reject electoral votes for Biden outright, or to suspend Congress’ joint session in order to allow time for the votes to be “re-certified” (ie, changed) by state legislatures.It was Eastman who invented this cockamamie scheme, claiming without precedent or any legal support that the vice-president had the authority to change the results of an election unilaterally. The Pence camp searched desperately for some way that the plan could be legal, only to find none. For weeks, Pence and his advisors were caught in a pickle – not wanting to concede the election or disappoint Trump, but also too scared to get implicated in a treasonously hairbrained scheme. The Pence camp told Trump and Eastman that the plan was illegal. According to testimony, so did the White House counsel. So did everyone. At certain points, according to Jacob, both Eastman and Giuliani admitted that the scheme had no legal basis. They kept pushing it anyway.Things escalated. Trump began to make public attacks on Pence on Twitter. The vice-president’s office talked to the Secret Service before January 6, concerned that Trump’s hostility would mean that Pence would need more security. On a phone call the morning of the attack, Trump called Pence a “wimp” and a “pussy.” Members of the White House staff testified that even after Trump had been made aware of violence at the Capitol, he sent out another tweet attacking Pence. This prompted a surge of intensity and passion among the angry crowd, who pushed through into the Capitol building chanting “Hang Mike Pence.” After the crowds had been cleared, as members of Congress filed back into the ransacked Capitol to complete their work, Eastman sent another email: would Pence consider overturning the election now?A person of conscience and integrity would never have found himself in the position that Mike Pence was in on January 6. A man with courage would have stood up to Trump sooner; a man of moral commitment would never have worked for him in the first place. Still, the committee’s argument that Pence did something honorable when he refused to carry through the illegal plan put forth by Eastman might carry some weight, in the sense that Pence was under enormous, life-threatening pressure to do the wrong thing, and he did not. But perhaps this is the real indictment of the American system of government: if we were a functioning democracy, the rule of law wouldn’t be dependent on something so flimsy as Mike Pence’s honor.But as a symbol for a good Republican, Pence hardly seems to fit the image of uprightness and dignity that the committee is trying to assign him. The members of the January 6 committee clearly want to address these “good” Republicans, to show them that their party need not be defined by Trump, to bring them back to the light. But the people they are talking to don’t exist anymore.
Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
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Outrage at pay hike for Phoenix police under investigation over use of forceCommunity advocates say money should be spend tackling city’s extreme heat, homelessness and mental health crises A bumper pay hike for Phoenix police has been condemned by community advocates who argue the money should be spent tackling the city’s extreme heat, homelessness and mental health crises.At a heated city council meeting on Wednesday, several public speakers questioned the $19.8m salary windfall given the continuing Department of Justice investigation into the city police department over allegations of excessive use of force, retaliation against Black Lives Matter protesters, discriminatory policing and inappropriate treatment of homeless and disabled people.The federal investigation was launched by attorney general Merrick Garland in August 2021 amid mounting evidence of disproportionate use of violence against people of color and rising rates of police shootings.“There is such a crisis of poverty and unhoused people in the city, yet every year more money goes to a police department which is fundamentally corrupt, under investigation and which has shown no changes in the culture from when they arrested protesters on false charges,” said resident Christopher Martinez.But city officials argued that the salary bumps, which range from 20 to 67%, will help recruit and retain officers to the beleaguered department and improve policing. It was approved by the Democratic led city council by eight votes to one.“You’re not twiddling your thumbs, you’re doing really important work out there and it is fair that our compensation reflects what we are doing,” said Mayor Kate Gallego.Councilman Carlos Garcia, the lone vote against the pay hikes, said: “We’re embarrassed weekly on the nightly news, we pay out millions in lawsuits [against the police]. “We continue to prioritize and fund this department and then expect them to do things that they’re simply not trained for, and the results have unfortunately been loss of life.”In one recent incident, Caleb Blair, a 19-year-old Black homeless man who was showing signs associated with heat stroke and possible intoxication, died in police custody last Friday during the season’s first extreme heat wave. According to local reports, Blair was rolling around the ground partially dressed after being asked to leave a convenience store where he had sought relief from the scorching 112F (44C) heat.According to his family, who spoke to Phoenix New Times, Blair was addicted to fentanyl, the synthetic opioid that is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine. Substance use played a role in 60% of last year’s record heat death toll.The police have said Blair was “showing signs of impairment” but did not respond to the Guardian’s questions about why he was handcuffed. An internal critical incident inquiry is expected to provide video and audio footage of the fatal incident on 10 June. The medical examiner’s investigation is continuing.Of the country’s 10 largest forces, Phoenix police department ranks number one for use of deadly force, according to analysis by Mapping Police Violence. Police shootings hit record levels in 2018 in Phoenix, the country’s fifth biggest city, topping New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston.The department, which has a budget of $850m, has hundreds of vacancies.TopicsArizonaUS policingUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Capitol attack prosecutors press January 6 committee for transcripts Attorneys general say material is needed for criminal cases but congressional inquiry says it must be left to do its work Tensions between the US justice department and the House of Representatives January 6 select committee have escalated after federal prosecutors complained that their inability to access witness transcripts was hampering criminal investigations into rioters who stormed the Capitol.The complaint that came from the heads of the justice department’s national security and criminal divisions and the US attorney for Washington Matthew Graves showed a likely collision course for the parallel congressional and criminal probes into the Capitol attack.“The interviews the select committee conducted are not just potentially relevant to our overall criminal investigations, but are likely relevant to specific prosecutions,” Graves wrote, alongside assistant attorneys general Kenneth Polite and Matthew Olsen.“The select committee’s failure to grant the department access to these transcripts complicates the department’s ability to investigate and prosecute those who engaged in criminal conduct in relation to the January 6 attack on the Capitol.”01:56Federal prosecutors are seeking all of the select committee’s transcripts as they quietly expand their criminal inquiry into January 6 rally organizers and people in Donald Trump’s orbit, according to a source familiar with the matter and grand jury subpoenas reviewed by the Guardian.The justice department has empaneled one grand jury in Washington to investigate the rally organizers, examining whether any executive or legislative branch officials were involved in trying to criminally obstruct Joe Biden’s congressional certification.Another grand jury also appears to be investigating political operatives and lawyers close to Trump, including the ex-president’s former attorney Rudy Giuliani, over their involvement in a scheme to send fake Trump electors to Congress on January 6.The justice department has also signaled a potential interest in moving more aggressively with Capitol attack related prosecutions. The US attorney general, Merrick Garland, said this week that he and federal prosecutors were closely watching the select committee’s hearings on Capitol Hill.Trump a ‘clear and present danger to US democracy’, conservative judge warnsRead moreBut the panel has been reluctant to work with the justice department, in part because of fears that they lose control over their work product once they release the transcripts or that prosecutors might misinterpret their evidence, according to a source close to the inquiry.The chairman of the select committee, Bennie Thompson, said on Thursday that the panel would eventually cooperate with the justice department but the panel was “not going to stop what we are doing to share the information that we’ve gotten … We have to do our work.”The public repudiation by top justice department officials – the letter came during the panel’s third hearing into the Capitol attack – marks the latest point in steadily worsening relations ahead of looming trial dates for members of the far-right Proud Boys group on seditious conspiracy charges.Federal prosecutors said they were seeking witness transcripts as part of their preparations for an expected trial in September of five top Proud Boys members charged with seditious conspiracy and obstructing an official proceeding on January 6.The justice department’s complaint was included in a court filing as part of prosecutors’ notice to the judge that they agreed with defendants’ request to delay trial because of a lack of access to the panel’s witness transcripts.US district judge Timothy Kelly set a hearing on the matter for next Wednesday after a lawyer for one of the Proud Boys, Ethan Nordean, objected to the trial delay. Kelly gave former Proud Boys leader Henry Tarrio and another defendant until Monday to say whether they also objected to the request.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

‘System nearly failed’: US democracy was left hanging by the thread of Pence’s defianceIf the vice-president had acquiesced to Trump’s demand, the country could have plunged into an unprecedented crisis The January 6 select committee showed on Thursday that Mike Pence withstood an intense pressure campaign from Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.Trump’s advisers repeatedly tried to convince Pence to disrupt the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s victory on January 6, even after they themselves acknowledged that there was no constitutional basis for the vice-president to do so.Pence was 40ft from mob on January 6: ‘Vice-president’s life was in danger’Read morePence ultimately refused to interfere with the certification process, despite facing threats to his personal safety from Trump’s supporters who stormed the Capitol. But if Pence had acquiesced to Trump’s demands, the US could have faced an unprecedented constitutional crisis, the committee warned on Thursday.“We’re fortunate for Mr Pence’s courage on January 6,” said Bennie Thompson, the Democratic chair of the committee. “Our democracy came dangerously close to catastrophe.”Thompson’s warning was echoed by Michael Luttig, a retired federal judge who served as an advisor to Pence in the weeks after the 2020 election. Luttig argued that, if Pence had tried to overturn the results of the election, that effort would have threatened the very foundation of American democracy.“That declaration of Donald Trump as the next president would have plunged America into what I believe would have been tantamount to a revolution within a constitutional crisis,” Luttig said.The Trump team’s legal efforts to overturn the election results were spearheaded by conservative lawyer John Eastman, the committee heard Thursday. Eastman tried to convince Pence and his advisors that the vice-president had the authority, under the Electoral Count Act of 1887, to reject the results. Luttig summarily rejected that theory on Thursday, joining a loud chorus of constitutional experts who had already dismissed Eastman’s idea.“There was no basis in the Constitution or laws of the United States, at all, for the theory espoused by Mr Eastman. At all. None,” Luttig said. He added, “I would have laid my body across the road before I would have let the vice-president overturn the 2020 presidential election on the basis of that historical precedent.”According to Pence’s former counsel, Greg Jacob, even Eastman himself acknowledged that such a strategy would not withstand legal scrutiny. Eastman told Jacob that he believed the supreme court would reject the theory in a unanimous vote of 9 to 0.And yet, Trump and his allies continued to pursue their unconstitutional strategy. The committee shared new footage Thursday showing January 6 insurrectionists threatening the vice-president for refusing to block the certification, as rioters chanted, “Hang Mike Pence!”Instead of offering support to his endangered vice-president, Trump escalated his pressure on Pence. At 2.24pm, Trump tweeted, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our Constitution, giving states a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”Committee member Pete Aguilar, who took a lead role in questioning Jacob and Luttig at the Thursday hearing, said that immediately after Trump sent his tweet, the crowds in and around the Capitol surged, and Pence was evacuated.“Make no mistake about the fact that the vice-president’s life was in danger,” Aguilar said.In light of the serious threats Pence faced on January 6, many viewers of the hearing marveled at the fact that he ultimately followed through with certifying the election, ensuring the transfer of presidential power.“Had Pence not certified the election, there’d likely be violent protests in the streets,” Alyssa Farah Griffin, Trump’s former communications director, said on Twitter. “Lame duck Trump would undoubtedly try to use the military to quell unrest. You’d have general officers refusing orders. The republic would be in crisis.”Instead, Congress stayed in session until the early hours of 7 January to oversee the counting of electoral college votes and make Biden’s victory official.In the year and a half since the insurrection, lawmakers have taken steps to guarantee that a future vice-president cannot ignore the will of the people. A bipartisan group of senators is working to reform the Electoral Count Act, and they announced last week that they had reached a general agreement on language clarifying the vice-president’s role to be entirely ministerial during the counting of electoral college votes.The alarming testimony from members of Pence’s inner circle underscored the immense importance of those senators’ work, while revealing just how close the US came to an even larger disaster on January 6.Thompson chose to close out the Thursday hearing with a stark warning to the entire country: although the system of American democracy held this time, that does not guarantee it will survive the next threat.“There are some who think the danger has passed, that even though there was violence and a corrupt attempt to overturn the presidential election, the system worked,” Thompson said.“I look at it another way. Our system nearly failed and our democratic foundation destroyed but for people like you.”TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackMike PenceDonald TrumpUS politicsanalysisReuse this content More

Pence the ‘hero’ who foiled Trump’s plot – could it lead to a 2024 run? The former VP rejected the plot to overturn the election – the death knell for Trump and Pence’s marriage of convenienceMike Pence was described as the hero of the hour, the man who stood his ground to Donald Trump’s coup plot and saved America from a violent “revolution”.Pence was 40ft from mob on January 6: ‘vice-president’s life was in danger’Read moreYet among the rows of committee members, witnesses, reporters, congressmen and women and young citizens at Thursday’s January 6 hearing into the attack on the Capitol, the former vice-president was nowhere to be seen. Pence was 500 miles away in Ohio to promote “American energy dominance”.Both events could ultimately lead in the same direction: Pence 2024, a once unlikely presidential campaign illuminating the complexity of his relationship with his former boss, Trump.Pence has dropped numerous clues already, from founding an organisation, Advancing American Freedom, to touring Republican primary battlegrounds. Nothing that the 63-year-old says on the early campaign trail, however, might be as crucial as the near three hours that played out in his absence on Thursday before a TV audience of millions.But the panel came to praise Pence, not to bury him, or to hang him, for that matter – like some of Trump’s insurrectionists wanted. Even while he was taking part in a roundtable discussion in Cincinnati, the ex-vice-president’s ears might have been burning as the congressional committee investigating last year’s deadly assault on the US Capitol cast him as the savior of the republic.They spoke of a man who put his loyalty to country ahead of his loyalty to Trump, a potential selling point to Republican voters who may want to move on from the former president. But the session could also prove a serious liability for Pence with the Trump base, hardening its view of him as a traitor.The third public hearing was about Trump’s attempts to pressure Pence to overturn his 2020 election defeat. It heard how the president was told repeatedly that Pence lacked the constitutional and legal authority to meet his demands.Bennie Thompson, chairman of the committee, began the hearing by observing: “Mike Pence said no. He resisted the pressure. He knew it was illegal. He knew it was wrong. We are fortunate for Mr Pence’s courage on January 6. Our democracy came dangerously close to catastrophe. That courage put him very close to tremendous danger.”The vice-chairwoman, Liz Cheney, a Republican who in theory could run against Pence in 2024, added: “Pence understood that his oath of office was more important than his loyalty to Donald Trump. He did his duty. President Trump unequivocally did not.”The committee heard how Trump latched on to a “nonsensical” plan from a conservative law professor, John Eastman, and launched a public and private pressure campaign on Pence days before he was to preside over the January 6 joint session of Congress to certify Joe Biden’s election victory.Witness Greg Jacob, who was the vice-president’s counsel, testified that Pence refused to yield to it. The former Indiana governor understood the founding fathers did not intend to empower any one person to affect an election result and never wavered from that view.It was the death knell for the Trump and Pence’s marriage of political convenience. The president whined: “I don’t want to be your friend any more if you don’t do this.”And as a giant screen in the cavernous caucus room showed, it lit the fuse for a mob on January 6 to make bellicose declarations such as “Mike Pence has betrayed the United States of America!” The sound of chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” was juxtaposed with the image of a mock gallows against the backdrop of the US Capitol dome.Computer graphics demonstrated how Pence was evacuated from the Senate chamber but was just 40 feet from the mob and in great peril. Jacob recalled: “I can hear the din of the rioters in the building while we moved. I don’t think I was aware they were as close as that.”The committee noted that a confidential informant told the FBI that the far-right group the Proud Boys would have killed Pence if they got the chance. Jacob recalled how Pence declined to leave, insisting that the world must not see the vice-president “fleeing the United States Capitol”.Yet Trump never called to check on his safety. Asked how Pence and his wife Karen reacted to that, Jacob replied simply: “With frustration.”The implication was that Pence bravely alone stood between America and catastrophe. But the praise singing was jarring to critics who wondered why he was far away in Ohio and not here to speak for himself.Michael Beschloss, a presidential historian, tweeted: “Why won’t Pence testify before the January 6 House Committee and tell all of us what really happened?”Pence did, after all, act as Trump’s enabler for the previous four years. As vice-president he gave speech after speech lauding his boss and his policies, betraying no hint of dissent. In one strange example of sycophancy, he even seemed to imitate Trump’s actions in placing a water bottle on the floor.Asha Rangappa, a lawyer, CNN analyst and former FBI special agent, wrote on Twitter: “Pence is not a hero. Pence is a coward. It just so happens that on Jan 6, his fear of displeasing Trump was (fortunately) outweighed by a fear of something else – either being implicated in a failed coup and/or aiding and abetting criminal activity – but he’s still a coward.”Even now, while stating that Trump was “wrong” to seek to overturn the election, Pence also regularly trumpets the achievements of the Trump-Pence administration, pushes rightwing talking points and savages Biden and the “woke” left.A presidential run would presumably try to square the circle by offering a resumption of the “America first” agenda but within recognised constitutional and democratic boundaries. “Look, I’m Donald Trump but without the violence,” as Michael D’Antonio, a Pence biographer, has put it.But Thursday’s hearing might just as easily be the breaking, not the making, of a Pence bid for the White House. His defiance of Trump has now been luminously displayed for a national audience and recorded for posterity. He will not be speaking at this week’s Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in Nashville after being booed last year; Trump is the star turn on Friday.If the Republican party was still “team normal”, Pence would now be strongly placed to make the case that he was a loyal vice-president who showed his independence when it mattered. This week’s primary election results, however, suggest that the party remains “team Maga” and some still believe that Pence should hang.TopicsMike PenceJanuary 6 hearingsUS politicsRepublicansDonald TrumpUS Capitol attacknewsReuse this content More

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50 years ago, police in Washington DC arrested five men for breaking into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. What followed was the unravelling of a web of scandals that ultimately ended Richard Nixon’s presidency. What can today’s January 6 hearings learn from Watergate? And had it happened in today’s political climate, would it have played out the way it did? Jonathan Freedland speaks with Garrett M. Graff, journalist and author of Watergate: A New History

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Archive: All the President’s Men – Warner Bros, The Nixon White House Tapes – Richard Nixon Presidential Library Send your questions and feedback to [email protected] Help support the Guardian by going to theguardian.com/supportpodcasts More

Trumpists stitched a legal theory from whole cloth. The hearings tore it apartLloyd GreenOver the course of nearly three hours, the public repeatedly heard that Mike Pence lacked the authority to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election On Thursday, the House special committee again met. An hour earlier, Representative Bennie Thompson announced that the committee would invite Ginni Thomas, wife of US supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, to testify. A day before, a federal court rejected Steve Bannon’s attempt to dismiss contempt of Congress charges.“The court cannot conclude that the committee was invalidly constituted such that the indictment should be dismissed,” Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, announced. If convicted at an upcoming trial, Bannon, a former Trump senior adviser, faces up to two years in prison.Trump lawyer John Eastman sought presidential pardon after January 6Read moreThe third committee session offered no fireworks. Rather, over the course of nearly three hours, the public repeatedly heard in the driest terms that Mike Pence lacked the authority to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election.J Michael Luttig, a retired appellate judge appointed to the federal bench by George HW Bush, Greg Jacob, the vice president’s counsel, and Eric Herschmann, a Trump White House lawyer, all made that reality abundantly clear.The theory advanced by Donald Trump and concocted by John Eastman – a former clerk to Justice Thomas and Judge Luttig and a pen pal of Ginni Thomas – was a lie. It was stitched from whole cloth to sate the ambitions of the Oval Office’s desperate occupant and his minions.To quote Pence’s counsel, “there was no way” that a sitting vice president could unilaterally decide or alter the election’s outcome at a joint session of Congress. The witnesses stressed that to say otherwise would license Kamala Harris to do just that in early 2025 or have conferred upon Al Gore the power to commit constitutional “mischief” back in January 2001.Eastman’s name and theories received repeated mention throughout the hearing. In August 2020, Eastman penned an op-ed challenging Kamala Harris’s US citizenship and her eligibility to run for vice president. For the record, Harris was born in Oakland, which is very much part of America.The Eastman-Ginni Thomas alliance hovered over the hearing but received no mention before the cameras. Starting Monday night, a stream of stories emerged of communications between Ms Thomas and Eastman. Further, the New York Times reported that Eastman conveyed to Kenneth Chesebro, a pro-Trump lawyer, the state of play within the high court.“So the odds are not based on the legal merits but an assessment of the justices’ spines, and I understand that there is a heated fight underway,” Eastman wrote.From the sound of things, Eastman became privy to pillow-talk between the justice and his wife.It was only a few short weeks ago that the right exploded over the leak of a draft of a supreme court decision that stands to overturn Roe v Wade and undo constitutional protections for reproductive freedom. Now, only crickets.“We think it’s time that we, at some point, invite [Ginni Thomas] to come talk to the committee,” Bennie Thompson, the committee chair, told Axios on Thursday. “It’s time for us to invite her to come talk,” he relayed to CNN.Like Bannon, Eastman failed in his efforts to undercut the committee. In March, a federal court ruled that Eastman could not block the production of certain documents despite their possibly constituting “attorney-work product”. Instead, the crime-fraud exception attached, and the privilege did not apply.“Based on the evidence, the court finds that it is more likely than not that President Trump and Dr Eastman dishonestly conspired to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6 2021,” the court opined.During the Trump administration’s waning days, Eastman sought but failed to obtain a presidential pardon. Herschmann told Eastman to lawyer up. Fittingly, Eastman has invoked his right against self-incrimination before the committee 100 times.Despite all this, the hearings have not swayed broad swaths of the public. In Nevada, election-deniers ran the table in Tuesday’s Republican primaries. Further east, in Michigan, indicted Ryan Kelley is in the hunt for the party’s gubernatorial nomination.Instead, a recent poll shows half the country predicting that someday the US will “cease” to be a democracy. Beyond that, 49% of respondents answered that they were not following the hearings.Judge Luttig repeated that the 45th president and some of his followers were a “threat” to democracy – not simply for what happened on 6 January 2021, but on account on the 2024 presidential race and what may follow.At the moment, Trump is considering whether to announce his candidacy before November’s midterms. Beyond that, plans for a Trump-driven steal reportedly appear to be in the works. If Mike Pence prayed the morning of 6 January, he was right to.
An attorney in New York, Lloyd Green is a regular contributor and served in the Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992
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‘I’m through talking’: top Republican negotiator walks out of Senate gun talksJohn Cornyn says he is heading back to Texas, dimming hope of vote on bipartisan gun safety bill before July recess The lead Republican negotiator in US Senate dialogue toward a bipartisan gun safety bill walked out of the talks on Thursday, dimming the likelihood of a vote on the legislation before senators leave for a two-week July 4 recess.Trump a ‘clear and present danger to US democracy’, conservative judge warnsRead moreSenator John Cornyn told reporters that he had not abandoned the negotiations, but he was returning to Texas amid difficulty reaching agreement.“It’s fish or cut bait,” he said. “I don’t know what they have in mind, but I’m through talking.” Other senators in the huddle remained inside the room.The bipartisan group has been working on a deal to curb gun violence since a gunman killed 19 school children and two adults in the small city of Uvalde, south Texas, just 10 days after a separate gunman killed 10 people in an act of stated racist violence against Black people in Buffalo, New York.The group of lawmakers, gathered by Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy, announced a framework on measures to curb gun violence on Sunday. It did not go as far as Democrats, including US president Joe Biden, had sought, but would still be the most significant federal action to combat gun violence to emerge from Congress in years if passed.But in the days since, the talks have become bogged down in disagreements over two main provisions: how to provide incentives to states to create so-called red flag laws, in which guns can be temporarily taken away from people deemed dangerous, and the “boyfriend loophole,” allowing authorities to block abusive spouses from buying firearms, but does not cover people who aren’t married.Cornyn, whose home state of Texas does not have a red-flag law and is considered unlikely to enact one, wants the funding for that provision to cover other efforts towards tackling mental illness issues, such as “crisis intervention programs.”Cornyn said earlier on Thursday negotiators would need to reach agreement that day to have legislation ready in time for a vote next week.Midterm elections that decide which party controls the congressional chambers are in November, making the time window to pass any new legislation ever narrower.TopicsUS gun controlUS politicsRepublicansUS SenatenewsReuse this content More