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    Who Are the Key Figures of Interest in the Jan. 6 Inquiry?

    The list of names being scrutinized by the House committee for their role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol keeps growing.A House select committee has been formed to scrutinize the causes of the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. The riot occurred as Congress met to formalize Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s election victory amid efforts by President Donald J. Trump and his allies to overturn the results.Here are some of the key people and groups included so far in the panel’s investigation:President Donald J. Trump spoke at a rally on Jan. 6, 2021, shortly before the riot at the Capitol.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesTrump, His Family and His Inner CircleDonald J. TrumpThe former president’s White House records related to the attack have been a focus of the inquiry. Mr. Trump unsuccessfully tried to keep these documents from the committee by claiming executive privilege. The panel is also scrutinizing Mr. Trump’s role in proposals to seize voting machines after the 2020 election.Ivanka TrumpThe daughter of the former president, who served as one of his senior advisers, has been asked to cooperate. The panel said that it had gathered evidence that she had implored her father to call off the violence that occurred when his supporters stormed the Capitol.Rudolph W. GiulianiMr. Trump’s personal lawyer and three members of his legal team — Jenna Ellis, Sidney Powell and Boris Epshteyn — pursued conspiracy-filled lawsuits that made claims of voter fraud and played central roles in the effort to use courts, state legislatures and Congress to overturn the results.Stephen K. BannonThe former Trump aide is under scrutiny by the committee for comments he made on his radio show on Jan. 5, 2021. The committee points to this as evidence that he had “some foreknowledge” of the attack. Mr. Bannon has been charged with contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena; he claimed protection under executive privilege even though he was an outside adviser.Michael T. FlynnMr. Trump’s former national security adviser attended an Oval Office meeting on Dec. 18, 2020, in which participants discussed seizing voting machines and invoking certain national security emergency powers. Mr. Flynn has filed a lawsuit to block the panel’s subpoenas.Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, arrived in the East Room for an election night address by Mr. Trump.Mandel Ngan/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhite House OfficialsMark MeadowsMr. Trump’s chief of staff, who initially provided the panel with a trove of documents that showed the extent of his role in the efforts to overturn the election, is now refusing to cooperate. The House voted to recommend holding Mr. Meadows in criminal contempt of Congress for defying the panel’s subpoena.Mike PenceThe former vice president could be a key witness as the committee focuses on Mr. Trump’s responsibility for the riot and considers criminal referrals, but Mr. Pence has not decided whether to cooperate, according to people briefed on his discussions with the panel.Marc ShortMr. Pence’s chief of staff, who has firsthand knowledge of Mr. Trump’s pressure campaign on the vice president to throw out the election results, testified before the panel under subpoena. He is the most senior person on Mr. Pence’s staff who is known to have cooperated with the committee.Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader. He has refused to cooperate with the congressional inquiry into the Jan. 6 riot.Tom Brenner for The New York TimesMembers of CongressKevin McCarthyThe panel has requested an interview with Mr. McCarthy, the House Republican leader, about his contact with Mr. Trump during the riot. A California representative who could become speaker of the House after the midterms in November, Mr. McCarthy has refused to cooperate.Scott Perry and Jim JordanThe representatives from Pennsylvania and Ohio are among a group of Republican congressmen who were deeply involved in efforts to overturn the election. Both Mr. Perry and Mr. Jordan have refused to cooperate with the panel.Roger Stone in December 2021, after a meeting with the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.Al Drago for The New York TimesOutside Advisers and GroupsRoger J. Stone Jr.The longtime political operative, who promoted his attendance at rallies on Jan. 5 and 6 and solicited support to pay for his security, has become a focus of the panel as it digs further into the planning and financing of rallies before the attack.Phil WaldronThe retired Army colonel has been under scrutiny since Mr. Meadows turned over a 38-page PowerPoint document that Mr. Waldron had circulated on Capitol Hill. The document contained plans that detailed how to overturn the election.Jeffrey ClarkThe Justice Department official repeatedly pushed his colleagues to help Mr. Trump undo his loss. The panel has recommended that Mr. Clark be held in criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate with a subpoena.John EastmanThe little-known academic and conservative lawyer has become the subject of intense scrutiny since writing a memo that laid out how Mr. Trump could stay in power.Fake Trump electorsFourteen people falsely claimed to be electors for Mr. Trump in the 2020 election in states that Mr. Biden had won: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.Members of the Proud Boys burned a Black Lives Matter banner torn from a church in Washington, D.C., in December 2020.Victor J. Blue for The New York TimesFar-Right FiguresExtremist groupsThe panel is scrutinizing some white nationalist leaders and militia groups, including the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers. It is intensifying its focus on the rallies that led up to the mob violence and how extremists worked with pro-Trump forces to undermine the election.Alex JonesThe conspiracy theorist helped organize the rally that occurred before the riot, and said that White House officials told him that he was to lead a march to the Capitol, where Mr. Trump would speak, according to the committee.Sean Hannity, the Fox News host.Frank Franklin II/Associated PressMedia EntitiesFox News anchorsSean Hannity sent text messages to Trump officials in the days surrounding the riot that illustrate his unusually elevated role as an outside adviser. Mr. Hannity, along with Laura Ingraham and Brian Kilmeade, also texted Mr. Meadows as the riot unfolded.Big Tech firmsThe committee has criticized Alphabet, Meta, Reddit and Twitter for allowing extremism to spread on their platforms. The panel has said that the four social media companies have failed to adequately cooperate with the inquiry.The Willard Hotel in Washington, where several Trump allies met on the day before the riot.Drew Angerer for The New York TimesAnd a Key EventWillard Hotel meetingSeveral Trump advisers and allies — including Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Bannon, Mr. Flynn, Mr. Stone, Mr. Jones and Mr. Eastman — gathered at the Willard Hotel near the White House the day before the riot. The events that unfolded there have become a prime focus of the committee. More

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    DeSantis and the Media: (Not) a Love Story

    The Florida governor and the mainstream press have had a rocky relationship that he has often worked to his advantage.If Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida somehow becomes the Republican Party’s presidential nominee in 2024, two factors will help explain why: his mastery of his party’s hostile relationship with the mainstream media, and his relentless courtship of Fox News.An exchange in August 2021 is a typical example of how DeSantis interacts with the press — with a combination of bluster and grievance modeled on Donald Trump, his political mentor and potential rival.The Delta variant of the coronavirus had just arrived, and a question about the rising number of Covid-19 cases in the state set him off. There was plenty of room in Florida’s hospitals, he explained.Then, with a jerky, almost robotic forward-chopping motion, he gestured at the reporters gathered in front of him. “I think it’s important to point out because obviously media does hysteria,” he said. “You try to fearmonger. You try to do this stuff.”Awkward and ineloquent as the moment was, it was vintage DeSantis — a frequently underestimated politician who has made the media his focal point and foil throughout his rapid rise. The clash, not the case numbers, which averaged nearly 25,000 a day in Florida at the peak of the Delta surge, led that day’s headlines.“It’s the undercurrent of his operation,” said Peter Schorsch, the publisher of FloridaPolitics.com. “Trolling the media.”Former aides say that DeSantis views the press as just another extension of the political process — a tool to weaponize or use for his own benefit. During a recent interview on “Ruthless,” a conservative podcast, he expounded on his philosophy.“Too long, for many of these Republicans, they would always defer to the corporate media,” DeSantis said. “They would try to impress the corporate media. Don’t work with them. You’ve got to beat them. You’ve got to fight back against them.”He’s proven remarkably deft at fighting back.The day after a “60 Minutes” report suggesting that Florida’s vaccine program had been influenced by political donors, DeSantis gave a 26-minute news conference — complete with a PowerPoint presentation — to decry CBS’s reporting as “malicious smears” and “a big lie.” Media critics agreed the segment was flawed.“I think you need that approach,” said Dave Vasquez, his former press secretary. “Some outlets are out to land a big punch on him, so he goes into it thinking, ‘I’m going to fight really hard.’”How Donald J. Trump Still LoomsGrip on G.O.P.: Mr. Trump remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party. However, there are signs his control is loosening.Trump vs. DeSantis: Tensions between the ex-president and Florida governor show the challenge confronting the G.O.P. in 2022.Midterms Effect: Mr. Trump has become a party kingmaker, but his involvement in state races worries many Republicans.Just the Beginning: For many Trump supporters who marched on Jan. 6, the day was not a disgraced insurrection but the start of a movement.The incident with “60 Minutes” earned him the sympathy of the right-wing media ecosphere, which cheered DeSantis as he pounded CBS for deceptive editing and misleading innuendo.“I view it as positive feedback,” he later boasted. “If the corporate press nationally isn’t attacking me, then I’m probably not doing my job.”The candidate from FoxDeSantis has shrewdly cultivated the right-wing media — and Fox News above all.It began in 2012, when DeSantis was an unknown candidate for a U.S. House seat in Florida. Somehow, he managed to score an appearance on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show, where the nervous-looking, 33-year-old Iraq veteran spoke about then-President Barack Obama and his supposed lack of support for Israel.DeSantis won that race, and the relationship blossomed over the ensuing years. When DeSantis ran for governor in 2018, he appeared regularly on Fox in what former aides acknowledged was a strategy aimed at securing the primary endorsement of the network’s No. 1 fan. Sure enough, Trump endorsed him, and DeSantis went on to defeat Andrew Gillum, the Democratic nominee, by fewer than 33,000 votes.Lately, it often seems like Fox News is promoting another campaign: DeSantis’s thinly disguised bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.Last year, The Tampa Bay Times revealed that various Fox shows requested the Florida governor appear on the network 113 times between November 2020 and the end of February 2021 — almost once a day. The Times quoted emails from Fox staffers gushing about DeSantis, with one producer calling him “the future of the party.”In response to the Tampa Bay paper, Fox said it “works to secure interviews daily with headliners across the political spectrum, which is a basic journalism practice at all news organizations.”Last March, DeSantis invited Brian Kilmeade of “Fox and Friends” to the governor’s mansion in Tallahassee for a fawning feature on his family.“I’m just so proud that he’s been able to be there for the people of Florida,” his wife, Casey, says in the segment. “I mean, it’s not every day you can say that you’re married to your hero.”A ‘sandpapery’ relationshipThe mainstream press, which DeSantis invariably describes with epithets like “the corporate media” or “the Acela media,” tends to get brass-knuckle treatment — when it gets access to him at all.Former advisers say DeSantis was often dismissive of the Florida press corps in particular, which he saw as biased and irrelevant. “I don’t think anybody reads them,” he told one aide.In a March 2021 profile, Michael Kruse, a senior writer for Politico Magazine, described the governor’s relationship with the media as “sandpapery at best.” Aminda Marqués Gonzalez, the publisher of The Miami Herald, in 2020 accused the governor’s office of pressuring the newspaper not to file a public-records lawsuit seeking information on how elder-care facilities were handling the pandemic. His spokesperson denied the allegation.After The Associated Press ran a story implying that DeSantis was helping a top donor by promoting Regeneron, a biotechnology company selling a coronavirus treatment, Twitter briefly suspended the combative account of his press secretary, Christina Pushaw, for what the social media company said was abusive behavior.In one tweet aimed at The A.P. that she has since deleted, Pushaw wrote: “Drag them.” In another, she wrote, “Light. Them. Up.”In a letter to DeSantis, Daisy Veerasingham, A.P.’s chief executive, asked him to stop Pushaw’s “harassing behavior.” The A.P. reporter later described receiving death threats, and took his account private.In an interview, Pushaw said she was merely asking her followers to criticize The A.P.’s coverage. “Frankly,” she said, “they deserved that criticism.”Journalists in Florida privately describe a climate of fear since the arrival of Pushaw, who often engages in late-night Twitter battles with her foes. On Sunday night, she suggested that Democratic operatives posed as Nazi sympathizers at a rally in Orlando. She deleted the tweet after an outcry, acknowledging it was “flippant.”“There’s nothing in there that could be interpreted as giving cover to neo-Nazis,” Pushaw said. “It’s despicable what they’re doing. I would never condone that in any way.”As for the criticism that she is too combative with the press, Pushaw is unapologetic. “I think the press has been combative with the governor, and I call that out,” she said.Asked about DeSantis’s relationship with the media, she said, “The governor is willing to work with any reporter who covers him fairly.”His former aides as well as his critics describe his approach to the media as methodical and ruthless, in contrast to Trump’s haphazard, seat-of-the-pants approach.“He has studied what has worked and left behind what doesn’t,” said David Jolly, a former Republican congressman who has contemplated running against him for governor. “He’s very good at maximizing the Trump benefit without bringing along the liabilities.”Conservative writers have celebrated DeSantis for regularly coming out ahead in his battles with the press. Dan McLaughlin, a columnist for National Review, compared the governor to the Road Runner for his ability to keep “escaping with his head high while his pursuers’ plans detonate in their faces.”‘Will you stay strong, or will you fold?’When Rush Limbaugh, the right-wing radio host, died in February of last year, DeSantis ordered flags in Florida lowered to half-staff — an honor usually bestowed on public officials or law enforcement heroes.Announcing the move, DeSantis hailed Limbaugh for connecting with “the hardworking, God-fearing and patriotic Americans who were and are the subject of ridicule by the legacy media.”The flag order provoked an uproar in Florida, but DeSantis made sure to mention it days later in his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference.The question facing conservatives, he told the audience, was this: “When the klieg lights get hot, when the left comes after you, will you stay strong, or will you fold?”What to read Trump’s grip on the Republican Party faces new strains, Shane Goldmacher reports, though the former president remains the party’s dominant figure. At a rally Saturday in Texas, Trump said he would consider pardons for the Jan. 6 defendants if he won the presidency again.Jennifer Medina, Nick Corasaniti and Reid J. Epstein dive deep into the previously obscure office of secretary of state, which has become a major point of contention between the parties ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, a leading contender to replace Justice Stephen G. Breyer on the Supreme Court, was shaped by her uncle’s cocaine conviction, according to a new profile by Patricia Mazzei and Charlie Savage.Justice Breyer, who is retiring from the Supreme Court, brought his own musings to cases during oral arguments.Sarahbeth Maney/The New York TimesOne more thing …Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who announced his retirement last week, is famous for spinning long-winded, hypothetical scenarios during Supreme Court arguments.In his column today, our colleague Adam Liptak recounts an episode from October, in a case involving a dispute over water rights between Tennessee and several other states:“San Francisco has beautiful fog,” Breyer said during oral arguments. “Suppose somebody came by in an airplane and took some of that beautiful fog and flew it to Colorado, which has its own beautiful air.”“And somebody took it and flew it to Massachusetts or some other place,” he continued. “I mean, do you understand how I’m suddenly seeing this and I’m totally at sea? It’s that the water runs around. And whose water is it? I don’t know. So you have a lot to explain to me, unfortunately, and I will forgive you if you don’t.”Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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    Sean Hannity Told Trump After Jan. 6: ‘No More Stolen Election Talk’

    The Fox News host Sean Hannity had some blunt advice for President Donald J. Trump on Jan. 7, 2021: “No more stolen election talk.”His guidance did not take. But documents disclosed on Thursday showed in vivid detail just how closely Mr. Hannity had worked with White House aides in a fervent, if brief, effort to persuade Mr. Trump to abandon his false claims about voter fraud after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.One day after the attack, Mr. Hannity sent a text message to Kayleigh McEnany, then the White House press secretary, describing a five-point plan for approaching conversations with the president, according to documents released by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot.After urging Ms. McEnany to avoid discussion of a “stolen election,” Mr. Hannity proffered another talking point to use with Mr. Trump: “Yes, impeachment and 25th amendment are real, and many people will quit …”Mr. Hannity appeared to be referring to the possibilities that Mr. Trump could be impeached, face mass resignations from his staff or be temporarily removed from office by a group of his cabinet secretaries invoking the 25th Amendment.Ms. McEnany replied: “Love that. Thank you. That is the playbook. I will help reinforce.”Fox News, where Ms. McEnany is now a commentator and a co-host of a weekday program, declined to comment on Thursday.In public, Mr. Hannity and Ms. McEnany remain lock-step supporters of Mr. Trump and his worldview. But their private exchanges show the level of alarm among even the president’s closest allies after the Jan. 6 riot, as Mr. Trump persisted in his false claims that the election had been stolen from him and his political future appeared deeply precarious.The exchanges were included in a letter sent by the House committee to Ivanka Trump, Mr. Trump’s daughter and one of his senior advisers. The committee is seeking Ms. Trump’s cooperation as it tries to piece together a scramble inside the White House to persuade Mr. Trump to denounce the attackers at the Capitol.In another exchange included in the letter, Mr. Hannity urged Ms. McEnany to keep the president away from certain advisers. “Key now. No more crazy people,” Mr. Hannity wrote. Ms. McEnany replied: “Yes 100%.”This month, the House committee asked Mr. Hannity to cooperate and answer questions about his communications with Mr. Trump and his aides in the days surrounding the riot. At the time, the committee disclosed messages in which Mr. Hannity advised Mark Meadows, then the White House chief of staff, on the president’s political future. “He can’t mention the election again. Ever,” Mr. Hannity wrote on Jan. 10, 2021, to Mr. Meadows and Representative Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican.A lawyer for Mr. Hannity, Jay Sekulow, has said the committee’s request to interview Mr. Hannity raises “First Amendment concerns regarding freedom of the press.”Luke Broadwater More

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    Sean Hannity Is Asked to Cooperate in Jan. 6 Inquiry as Panel Details Texts

    The committee told Mr. Hannity it had obtained “dozens of text messages” he exchanged with senior Trump White House officials around the time of the riot.The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol has requested that Sean Hannity, the star Fox News host, respond to questions about his communications with former President Donald J. Trump and his staff in the days surrounding the riot.In a letter on Tuesday, the committee asked for Mr. Hannity’s voluntary cooperation, meaning that the host has not received a formal subpoena. The letter detailed a series of text messages between the conservative media star and senior officials in the Trump White House, illustrating Mr. Hannity’s unusually elevated role as an outside adviser to the administration.The texts suggest that Mr. Hannity was aware of, and deeply concerned about, what Mr. Trump was planning for Jan. 6, and bracing for a possible mass resignation of top White House lawyers as a result.“We can’t lose the entire WH counsels office,” Mr. Hannity wrote to Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, in a Dec. 31, 2020, text message that the committee included in its letter. “I do NOT see January 6 happening the way he is being told.”They also indicate that the Fox News host, a longtime confidant of the former president, had knowledge of a flurry of high-level conversations at the White House, involving Mr. Trump himself, about leaning on Vice President Mike Pence to use his ceremonial role in Congress’s official electoral count to keep Mr. Trump in office.“Pence pressure,” Mr. Hannity wrote in a Jan. 5 message. “WH counsel will leave.”The texts were included in a trove of 9,000 pages of documents Mr. Meadows turned over to the panel in response to a subpoena.As Mr. Trump grappled with the political fallout of the attack — including a looming impeachment inquiry and rebukes from some top Republicans — Mr. Hannity wrote on Jan. 10 to Mr. Meadows and Representative Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican and a key ally. “He can’t mention the election again. Ever,” Mr. Hannity said in the message, referring to Mr. Trump. “I did not have a good call with him today. And worse, I’m not sure what is left to do or say, and I don’t like not knowing if it’s truly understood. Ideas?”A lawyer for Mr. Hannity, Jay Sekulow, said on Tuesday that the committee’s request “would raise serious constitutional issues including First Amendment concerns regarding freedom of the press.” Fox News referred inquiries to Mr. Sekulow’s statement.The letter from the committee informed Mr. Hannity that it believed the Fox News host “had advance knowledge regarding President Trump’s and his legal team’s planning for Jan. 6,” calling him “a fact witness in our investigation.” The committee wrote that it had obtained “dozens of text messages” between Mr. Hannity and members of Mr. Trump’s inner circle, including a note on Jan. 5 in which Mr. Hannity expressed concern about the next day’s counting of Electoral College votes.“I’m very worried about the next 48 hours,” Mr. Hannity wrote.Mr. Hannity was one of several Fox News stars who became informal confidants to Mr. Trump over the course of his administration, frequently conversing with the president by telephone and over meals in the White House.Key Figures in the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 10The House investigation. More

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    Election Falsehoods Surged on Podcasts Before Capitol Riots, Researchers Find

    A new study analyzed nearly 1,500 episodes, showing the extent to which podcasts pushed misinformation about voter fraud.Weeks before the 2020 presidential election, the conservative broadcaster Glenn Beck outlined his prediction for how Election Day would unfold: President Donald J. Trump would be winning that night, but his lead would erode as dubious mail-in ballots arrived, giving Joseph R. Biden Jr. an unlikely edge.“No one will believe the outcome because they’ve changed the way we’re electing a president this time,” he said.None of the predictions of widespread voter fraud came true. But podcasters frequently advanced the false belief that the election was illegitimate, first as a trickle before the election and then as a tsunami in the weeks leading up to the violent attack at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, according to new research.Researchers at the Brookings Institution reviewed transcripts of nearly 1,500 episodes from 20 of the most popular political podcasts. Among episodes released between the election and the Jan. 6 riot, about half contained election misinformation, according to the analysis.In some weeks, 60 percent of episodes mentioned the election fraud conspiracy theories tracked by Brookings. Those included false claims that software glitches interfered with the count, that fake ballots were used, and that voting machines run by Dominion Voting Systems were rigged to help Democrats. Those kinds of theories gained currency in Republican circles and would later be leveraged to justify additional election audits across the country.Misinformation Soared After ElectionThe share of podcast episodes per week featuring election misinformation increased sharply after the election.

    Note: Among the most popular political talk show podcasts evaluated by Brookings, using a selection of keywords related to electoral fraud between Aug. 20, 2020 and Jan. 6, 2021.Source: The Brookings InstitutionThe New York TimesThe new research underscores the extent to which podcasts have spread misinformation using platforms operated by Apple, Google, Spotify and others, often with little content moderation. While social media companies have been widely criticized for their role in spreading misinformation about the election and Covid-19 vaccines, they have cracked down on both in the last year. Podcasts and the companies distributing them have been spared similar scrutiny, researchers say, in large part because podcasts are harder to analyze and review.“People just have no sense of how bad this problem is on podcasts,” said Valerie Wirtschafter, a senior data analyst at Brookings who co-wrote the report with Chris Meserole, a director of research at Brookings.Dr. Wirtschafter downloaded and transcribed more than 30,000 podcast episodes deemed “talk shows,” meaning they offered analysis and commentary rather than strictly news updates. Focusing on 1,490 episodes around the election from 20 popular shows, she created a dictionary of terms about election fraud. After transcribing the podcasts, a team of researchers searched for the keywords and manually checked each mention to determine if the speaker was supporting or denouncing the claims.In the months leading up to the election, conservative podcasters focused mostly on the fear that mail-in ballots could lead to fraud, the analysis showed.At the time, political analysts were busy warning of a “red mirage”: an early lead by Mr. Trump that could erode because mail-in ballots, which tend to get counted later, were expected to come from Democratic-leaning districts. As ballots were counted, that is precisely what happened. But podcasters used the changing fortunes to raise doubts about the election’s integrity.Election misinformation shot upward, with about 52 percent of episodes containing misinformation in the weeks after the election, up from about 6 percent of episodes before the election.The biggest offender in Brookings’s analysis was Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former adviser. His podcast, “Bannon’s War Room,” was flagged 115 times for episodes using voter fraud terms included in Brookings’ analysis between the election and Jan. 6.“You know why they’re going to steal this election?” Mr. Bannon asked on Nov. 3. “Because they don’t think you’re going to do anything about it.”As the Jan. 6 protest drew closer, his podcast pushed harder on those claims, including the false belief that poll workers handed out markers that would disqualify ballots.“Now we’re on, as they say, the point of attack,” Mr. Bannon said the day before the protest. “The point of attack tomorrow. It’s going to kick off. It’s going to be very dramatic.”Mr. Bannon’s show was removed from Spotify in November 2020 after he discussed beheading federal officials, but it remains available on Apple and Google.When reached for comment on Monday, Mr. Bannon said that President Biden was “an illegitimate occupant of the White House” and referenced investigations into the election that show they “are decertifying his electors.” Many legal experts have argued there is no way to decertify the election.Election Misinformation by PodcastThe podcast by Stephen K. Bannon was flagged for election misinformation more than other podcasts tracked by the Brookings Institution.

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    Episodes sharing electoral misinformation
    Note: Among the most popular political talk show podcasts evaluated by Brookings, using a selection of keywords related to electoral fraud between Aug. 20, 2020 and Jan. 6, 2021.Source: Brookings InstitutionBy The New York TimesSean Hannity, the Fox News anchor, also ranked highly in the Brookings data. His podcast and radio program, “The Sean Hannity Show,” is now the most popular radio talk show in America, reaching upward of 15 million radio listeners, according to Talk Media.“Underage people voting, people that moved voting, people that never re-registered voting, dead people voting — we have it all chronicled,” Mr. Hannity said during one episode.Key Figures in the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 10The House investigation. More

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    From Fox News to Trump’s Big Lie, the Line Is Short and Direct

    This article is part of Times Opinion’s Holiday Giving Guide 2021. For other ideas on where to donate this year, please see the rest of our guide here.What did Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham say about the Jan. 6 rioting at the United States Capitol — and when did they say it?Were they suitably censorious of the violence? At the time, did their public remarks match their private horror?Those questions have been heatedly and extensively hashed out over the days since a House committee released text messages from Jan. 6 in which Hannity and Ingraham, the popular hosts of prime-time shows on Fox News, separately implored President Donald Trump’s chief of staff to get Trump to say and do something to disperse the protesters and quell the violence. Hannity and Ingraham knew that he had stirred those protesters and could sway them, more so than they ever acknowledged on-air, according to their critics. According to Hannity and Ingraham, they’re just the victims — yet again! — of left-wing media smears.You can delve into the weeds of this or you can pull back and survey the whole ugly yard. And what you see when you do that — what matters most in the end — is that Fox News has helped to sell the fiction that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, and there’s a direct line from that lie to the rioting. There’s a direct line from that lie to various Republicans’ attempts to develop mechanisms to overturn vote counts should they dislike the results.That lie is the root of the terrible danger that we’re in, with Trump supporters being encouraged to distrust and undermine the democratic process. And that lie has often found a welcome mat at Fox News.The Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple is among the many attuned observers who have documented this, and a column of his from mid-January 2021 presented a compendium of inciting commentary on Fox News in the lead-up to Jan. 6. Interviewing Trump on Nov. 29, 2020, the Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo declared: “We cannot allow America’s election to be corrupted. We cannot.” On Hannity’s show two days later, the Fox News host Jeanine Pirro vented an apocalyptic outrage about Joe Biden’s victory, saying: “This fraud will continue and America will be doomed for the next 20 years.” The Fox News contributor Newt Gingrich, the Fox Business host Lou Dobbs, Hannity himself — all of them got in on the action to some degree, stating or signaling that something about the 2020 election was terribly amiss.And their evidence? It was fugitive then, and no one has tracked it down since. That’s because it doesn’t exist. It’s a conspiracy-minded, ratings-driven hallucination. Just this week, The Associated Press published a review of “every potential case of voter fraud in the six battleground states” where Trump has disputed Biden’s victory. It found fewer than 475 cases.“Joe Biden won Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and their 79 Electoral College votes by a combined 311,257 votes out of 25.5 million ballots cast for president,” the A.P. reported. “The disputed ballots represent just 0.15 percent of his victory margin in those states. The cases could not throw the outcome into question even if all the potentially fraudulent votes were for Biden, which they were not, and even if those ballots were actually counted, which in most cases they were not.”This mathematical analysis hardly supports the hysteria on the right — a hysteria that Fox News readily whips up. (I direct you to the so-called documentary “Patriot Purge” on Fox Nation, in which Tucker Carlson recasts Jan. 6 as evidence that a corrupt government is setting up and locking up Trump supporters, who are really political prisoners.) And this is no garden-variety partisan hysteria. It circles around and sometimes lands squarely on the contention that Biden is an illegitimate president and Trump is our rightful ruler, exiled to the Siberia of southern Florida.I know the pushback from the right: It was Democrats who refused to accept Trump’s legitimacy by insisting that he, in cahoots with Russia, cheated his way into the Oval Office. They rushed to judgment as more than a few sympathetic journalists indulged or floated rococo scenarios well beyond anything provable.But, but, but. Democrats weren’t passing or trying to pass laws in battleground states that would enable them to counter the popular will. Democrats weren’t trying to enshrine rule by the minority. Many Republicans are doing precisely that now.And they’re being motivated and cheered, both directly and obliquely, by what they see and hear on Fox News. I care less about Hannity’s and Ingraham’s precise words on Jan. 6 than about what they and their colleagues on Fox News said before and after, and what they’re saying now. It’s reckless. It’s subversive. And it’s scary.One Vision of GivingThe dance class at Visions.Damon Winter/The New York TimesTo go blind is to go back to school — the school of life.The simplest things, like cooking and dressing, are no longer simple, not at the start, because you once did them primarily with the sense of sight and must now rely on touch and sound and little prompts and tricks that weren’t necessary before. Often, someone has to teach you those tricks.Someone has to show you how to navigate the exit from your home and the re-entry; how to walk safely down the street; how to cross the street, a passage grown exponentially more perilous. Familiar tasks are suddenly unfamiliar, and independence must be forged anew.That’s where a group like Visions comes in.It’s a nonprofit rehabilitation and social services agency in New York that specifically helps people who are blind and visually impaired, and an overwhelming majority of those people have limited means — they can’t afford to pay for this help themselves. Visions is funded largely, but not entirely, by continuing government and foundation grants. But it depends, too, on individual contributions. It thrives when generous people give.I found my way to one of three centers that Visions runs after I was diagnosed with a rare disorder that threatens my own eyesight. I went there not as a client but as a journalist, curious to know more about the challenges that visually impaired people face. At this particular Visions center, in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, I saw such people being coached through the use of special computer programs. I saw them in a dance class, which gave them an outlet for physical expression — and a safe space — that they can’t find elsewhere.But much of what Visions does is in people’s homes, to which it sends therapists and other helpers. One of those therapists told me about an elderly woman who despaired of being able to light the candles that she typically used for the Jewish sabbath. She learned anew, though she could no longer see the flame.Blind people live full lives, but they face challenges that the rest of us don’t. In my own holiday season giving over recent years, I’ve kept that in mind and been sure to include groups that directly serve visually impaired people or promote research into potential cures and treatments for blindness. Large and small organizations on my radar include the Foundation Fighting Blindness, the VisionServe Alliance, the Filomen M. D’Agostino Greenberg Music School and The Seeing Eye.I’ll long remember that dance class at Visions, not for the moves that its participants busted but for the contentment that they radiated. In a world that could often shut them out, they’d been invited in. In a society that often told them what they couldn’t do, they were doing something that they themselves hadn’t expected. They gave me something: hope.For the Love of SentencesBettmann via Getty ImagesComing up with new ways to express frustration about the crazily high number of Americans who refuse coronavirus vaccines is increasingly difficult, so I tip my hat to John Ficarra, in Air Mail, for this: “Yes, West Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. But with your measly 49 percent double-vaccinated rate, he will be skipping most of your state.”In a recent re-examination of Greta Garbo’s career in The New Yorker, Margaret Talbot wrote: “Few other performers have ascended as quickly to mononymic status as Garbo did — she started off the way most of us do, with a first and last name, but the first soon fell away, like a spent rocket booster.” (Thanks to Ian Grimm, of Chapel Hill, N.C., and Stephanie Hawkins of Denton, Texas, for nominating this.)Per usual, there have been great sentences aplenty in The Times recently, including Eric Kim’s on one of the components of a divine holiday ham: “Sticky like tar and richly savory in taste, this glaze gets its body and spice from Dijon mustard, its molasses-rich sweetness from brown sugar and its high note, the kind of flavor that floats on top like a finely tuned piccolo in an orchestra, from a touch of rice vinegar.” (Dan Lorenzini, Sleepy Hollow, N.Y.)Here’s John McWhorter on how reliably language, including pronunciation, mutates: “Even with a word as quotidian as lox (with no disrespect intended to salmon, smoked or otherwise), you can bet that sooner rather than later, the passage of time will mash it with pestles and refract it through prisms to the point that it is all but beyond recognition.” (Barbara Sloan, Conway, S.C.)Here’s Pete Wells on the New York City restaurant that he liked best among the standouts that opened this year: “Half of Dhamaka’s success must have been its timing. New York was still coming out of a pandemic-shutdown fog when it opened in February, a period of glitchy video calls, undefined working hours, creeping anxiety, reheated leftovers and repressed pleasures. Life had gone prematurely gray. There’s nothing gray about the food at Dhamaka, though. Every dish comes at you as if it wants to either marry you or kill you.” (Kathleen Bridgman, Walnut Creek, Calif., and Donald Ham, Vallejo, Calif., among others)And here’s James Poniewozik on a recurring character in America’s culture wars: “There’s a rule in politics, or at least there should be: Never get into a fight with Big Bird. You end up spitting out feathers, and the eight-foot fowl just strolls away singing about the alphabet.” (Valerie Hoffmann, Montauk, N.Y.)To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here, and please include your name and place of residence.What I’m Watching (and Reading)Aunjanue Ellis (far left) and Will Smith with the actresses who play their daughters in “King Richard.”Warner BrosFor me, the holiday season is often about catching up on television series and movies that I didn’t have time to watch when they were first released. So I recently binged “Mare of Easttown,” which I enjoyed and admired every bit as much as its most ardent fans had told me I would, and “Hacks,” whose virtues redeemed its unevenness from episode to episode. “Mare” and “Hacks” have a common denominator: the actress Jean Smart, who has a supporting role in “Mare,” as the mother of the police detective (Kate Winslet) trying to solve a local murder, and the starring role in “Hacks,” as a stand-up diva terrified that she’s being put out to comedy pasture. Over the past two decades, Smart has become the Meryl Streep of the small screen. I’d pay to listen to her read the instructions for assembling an Ikea dresser. I’d pay to watch her assemble it. Heck, I’d assemble it for her, and I’m entirely thumbs.Speaking of great performances, the movie “King Richard,” about Richard Williams, father of Venus and Serena, is chockablock with them. Will Smith’s work in the title role has received the most attention, but Aunjanue Ellis, as the tennis prodigies’ mother, Oracene, impressed me just as much if not more. “King Richard” itself is entertaining and skillfully made, especially in the way it captures the speed and breathtaking athleticism of the sport at its center.Seldom does a celebrity profile generate as much discussion as Michael Schulman’s of the actor Jeremy Strong (“Succession”) did. The article, published in The New Yorker, is very much worth reading on its own merits: It’s a model of exhaustive, detail-rich reporting. But you can have some extra fun by also checking out the reactions to it and figuring out your own answer to the question of whether Schulman stacked the deck against his subject.On a Personal NoteNina Simone in 1965, the year her version of “Feeling Good” was released.Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)There are some songs that you hear so often across so many years that you no longer listen to them, not in any active sense. They wash over you. You hum without knowing it, tap your foot without engaging your brain. That’s the way it is with me and the unsurpassable Nina Simone version of “Feeling Good.” I swim in it without realizing I’m wet.But the other day, when it cycled onto some Pandora station of mine, I happened to pay close attention. I registered — really registered — the words: “Birds flying high/You know how I feel/Sun in the sky/You know how I feel.” “River running free,” “blossom on a tree,” “stars when you shine,” “scent of the pine” — all of them know how she feels. What a lovely take, and what a true one. When you’re indeed feeling as good and as free as the singer of this song, you’re not just in nature. You’re communicating with it, and it’s the expression of your own elation.The song, a declaration of emancipation, was written not by Simone but by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse, for the 1964 musical “The Roar of the Greasepaint — The Smell of the Crowd.” No surprise that it comes from a stage production: As the tributes to Stephen Sondheim after his death a few weeks ago reminded us, musical theater is a treasure chest of grand and clever lyrics. And lyrics are my focus here — lyrics and what a joy it is to come across superior ones.Most popular songs nowadays are lyrical letdowns. They don’t try all that hard. They lean on catchy riffs and on clunky or banal rhymes. Sometimes the lyrics are inscrutable. Just as often they’re trite.But when they’re not? It’s a much bigger surprise than encountering stellar prose, and thus, for me, it’s an even bigger pleasure. It’s poetry that you can sing along to, eloquence with a beat. I have a terrible memory for many things, but play me a well-written song with well-turned words three or four times and those words are with me and in me forever.Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain,” for example. There are banal rhymes and then there are audacious ones. I put “yacht,” “apricot” and “gavotte” in the latter category — and they appear in the song’s first stanza. I can sing “You’re So Vain” from start to finish, not muffing a syllable, even if I haven’t heard it in a decade.And you? Where in popular music, especially current and recent popular music, have you struck lyrics gold? Tell me by emailing me here. Maybe I’ll spotlight and celebrate some of these examples in newsletters to come.This column is part of Times Opinion’s Holiday Giving Guide 2021. If you are interested in any organization mentioned in the giving guide, please go directly to its website. Neither the authors nor The Times will be able to address queries about the groups or facilitate donations. More

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    Fox News Hosts Sent Texts to Meadows Urging Trump to Act as Jan. 6 Attack Unfolded

    Afterward, on their shows, Laura Ingraham spread the false claim of antifa involvement, and Sean Hannity referred to the 2020 election as a “train wreck.”Three prominent Fox News anchors sent concerned text messages on Jan. 6 to Mark Meadows, the last chief of staff for President Donald J. Trump, urging him to persuade the president to take the riot seriously and to make an effort to stop it.The texts were made public on Monday, shortly before the House committee scrutinizing the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol voted 9-0 in favor of recommending that Mr. Meadows be charged with contempt of Congress. Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, read the text messages aloud.The texts, part of a trove of 9,000 documents that Mr. Meadows had turned over before he stopped cooperating with the inquiry, were sent to the former White House chief of staff by Laura Ingraham, the host of the nighttime show “The Ingraham Angle”; Sean Hannity, a longtime prime-time host who once appeared onstage with Mr. Trump at a campaign rally; and Brian Kilmeade, a host of the morning show “Fox & Friends.”“Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home,” Ms. Ingraham wrote. “This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy.”Mr. Kilmeade echoed that concern, texting Mr. Meadows: “Please, get him on TV. Destroying everything you have accomplished.”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Sean Hannity texted: “Can he make a statement? Ask people to leave the Capitol.”Ms. Ingraham’s text came in contrast with what she said on her Fox News program in the hours after the attack, when she promoted the false theory that members of antifa were involved.“From a chaotic Washington tonight, earlier today the Capitol was under siege by people who can only be described as antithetical to the MAGA movement,” Ms. Ingraham said on the Jan. 6 episode. “Now, they were likely not all Trump supporters, and there are some reports that antifa sympathizers may have been sprinkled throughout the crowd.”Ms. Ingraham went on to cite “legitimate concerns about how these elections were conducted,” while adding that any dissatisfaction with the vote should not have resulted in violence.Mr. Hannity, a onetime informal adviser to Mr. Trump, condemned the attack, saying at the top of his Jan. 6 show, “Today’s perpetrators must be arrested and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.” He also said that the nation must do more to protect law enforcement and political representatives.On that matter of who was responsible, Mr. Hannity said, “I don’t care if the radical left, radical right — I don’t know who they are. They’re not people I would support. So how were officials not prepared? We got to answer that question. How did they allow the Capitol building to be breached in what seemed like less than a few minutes?”He also brought up the 2020 election, the results of which had been questioned by Mr. Trump and his supporters in the weeks before the riot, although there was no evidence of widespread fraud.“Our election, frankly, was a train wreck,” Mr. Hannity said. “Eighty-three percent, according to Gallup, of Republicans, and millions of others, do not have faith in these election results. You can’t just snap your finger and hope that goes away.”The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol voted 9 to 0 to recommend Mark Meadows, the last White House chief of staff for former President Donald J. Trump, be charged with criminal contempt of Congress for defying its subpoena.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesRepresentatives for Fox News did not immediately respond to a request for comment.In the 11 months since the attack, the Fox News hosts who appear in the morning and in the prime-time hours have often played down the events of Jan. 6, with some likening it to the violence during the widespread protests against racism and police violence in the summer of 2020.Understand the Claim of Executive Privilege in the Jan. 6. InquiryCard 1 of 8A key issue yet untested. More

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    Why Do Republicans Hate Cops?

    WASHINGTON — It was, I must admit, a virtuoso performance by Sean Hannity.Not since the sheriff in “Blazing Saddles” put a gun to his own head and took himself hostage has anyone executed such a nutty loop de loop. More