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      Congress members led ‘reconnaissance tours’ of Capitol before attack, evidence suggests

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      Congress members led ‘reconnaissance tours’ of Capitol before attack, evidence suggestsThe revelation resurrects a line of inquiry into the involvement of House Republicans in the insurrection The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack revealed on Thursday that it had evidence to suggest certain “reconnaissance tours” took place in the days before 6 January, potentially providing some rioters with a layout of the complex.The panel said in a letter requesting cooperation from Georgia Republican congressman Barry Loudermilk that he gave a tour the day before the Capitol attack. The startling disclosure resurrects a contentious line of inquiry that connects House Republicans to the insurrection.“Based on our review of evidence in the select committee’s possession, we believe you have information regarding a tour you led through parts of the Capitol complex on Jan 5, 2021,” said a letter from Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the select committee, and the vice chair Liz Cheney.House panel not planning to seek Trump’s testimony on Capitol attackRead moreThe select committee noted in the letter to Loudermilk that Republicans on the House administration committee that reviewed security camera footage of the Capitol before January 6 recently claimed there were no tours or large groups or anyone wearing Maga caps.“However, the select committee’s review of evidence directly contradicts that denial,” Thompson and Cheney wrote.The request for voluntary cooperation from Loudermilk indicates the panel has been quietly focused on one of the unexplained mysteries of 6 January: how certain supporters of Donald Trump who stormed the Capitol appeared to know in advance the layout of the Capitol complex.Some of the offices and ceremonial spaces in the Capitol – such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office – are marked and easy to locate. But Democrats raised concerns after 6 January that some rioters were able to locate hideaway offices and the underground tunnel network.The concerns led to 34 House Democrats seeking an investigation into the alleged reconnaissance tours that took place on 5 January 2021, which prompted a review of security camera footage by the House administration committee, according to two sources familiar with the matter.Democrats on the House administration committee turned over some of that footage to the US attorney for the District of Columbia, which is prosecuting January 6 seditious conspiracy and obstruction of Congress cases, the sources said.But the top Republican on that committee said in February that some of his members had reviewed the footage and said in a separate letter that “it does not support these repeated Democrat accusations about so-called ‘reconnaissance’ tours”.In a twist, Loudermilk filed an ethics complaint last May against Democratic congresswoman Mikie Sherrill and other Democrats who alleged GOP members had given such tours.“No Republican member of Congress led any kind of ‘reconnaissance’ tours through the Capitol, proven by security footage captured by the US Capitol police,” Loudermilk said as part of his complaint that urged the House ethics committee to investigate Sherrill.The select committee investigating 6 January events reached a different conclusion, Thompson and Cheney wrote, and identified Loudermilk as among the members who provided tours the day before the Capitol attack – at a time when congressional Covid-19 rules prohibited such tours.TopicsUS Capitol attackHouse of RepresentativesRepublicansUS CongressUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      US House passes domestic terrorism bill in response to Buffalo shooting

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      US House passes domestic terrorism bill in response to Buffalo shootingAdam Kinzinger was the lone Republican to vote in favor of the measure that faces an uphill climb to pass the Senate The US House of Representatives has passed legislation that would bolster federal resources to prevent domestic terrorism in response to the racist mass shooting in Buffalo, New York – but the bill faces the increasingly familiar burden of an uphill climb to pass the Senate.The 222-203, nearly party-line House vote was an answer to the growing pressure Congress faces to address gun violence and white supremacist attacks – a crisis that escalated following two mass shootings over the weekend.New York governor unveils ‘comprehensive’ plan to fight domestic terror and gun violenceRead moreAdam Kinzinger of Illinois, a member of the congressional committee investigating the insurrection at the US Capitol by extremist supporters of Donald Trump on January 6, 2021, was the lone Republican to vote in favor of the measure.But the legislative effort by Democrats is not new. The House passed a similar measure in 2020 only to have it languish in the Senate.And since lawmakers lack the support in the Senate to move forward with any sort of gun control legislation they see as necessary to stop mass shootings, Democrats are instead putting their efforts into a broader federal focus on domestic terrorism.“We in Congress can’t stop the likes of [Fox News host] Tucker Carlson from spewing hateful, dangerous replacement theory ideology across the airwaves. Congress hasn’t been able to ban the sale of assault weapons. The Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act is what Congress can do this week to try to prevent future Buffalo shootings,” the Illinois Democrat Brad Schneider, who first introduced the measure in 2017, said on the House floor late on Wednesday night.“Replacement” theory is a set of racist and antisemitic lies and socio-political arguments that has cropped up around the world in the past decade.In the US it is expressed as the false idea that a cabal of Jews and Democrats is “replacing” the shrinking white American majority race with Black, Hispanic and other people of color by encouraging immigration and interracial marriage – with the goal of threatening the ruling elite and eventually engineering the extinction of the white race.It is being investigated as a key motivating factor in Saturday’s supermarket shooting that killed 10 people and wounded three others in Buffalo, New York, 11 of them Black.Police say an 18-year-old white man drove three hours to carry out a racist, live-streamed shooting rampage in a crowded supermarket. He appeared to have carefully planned the attack and written white supremacist screeds online, also following influences from other mass shootings and self-declaring as a racist anti-migration far-right believer known as an “eco-fascist”.Supporters of the House bill say it will fill the gaps in intelligence-sharing among the justice department, Department of Homeland Security and the FBI so that officials can better track and respond to the growing threat of white extremist terrorism.Under current law, the three federal agencies already work to investigate, prevent and prosecute acts of domestic terrorism.But the bill would require each agency to open offices specifically dedicated to those tasks and create an interagency taskforce to combat the infiltration of white supremacy in the military.Senate Democrats are pledging to bring up the bill for a vote next week. But its prospects are uncertain, with Republicans opposed to bolstering the power of the justice department in domestic surveillance.Under the bill, agencies would be required to produce a joint report every six months that assesses and quantifies domestic terrorism threats nationally, including threats posed by white supremacists and neo-Nazi groups. For decades, terrorism has been consistently tied with attacks from foreign actors, but as homegrown terrorism, often perpetrated by white men, has flourished over the past two decades, Democratic lawmakers have sought to clarify it in federal statute.“We’ve seen it before in American history. The only thing missing between these organizations and the past are the white robes … it’s time for us to take a stand,” the Illinois Democratic senator Dick Durbin said, nodding to the Ku Klux Klan.Also on Wednesday, New York’s Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul, unveiled what she called a “comprehensive plan to combat domestic terrorism and prevent gun violence” for the state.TopicsBuffalo shootingHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Pennsylvania and North Carolina primaries test Trump’s hold on Republican party

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      Pennsylvania and North Carolina primaries test Trump’s hold on Republican partyVoters nominated Maga-bona fide Doug Mastriano as the GOP candidate in Pennsylvania’s governor race, but were divided in North Carolina Pennsylvania Republicans on Tuesday nominated Donald Trump’s choice for governor, an election denier who was outside the Capitol on 6 January, but were divided over his candidate for Senate in a consequential round of primary contests that also saw the ousting of Madison Cawthorn, the scandal-plagued first-term congressman, in North Carolina. Voters in five states went to the polls on Tuesday to pick the candidates at the center of some of this year’s most contentious battles for control of Congress, statehouses and governor’s offices. From Oregon to North Carolina, Idaho to Kentucky and Pennsylvania, the array of nominating contests tested both Trump’s grip on the Republican party and Joe Biden’s leadership of the Democratic party.In Pennsylvania – a perennial swing state and one of the fiercest electoral battlegrounds – Doug Mastriano, a far-right state senator who was a key figure in the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the state, will face Democrat Josh Shapiro, the Pennsylvania attorney general, in a highly anticipated contest for governor.Madison Cawthorn, pro-Trump firebrand who faced political stumbles, concedes in House raceRead moreThe Associated Press declared Mastriano, a retired Army colonel, the winner in a crowded field of Republican candidates. Shapiro ran unopposed. Despite his Maga bona fides, Trump only endorsed Mastriano in the final days of the campaign after he had consistently led in the polls. But his candidacy has worried party leaders concerned that he is too extreme to appeal to swing voters in the state.In North Carolina, Cawthorn failed to win re-election amid multiple scandals, losing his seat to Chuck Edwards, a three-term state senator and business owner. It was a stunning fall for the 26-year-old congressman, once seen as a rising star in the Republican party.But his rabble-rousing antics angered many of his colleagues, some of whom turned sharply against him in the race after he claimed without evidence that Washington figures he “looked up to” had invited him to orgies and used cocaine. House minority leader Kevin McCarthy rebuked Cawthorn publicly over the remark.John Fetterman, Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor, handily won the state’s Democratic primary for Senate that was complicated when a stroke took Fetterman off the campaign trail in the final weekend before the election. His victory sets the stage for one of the fiercest Senate races of the cycle – and one of the best opportunities for Democrats to pick up a seat in a year when the political headwinds are blowing against them.Fetterman, a plain-spoken Harvard graduate known for wearing gym shorts and championing marijuana legalization, beat congressman Conor Lamb, a moderate who aligned himself closely with Biden and state representative Malcolm Kenyatta, a leftwing state legislator. Fetterman is expected to make a full recovery from his stroke, but was not able to attend his election night party because he was still in the hospital.In a statement, Joe Biden said electing Fetterman, a liberal Democrat, would be a “big step forward for Pennsylvania’s working people”. Calling him a “strong nominee” who could unite Democrats and win a general election, the president lashed out at his prospective Republican opponent, warning that whoever emerged as the nominee was guaranteed to be “too dangerous, too craven, and too extreme” for the US Senate.As of late Tuesday, Fetterman’s opponent was not yet known. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity physician known as Dr Oz, was trailing Dave McCormick, a former hedge fund CEO, but the race remained too close to call. Conservative commentator Kathy Barnette, who enjoyed an 11th hour surge as Oz and McCormick lobbed brutal attacks on one another, finished in a distant third.“Unfortunately we’re not going to have a resolution tonight,” McCormick said during a speech at his election night party on Tuesday, citing “tens of thousands” of outstanding ballots left to count. On the Republican side, Oz struggled to unite the conservative base behind him. Hounded as a “Hollywood liberal,” Oz embraced Trump’s false claim of voter fraud and was rewarded with the former president’s seal of approval. But when they appeared together a rally, boos could be heard whenever Trump mentioned Oz.Conservatives in the state also appeared tepid about McCormick, the husband of former Trump administration official Dina Powell. During the campaign, he and Oz unloaded their personal war chests, leveling such a ferocious campaign against one another that exasperated voters said they began looking at Barnette.Several states over, in North Carolina, the Trump-backed congressman Ted Budd bested ex-governor Pat McCrory and a dozen other candidates to clinch the Republican nomination for Senate. Budd had struggled to gain traction early in the race until a surprise endorsement from the former president elevated his candidacy. He also received a major boost from the Club for Growth, an influential anti-tax group that poured money into the race on his behalf.Budd will face Democrat Cheri Beasley, a former chief justice for the North Carolina state supreme court, who easily won her party’s 10-way primary to replace retiring Republican senator Richard Burr. Beasley faces an uphill climb in the state, where Republicans have dominated the Senate race. If victorious, the trailblazing former public defender would make history as the southern state’s first Black senator.In a setback for progressives, state senator Valerie Foushee defeated Nida Allam, the first Muslim woman ever elected to public office in North Carolina, in the hotly contested primary to replace retiring the congressman David Price in North Carolina’s 4th congressional District, a safe Democratic seat.Foushee was one of the many candidates who benefited from the support of a Super Pac affiliated with American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel lobby group,which poured money into primary races with the goal of countering the rise of progressive Democrats sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.The group also targeted Summer Lee in the final weeks of her bid to capture the party’s nomination in the solidly Democratic Pennsylvania district.But as of late Tuesday evening, Lee, a progressive representative, appears to have overcome the flood of money spent against her to defeat Steve Irwin in the race to replace congressman Mike Doyle, who is retiring at the end of next year. Lee’s victory would be a major win for the progressive movement in the safely Democratic seat. If elected, she would be the first Black woman to represent the state in Congress.In deeply conservative Idaho, the sitting governor, Brad Little, defeated his far-right lieutenant governor, Janice McGeachin, a Trump-endorsed candidate who twice attempted a power grab to ban coronavirus mask and vaccine mandates when Little was out of state on business. Little overturned the orders when he returned.Republican Senate hopeful Mehmet Oz calls far-right rival’s comments on Islam ‘reprehensible’Read moreAnd in Oregon, congressman Kurt Schrader, a moderate Democrat known for breaking with his party, was hoping to fend off a strong progressive challenge in a race seen as a test of the president’s appeal among the party’s base.And in an expensive fight for Oregon’s newly created sixth congressional district, Democratic state representative Andrea Salinas was leading a sprawling primary that included a political novice backed by a cryptocurrency billionaire. If elected, Salinas will be the state’s first Latina in Congress.The seven-term incumbent was a top target for progressives after joining Republicans in opposition to Biden’s $1.9tn pandemic relief package, among other policy positions. Nevertheless, Schrader was the first candidate Biden endorsed this cycle.In Kentucky, the state’s highest ranking Democrat, Morgan McGarvey, won the party primary for an open congressional seat to replace the retiring congressman John Yarmuth, who endorsed him. He beat state representative Attica Scott, who drew national attention when she sued Louisville police officers after being arrested during the racial justice protests in the summer of 2020, a disappointment for movement activists hoping to translate the grassroots energy into political gains.Charles Booker, a Black former state lawmaker who emerged as a powerful voice against racial justice in the aftermath of the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor in 2020, won the Democratic Senate primary in the state. The progressive faces long odds in his bid to unseat Republican senator Rand Paul in November.TopicsRepublicansUS politicsDemocratsPennsylvaniaNorth CarolinaIdahoOregonnewsReuse this content More

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      Madison Cawthorn, pro-Trump firebrand who faced political stumbles, concedes in House race

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      Madison Cawthorn, pro-Trump firebrand who faced political stumbles, concedes in House raceThe 26-year-old congressman who failed to beat back a challenge from Chuck Edwards had lost Republican support Madison Cawthorn, the first-term congressman and pro-Donald Trump firebrand, has lost his seat in the US House after failing to beat back a challenge from state legislator Chuck Edwards in the North Carolina Republican primary.Luke Ball, a spokesperson for Cawthorn’s campaign, told the Associated Press late Tuesday that Cawthorn had conceded the race.Republican Madison Cawthorn cited for carrying gun in his bag at airportRead moreThe race came to be seen as a test of whether voters would grant Cawthorn another term despite his personal and political stumbles. Several Republican leaders have turned away from the 26-year-old congressman, with some citing a series of errors, such as calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy a “thug” after Russia invaded his country. Cawthorn also infuriated fellow Republicans in Congress when he alleged on a podcast that he had been invited to an orgy in Washington.Cawthorn has banked on his successful fundraising, social media presence and vocal support for the former president to help him win the 11th congressional district nomination again.Edwards, an owner of McDonald’s franchises, received endorsements from Senator Thom Tillis and the state’s top GOP legislative leaders. A Super ac allied with Tillis ran ads against Cawthorn, one of which called him a “reckless embarrassment” and “dishonest disaster”.Edwards now advances to the November election against Democrat Jasmine Beach-Ferrara.Cawthorn’s term in the the House was marked by controversy from the outset. Within days of taking office in early 2021, Cawthorn spoke at the “Save America” rally, questioning Joe Biden’s presidential election victory, that preceded the Capitol insurrection. Cawthorn soon became a leading spokesperson for Trump’s “America First” policies and conservatives in the culture wars. Trump has endorsed him.Besides the remark about being invited to an orgy, Cawthron said he had seen leaders in the movement to end drug addiction use cocaine. House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy reprimanded him publicly for the remarks.Cawthorn has been stopped by police on driving citations three times since October and caught with guns at airport checkpoints twice since last year, including last month. And videos released in the campaign’s final weeks showed Cawthorn in sexually suggestive poses.Cawthorn acknowledged speeding and gun citations as failings, but said the videos were part of a “drip campaign” by his political enemies, of which he has included some Republicans, to flood the district with negative stories.Cawthorn was seen as a rising star by many conservatives when in 2020 he won a primary runoff for the seat being vacated by Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff. Cawthorn, who uses a wheelchair after being partially paralyzed from a car accident as a teenager, turned 25 – the constitutionally mandated minimum age to serve in the House – during the 2020 campaign.In an election-eve post on his social media site Truth Social, Trump asked primary voters to back him again: “Recently, he made some foolish mistakes, which I don’t believe he’ll make again … let’s give Madison a second chance!”His biggest political mistake may have occurred last fall, when he decided to run for a different US House seat that could have led to an easier reelection bid, only to return to the 11th district when redistricting litigation shifted the lines again. Edwards and others accuse Cawthorn of trying to walk away from his constituents for political convenience. TopicsNorth CarolinaHouse of RepresentativesRepublicansUS politicsUS CongressnewsReuse this content More

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      Nancy Pelosi: supreme court ‘dangerous to families and to freedoms’

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      Nancy Pelosi: supreme court ‘dangerous to families and to freedoms’House speaker rails against conservative judges appointed by Trump as justices prepare to finalize draft abortion ruling The supreme court is “dangerous to families and to freedoms in our country”, Nancy Pelosi said on Sunday, as justices prepare to finalize a draft ruling stripping almost have a century of abortion rights in the US.The House speaker railed against conservative judges appointed by former president Donald Trump in an interview Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, in which she urged Democrats to keep their “eye on the ball” to protect other freedoms she sees under threat.“Beware in terms of marriage equality, beware in terms of other aspects,” she said.“Understand this. This is not just about terminating a pregnancy. This is about contraception, family planning.“This is a place where freedom and the kitchen table, issues of America’s families, come together. What are the decisions that a family makes? What about contraception for young people? It’s beyond just a particular situation. It’s massive in terms of contraception, in vitro fertilization, a woman’s right to decide.”Speaking the day after hundreds of protest events took place nationwide, Pelosi insisted Democrats had done what they could in terms of protecting abortion rights through legislation. She pointed out the House had passed a bill before the women’s health protection act failed in the Senate on Wednesday, and she said she was still optimistic of a resolution with the support of pro-choice Republicans.But she said the 60-vote requirement in the Senate was “an obstacle to many good things”, and that Democrats needed to rally ahead of November’s midterm elections to “get rid of the damage” caused by conservative justices, including Trump’s three appointments, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.“Whoever suspected a creature like Donald Trump would become president, waving a list of judges he would appoint, therefore getting the support of the far right and appointing those anti-freedom justices to the court?” she said.“This is not about a long game. We played a long game, we won Roe v Wade a long time ago, we voted to protect it over time. Let’s not take our eye off the ball. The ball is this court, which is dangerous to families, to freedoms in our country.“The genius of our founders was to have a constitution that enabled freedom to expand. This is the first time the court has taken back a freedom that was defined by precedent and respect for privacy.”Independent Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, on NBC’s Meet the Press, said he remained hopeful that abortion rights legislation could be resurrected before the midterms.“Nobody should think this process is dead. We should bring those bills up again, and again and again,” he said.“People cannot believe you have a supreme court and Republicans who are prepared to overturn 50 years of precedent. What we should do is on this bill end the filibuster, do everything that we can to get 50 votes on the strongest possible bill to protect a woman’s right to control her own body.”An NBC News poll conducted after the leak of a draft opinion and reported by the network Sunday showed six out of 10 voters were in favor of abortion rights, and that 52% of voters were “less likely” to support a candidate who backed the supreme court’s draft ruling.But the poll found that inflation and the economy remained the biggest concerns for voters as the midterms approach.TopicsUS supreme courtNancy PelosiHouse of RepresentativesAbortionUS politicsLaw (US)newsReuse this content More

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      What the Jan. 6 Panel Wants to Learn From 5 G.O.P. Lawmakers

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      The committee’s subpoenas to five House Republicans underscore the potential importance of their testimony to producing a full account of the effort to overturn the 2020 election.WASHINGTON — In deciding to take the highly unusual step of issuing subpoenas to five Republican members of Congress, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack concluded that trying to compel their testimony was important enough to justify an escalatory step involving their colleagues.All five of the Republicans subpoenaed on Thursday have previously refused to appear voluntarily before the committee. The most prominent of them, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, is his party’s leader in the House and in line to become speaker if Republicans win control of the chamber in November. He has sought legal advice in recent months on how to fight a subpoena, though he has yet to say how he will respond to the panel’s action.But the committee has made clear that it believes all five may have information that is important to its efforts to document efforts by President Donald J. Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election, which culminated in the assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by a pro-Trump mob.Here are the subjects that the committee could be interested in hearing about from each of the five Republicans.Representative Kevin McCarthyThe committee is seeking to question Mr. McCarthy about conversations he had with Mr. Trump during and after the attack about his culpability in the assault and what should be done to address it. The committee has also suggested that Mr. Trump, whose political support is vital to Mr. McCarthy, may have influenced the congressman’s refusal to cooperate with the investigation.Mr. McCarthy has acknowledged getting into a heated argument with Mr. Trump during the Capitol attack, in which the president appeared to side with the rioters as they were tearing through the grounds.According to Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler, a Washington Republican who has said that Mr. McCarthy recounted the exchange to her, Mr. Trump ignored Mr. McCarthy’s pleas to call off the rioters and sided with them instead, saying, “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.”Interest in the details of those conversations has only increased in light of leaked audio in which Mr. McCarthy told colleagues that Mr. Trump had expressed feeling partly responsible for the attack.The audio, obtained by The New York Times and released in April, showed Mr. McCarthy recounting an exchange with the former president, in which he claimed Mr. Trump had been relatively contrite about how his language concerning the election might have contributed to the riot.“Does he feel bad about what happened? He told me he does have some responsibility for what happened, and he’d need to acknowledge that,” Mr. McCarthy said in the recording.Earlier, Mr. McCarthy had told colleagues that he was going to push Mr. Trump to resign.Representative Scott PerryThe committee first publicly approached Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania in December with a letter requesting information, in the panel’s first formal attempt to interview a sitting member of Congress.Committee members have argued that Mr. Perry, who leads the deeply conservative House Freedom Caucus, was one of main architects behind a plan to install Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official, as the acting attorney general after he appeared sympathetic to Mr. Trump’s false allegations of widespread voter fraud.Mr. Clark appeared eager to pursue various conspiracy theories about hacked voting booths and other forms of election fraud, as well as to pressure state elections officials to overturn results in Georgia.Committee members and investigators have said that Mr. Perry introduced Mr. Clark and the former president. They have also found evidence that Mr. Perry was frequently in touch with Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, over encrypted messaging services in the weeks leading up to Jan. 6.After the election, Mr. Perry helped assemble a dossier of purported instances of voter fraud and also encouraged Mr. Trump’s supporters to take part in the march on the Capitol that resulted in the riot.Mr. Perry, a former Army helicopter pilot who is close to Mr. Meadows and another of the Republicans now under subpoena, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, coordinated many of the efforts to keep Mr. Trump in office. His colleagues referred to him as General Perry; he retired from the Pennsylvania National Guard in 2019.Representative Mo BrooksMembers of the committee have expressed interest in testimony from Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama after he broke with Mr. Trump and accused the former president of pressing him to find a way to remove President Biden from power.While Mr. Brooks was initially among Mr. Trump’s staunchest allies in questioning the election outcome, their relationship soured after the former president withdrew his endorsement of Mr. Brooks in the Republican primary for Alabama’s Senate seat in March.Before then, Mr. Brooks had campaigned on false claims that the 2020 election was rigged. He had been one of the speakers alongside Mr. Trump at the rally in Washington that preceded the riot.But after the former president withdrew his endorsement, Mr. Brooks came forward with startling claims that Mr. Trump had repeatedly called on him to find a way to invalidate the election and somehow remove Mr. Biden. If the assertions are true, they would show that Mr. Trump continued his efforts to overturn the outcome long after leaving office. Mr. Trump has not denied making the statements.“President Trump asked me to rescind the 2020 elections, immediately remove Joe Biden from the White House, immediately put President Trump back in the White House, and hold a new special election for the presidency,” Mr. Brooks said in a statement in March.His account of the conversations was the first time a lawmaker close to Mr. Trump had suggested that the former president had encouraged steps that, if taken, would have violated federal law.Representative Andy BiggsIn a letter to Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona in May, the committee’s leaders described evidence linking the congressman to a range of organizational efforts including “planning meetings” aimed at attracting protesters to Washington on Jan. 6.The letter also described a scheme by several House Republicans to seek presidential pardons for “activities taken in connection with President Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.”“Your name was identified as a potential participant in that effort,” it said.It is unclear whether Mr. Biggs or other House Republicans formally approached Mr. Trump about what would amount to a pre-emptive pardon, or what crime those pardons would have been for. Mr. Biggs declined this week to answer questions about the potential pardons.A former leader of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, Mr. Biggs also tried to persuade state legislators to join Mr. Trump’s push to overturn the election.Representative Jim JordanAs one of Mr. Trump’s fiercest defenders in Congress, Mr. Jordan stood by him through several ordeals during his presidency, including operating as his chief defender during Mr. Trump’s first impeachment proceeding.In the weeks after the election, Mr. Jordan met regularly with White House advisers to coordinate messaging about the outcome, often following up with false claims of fraud during media appearances.Members and investigators on the House panel have pushed aggressively for details surrounding conversations between Mr. Jordan and Mr. Trump on the day of the riot, after call records indicated that the two spoke over the phone that morning.Mr. Jordan was deeply involved in Mr. Trump’s effort to fight the election results, including participating in planning meetings in November 2020 at Trump campaign headquarters in Arlington, Va., and a meeting at the White House in December 2020.On Jan. 5, 2021, Mr. Jordan forwarded to Mr. Meadows a text message he had received from a lawyer and former Pentagon inspector general outlining a legal strategy to overturn the election.“On Jan. 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence, as president of the Senate, should call out all the electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all — in accordance with guidance from founding father Alexander Hamilton and judicial precedence,” the text read.Mr. Jordan has acknowledged speaking with Mr. Trump on Jan. 6, though he has said that he cannot remember how many times they spoke that day or when the calls occurred. One of Mr. Jordan’s conversations with Mr. Trump that day, a 10-minute phone call, was included in the official White House call log. More

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      How senior GOP figures tried to oust Trump: Politics Weekly America podcast

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      This week Jonathan Freedland speaks to Jonathan Martin of the New York Times after the publication of his new book This Will Not Pass and what he and his co-author Alexander Burns unearthed about events behind the scenes in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, why all is not well for the Biden administration, and what all of this says for the future of the two-party system

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know

      Archive: PBS Newshour, NBC You can buy This Will Not Pass here. Listen to Thursday’s episode of Politics Weekly UK with Rafael Behr. Sign up to First Edition for free at theguardian.com/firstedition. Send your questions and feedback to [email protected]. Help support the Guardian by going to gu.com/supportpodcasts. More

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      Jan. 6 Panel Subpoenas 5 Republicans, Including McCarthy

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      The leaders of the House committee investigating the Capitol attack demanded testimony from Representative Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader, and four of his colleagues.WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol issued subpoenas on Thursday to five Republican members of Congress, including Representative Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader, a significant escalation as it digs deeper into the role Republicans played in attempts to overturn the 2020 election.The panel’s move was an extraordinary step in the annals of congressional investigations — a committee targeting sitting lawmakers, including a top party leader, who have refused to cooperate in a major inquiry into the largest attack on the Capitol in centuries.It reflected the belief among investigators that a group of Republican members of Congress loyal to former President Donald J. Trump had played crucial roles in the events that led to the assault on their own institution, and may have hidden what they know about Mr. Trump’s intentions and actions before, during and after the attack.Mr. McCarthy, the Californian who is in line to be speaker if his party wins the House majority in November, had a heated phone call with Mr. Trump during the riot, in which he implored the president to call off the mob invading the Capitol in his name. When Mr. Trump declined, according to Representative Jaime Herrera Buetler, a Washington Republican who has said Mr. McCarthy recounted the exchange to her, Mr. Trump sided with the rioters, saying, “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.”Mr. McCarthy also told fellow Republican leaders privately days later that Mr. Trump had conceded in another phone call that he bore “some responsibility” for the attack.The panel also issued subpoenas for other Republicans who it said played central roles in the former president’s scheme to use Congress to help him overturn the 2020 election. Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania coordinated a plan to try to replace the acting attorney general after he resisted Mr. Trump’s false claims of widespread voting fraud. Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, one of Mr. Trump’s most outspoken defenders, was deeply involved in the effort to invalidate the election results.Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama was a ringleader of the Republican effort to lodge formal challenges to the counting of electoral votes from battleground states on Jan. 6, 2021, and has said Mr. Trump has pressured him in the months since to help reinstate him to the presidency. The committee also summoned Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona, the former leader of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus who tried to persuade state legislators to join Mr. Trump’s push to overturn the 2020 election.All five have refused requests for voluntary interviews about the roles they played in the buildup to the attack by supporters of the former president who believed his lie of widespread election fraud, and most continued to denigrate the committee after the subpoenas were issued.Mr. McCarthy told reporters on Capitol Hill on Thursday that he had not yet seen the subpoena.The panel wants to question Representative Andy Biggs about evidence it had obtained on efforts by certain House Republicans to seek a presidential pardon after Jan. 6.Tom Brenner for The New York Times“My view on the committee has not changed,” he said. “They’re not conducting a legitimate investigation. It seems as though they just want to go after their political opponents.”Mr. Perry called the investigation “a charade” and a “political witch hunt” by Democrats that is “about fabricating headlines and distracting the Americans from their abysmal record of running America into the ground.”The subpoenas come as the committee is preparing for a series of public hearings next month to reveal its findings. The eight hearings are scheduled to take place over several weeks beginning on June 9, some during prime time in an effort to attract a large television audience.“The select committee has learned that several of our colleagues have information relevant to our investigation into the attack on Jan. 6 and the events leading up to it,” Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, said in a statement. “Before we hold our hearings next month, we wished to provide members the opportunity to discuss these matters with the committee voluntarily. Regrettably, the individuals receiving subpoenas today have refused, and we’re forced to take this step to help ensure the committee uncovers facts concerning Jan. 6.”The committee’s leaders had been reluctant to issue subpoenas to their fellow lawmakers. It is a rare step for a congressional panel, other than the House Ethics Committee, which is responsible for investigating allegations of misconduct by members.For weeks, members and investigators on the special House panel have privately agonized over how aggressively to pursue sitting members of Congress, weighing their desire for information about lawmakers’ direct interactions with Mr. Trump against the potential legal difficulty and political consequences of doing so.Behind closed doors, committee and staff members researched the law, parliamentary rules and past precedents before deciding to proceed, people familiar with the inquiry said.In letters to the lawmakers sent on Thursday, Mr. Thompson wrote that their refusal to cooperate had left the panel with “no choice” but to issue subpoenas.Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and the vice chairwoman of the committee, said the decision was not made lightly. “It’s a reflection of how important and serious the investigation is, and how grave the attack on the Capitol was,” she said.The subpoena to Mr. McCarthy is particularly noteworthy given his position at the top of his party. Should he refuse to comply, it could set in motion a process that could lead to a Democratic-controlled House holding him in contempt of Congress as the midterm elections loom.The committee has thus far recommended four criminal contempt of Congress charges against witnesses who have refused to cooperate. That charge carries up to a year in jail and a $100,000 fine.Panel members declined to comment on Thursday about whether they would recommend a charge against the sitting Republican lawmakers should they refuse to comply.Representative Liz Cheney said the decision to issue subpoenas was not made lightly.Tom Brenner for The New York TimesMr. McCarthy has long feared being subpoenaed in the investigation. In recent months, he has been in discussions with William A. Burck, a longtime Washington lawyer, about how to fight a subpoena.Congressional Republicans were deeply involved in several aspects of the plans to keep Mr. Trump in office: They joined baseless lawsuits, spread the lie of widespread election fraud and objected on Jan. 6 to certifying President Biden’s victory in multiple states.The committee wants to question Mr. McCarthy about conversations he had after the attack about the president’s culpability in the assault and what should be done to address it. The committee has also suggested that Mr. Trump may have influenced Mr. McCarthy’s refusal to cooperate with the investigation.Mr. McCarthy issued a blistering statement in January condemning the committee as illegitimate and saying he would not cooperate with its inquiry. He has argued that the panel was violating the privacy of Republicans through subpoenas for bank and phone records. Mr. McCarthy also denounced Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California for having rejected two of his five choices to sit on the panel, one of whom was Mr. Jordan, and boycotted the inquiry.Ms. Pelosi added two Republicans of her choosing — Ms. Cheney and Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, both outspoken critics of Mr. Trump — to the panel.The committee informed Mr. Jordan by letter in December that its investigators wanted to question him about his communications in the run-up to the Capitol riot. Those include Mr. Jordan’s messages with Mr. Trump and his legal team as well as others involved in planning rallies on Jan. 6 and congressional objections to certifying Mr. Biden’s victory.In the weeks after the 2020 election, Mr. Perry, a member of Congress since 2013 who is close to Mr. Jordan, compiled a dossier of voter fraud allegations and coordinated a plan to try to replace the acting attorney general, who was resisting Mr. Trump’s attempts to overturn the election, with a more compliant official. Mr. Perry also endorsed the idea of encouraging Mr. Trump’s supporters to march on the Capitol on Jan. 6.In a letter to Mr. Biggs, the committee’s leaders wrote that they wanted to question him about evidence they had obtained about efforts by certain House Republicans to seek a presidential pardon after Jan. 6 in connection with Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.And the panel said it wanted to question Mr. Brooks about statements he made in March claiming that Mr. Trump had asked him repeatedly in the months since the election to illegally “rescind” the results, remove Mr. Biden and force a special election so that Mr. Trump could return to the presidency.The panel has conducted more than 1,000 interviews with witnesses, but needed to hear from members of Congress who were involved in the president’s plans, said Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and a member of the committee, who called the subpoenas a “big step” for the inquiry.“What I’m most concerned about is that if Republicans should ever get near the gavel, that they will overturn the next election if Trump loses again,” Mr. Schiff said, adding that more subpoenas for members of Congress were “possible.”The Republicans could argue that their official actions — such as objecting to Mr. Biden’s victory on the floor of the House on Jan. 6 — are protected by the so-called speech or debate clause of the Constitution, intended to preserve the independence of the legislative branch.The clause says that senators and representatives “shall not be questioned in any other place” about any speech or debate in either chamber. It has been broadly interpreted to cover all legislative actions, not just words. On its face, however, that clause is limited to questioning them in “other” places, like courtrooms.The committee has also sought an interview with Representative Ronny Jackson of Texas, Mr. Trump’s former White House doctor, about why he was mentioned in encrypted messages from the Oath Keepers militia group, some of whose members have been charged criminally in connection with the attack.Mr. Jackson has also refused to voluntarily cooperate, but he was not among those issued a subpoena on Thursday.Ms. Pelosi declined to comment on the action. Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 House Democrat, said he was not worried about whether Republicans would try to seek revenge by issuing their own subpoenas of Democratic lawmakers if they won the House.“We ought to all be subject to being asked to tell the truth before a committee that is seeking information that is important to our country and our democracy,” Mr. Hoyer said.Michael S. Schmidt More