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Capitol attack panel says ‘no choice’ but to advance contempt charges for Mark Meadows
Capitol attack panel says ‘no choice’ but to advance contempt charges for Mark Meadows News comes one day after Trump’s former chief of staff indicated he would no longer cooperate with investigators The leaders of the House committee investigating the 6 January Capitol attack have said they have “no choice” but to hold former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in contempt of Congress after his lawyer said Tuesday that his client will cease cooperating with the panel.Mark Meadows stops cooperating with Capitol attack investigation Read moreThe Democratic chair of the committee, Mississippi congressman Bennie Thompson, released a letter to Meadows’s attorney, George Terwilliger, notifying him of the panel’s plans.“The select committee is left with no choice but to advance contempt proceedings and recommend that the body in which Mr Meadows once served refer him for criminal prosecution,” Thompson said.The news comes one day after Meadows indicated he would no longer cooperate with investigators, claiming the committee is disrespecting former president Donald Trump’s claims of executive privilege over certain records.In an abrupt reversal, Meadows attorney George Terwilliger said in a letter that a deposition would be “untenable” because the 6 January panel “has no intention of respecting boundaries” concerning questions that Trump has claimed are off-limits.Terwilliger also said he learned over the weekend that the committee had issued a subpoena to a third-party communications provider that he said would include “intensely personal” information.“As a result of careful and deliberate consideration of these factors, we now must decline the opportunity to appear voluntarily for a deposition,” Terwilliger wrote in the letter.Meadows’s decision not to cooperate is a blow to the committee, as lawmakers were hoping to interview Trump’s top White House aide about Trump’s actions before and during the violent attack of his supporters. They had also hoped to use Meadows as an example to other witnesses who may be considering not cooperating as Trump has filed legal challenges to block the panel’s work.Lawmakers on the committee have blasted Meadows’s reluctance to testify while he is also releasing a book this week that details his work inside the White House. Thompson and Liz Cheney, the Republican vice-chair of the committee, said they also have questions about documents Meadows has already turned over to the panel.“Even as we litigate privilege issues, the select committee has numerous questions for Mr Meadows about records he has turned over to the committee with no claim of privilege, which include real-time communications with many individuals as the events of January 6th unfolded,” they said in a statement released yesterday.Thompson and Cheney said the panel also wants to speak to Meadows about “voluminous official records stored in his personal phone and email accounts” that could be turned over to the committee by the National Archives in the coming weeks. Trump has sued to stop the release of those records, and the case is pending in the US court of appeals.The two committee leaders did not comment on Terwilliger’s claim about subpoenas to third-party communications providers. The committee in August issued a sweeping demand that telecommunications and social media companies preserve the personal communications of hundreds of people who may have been connected to the attack, but did not ask the companies to turn over the records at that time.Terwilliger said in a statement last week that he was continuing to work with the committee and its staff on a possible accommodation that would not require Meadows to waive the executive privileges claimed by Trump or “forfeit the long-standing position that senior White House aides cannot be compelled to testify” before Congress.“We appreciate the select committee’s openness to receiving voluntary responses on non-privileged topics,” he said then.Thompson said then that the panel would “continue to assess his degree of compliance” and would take action against Meadows or any other witnesses who don’t comply, including by voting to recommend contempt charges. The House has already voted to hold longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon in contempt after he defied a subpoena, and the justice department indicted Bannon on two counts.In halting cooperation, Terwilliger cited comments from Thompson that he said unfairly cast aspersions on witnesses who invoke their fifth amendment right against self-incrimination. A separate witness, former justice department official Jeffrey Clark, has said he will invoke those fifth amendment rights, prompting questions from the committee about whether he would directly acknowledge that his answers could incriminate him.Thompson said last week that Clark’s lawyer had offered “no specific basis” for Clark to assert the fifth and that he viewed it as a “last-ditch attempt to delay the select committee’s proceedings”, but he said members would hear Clark out. The committee has already voted to recommend contempt charges for Clark, and Thompson has said it will proceed with a House vote if the panel is not satisfied with his compliance at a second deposition on 16 December.In his new book, released Tuesday, Meadows reveals that Trump received a positive Covid-19 test before a presidential debate. He also reveals that when Trump was later hospitalized with Covid, he was far sicker than the White House revealed at the time.Trump – who told his supporters to “fight like hell” before hundreds of his supporters broke into the Capitol and stopped the presidential electoral count – has attempted to hinder much of the committee’s work, including in the continuing court case, by arguing that Congress cannot obtain information about his private White House conversations.Associated Press contributed to this reportTopicsUS Capitol attackHouse of RepresentativesDonald TrumpUS politicsnewsReuse this content More
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Bob Dole, former US senator and presidential nominee, dies aged 98 – video obituary
Bob Dole, the long-time Kansas senator who was the Republican nominee for president in 1996, has died at the age of 98. Born in Russell, Kansas in 1923, Dole served in the US infantry in the second world war, suffering serious wounds in Italy and winning a medal for bravery.
In 1976 he was the Republican nominee for vice-president to Gerald Ford, in an election the sitting president lost to Jimmy Carter. Two decades later, aged 73, Dole won the nomination to take on Bill Clinton, to whom he lost. More - in US Politics
Bob Dole, giant of Republican politics and presidential nominee, dies aged 98
Bob Dole, giant of Republican politics and presidential nominee, dies aged 98
Long-time power-broker lost 1996 election to Bill Clinton
Biden: ‘An American statesman like few in our history’
Obituary: Bob Dole, 1923-2021
0Bob Dole, the long-time Kansas senator who was the Republican nominee for president in 1996, has died. He was 98.Bob Dole was a soldier, a politician and a Republican of the old school Read moreIn a statement on Sunday, the Elizabeth Dole Foundation – founded by Dole’s wife, a former North Carolina senator and cabinet official – said: “It is with heavy hearts we announced that Senator Robert Joseph Dole died earlier this morning in his sleep. At his death at age 98 he had served the United States of America faithfully for 79 years.”In late February, Dole announced that he had advanced lung cancer and would begin treatment. Visiting him, Joe Biden called Dole his “close friend”. The two men were in the Senate together for 23 years.On Sunday, Biden said: “We picked up right where we left off, as if it were only yesterday that we were sharing a laugh in the Senate dining room, or debating the great issues of the day, often against each other on the Senate floor.“I saw in his eyes the same light, bravery and determination I’ve seen so many times before in the Senate. Though we often disagreed, he never hesitated to work with me or other Democrats when it mattered most.”Citing Dole’s work on the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Social Security Commission and in creating a public holiday in honour of Martin Luther King – “a bill that many in his own caucus opposed” – Biden called Dole “an American statesman like few in our history, a war hero and among the greatest of the greatest generation”.“To me,” he said, “he was also a friend whom I could look to for trusted guidance, or a humorous line at just the right moment to settle frayed nerves.”The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, ordered flags at the Capitol flown at half-staff.Born in Russell, Kansas, in 1923, Dole left college to serve in the US infantry in the second world war, suffering serious wounds in Italy and winning a medal for bravery.His wounds cost him use of his right arm but he entered state politics and soon became a Republican power-broker, representing Kansas in the US House from 1961 to 1969 and in the Senate until 1996. He had spells as chairman of the Republican National Committee and as Senate minority and majority leader.In 1976 he was the Republican nominee for vice-president to Gerald Ford, in an election the sitting president lost to Jimmy Carter. Famously, in a debate with Walter Mondale Dole said America’s wars in the 20th century had been “Democrat wars”.Mondale said Dole had just “richly earned his reputation as a hatchet man”. Dole denied saying what he had just said, then backed down. He eventually acknowledged going too far.“I was supposed to go for the jugular,” he said, “and I did my own.”He pursued the Republican nomination in 1980 and 1988 and finally won it in 1996, at the age of 73 and two decades after being on the ticket.That put him up against Bill Clinton, a formidable campaigner seeking a second term. Against the backdrop of a booming economy, the Democrat won with ease, by 379–159 in the electoral college and by nine points in the popular vote, the third-party candidate Ross Perot costing Dole support on the right.On Sunday, Clinton said of Dole: “After all he gave in the war, he didn’t have to give more. But he did. His example should inspire people today and for generations to come.”Dole received both the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest US civilian honours.In December 2018, amid ceremonies in honour of the former president (and Dole’s rival) George HW Bush, Dole appeared before Bush’s casket in the Capitol Rotunda. As an aide lifted him from his wheelchair, Dole steadied himself and saluted.In the Trump years and after, Dole came widely to be seen as a figure from another time in Republican politics. On Sunday, the political consultant Tara Setmeyer, a member of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, tweeted: “I cast my first ever vote for president for Bob Dole in 1996. A war hero with a sharp sense of humor … another piece of a once respectable GOP gone.”But Dole remained a loyal Republican soldier. This summer, he told USA Today that though Donald Trump “lost the election, and I regret that he did, but they did”, and though he himself was “sort of Trumped out”, he still considered himself “a Trumper”.On Sunday, Trump called Dole “an American war hero and true patriot for our nation”.In the same USA Today interview, Dole called Biden “a great, kind, upstanding, decent person”, though he said he leaned too far left.He also said: “I do believe [America has] lost something. I can’t get my hand on it, but we’re just not quite where we should be, as the greatest democracy in the world. And I don’t know how you correct it, but I keep hoping that there will be a change in my lifetime.”On Sunday the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, a fiercely partisan Washington warrior who many on the left hold responsible for America losing its way, said: “Whatever their politics, anyone who saw Bob Dole in action have to admire his character and his profound patriotism. Those of us who were lucky to know Bob well ourselves admired him even more.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report
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Trump rails against Meadows for revealing Covid test cover-up – report
Trump rails against Meadows for revealing Covid test cover-up – reportGuardian revealed explosive claims in chief of staff’s memoirTrump slams ‘fake news’ but in private says aide ‘fucking stupid’ In a blurb on the cover of Mark Meadows’ new book, Donald Trump calls the former congressman a “great chief of staff – as good as it gets” and predicts “a great future together”. The former president has also promoted the book to his followers.Trump tested positive for Covid few days before Biden debate, chief of staff says in new bookRead moreNow the book is in the public domain, however, the former president reportedly thinks it is “garbage” and that Meadows was “fucking stupid” to write it.Influential members of the House committee investigating the deadly Capitol attack, meanwhile, have said Meadows may have undermined his own defence when seeking to block their inquiries.The Chief’s Chief will be published next week. This week, the Guardian broke the news that according to Meadows, Trump tested positive for Covid three days before the first presidential debate with Joe Biden in September last year.Meadows also details how that test, like another which came back negative, was covered up. Trump eventually announced a positive test on 2 October, the day he was admitted to hospital in Maryland. The White House said that positive result was announced within an hour.This week, amid huge controversy over whether Trump had endangered not only Biden but the White House press corps, debate staff, the families of fallen US service members, businessmen and more, Trump called the Guardian report “fake news” – a judgment with which Meadows, bizarrely, agreed.But outlets including the New York Times and the Washington Post confirmed the cover-up.Late on Friday, the Daily Beast cited three anonymous sources as saying Trump had spent “an inordinate amount of the past few days privately railing against Meadows, the revelation in the memoir, and, of course, the extensive media coverage of the matter”.Trump, the Beast said, was now “aggressively scolding” his former chief of staff – whose book is filled with effusive expressions of loyalty – and had said he did not know the “garbage” about the positive test would be included in Meadows’ memoir.A source close to the ex-president, the Beast said, said he “bemoaned that Meadows had been so – in Trump’s succinct phrasing – ‘fucking stupid’ with his book”.The Beast also reported that Meadows was horrified by the turn of events.“He thought Trump was going to love it,” the website quoted a source as saying.Meadows may not love what may be coming his way from the House committee investigating the Capitol attack – also as a result of his book.The Guardian obtained Meadows’ book the same day he agreed to cooperate with the panel, under threat of a charge of contempt of Congress.But though Meadows’ discussion of 6 January is highly selective and seeks to play down the attack – which as the Guardian first reported he claims was carried out by a “handful of fanatics” – it could yet prove important.Like other Trump aides and Trump himself, Meadows has claimed executive privilege, covering communications between a president and his staff, shields him from scrutiny by the select committee.‘Handful of fanatics’ to blame for Capitol riot, Trump ally Meadows says in bookRead moreAdam Schiff of California, the chair of the House intelligence committee and a member of the 6 January panel, told Politico: “It’s … very possible that by discussing the events of 6 January in his book … [Meadows is] waiving any claim of privilege.“So, it’d be very difficult for him to maintain ‘I can’t speak about events to you, but I can speak about them in my book.’”Jamie Raskin of Maryland, another Democrat on the panel, said: “You can’t assert a privilege that you have waived by virtue of your other actions.”Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the committee chair, told reporters he had seen coverage of Meadows’ memoir.“Some of what we plan to ask him is in the excerpts of the book,” Thompson said.TopicsTrump administrationDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackHouse of RepresentativesnewsReuse this content More
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Funding bill to avoid US shutdown wins enough Senate votes
Funding bill to avoid US shutdown wins enough Senate votes House of Representatives earlier passed resolution, then Republicans launched failed Senate bid to defund vaccine mandates
House votes to fund government amid shutdown threats by Senate Republicans – live A bill to fund the US government through mid-February has gained the support of enough members of the Senate to win passage and prevent a partial shutdown of federal agencies at the end of this week.The vote late on Thursday came after some Republican senators threatened to block the process in order to voice their opposition to the Biden administration’s vaccine mandates. Senators voted on an amendment to defund the federal vaccine mandate, which ultimately failed, clearing the way for the passage of the short-term funding bill.The measure, which was approved by lawmakers in the House earlier in the day, will keep the federal government funded for the next two and a half months.Biden announces plan to get booster shots to 100m Americans amid Omicron arrival in USRead moreThe need for vaccine mandates, which have been introduced by Joe Biden, has taken on additional importance as the US braces for the impact of the Omicron coronavirus variant.The plot by Republican senators to undermine the vaccine mandate came after some Republican states have already sought to diminish mandates, by expanding unemployment benefits for employees who have been fired or quit over the requirement to get the vaccine.On Wednesday, the House Freedom Caucus, a group of rightwing Republicans in the House of Representatives, urged their Senate colleagues to block the funding bill, also known as a continuing resolution, “unless it prohibits funding – in all respects – for the vaccine mandates and enforcement thereof”.In a letter to Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, the House Freedom Caucus said that the Friday deadline gave their Senate colleagues “important leverage” to prevent funding for mandates.Biden introduced vaccine mandates, which require employees to be vaccinated or submit to weekly testing, for federal workers and contractors in July. In September, Biden ordered healthcare workers to be vaccinated and companies with 100 workers or more to require Covid-19 vaccines or testing, which the government said would cover more than 100 million employees. Those measures have been put on hold by court rulings, after Republican state attorneys general, conservative groups and trade organizations sued to stop the regulations.TopicsUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesUS SenateRepublicansUS politicsnewsReuse this content More
