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      Jan. 6 Committee Weighs Possibility of Criminal Referrals

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      The House panel is examining whether there is enough evidence to recommend that the Justice Department pursue cases against Donald J. Trump and others.When the House formed a special committee this summer to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol assault, its stated goal was to compile the most authoritative account of what occurred and make recommendations to ensure it never happens again.But as investigators sifted through troves of documents, metadata and interview transcripts, they started considering whether the inquiry could yield something potentially more consequential: evidence of criminal conduct by President Donald J. Trump or others that they could send to the Justice Department urging an investigation.That move — known as sending a criminal referral — has no legal weight, as Congress has little ability to tell the Justice Department what investigations it should undertake. But it could have a substantial political impact by increasing public pressure on Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, who in his first year in office has largely sidestepped questions about what prosecutors are doing to examine the conduct of Mr. Trump and his aides as they promoted baseless allegations of voter fraud.The questions of criminality go far beyond the contempt of Congress referrals that the House has sent to the Justice Department for Mr. Trump’s former chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, and his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, for their refusal to cooperate with the investigation. (Federal law requires prosecutors to bring contempt of Congress charges before a grand jury upon receiving such a referral.)According to people briefed on their efforts, investigators for the committee are looking into whether a range of crimes were committed, including two in particular: whether there was wire fraud by Republicans who raised millions of dollars off assertions that the election was stolen, despite knowing the claims were not true; and whether Mr. Trump and his allies obstructed Congress by trying to stop the certification of electoral votes.It is not clear what, if any, new evidence the committee has that might support a criminal referral, when and how it will determine whether to pursue that option and whether the committee could produce a case strong enough to hold up against inevitable accusations that it acted in a partisan manner.Behind the scenes, the committee’s day-to-day work is being carried out by a team of 40 investigators and staff members, including former federal prosecutors. The panel has obtained more than 30,000 records and interviewed more than 300 witnesses, including about a dozen last week whom committee members say provided “key” testimony.In recent weeks, the committee has publicly signaled its interest in the question of criminality. Shortly after obtaining from Mr. Meadows 9,000 pages of documents — including text messages and a PowerPoint presentation — the panel’s top Republican, Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, read from the criminal code at a televised hearing.She suggested that Mr. Trump, by failing to stop the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, might have violated the federal law that prohibits obstructing an official proceeding before Congress.“We know hours passed with no action by the president to defend the Congress of the United States from an assault while we were trying to count electoral votes,” Ms. Cheney said, adding: “Did Donald Trump, through action or inaction, corruptly seek to obstruct or impede Congress’s official proceeding to count electoral votes?”Understand the U.S. Capitol RiotOn Jan. 6, 2021, a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol.What Happened: Here’s the most complete picture to date of what happened — and why.Timeline of Jan. 6: A presidential rally turned into a Capitol rampage in a critical two-hour time period. Here’s how.Key Takeaways: Here are some of the major revelations from The Times’s riot footage analysis.Death Toll: Five people died in the riot. Here’s what we know about them.Decoding the Riot Iconography: What do the symbols, slogans and images on display during the violence really mean?The question is one of the most significant to emerge in the first six months of the investigation.The panel has nine House members — including two Republicans — and is modeling itself on the commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The committee plans to produce the authoritative report about Jan. 6.It plans to hold televised hearings early next year to lay out for the public how the pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” movement helped lead to the Capitol riot. And it ultimately may propose changes to federal laws, toughening statutes to rein in a president’s conduct and overhauling the Electoral Count Act, which Mr. Trump and his allies sought to exploit in his attempt to cling to power.One of the challenges the committee faces is that so much has been reported about Mr. Trump’s efforts to hold onto power and the attacks themselves. So far, the numerous disclosures about the role of Mr. Trump, his aides and others who promoted the baseless idea that the election had been stolen from him have had little impact on his Republican support in Congress.But a credible criminal referral could provide the committee an opportunity to underscore the gravity of what happened while potentially subjecting Mr. Trump and others to intensified legal scrutiny.Although congressional investigators have no powers to charge a crime, their ability to subpoena documents and compel witnesses to testify allows them to reveal new details about events. At times, that process leads to witnesses disclosing potential criminality about themselves or others.When that occurs, Congress can make a criminal referral to the Justice Department — often in the form of a public letter — that can increase pressure on the department to open investigations. Sometimes members of Congress, amid partisan squabbling, overstate the evidence of criminality and make referrals to the Justice Department that are ignored because they appear political.Congressional investigations also create problems for witnesses because it is against the law to make false or misleading statements to Congress. The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, indicted Roger J. Stone Jr. in 2019 for lying to congressional investigators examining Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and for obstructing that inquiry. Mr. Stone was ultimately convicted and then pardoned by Mr. Trump.Mr. Stone appeared before the Jan. 6 committee on Friday to face questions about his role in the “Stop the Steal” movement. But rather than answer questions, he repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination because he said he feared that Democrats would again accuse him of lying under oath.During his meeting with the Jan. 6 committee last week, Roger J. Stone Jr., right, repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesAt a hearing this month, Ms. Cheney suggested that the committee could subpoena Mr. Trump to answer questions and that criminal penalties would hang over his head if he lied.“Any communication Mr. Trump has with this committee will be under oath,” she said. “And if he persists in lying then, he will be accountable under the laws of this great nation and subject to criminal penalties for every false word he speaks.”Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and a member of the committee, said it was “certainly possible” that the panel would make criminal referrals before the investigation concluded.Key Figures in the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 9The House investigation. More

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      Why Trump appears deeply unnerved as Capitol attack investigation closes in

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      Why Trump appears deeply unnerved as Capitol attack investigation closes in Flurry of recent revelations raises the specter that the committee is swiftly heading towards an incriminating conclusion

      6 January panel will say if Trump committed crime – Kinzinger
      Donald Trump is increasingly agitated by the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack, according to sources familiar with the matter, and appears anxious he might be implicated in the sprawling inquiry into the insurrection even as he protests his innocence.Republicans are shamelessly working to subvert democracy. Are Democrats paying attention? Read moreThe former president in recent weeks has complained more about the investigation, demanding why his former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, shared so much material about 6 January with the select committee, and why dozens of other aides have also cooperated.Trump has also been perturbed by aides invoking the Fifth Amendment in depositions – it makes them look weak and complicit in a crime, he has told associates – and considers them foolish for not following the lead of his former strategist Steve Bannon in simply ignoring the subpoenas.When Trump sees new developments in the Capitol attack investigation on television, he has started swearing about the negative coverage and bemoaned that the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, was too incompetent to put Republicans on the committee to defend him.The former president’s anger largely mirrors the kind of expletives he once directed at the Russia inquiry and the special counsel investigation when he occupied the White House. But the rapidly accelerating investigation into whether Trump and top aides unlawfully conspired to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s victory at the 6 January joint session appears to be unnerving him deeply. The portrait that emerges from interviews with multiple sources close to Trump, including current and former aides, suggest a former president unmoored and backed into a corner by the rapid escalation in intensity of the committee’s investigation.A spokesperson for Trump did not respond to requests for comment.But as Trump struggles to shield himself from the select committee, with public hearings next year and the justice department said to be tracking the investigation, the path ahead is only likely to be more treacherous.The former president is especially attuned to his potential for legal exposure, even as he maintains he did nothing wrong in conferring about ways to overturn the 2020 election and encouraging supporters to march on the Capitol. He has expressed alarm to associates about repeated defeats in court as he seeks to stop the select committee obtaining some of the most sensitive of White House documents about 6 January from the National Archives, on grounds of executive privilege.The reality is that with each passing day, the committee seems to be gathering new evidence about Trump’s culpability around the Capitol attack that might culminate with recommendations for new election laws – but also for prosecutions.“I think that the justice department will keep a keen eye on what evidence the committee has accumulated, as well as looking out for witnesses for a potential case,” said Ryan Goodman, a former special counsel at the Department of Defense now a law professor at New York University.“One of the outcomes of the committee’s work and the public hearings will be to demonstrate individuals who might be wanting to come forward as witnesses and that’s got to be very important to justice department prosecutors,” Goodman said.House investigators are expected to soon surpass more than 300 interviews with Trump administration officials and Trump political operatives as part of a process that has yielded 30,000 documents and 250 tips via the select committee’s tip line.The flurry of recent revelations – such as the disclosure of Meadows’s connection to a powerpoint outlining how Trump could stage a coup, as first reported by the Guardian – raises the specter that the select committee is swiftly heading towards an incriminating conclusion.Trump’s associates insist they are not worried, at least for the moment, since the select committee has yet to obtain materials covered by executive privilege either through Meadows or the National Archives that could ensnare Trump personally.The former president’s defenders are correct in that respect – the committee does not have messages that show Trump directing an attack on the Capitol, one source said – and Trump has vowed to appeal the National Archives case to the supreme court.House panel gathers mountain of evidence in Capitol attack investigationRead moreBut no one outside the select committee, which is quietly making progress from a glass office on Capitol Hill with boarded-up windows and electronically secured doors, knows exactly what it has uncovered and whether the inquiry ends with a criminal referral.The material Meadows turned over alone depicts an alarming strategy to stop Biden’s certification on 6 January, involving nearly the entire federal government and lieutenants operating from the Willard hotel in Washington.One member on the select committee described the events around 6 January as showing a coalescence of multiple strategies: “There was a DoJ strategy, a state legislative strategy, a state election official strategy, the vice-president strategy. And there was the insurrection strategy.”The text messages Meadows received on his personal phone implicate Trump’s eldest son, Don Jr, and Republican members of Congress. Texts Meadows turned over to the committee might also be used by an enterprising prosecutor as evidence of criminal obstruction to stop a congressional proceeding if the White House knew election fraud claims to be lies but still used them to stop Biden’s certification.While Meadows never testified about the communications, a cadre of top Trump officials, from former acting national security adviser Keith Kellogg to Pence’s former chief of staff Marc Short, have moved to cooperate with House investigators.The trouble for Trump – and part of the source of his frustration, the sources said – is his inability, out of office, to wield the far-reaching power of the executive branch to affect the course of the inquiry.The limited success of strategies he hoped would stymie the committee – ordering aides to defy subpoenas or launching legal challenges to slow-walk the release White House records – has been jarring for Trump.“I think what he’s finding is that as the ex-president, he has a lot less authority than he did as president. But his playbook doesn’t work if he’s not president,” said Daniel Goldman, former lead counsel in the first House impeachment inquiry into Trump.In a reflection of dwindling legal avenues available to undercut the investigation, Trump has returned to launching attacks-by-emailed-statement on the select committee, stewing over his predicament and what he considers an investigation designed only to hurt him politically.“The Unselect Committee itself is Rigged, stacked with Never Trumpers, Republican enemies, and two disgraced RINOs, Cheney and Kinzinger, who couldn’t get elected ‘dog catcher’ in their districts,” Trump vented last month.Trump tested positive for Covid few days before Biden debate, chief of staff says in new bookRead moreIn private, Trump is said to have reserved the brunt of his scorn for Meadows, furious with his former White House chief of staff for sharing sensitive communications on top of all the unflattering details about Trump included in his book this month.Trump’s associates, however, have focused more on questioning the legitimacy of the select committee and its composition, arguing the fact that the House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, appointed both Republican members reduces the investigation to a partisan political endeavor.They also argue that none of the revelations to date – like the Guardian’s reporting on Trump’s call to the Willard hotel, during which he pressed operatives to stop Biden’s certification from taking place entirely – amounts to criminal wrongdoing.But in the meantime, Trump is left with little choice but to wait for the committee’s report.“The justice department seems to be more reactive than proactive,” Goodman said. “They might be waiting for the committee to wrap up its work to make criminal referrals.”TopicsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackUS politicsRepublicansHouse of RepresentativesUS CongressDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

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      Capitol attack panel will determine if Trump committed crime – Republican

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      Capitol attack panel will determine if Trump committed crime – Republican
      Kinzinger promises to determine if criminal statute violated
      ‘He’s not a king. Former presidents, they aren’t former kings’
      Robert Reich: Beware the big lie, big anger and big money
      Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republicans on the House committee investigating the deadly 6 January Capitol attack incited by Donald Trump, said on Sunday he was not “yet” ready to declare the former president guilty of a crime – but that the panel was investigating the likelihood that he is.Mark Meadows was at the center of the storm on 6 January. But only Trump could call it offRead more“Nobody is above the law,” the Illinois congressman told CNN’s State of the Union. “And if the president knowingly allowed what happened on 6 January to happen, and, in fact, was giddy about it, and that violates a criminal statute, he needs to be held accountable for that.”The committee has been picking up pace in recent weeks with dozens of subpoenas issued, some to close Trump aides. The waters lapped at the doors of Trump’s Oval Office this week when his fourth and final chief of staff, Mark Meadows, became a focus of the investigation over tweets he received on and around the day of the insurrection.The committee voted unanimously to refer Meadows for criminal prosecution for contempt of Congress, after he withdrew his cooperation.Kinzinger, who alongside fellow Republican Liz Cheney has drawn the ire of Trump allies for serving on the committee, said he had no qualms about scrutinising how Trump incited supporters to try to overturn his election defeat by Joe Biden, which he says was the result of massive electoral fraud, which it was not.“He’s not a king,” Kinzinger said, “Former presidents, they aren’t former kings.”Kinzinger added that he feared the events of 6 January were “trial run” for Trump and his allies to attempt another coup.“We will get every bit of detail that we can possibly get on that, so that’s important for the president’s role,” he said. “I want to hold the people guilty accountable but I want to make sure this never happens again.“Otherwise, 6 January will have been, yes, a failed trial run, but, sometimes, a failed trial run is the best practice to get one that succeeds, a coup that would succeed in toppling our government.”Kinzinger’s comments are the strongest to date about the depth of the inquiry into Trump’s role.At a “Stop the Steal” rally near the White House on 6 January, the then-president urged supporters to march on the Capitol and “fight like hell [or] you’re not going to have a country any more”.He was impeached a second time for inciting the insurrection that followed, but though Kinzinger, and nine other House Republicans and seven GOP senators voted with Democrats, Trump was acquitted in his Senate trial and remains free to run for office again.Pressed on whether he thought Trump was guilty of a crime, Kinzinger said: “I don’t want to go there yet, to say, ‘Do I believe he has’. But I sure tell you I have a lot of questions about what the president was up to.”Earlier this month at a sentencing hearing for one of the rioters, a district court judge, Amy Berman Jackson, said she believed Trump stoked the riot and should be held accountable. Jackson was one of a growing number of federal judges to speak out.Trump is also in legal jeopardy from investigations of his business affairs, with authorities in New York looking at tax issues in particular.Trump spoke to Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures but was not asked about the 6 January inquiry, instead riffing on subjects including the Taliban’s hatred of dogs and how Biden’s chief medical adviser, Dr Anthony Fauci, struggles to pitch a baseball. Bob’s Burgers bans actor over alleged involvement in Capitol attack – reportRead moreTrump also weighed in on a conspiracy theory popular on Fox News which says Biden is not running the country, based on an apparent gaffe in which he called his vice-president, Kamala Harris, “president” in a university commencement speech this week.On CNN, Kinzinger acknowledged the 6 January committee was working to complete its work before next year’s midterm elections, in which Republicans are likely to take back control and thereby kill the investigation.The Ohio congressman Jim Jordan, a Trump loyalist whose text messages were included in those released this week, was one of the Republicans rejected by the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, for a place on the 6 January panel.Regardless, Jordan has been tipped as a possible judiciary committee chair – who would therefore act to close the investigation of the Capitol attack.“He could not credibly head the [judiciary] committee,” Kinzinger said. “But he certainly could head the committee.”TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsUS elections 2020Donald TrumpTrump administrationRepublicansHouse of RepresentativesnewsReuse this content More

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      Will Trump Undercut a Red Wave?

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      Former Senator David Perdue knows how to crash a party. When he announced that he would seek the 2022 Republican nomination for governor in Georgia, challenging the incumbent, Brian Kemp, he did more than enter a primary race. He illustrated the dangers facing the G.O.P. in the coming year.Georgia Republicans are divided over former President Donald Trump and torn between mainstream credibility and the conspiratorial fringe. Mr. Perdue — an ally of Mr. Trump — has made these divisions worse. The beneficiary? The Democrat Stacey Abrams.Republicans worry about internal strife and outlandish messages that turn off swing voters because everything else is going their way. The party did well in last month’s elections. President Biden’s low approval ratings endanger Democrats in Congress, where Republicans must net only five seats in the House and one in the Senate to seize control.Republican strength at the state level gives the party an advantage in drawing new maps of congressional districts, which will amplify their slim lead in the FiveThirtyEight estimate of the congressional generic ballot.Yet history shows how expectations can be thwarted. Republicans have experienced hopeful times before — only to have the moment pass. They believed that disapproval of President Bill Clinton’s conduct would expand their majorities in 1998. They ended up losing five House seats. They believed that Mr. Trump would rally the base to support two incumbent senators during runoffs in Georgia last January. They lost both seats and control of the Senate.Time and again, the biggest obstacle to a red wave hasn’t been the Democratic Party. It’s been the Republican Party.Republican victories in the midterms next year are far from preordained. Glenn Youngkin’s win in Virginia may be much harder to replicate elsewhere than it looked on election night. Republican leaders continue to fear Mr. Trump and his supporters, and they are divided over candidate selection, message and agenda. The result is a unique combination of external strength and internal rot: an enthusiastic and combative Republican Party that despite its best efforts may soon acquire power it has done nothing to deserve.It will be hard for the party to appeal to the suburban independents who decide elections, though Mr. Youngkin’s success suggests a path. He is the first Republican elected governor of Virginia in over a decade because of his emphasis on kitchen-table issues like rising prices and school closures. He ignored immigration, encouraged vaccination while opposing government mandates and stayed clear of Mr. Trump during the general election. He focused on parental involvement in education and planted himself firmly in the center-right of the political mainstream. When asked about a Trump rally where the Pledge of Allegiance was recited to a flag supposedly connected to the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, Mr. Youngkin called it “weird and wrong.” One Republican senator joked in private that Mr. Youngkin had figured out how to hold Mr. Trump’s hand — under the table and in the dark.Other candidates won’t be as skilled or as lucky as Mr. Youngkin. Republicans lost winnable Senate seats in 2010 and 2012 because of flawed nominees like Sharron Angle in Nevada, Christine O’Donnell in Delaware, Todd Akin in Missouri and Richard Mourdock in Indiana. Past may be prologue if Republicans nominate Trump allies whose record or rhetoric are questionable and extreme. Last month, one Trump-endorsed candidate for Senate, Sean Parnell of Pennsylvania, suspended his campaign after he lost a custody battle against his estranged wife. The Trump endorsees Kelly Tshibaka of Alaska and Herschel Walker of Georgia are untested on the campaign trail. In races where Mr. Trump hasn’t yet endorsed, Blake Masters of Arizona, Eric Greitens of Missouri and J.D. Vance of Ohio may secure the MAGA base by forfeiting viability in the general election.Mr. Trump remains the central figure in the G.O.P. Party elites try to ignore him as he spends many days fighting Republicans rather than Democrats and plotting his revenge against the 10 Republican House members who voted for his second impeachment, the seven Republican senators who voted to convict him and the 13 House Republicans who voted for the bipartisan infrastructure bill. Mr. Trump targets his enemies with primary challenges, calls for “audits” and “decertification” of the 2020 presidential results and howls at Mitch McConnell for not being “tough.” His imitators within the party are a font of endless infighting and controversy, and they undermine the authority of the House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy. Mr. Trump would have it no other way.The former president was content to keep a distance in this year’s races for governor. He won’t be so quiet next year — especially if he concludes that a successful midterm is a key step to his restoration to power in 2024. A more visible and vocal Trump has the potential to help Republicans in solid red states but doom them in purple or blue ones. Yet control of the Senate hinges on the results in Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire — states Mr. Trump lost in 2020.Mr. Youngkin showed that a positive message attuned to middle-class priorities repels Democratic attacks. If Republicans campaign on a unified message that applies conservative principles to inflation, the border, crime, education and health care, they might be able to avoid being tagged as the party of extremism, conspiracy and loyalty to Mr. Trump. Their problem is that they have no such message.Mr. McConnell has reportedly told Senate Republicans that they won’t release an agenda before the midterms. He’s worried that specific proposals are nothing but fodder for Democratic attacks. What should worry him more are rudderless Republican candidates who allow their Democratic opponents to define them negatively — and then, if they still win, take office in January 2023 with no idea what to do.In an ideal world, more Republicans would think seriously about how best to provide individuals and families with the resources necessary to flourish in today’s America. They would spend less time attacking one another and more time offering constructive approaches to inflation and dangerous streets. They would experiment with a ranked-choice primary system that played a role in Mr. Youngkin’s nomination in Virginia and in the law-and-order Democrat Eric Adams’s win in New York City’s mayor’s race. Interested Republicans would declare today that Mr. Trump won’t deter them from seeking the presidency — reminding him that renomination is not guaranteed.But that’s not the world we live in. Republicans appear either unwilling or unable to treat the former president as a figure from the past whose behavior has done the party more harm than good. They take false comfort in the idea that midterm elections are “thermostatic,” the inevitable repudiation, climatic in nature, of the governing party. They assume they will win next year without doing anything of significance. And they may be right.Matthew Continetti is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of the forthcoming “The Right: The Hundred Year War for American Conservatism.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Jan. 6 Committee May Add New Expertise for Investigation

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      As the panel continues to take testimony, it is looking to do more analysis of social media and possible foreign efforts to sow discord in the U.S. before the Capitol riot.WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault at the U.S. Capitol is weighing whether to hire staff members who can analyze social media posts and examining the role foreign adversaries played in sowing divisions among Americans over the outcome of the presidential election, according to two people briefed on the committee’s decision making.The new avenues of inquiry come as the committee, which currently has about 40 staff members, continues to subpoena testimony and documents. Witnesses this week included William J. Walker, the former commander of the D.C. National Guard, who has said military leaders delayed the guard response on Jan. 6, and the conservative activist Dustin Stockton, whose lawyer said he is turning over a “treasure trove” of documents that would have senior Trump allies and lawmakers “quivering in their boots.”Mr. Stockton and his fiancée, Jennifer L. Lawrence, assisted in organizing rallies after the election advancing false claims about its outcome. But Mr. Stockton has said he was concerned that a march to the Capitol on Jan. 6 while Congress was certifying the election would mean “possible danger,” and that his urgent concerns were escalated to Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff at the time, according to the committee.The political operative Roger J. Stone Jr., a close ally of former President Donald J. Trump, appeared before the committee for a deposition on Friday. But he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination to each of the panel’s questions because, he said, he feared that Democrats would fabricate perjury charges.Understand the U.S. Capitol RiotOn Jan. 6, 2021, a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol.What Happened: Here’s the most complete picture to date of what happened — and why.Timeline of Jan. 6: A presidential rally turned into a Capitol rampage in a critical two-hour time period. Here’s how.Key Takeaways: Here are some of the major revelations from The Times’s riot footage analysis.Death Toll: Five people died in the riot. Here’s what we know about them.Decoding the Riot Iconography: What do the symbols, slogans and images on display during the violence really mean?“I did my civic duty and I responded as required by law,” Mr. Stone said after the deposition. He then criticized the investigation as “Witch Hunt 3.0,” and accused the government of hiding potentially exculpatory video evidence about the attack on the Capitol.Mr. Stone has claimed that he was leaving town as rioters stormed the Capitol. “I did not march to the Capitol. I was not at the Capitol,” he said, adding that he believed the violence was “illegal and politically counterproductive.”But Mr. Stone promoted his attendance at the rallies on Jan. 5 and 6, solicited support to pay for security through the website stopthesteal.org and used members of the Oath Keepers militia group as personal security guards while he was in Washington. At least two of those members have been indicted on charges that they were involved in the Capitol attack.To bolster the public’s understanding of the attack, the committee is considering hiring several new staff members to analyze the vast amount of information that Mr. Trump’s supporters posted on sites like Twitter, Facebook, Parler and YouTube in the weeks before and after the attack. These digital footprints could help congressional investigators connect players and events, or bring to light details that witnesses might not know or remember.Federal prosecutors have relied on hundreds of thousands of pieces of digital evidence to identify and support charges against more than 700 defendants who have been arrested in nearly every state for their part in the attack.The committee’s investigators are also seeking to understand whether foreign governments were able to exploit and deepen social divisions created by Mr. Trump’s refusal to concede his election loss. Foreign adversaries have long tried to damage America’s national security interests by exacerbating social unrest and polarization.Key Figures in the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 9The House investigation. More

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      Jan. 6 Panel Subpoenas Retired Colonel Who Shared Plan to Overturn Election

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      Phil Waldron has been under scrutiny since a 38-page PowerPoint he circulated was turned over to the panel by former President Donald J. Trump’s last chief of staff.WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack at the Capitol issued a subpoena on Thursday for Phil Waldron, a retired Army colonel with a background in information warfare who had circulated a detailed and extreme plan to overturn the 2020 election.The committee has been scrutinizing Mr. Waldron’s role in spreading false information about the election since a 38-page PowerPoint presentation he circulated on Capitol Hill was turned over to the panel by Mark Meadows, President Donald J. Trump’s last chief of staff, who denied having anything to do with it.“The document he reportedly provided to administration officials and members of Congress is an alarming blueprint for overturning a nationwide election,” Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and chairman of the committee, said.Waldron said he had not yet seen the subpoena and declined to comment.The PowerPoint — titled “Election Fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for 6 JAN” — recommended that Mr. Trump declare a national emergency to cling to power and included the false claim that China and Venezuela had obtained control over the voting infrastructure in a majority of states.On Jan. 4, associates of Mr. Waldron spoke to a group of senators and informed them about the allegations of election fraud in the PowerPoint, Mr. Waldron told The New York Times recently in an interview. On Jan. 5, he said, he personally briefed a small group of House members whom he did not identify; that discussion also focused on baseless claims of foreign interference in the election. He said he had made the document available to the lawmakers.Mr. Waldron told The Washington Post that he had contributed to the creation of the document and had visited the White House several times after last year’s election, and spoken with Mr. Meadows “maybe eight to 10 times.”Mr. Waldron, who specialized in psychological influence operations and once was deployed to Iraq, retired from the military in 2016 after 30 years of service. He appears to lead a quieter life these days, describing himself on his LinkedIn page as the founder, forklift driver and floor sweeper at One Shot Distillery and Brewery in Dripping Springs, Texas.Understand the U.S. Capitol RiotOn Jan. 6, 2021, a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol.What Happened: Here’s the most complete picture to date of what happened — and why.Timeline of Jan. 6: A presidential rally turned into a Capitol rampage in a critical two-hour time period. Here’s how.Key Takeaways: Here are some of the major revelations from The Times’s riot footage analysis.Death Toll: Five people died in the riot. Here’s what we know about them.Decoding the Riot Iconography: What do the symbols, slogans and images on display during the violence really mean?But almost as soon as the 2020 polls closed, he joined a wide-ranging effort to persuade the public and key Republican politicians that the vote count had been marred by rampant fraud.By mid-November, Mr. Waldron was in contact with Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, who at the time was overseeing challenges to the election. Mr. Waldron fed Mr. Giuliani information about alleged attempts by foreign powers to hack American voting machines and about suspected left-wing operatives who were working for the vote tabulation company Dominion Voting Systems. Some of these baseless claims ultimately made their way into federal lawsuits attacking Dominion’s role in the election that were filed by the pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell.“Colonel in the military, great war record,” Mr. Giuliani later said of Mr. Waldron in a deposition he gave in a defamation lawsuit brought by a Dominion employee. “I’ve had substantial dealings with him and he’s very, very thorough and very experienced in this kind of work.”Mr. Giuliani said his legal team put up a “big whiteboard” that laid out its strategies while he and fellow lawyers, including Ms. Powell and Jenna Ellis, ran operations as “really active supervisors.”Mr. Giuliani said another lawyer, Boris Epshteyn, was focusing on fraud allegations in Nevada and Arizona, while Mr. Waldron was investigating conspiracies related to Dominion voting machines.“If I were to think of Dominion, I would think of Sidney carrying the ball on that, with everybody else helping, and Phil was the investigator,” Mr. Giuliani said.Mr. Waldron also participated in meetings at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., in early January to plan ways to challenge the election results, according to the committee.Key Aspects of the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 8The House investigation. More

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      Congressman Jim Jordan sent plans for Capitol attack to Mark Meadows

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      Congressman Jim Jordan sent plans for Capitol attack to Mark MeadowsJordan forwarded a text to Meadows on 5 January, one of the congressman’s aides has confirmed, containing details of the plot The Ohio congressman Jim Jordan has been identified as the Republican who sent a message to Donald Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows the day before the deadly 6 January US Capitol riots outlining a plan to stop Joe Biden – the legitimate winner of the presidential election – from reaching the White House.The House select committee investigating the insurrection has been looking at numerous messages sent to Meadows on and around that day, many of which were from Trump supporters urging the then-president to call off a mob of his supporters as they ransacked the Capitol building.Meadows, whose role in events has become a central plank of the investigation, and who provided many of the messages to the committee, is facing possible contempt of Congress charges for withdrawing his cooperation.Jordan, a staunch Trump ally whom Republicans originally wanted to sit on the committee, forwarded a text message to Meadows on 5 January, one of the congressman’s aides has confirmed, containing details of the plot to block Biden.The message was sent to Jordan by Joseph Schmitz, a former US defense department inspector general who outlined a “draft proposal” to pressure vice-president Mike Pence to refuse to certify audited election returns on 6 January.A portion of the message was shown by Democratic committee member Adam Schiff on Tuesday. It read: “On January 6, 2021, Vice-President Mike Pence, as president of the Senate, should call out all electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all.”The plotters falsely believed Pence had the constitutional authority to reject the election results and allow rival slates of electors from Republicans in states that Biden won to decide the outcome. Pence refused to do so, and has since been castigated by Trump and his allies.Jordan was one of five Republicans rejected from serving on the committee by Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker who instead appointed Trump critics Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. Some commentators say the move “saved” the committee’s integrity.The panel has accelerated its inquiries in recent days and weeks, issuing dozens of subpoenas, interviewing more than 300 witnesses and reviewing more than 30,000 documents as it attempts to tie Trump to the events of 6 January.A clearer picture has emerged of the involvement of Trump loyalists, including senior Republican party officials such as Jordan, in the coup attempt, with questions swirling this week particularly over the role of Meadows.Trump’s former chief of staff is revealed to have received numerous messages on the day of the riot from Republican politicians, Fox News television personalities such as Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, and the president’s son Donald Trump Jr.The text from Trump Jr was succinct. “We need an Oval address. He has to lead now. It has gone too far and gotten out of hand. He’s got to condemn this shit asap.”Meadows replied: “I’m pushing it hard. I agree.”Schiff, a California Democrat who led the prosecution in the Senate at Trump’s second impeachment in January, has argued that Meadows was at the heart of the pressure campaign on Pence, and voted for him to face contempt charges for his refusal to explain it.“You can see why this is so critical to ask Mr Meadows about,” Schiff said during the committee’s presentation on Tuesday.“About a lawmaker suggesting that the former vice-president simply throw out votes that he unilaterally deems unconstitutional in order to overturn a presidential election and subvert the will of the American people.”TopicsUS Capitol attackMark MeadowsOhioHouse of RepresentativesRepublicansDonald TrumpUS CongressnewsReuse this content More