January 6 hearings

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Feds seize phone of ex-Trump lawyer who aided effort to overturn election

      by

      Feds seize phone of ex-Trump lawyer who aided effort to overturn electionJohn Eastman had put forth the proposal for then vice-president Mike Pence to halt the certification of electoral votes A conservative lawyer who aided former President Donald Trump’s efforts to undo the 2020 election results and who has been repeatedly referenced in House hearings on the January 6assault on the Capitol said on Monday that federal agents seized his cellphone last week.‘Watergate for streaming era’: how the January 6 panel created gripping hearingsRead moreJohn Eastman said the agents took his phone as he left a restaurant last Wednesday evening, the same day law enforcement officials conducted similar activity around the country as part of broadening investigations into efforts by Trump allies to overturn the election results in an unsuccessful bid to keep the Republican president in power.Eastman said the agents who approached him identified themselves as from the FBI but appeared to be serving a warrant on behalf of the justice department’s office of inspector general, which he contends has no jurisdiction to investigate him since he has never worked for the department.The action was disclosed in a filing in federal court in New Mexico in which Eastman challenges the legitimacy of the warrant, calling it overly broad, and asks that a court force the federal government to return his phone. The filing does not specify where exactly agents seized his phone, and a lawyer for Eastman did not immediately return an email seeking comment.Federal agents last week served a raft of subpoenas related to a scheme by Trump allies to put forward fake slates of electors in hopes of invalidating the election won by Democrat Joe Biden. Also that day, agents searched the Virginia home of Jeffrey Clark, a Trump justice department official who encouraged Trump’s challenges of the election results.A spokeswoman for the inspector general’s office declined to comment. Eastman, who last year resigned his position as a law professor at Chapman University, has been a central figure in the ongoing hearings by the House committee investigating the riot at the Capitol, though he has not been among the witnesses to testify.The committee has heard testimony about how Eastman put forward a last-ditch, unorthodox proposal challenging the workings of the 130-year-old Electoral Count Act, which governs the process for tallying the election results in Congress.The committee has heard testimony about how Eastman pushed for vice-president Mike Pence to deviate from his ceremonial role and halt the certification of the electoral votes, a step Pence had no legal power to take and refused to attempt.Eastman’s plan was to have the states send alternative slates of electors from states Trump was disputing, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.With competing slates for Trump or Biden, Pence would be forced to reject them, returning them to the states to sort it out, under the plan.A lawyer for Pence, Greg Jacob, detailed for the committee at a hearing earlier this month how he had fended off Eastman’s pressure. The panel played video showing Eastman repeatedly invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination while being interviewed by the committee.Eastman later sought to be “on the pardon list,” according to an email he sent to Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, shared by the committee. TopicsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpNew MexicoUS politicsJanuary 6 hearingsnewsReuse this content More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Watergate for streaming era’: how the January 6 panel created gripping hearings

      by

      ‘Watergate for streaming era’: how the January 6 panel created gripping hearingsThe committee have put on hearings that feel more like a Hollywood prestige limited series than a congressional inquiry There is a certain kind of ritual that has come to define a blockbuster congressional hearing in Washington.The star witnesses take their seats facing the dias, swamped by photographers. The committee chairman gives a solemn opening statement, followed by a statement from the ranking member of the minority party. There is some bickering over the rules for the hearing, whether it is a sham, sometimes followed by a theatrical effort to postpone the session. Eventually, the star witness gets to speak, and parries questions from the committee members, each party asking either friendly or aggressive questions, depending on the politics. The whole thing often lasts hours and can get somewhat confusing to follow. At the end of the day, newscasts are filled with highlight reels of the can’t miss moments.Get the latest updates on voting rights in the Guardian’s Fight to vote newsletterBut over the last few weeks, the committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US capitol has broken that mold.Instead of just presenting the facts from their investigation, the committee has generated a clear narrative, teasing how each piece will connect to the next at a future hearing. They have promised and delivered on new sensational details making the hearings can’t miss television. The committee, which is getting advice from a former ABC News executive, have put on hearings that felt more like a Hollywood prestige limited series than a congressional inquiry.“They have put on the Watergate hearings for the streaming era,” said Norman Eisen, who served as special counsel to the House judiciary committee during Trump’s first impeachment.The committee has done this in a few key ways. They’ve broken up the hearings into several pieces, keeping each hearing to just a few hours (short by Congress’s standards) and focused on a particular topic. A single member of the committee, or professional staff, has handled the questioning, without interruptions from the opposing party. And the committee has placed a beating heart at the center of its investigation, featuring testimony from police officers, elected officials, and election workers who have all emotionally laid out the severe consequences of Trump’s investigative work.“What they’ve done brilliantly is use video, kind of the newest techniques of presenting narrative through video, with the most traditional, but powerful approach of having live witnesses. And they’ve blended the two and managed to tell a gripping account of a criminal conspiracy,” said Eisen, who now serves as a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.Perhaps most significantly, the committee has made extraordinary use of over a year of investigative work. They frequently play video clips of government officials at the highest levels of government and in Trump’s inner circle detailing what was going on behind the scenes as Trump tried to overturn the election. In many of those clips, the officials have said they knew Trump’s claims about massive fraud were bunk and told him so. Their close ties to Trump make their words all the more damning.“Video is the top of the pyramid of what gets people’s attention,” said David Litt, a former speechwriter for Barack Obama. “The same set of words, if it’s a quote, it’s less valuable than audio, and audio is less valuable than video. I think they understood that.”The committee has also done a good job of feeding the appetite for constant new information by carefully meting out and teasing bombshell information, Litt said. During the first impeachment hearing, for example, Liz Cheney said that multiple Republican congressman sought presidential pardons, but didn’t reveal who. Cheney opened another hearing by saying that Rudy Giuliani was “apparently inebriated”, before later playing a clip of Jason Miller, a senior Trump adviser telling investigators that was the case. At one hearing, the committee also teased a video in which Eric Herchmann says he told John Eastman: “I’m going to give you the best free legal advice you’re ever getting in your life: get a great fucking criminal defense lawyer.”“They went out and they got the receipts and now they’re deploying them in a smart way where there’s this constant drip,” Litt said. “They understand that the drip drip drip is what holds interest in a story. Unfortunately we’ve seen this time and time again where there’s a bombshell, but someone just waits it out because all the shoes drop at once.”Some of the committee’s biggest success may also be the result of a strategic error by Republicans. After Nancy Pelosi blocked two Republicans who voted to overturn the election from serving on the January 6 committee last year, Kevin McCarthy, the Republican said he wouldn’t appoint any Republicans to the panel. That decision left Trump without any allies on the commission to challenge the committee’s inquiries or throw out distracting questions to muddy the water during hearings. Trump has said in recent days that McCarthy’s decision was a mistake.Now, the committee has shown a remarkable discipline in its effort to investigate witnesses without having to worry about sideshows. Republican witnesses who might otherwise have been reluctant to testify publicly and face grandstanding from Republican members, might now feel more comfortable coming forward, Litt said.But even though the committee has succeeded in creating remarkably compelling hearings, will the hearings actually break through? Part of that depends on who the audience is. In one sense, the entire investigation has a very specific audience, the US justice department, which is weighing whether to bring criminal charges against Trump and allies. And it’s difficult to say whether the hearings will sway Attorney General Merrick Garland and other justice department officials one way or the other.For another audience, the committee’s work may be succeeding. The committee’s work is never going to convince diehard Trump supporters that the election wasn’t stolen, Litt noted. But more than a year and a half after January 6, the committee is forcing the events of January 6 to be at the center of America’s political discourse.“When I was writing speeches, the important thing I used to say is that you can’t tell people what to think, but you can tell them what to think about,” Litt said. “And a large percentage of the most influential people in American media, business and politics are thinking about what happened on January 6 and why. And whether the people responsible have been held accountable.”TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS politicsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpRepublicansfeaturesReuse this content More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      January 6 hearings: if Republicans did nothing wrong, why were pardons sought?

      by

      January 6 hearings: if Republicans did nothing wrong, why were pardons sought?Email from Alabama’s Mo Brooks potentially reveals what conduct by lawmakers he feared might be criminal When the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack revealed the evidence that showed Republican members of Congress sought preemptive presidential pardons after January 6, one of the most striking requests came from Congressman Mo Brooks.The request from Brooks to the Trump White House came in an 11 January 2021 email – obtained by the Guardian – that asked for all-purpose, preemptive pardons for lawmakers involved in objecting to the certification of Joe Biden’s election win.Brooks in the first instance sought preemptive pardons for “every Republican who signed the Amicus brief in the Texas lawsuit” that sued then-vice president Mike Pence to unilaterally decide whether to certify Biden’s win in certain battleground states.The Alabama congressman also recommended in the email to former Oval Operations coordinator Molly Michael that Donald Trump issue pardons for “Every Congressman and Senator who voted to reject the electoral college vote submissions of Arizona and Pennsylvania”.Brooks was one of at least a half dozen Republican congressmen who sought pardons immediately after the Capitol attack. It came after Trump “hinted at a blanket pardon for the Jan. 6 thing for anybody,” the head of White House presidential personnel John McEntee testified.But the request from Brooks stands out because he explicitly outlines two groups for whom he was seeking preemptive pardons, opening a window into his thinking and potentially revealing for what conduct he worried that they might have been guilty of a crime.The reference to the Texas lawsuit is revealing since that suit pushed Pence to commandeer the ceremonial congressional certification to overturn the results of the 2020 election – which the select committee has argued amounted to a violation of federal law.Meanwhile, the reference to Arizona and Pennsylvania is notable since the objections to those states occurred after the Capitol attack, which, seen with Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani asking senators to keep objecting to stop Biden’s certification, could suggest further corrupt intent.Brooks has rejected the notion that the pardon requests showed any consciousness of guilt, saying in a statement that he feared Democrats would prosecute and jail “Republicans who acted pursuant to their Constitutional or statutory duties under 3 USC 15”.The statement referred to the statute governing the congressional certification of the presidential election, at which members of Congress are permitted to raise objections to the results in any of the states.But the trouble with Brooks’s statement remains that if he truly believed that Republicans were engaging in only lawful activity on January 6, then he could defend that conduct in court – without the need for a pardon.The select committee at the hearing also showed testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson, a top former aide to Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who said House Republicans Louie Gohmert, Scott Perry, Andy Biggs and Matt Gaetz also expressed interest in pardons.Hutchinson recalled that House Republican Jim Jordan did not directly ask for a pardon but did ask whether Trump was going to give them to members of Congress, and that House Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene expressed interest to the White House counsel’s office.The testimony by Hutchinson and McEntee and other top White House aides showed that at the very least, Republican members of Congress were concerned about potential legal exposure over their roles in Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.And the accounts, delivered under oath to the select committee, showed the extraordinary and brazen inquiries by some of Trump’s top allies on Capitol Hill to use the power of presidential pardons for their own political and personal ends.“I think the American public understands folks asking for pardons generally feel they did something illegal,” select committee member Pete Aguilar told CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday morning of the preemptive pardon requests.Gohmert had brought the Texas lawsuit while Perry had played a role in Trump’s efforts to pressure the justice department to reverse his election defeat in battleground states. Biggs and Gaetz had strategized with Trump about objecting to Biden’s certification.The Republican members of Congress accused of seeking preemptive pardons near-universally rejected the allegations.Gohmert denied making a request for a pardon. Perry said in a statement that he “never sought a presidential pardon for myself or other members of Congress”. Biggs said Hutchinson was “mistaken” and Greene accurately called Hutchinson’s testimony hearsay.TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackUS politicsDonald TrumpRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Capitol attack hearings: if Republicans did nothing wrong, why were pardons sought?

      by

      Capitol attack hearings: if Republicans did nothing wrong, why were pardons sought?The email from Alabama’s Mo Brooks potentially reveals what conduct by lawmakers he feared might be criminal One of the most striking all-purpose, preemptive pardon requests that the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack has revealed came from Alabama’s Mo Brooks.In an email obtained by the Guardian, Brooks sought preemptive pardons for lawmakers involved in objecting to the certification of Joe Biden’s election win.The 11 January 2021 email requested pardons for “Every Republican who signed the Amicus brief in the Texas lawsuit” that sued then-vice-president Mike Pence to unilaterally decide whether to certify Biden’s win in certain battleground states.Brooks, who sent the email to former Oval Office Operations coordinator Molly Michael, also recommended that Donald Trump issue preemptive pardons for “Every Congressman and Senator who voted to reject the electoral college vote submissions of Arizona and Pennsylvania”.Brooks was one of at least a half dozen members of Congress who sought pardons from Trump in the immediate aftermath of the January 6 attack. The former president “had hinted at a blanket pardon for the Jan. 6 thing for anybody,” the head of White House presidential personnel, John McEntee testified, which appears to have elicited pardon requests from some of Trump’s top allies on Capitol Hill.But the request from Brooks stands out because he explicitly outlines two groups for whom he was seeking preemptive pardons, opening a window into his thinking and potentially revealing for what conduct he worried that they might have been guilty of a crime.The reference to the Texas lawsuit is revealing since that suit pushed Pence to commandeer the ceremonial congressional certification to overturn the results of the 2020 election – which the select committee has argued amounted to a violation of federal law.Meanwhile, the reference to Arizona and Pennsylvania is notable since the objections to those states occurred after the Capitol attack, which, seen with Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani asking senators to keep objecting to stop Biden’s certification, could suggest further corrupt intent.Brooks has rejected the notion that the pardon requests showed any consciousness of guilt, saying in a statement that he feared Democrats would prosecute and jail “Republicans who acted pursuant to their Constitutional or statutory duties under 3 USC 15”.The statement referred to the statute governing the congressional certification of the presidential election, at which members of Congress are permitted to raise objections to the results in any of the states.But the trouble with Brooks’ statement remains that if he truly believed that Republicans were engaging in only lawful activity on January 6, then he could defend that conduct in court – without the need for a pardon.The select committee at the hearing also showed testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson, a top former aide to Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who said House Republicans Louie Gohmert, Scott Perry, Andy Biggs and Matt Gaetz also expressed interest in pardons.Hutchinson recalled that House Republican Jim Jordan did not directly ask for a pardon but did ask whether Trump was going to give them to members of Congress, and that House Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene expressed interest to the White House counsel’s office.The testimony by Hutchinson and McEntee and other top White House aides showed that at the very least, Republican members of Congress were concerned about potential legal exposure over their roles in Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.And the accounts, delivered under oath to the select committee, showed the extraordinary and brazen inquiries by some of Trump’s top allies on Capitol Hill to use the power of presidential pardons for their own political and personal ends.Gohmert had brought the Texas lawsuit while Perry had played a role in Trump’s efforts to pressure the justice department to reverse his election defeat in battleground states. Biggs and Gaetz had strategized with Trump about objecting to Biden’s certification.The Republican members of Congress accused of seeking preemptive pardons near-universally rejected the allegations.Gohmert denied making a request for a pardon. Perry said in a statement that he “never sought a presidential pardon for myself or other members of Congress”. Biggs said Hutchinson was “mistaken” and Greene accurately called Hutchinson’s testimony hearsay.TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS politicsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump feeling fallout of Capitol attack hearings as allies abandon ship

      by

      Trump feeling fallout of Capitol attack hearings as allies abandon shipThe smooth and efficient proceedings with testimonies from Republicans has reportedly infuriated Trump Somewhere in Bedminster, New Jersey, on Thursday afternoon, it seems quite possible that an elderly man was sitting in front of a television howling with rage.Donald Trump, who spends summers at his Bedminster golf club, is a TV guy, a ratings guy. So the widely televised hearings of the congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol hit him where it hurts.‘A dangerous cancer’: fourth hearing reveals how Trump’s big lie destroyed people’s livesRead moreThe former US president has reportedly been glued to them – and has not liked what he’s seen. As the panel has presented a carefully crafted case against Trump as the leader of a failed coup, he is said to be livid that there is no one in the room to speak up for him.Trump “has tuned into every hearing” and has grown increasingly irate – to “the point of about to scream at the TV”, according to a close adviser – with what he views as the “lack of defense by his Capitol Hill allies”, the Washington Post reported.He is possibly aware that, while the hearings come too late to force his resignation and may or may not cause the justice department to press criminal charges, they seem to be inflicting greater political damage than anyone imagined.Thursday’s fifth hearing served up more of the same in the Cannon Caucus Room which, somewhat reminiscent of a grand ornate ballroom with curtains closed and lights on, is bringing a gravitas to the nailing of Trump that no trickle of media revelations or tell-all memoirs can.Photographers crowded around the witnesses just as the panel’s chairman, congressman Bennie Thompson, brought down the gavel, a now ominous sound for Trump, and spoke of “a brazen attempt to use the justice department to advance the president’s personal political agenda”.Trump’s consternation is likely to have only intensified when Republican Liz Cheney summed up his central role in the conspiracy to overturn the election, then another Republican, Adam Kinzinger, questioned former justice department officials. “Today President Trump’s total disregard for the constitution and his oath will be fully exposed,” Kinzinger said.Once again, all went smoothly and efficiently. There were no interruptions, objections, points of order or spoiling tactics. And that is said to have made Trump furious. He is especially critical of Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader in the House, for boycotting the committee instead of giving pro-Trump Republicans a voice on it.Trump told Punchbowl News, “In retrospect, I think it would have been very smart” to put more Republicans on the committee. “The Republicans don’t have a voice. They don’t even have anything to say.”McCarthy apparently gambled that this would allow Republicans to write off the hearings as illegitimate, partisan and an attempt to distract from more pressing issues such as inflation. But the presence of Cheney, Kinzinger and more than a dozen Republican witnesses have undermined that argument.Moreover, McCarthy, who wants to be speaker of the House of Representatives, may have forgotten that Trump pays attention to TV, where the hearings are inescapable and will run into next month, prolonging the agony. Even if they are not penetrating the Trump base, they are penetrating Trump himself.And his formidable political instincts – which served him well against Hillary Clinton and warned him early that Joe Biden posed the biggest threat to his reelection – will now be warning Trump that the January 6 committee’s contribution to the history books poses a threat to his hopes of a 2024 presidential run.The hearings have painted a portrait of a man detached from reality, peddling paranoid conspiracy theories and putting himself before his country. Kinzinger noted: “He was willing to sacrifice our republic to prolong his presidency. I can imagine no more dishonorable act by a president.” They have also highlighted a callous, cruel streak that saw him make baseless allegations with no regard for how they would ruin individual lives.A source close to Trump told NBC News: “I look at this and say there is nobody in America who is watching this – even with all that’s going on in the world with Joe Biden – and saying, ‘Donald Trump should be the next president of the United States’. Nobody.’”Trump’s chequered record of endorsements in this year’s Republican primary elections have also raised questions over whether he still has a tight grip on the “Make America great again” movement. The hearings could turn him into damaged goods and give even Maga diehards some reasons to look for more electable alternatives.Frank Luntz, a political consultant and pollster, said: “I see people no longer drinking the Kool-Aid. I see people moving away from Trump for the first time. His endorsement matters more than anybody else in the Republican party by far, but he does not control the Republican party anymore. He’s the loudest voice, he has the most influence, but he’s losing control every day.”The leading challenger to Trump’s throne is Ron DeSantis, the rightwing governor of Florida, who is gaining on him in opinion polls. A poll of 300 likely Republican voters in New Hampshire, the first presidential primary state, found 39% wanted DeSantis to be the next nominee, while 37% favored Trump, within the 5.5% margin of error, according to the University of New Hampshire Survey Center.Pam Roehl, attending last week’s Faith & Freedom Coalition conference in Nashville, Tennessee, told the Associated Press that she still supports Trump but increasingly finds herself in the minority among friends who have moved on. “They’re like kind of: ‘Get with the program. Why aren’t you backing DeSantis?’” she was quoted as saying.If the two men go head-to-head, DeSantis could point to his legislative record in Florida and would be free of the baggage of the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection. More than three decades younger than Trump, the governor would be seen as the candidate of the future while the former president keeps harping on the past. Trump’s big lie, it transpires, could prove his big liability.TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpRepublicansUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

    • 200 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘More to come’: what the January 6 panel has revealed of Trump’s efforts to retain power

      by

      ‘More to come’: what the January 6 panel has revealed of Trump’s efforts to retain powerIn five hearings, the committee has shown the various paths the ex-president and his team explored to overturn the election02:02The January 6 select committee held its final hearing for this month on Thursday, sharing new details about Donald Trump’s efforts to pressure top justice department officials to overturn the results of the 2020 election.Across the committee’s five hearings this month, investigators have presented a meticulous account of Trump’s exhaustive efforts to cling to power after losing the election to Joe Biden. The panel has shown how Trump and his allies explored every possible avenue – from pressuring the vice-president, Mike Pence, to leaning on state election officials and justice department leaders – to promote lies about widespread election fraud.Capitol attack panel details Trump’s pressure on DoJ to support fraud claimsRead moreAnd Liz Cheney, the Republican vice-chair of the committee, said the committee is only just getting started.“At this point, our committee has just begun to show America the evidence that we have gathered,” Cheney said Thursday. “There is much more to come both in our hearings and in our report.”The committee had originally planned to hold only six hearings this month, as investigators prepare to release their final report on the deadly Capitol attack this fall. But Bennie Thompson, the Democratic chairman of the committee, said Thursday that the hearings had sparked a flood of new tips about the insurrection, necessitating additional hearings next month.“Those hearings have spurred an influx of new information that the committee and our investigators are working to assess,” Thompson said. “We are committed to presenting the American people with the most complete information possible. That will be our aim when we reconvene in the coming weeks.”The committee is also now analyzing footage from British documentarian Alex Holder, who repeatedly interviewed Trump and his family members in the days leading up to and immediately after 6 January. The committee issued a subpoena for Holder for his footage, and he met with investigators on Thursday morning.The common element of all of this was the president expressing his dissatisfaction that the justice department, in his view, had not done enough to investigate election fraud“I have provided the committee with all requested materials and am fully cooperating with the investigation,” Holder said in a statement shared on Twitter. “I have no further comment at this time other than to say that our conversation today was thorough and I appreciated the opportunity to share more context about my project.”Holder’s conversations with Trump could offer new insight into the former president’s knowledge about the possibility of violence during the congressional certification of Biden’s victory. At Thursday’s hearing, Cheney indicated the committee would soon share more evidence about how Trump reacted as the insurrection unfolded.“These efforts were not some minor or ad hoc enterprise concocted overnight. Each required planning and coordination. Some required significant funding,” Cheney said. “All of them were overseen by President Trump, and much more information will be presented soon regarding the president’s statements and actions on January 6.”So far, the committee has detailed Trump’s multi-pronged strategy to stay in power. First, Trump and his team launched dozens of legal efforts to challenge the election results. When those lawsuits failed, Trump and his willing advisers reached out to state election officials to pressure them to send fake slates of electors to Congress. When those officials refused to do so, Trump demanded that senior justice department officials investigate election conspiracy theories.Testifying before the committee on Thursday, former acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen said Trump spoke to him about baseless fraud theories almost every day between 23 December and 3 January. At one point, Trump told Rosen and his deputy, Richard Donoghue, “Just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.”Rosen told the committee, “The common element of all of this was the president expressing his dissatisfaction that the justice department, in his view, had not done enough to investigate election fraud.”When Rosen made it clear he would not go along with Trump’s fraud claims, the former president attempted to install a loyalist, Jeffrey Clark, as acting attorney general. Trump only backed off the idea after Donoghue and other senior officials warned him that such a drastic step would lead to mass resignations at the justice department. Donoghue issued that warning during a nearly three-hour long meeting in the Oval Office on 3 January. Three days later, the Capitol was under siege.Republicans who aided coup attempt sought blanket presidential pardonsRead moreIn the days after 6 January, several Republican members of Congress who promoted Trump’s election lies allegedly reached out to the White House to request pardons for their role in the insurrection. According to video testimony from senior White House officials that the committee shared on Thursday, at least six House members – Matt Gaetz, Mo Brooks, Andy Biggs, Louie Gohmert, Scott Perry and Marjorie Taylor Greene – inquired about pardons. Perry has previously denied requesting a pardon.Those pardon requests could play a central role in future hearings, as the committee attempts to build upon its case that Trump and his allies are directly responsible for the January 6 attack. In his closing statement Thursday, Thompson said the next round of hearings would demonstrate how Trump’s increasingly desperate attempts to stay in office culminated in the deadly insurrection.“We’re going to show how Donald Trump tapped into the threat of violence,” Thompson said. “How he summoned the mob to Washington and how after corruption and political pressure failed to keep Donald Trump in office, violence became the last option.”TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpRepublicansUS politicsJoe BidenanalysisReuse this content More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      What the January 6 hearings have told us: Politics Weekly America – podcast

      by

      More ways to listen

      Apple Podcasts

      Google Podcasts

      Spotify

      RSS Feed

      Download

      We learned this week that the public hearings held by the January 6 select committee would be extended into July. The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell tells Jonathan Freedland what we’ve learned so far, why they need more time and what happens next

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know

      Send your questions and feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com Help support the Guardian by going to theguardian.com/supportpodcasts More

    • 188 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      Trump asked DoJ to 'just say election was corrupt', January 6 hearing told – video

      by

      Donald Trump relentlessly pressured top officials at the justice department to pursue groundless claims of voter fraud in an unsuccessful effort to cling to power, according to testimony the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection heard on Thursday. The testimony by former acting US deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue included a claim Trump urged him ‘to tell people that this was an illegal, corrupt election’.

      January 6 panel calls Trump’s scheme a ‘power play’ that nearly succeeded More