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      Trump aides identify Republicans who sought pardons for January 6th – video

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      In the fifth round of hearings probing the ways in which US president Trump abused his powers to cajole the justice department into endorsing his false election claims, White House staffers give testimony identifying several Republican members of Congress who sought pardons. Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger said ‘the only reason I know to ask for a pardon is because you think you’ve committed a crime’

      Republicans who aided coup attempt sought blanket presidential pardons
      ‘More to come’: what the January 6 panel has revealed of Trump’s efforts to retain power More

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      Trump aides identify Republicans who sought pardons for January 6 – video

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      In the fifth round of hearings probing the ways in which US president Trump abused his powers to cajole the justice department into endorsing his false election claims, White House staffers give testimony identifying several Republican members of Congress who sought pardons. Republican Adam Kinzinger said: ‘The only reason I know to ask for a pardon is because you think you’ve committed a crime’

      Republicans who aided coup attempt sought blanket presidential pardons
      ‘More to come’: what the January 6 panel has revealed of Trump’s efforts to retain power More

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

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      ‘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

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      January 6 hearings: Barr ‘not sure at all’ transition would have happened had DoJ not resisted Trump – live

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      The January 6 committee has concluded its hearing for the day, with the next sessions expected later in July, when House lawmakers return to Washington from a recess.In his closing remarks, committee’s chair Bennie Thompson outlined what the committee had found thus far and what it expected to show in the future..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} Up to this point, we’ve shown the inner workings of what was essentially a political coup and attempt to use the powers of the government, from the local level all the way up, to overturn the results of the election. Send fake electors, just say the election was corrupt. Along the way, we saw threats of violence, we saw what some people were willing to do. In a service of the nation, the constitution? No. In service of Donald Trump.
      When the Select Committee continues this series of hearings, we’re going to show how Donald Trump tapped into the threat of violence, 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.The testimony of the justice department officials who gave the bulk of the day’s evidence has concluded, but before they did, Jeffrey Rosen, the acting attorney general, told a tale familiar to those who have watched the committee’s hearings closely: he never heard from Trump on the day of the attack.“I spoke to a number of senior White House officials, but not the president,” Rosen said.What Trump was doing during the attack and who he was talking to are both expected to be focuses of later hearings of the committee.The committee has just unveiled evidence of more Republican congressmen requesting pardons from Trump in his final days in office. NEW on PARDONS: Republican congressman Mo Brooks sent an email on 11 January 2021 seeking pardons for “Every Congressman and Senator who voted to reject the electoral college vote submissions of Arizona and Pennsylvania.”— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) June 23, 2022
      Trump WH aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified that Brooks and Gaetz pushed for pardons for every Republican lawmaker who participated in Jan. 6 planning meeting — and Reps. Perry, Biggs, Gohmert asked for pardons. Jordan asked whether White House would pardon members.— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) June 23, 2022
      The testimony adds to the list of pardon requests that have emerged as the January 6 committee aired its evidence.Capitol attack pardon revelations could spell doom for Trump and alliesRead moreJeffrey Clark came very close to be the acting attorney general, a position in which he could have used his authority to disrupt the certification of Biden’s election win in several states, according to evidence the committee is airing.On January 3, three days before the attack on the Capitol, the White House had already begun referring to Clark as acting attorney general, according to Adam Kinzinger, the Illinois Republican leading the committee’s questioning today.The committee then turned to exploring a meeting between Trump and the leaders of the justice department that day in the Oval Office, in which Trump repeated specific claims of fraud that had been debunked and expressed his will to see Clark take over the department.Richard Donoghue said he warned of mass resignations to follow if Clark took over the department. “You’re gonna lose your entire department leadership. Every single (assistant attorney general) will walk out. Your entire department of leadership will walk out within hours. And I don’t know what happens after that. I don’t know what the United States attorneys are going to do,” Donoghue said. “My guess would be that many of them would have resigned.”Jeffrey Rosen, the acting attorney general in the final weeks of the Trump administration, is now recounting Trump’s attempt to replace him with Jeffrey Clark, who was playing a major roles in his efforts to have states that voted for Biden overturn their results.In a meeting on a Sunday, Rosen said Clark “told me that he would be replacing me,” and had made the atypical request to ask to meet him alone, “because he thought it would be appropriate in light of what was happening to at least offer me, that I couldn’t stay on his his deputy.”“I thought that was preposterous. I told him that was nonsensical,” Rosen said. “There’s no universe where I was going to do that, to stay on and support someone else doing things that were not consistent with what I thought should be done.”However, Clark also said he would turn down Trump’s offer to replace Rosen if the acting attorney general signed the letter disputing the validity of Georgia’s electors for Biden. Richard Donoghue recounted that Rosen made the decisions to begin informing other department officials about the quandary, and almost all the assistant attorney generals said they would resign if Trump replaced Rosen with Clark.As this hearing has unfolded, the justice department officials testifying have said they investigated many of the claims of fraud in the 2020 election brought forward by Trump and his allies. The decision to look into these claims in the weeks after polls closed may be more significant than it appears at first glance.In video testimony aired earlier in the hearing, William Barr, Trump’s attorney general during the election, said be believes that the department’s ability to debunk the false claims of fraud as Trump was making them were essential to allowing Joe Biden to assume office.“I felt the responsible thing to do was to be… in a position to have a view as to whether or not there was fraud,” Barr told investigators.“I sort of shudder to think what the situation would have been if the position of the department was, we’re not even looking at this until after Biden’s in office. I’m not sure we would have had a transition at all.”The committee has returned, and is now asking Jeffrey Rosen, the acting attorney general, about a request from Trump to seize voting machines.“We had seen nothing improper with regard to the voting machines,” Rosen said he replied, noting that investigators had looked into allegations the machines gave fraudulent results and found nothing wrong. “And so that was not something that was appropriate to do … I don’t think there was legal authority either.”Richard Donoghue, the former acting deputy attorney general, is recounting a meeting with Trump, in which he pushed him unsuccessfully to seize voting machines. By the end, “The president again was getting very agitated. And he said, ‘People tell me I should just get rid of both of you. I should just remove you and make a change in the leadership with Jeff Clark, and maybe something will finally get done,’” Donoghue said.Donoghue said he responded: “Mr President, you should have the leadership that you want. But understand the United States justice department functions on facts and evidence, and then those are not going to change. So you can have whatever leadership you want, but the department’s position is not going to change.”The committee is now in recess, but before they finished, Richard Donoghue described his reaction when he first learned of Jeffrey Clark’s proposed letter to the Georgia legislature asking them to convene to declare alternate electoral college voters.“I had to read both the email and the attached letter twice to make sure I really understood what he was proposing because it was so extreme to me I had a hard time getting my head around it initially,” Donoghue said. He responded in writing to Clark’s letter, saying that its allegations were “not based on facts,” and, in his view, “for the department to insert itself into the political process this way, I think, would have had grave consequences for the country. It may very well have spiraled us into a constitutional crisis. And I wanted to make sure that he understood the gravity of the situation because he didn’t seem to really appreciate it.”Clark himself made a brief appearance in video testimony the committee played before it took its break, responding to questions by asserting his fifth amendment rights and executive privilege.The committee will reconvene in a few minutes.One name that’s coming up a lot in this hearing is Scott Perry, the Pennsylvania Republican congressman who the committee said took part in Trump’s plan to pressure the justice department, and in particular install Jeff Clark at its helm.The committee just showed text messages between Perry and Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, which showed the lawmaker encouraging Meadows to work on promoting Clark. Richard Donoghue also detailed a phone call from Perry where the congressman claimed fraud in the results in Pennsylvania from the 2020 election – which the justice department determined unfounded.The committee had sought documents and requested an interview with Perry last year, but the Republican refused to comply. Last month, Perry was among a group of congressmen subpoenaed by the committee.Capitol attack panel subpoenas five Republicans in unprecedented stepRead moreRichard Donoghue, the former acting deputy attorney general, is outlining his efforts to convince the president that the justice department could not interfere with a state’s election.“States run their elections. We are not quality control for the states,” he recalled explaining to Trump. “The bottom line was, if a state ran their election in such a way that it was defective, that is to the state or Congress to correct, it is not for the justice department to step in.”But Trump wanted something simpler, Donoghue said.“That’s not what I’m asking you to do,” Donoghue told the committee Trump said after he explained the department’s position. “Just say it was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen,” the president said.Today’s hearing is focusing on the inner workings of the justice department, but as in previous sessions, the committee has tried to make sure the insurrection isn’t far from viewers’ minds.Case in point: lawmakers just aired video from the day of the attack showing marchers chanting “Do your job!” outside the justice department — evidence that Trump’s most ardent supporters were well aware of the president’s attempts to push government lawyers to interfere with Joe Biden’s victory.But as justice department officials tell it, they never believed in Trump’s fraud claims. Richard Donoghue, the former acting deputy attorney general, said Trump lawyer Pat Cipollone described the letter Clark wanted to send for Trump as a “murder-suicide pact. It’s going to damage everyone who touches it.”The committee’s top Republican Liz Cheney is offering more details about the actions of justice department official Jeffrey Clark, who had his house raided today by federal investigators.According to Cheney, Clark and another justice department lawyer drafted a letter addressed to the Georgia state legislature, which would have said the department had “identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple states, including the state of Georgia”, and that the legislature should convene and consider approving a new slate of electors. Joe Biden had won Georgia, but Trump made baseless allegations of fraud in the polls, and the new electors would have presumably given him the state’s electoral votes.“In fact, Donald Trump knew this was a lie,” Cheney said. “The Department of Justice had already informed the president of the United States repeatedly that its investigations had found no fraud sufficient to overturn the results of the 2020 election.”Cheney said Clark had met with Trump privately and agreed to help him sway these states’ legislatures without telling his bosses at the justice department. But Cheney said Clark’s superiors – who are the witnesses testifying today – refused to sign it. That was when Trump began considering installing Clark at the helm at the justice department – which he never ended up doing. The House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection has started its fifth hearing, which will focus on Donald Trump’s efforts to get the justice department to go along with his plans to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory. Testifying in the chamber will be:
      Jeffrey Rosen, the acting attorney general for the final weeks of Trump’s term, including during the attack on the Capitol.
      Richard Donoghue, the former acting deputy attorney general, who appeared in a video aired at the conclusion of Tuesday’s hearing threatening to resign if Trump appointed Jeffrey Clark to head the justice department.
      Steven Engel, the former assistant attorney general for the office of legal counsel.
      We’re about 10 minutes away from the start of today’s January 6 hearing, which my colleague Lauren Gambino reports will offer new evidence of how Trump pressured the justice department to take part in his plot to overturn the 2020 election:The House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection plans to present new evidence on Thursday about Donald Trump’s brazen attempts to pressure the justice department to overturn the 2020 presidential election that he lost, aides said.After exhausting his legal options and being rebuffed by state and local elections officials, the president turned to the justice department to declare the election corrupt despite no evidence of mass voter fraud, the nine-member panel will seek to show in their fifth and final hearing of the month.Testifying from the Cannon Caucus Room on Capitol Hill are Jeffrey Rosen, the former acting attorney general; Richard Donoghue, the former acting deputy attorney general; and Steven Engel, the former assistant attorney general for the office of legal counsel.Capitol attack panel to show how Trump pressured DoJ to overturn electionRead more More

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      January 6 hearings to stretch into July, chair Bennie Thompson says – as it happened

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      Congressman Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the January 6 select committee in the House, said on Wednesday that the final set of hearings into the Capitol attack will take place in mid-July.The panel will conduct its fifth hearing – examining Donald Trump’s pressure campaign on top justice department officials to overturn the 2020 election results – as scheduled on Thursday, the chairman said.But Thompson said the final few hearings, which are expected to focus on the militia groups that stormed the Capitol and Trump’s lack of action to call off the rioters, will be pushed back until after the July recess.The chairman said the reason for the delay was because of new evidence that has arisen since the hearing started, including leads on its tip line, more records obtained from the National Archives, as well as video footage. The final set of hearings were originally on a collision course with a number of major supreme court decisions, including on abortion rights, that would probably have eclipsed the hearings if they happened simultaneously.The House is currently scheduled to leave Washington, DC for its next recess on 24 June and return on 12 July2. The timetable suggests that hearings would probably resume after that date.Thanks for reading our US politics blog today and we welcome you to strap back in on Thursday morning for a white-knuckle day – US Supreme Court decisions to be issued from 10am ET and the House January 6 committee’s fifth hearing at 1pm ET.Here are today’s highlights.
      Senate majority leader and New York Democrat Chuck Schumer wants the chamber to approve the gun control compromise introduced on Tuesday by “the end of the week”.
      Joe Biden detailed two proposals to lower gas prices across the US: suspending the $0.18 per-gallon federal gas tax for 90 days and calling for state government to suspend their own gas taxes “or find other ways to deliver some relief” to consumers on prices at the pump.
      Congressman Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the January 6 select committee in the House, said that the final set of hearings into the Capitol attack will take place in mid-July.
      Rusty Bowers, the Republican speaker of Arizona’s House of Representatives and a key witness at yesterday’s House January 6 committee hearing, said he could vote for Donald Trump again despite testifying to his having to flatly refuse pressure from Trump’s team to disrupt or overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory in Arizona.
      Andrew Gillum, the 2018 Democratic nominee for Florida governor, is facing 21 federal charges related to a scheme to seek donations and funnel a portion of them back to him through third parties, the US attorney’s office announced today, the Associated Press writes.Gillum, 42, and co-defendant Janet Lettman-Hicks, 53, face 19 counts of wire fraud. Gillum is also charged with making false statements to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).The US attorney’s office said the pair “conspired to commit wire fraud, by unlawfully soliciting and obtaining funds from various entities and individuals through false and fraudulent promises and representations that the funds would be used for a legitimate purpose.”Lettman-Hicks then used her company to fraudulently give money to Gillum disguised as payroll payments, the office said in a press release.Gillum issued a strong statement, via his lawyers..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Make no mistake that this case is not legal, it is political. Throughout my career I have always stood up for the people of Florida and have spoken truth to power. There’s been a target on my back ever since I was the mayor of Tallahassee. They found nothing then, and I have full confidence that my legal team will prove my innocence now,” he said. Gillum met with undercover FBI agents posing as developers while he was mayor and during his campaign for governor. His associates sought donations from the agents, and suggested ways to provide money without listing them as political contributions, including paying for a fundraising dinner, according to the indictment.The agents were asked to contribute $100,000 to Gillum’s campaign and said the money could be given to a private company in order to keep the agents’ names out of campaign finance documents.The agents said they would want favorable consideration on development projects and were told that wouldn’t be a problem, according to the indictment.Gillum lost to Republican governor Ron DeSantis in a race that required a recount.The former Tallahassee mayor had won a crowded Democratic primary against better funded candidates with 34.4% of the vote, stunning political observers. The charismatic politician won over the hearts of hardcore Democratic activists and ran a strong grassroots campaign, being seen as a rising star.In March 2020, Gillum was found intoxicated and unconscious in a hotel room with two men, including one who works as a male escort. Two days later he entered a rehabilitation center, and later did a television interview in which he said he’s bisexual.It’s not often that you find a poll that calls into question Donald Trump’s position as the most popular politician in the country among Republicans. Since his ascent through the ranks of the 2016 GOP primary crowd, the opposition he has faced from other Republicans during his time in the White House and after has proved to be either short-lived, or manageable.But now the University of New Hampshire Survey Center has released a poll showing Trump in a statistical tie with Florida governor Ron DeSantis in the swing state’s 2024 Republican primary. And it also shows DeSantis faring better against Biden in a hypothetical match-up than Trump, and notes “support for DeSantis has more than doubled since October”. “Trump slipping in pre-primary polls is part of a typical pattern,” the Survey Center’s director Andrew Smith said. While the losing candidate in a party’s previous election enjoys the spotlight for a while, “As the primary gets closer, new candidates emerge and attract more media attention, and therefore more voter attention, than the losing candidate from the previous election.”If the 2024 election were held today, the survey said Biden holds “an almost identical lead” over Trump as in the state’s 2020 race: 50 percent would vote for Biden, and 43 percent would vote for Trump.But when matched up against DeSantis, it would basically be a tie, the survey said. The Florida governor would win 47 percent of the vote, while Biden would end up with 46 percent, proof, perhaps, that DeSantis’s efforts to become a national figure for Republicans are paying off.Top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer wants the chamber to approve the gun control compromise introduced on Tuesday by “the end of the week”. “After 64 senators voted to getting on the bill, senate’s now on the brink of passing the first significant gun safety bill in decades,” Schumer said today, speaking at a press conference of the Democratic leadership in the chamber. “It’s my intention to make sure this Senate bill passes before the end of the week. The American people have waited long enough.”The compromise negotiated between the two parties won the vote of every Democrat and 14 Republicans yesterday, which is enough support to overcome filibusters by lawmakers opposed to the compromise. The bill would tighten gun access and fund mental health care across the country in response to the recent mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas and Buffalo, New York, though it isn’t as stringent as some Democrats would like.US Senators announce gun violence bill with bipartisan supportRead moreAnother Democrat has come out against Biden’s proposal to cut the federal gas tax, and this time it’s the head of the House transportation committee.Oregon Democrat Peter DeFazio said Biden’s proposal would deliver “only miniscule relief” while taking revenue away from the federal Highway Trust Fund, which pays for road and mass transit improvements nationwide:.@RepPeterDeFazio says the gas tax holiday “would at best achieve only miniscule relief while blowing a $10 billion dollar hole in the Highway Trust Fund.” pic.twitter.com/uorR26gcXM— Kyle Stewart (@KyleAlexStewart) June 22, 2022
      Biden did address the concerns about the Highway Trust Fund in his speech announcing the tax cut proposal, saying, “With tax revenues up this year and our deficit down over $1.6 trillion this year alone, we’ll still be able to fix our highways and bring down the prices of gas. We can do both at the same time.”Speaking at the White House, Biden has detailed his two proposals to lower gas prices across the United States.He called for suspending the $0.18 per-gallon federal gas tax for 90 days, and channel that savings to lowering costs overall. “We can bring down the price of gas and give families just a little bit of relief. I call on the companies to pass this along, every penny of this 18 cents reduction to the consumers,” Biden said. However, as this blog reported earlier today, the proposal doesn’t have a lot of support in Congress.The president then called for state government to suspend their own gas taxes “or find other ways to deliver some relief.” Because of “our historic economic recovery” states are in a “strong position” to cut these taxes, Biden said, pointing to Connecticut and New York’s decision to temporarily suspend their taxes, among other states. These policies are, of course, are up to the state governors and lawmakers to implement.He again tried to focus Americans’ wrath over expensive gas towards Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, saying the higher prices are the cost of “defending freedom.” “We could have turned a blind eye to Putin’s murderous ways; the price of gas wouldn’t have spiked the way it has. I believe that would have been wrong… I believe then and I believe now, the free world had no choice,” Biden said.“Together, these actions could help drop the price at the pump by up to $1 a gallon or more. It doesn’t reduce all the pain, but it will be a big help,” Biden said. “I’m doing my part. I want the Congress the states and industry to do their part as well.”High gas prices are part of an overall spike in inflation across the United States, and Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell was in the Capitol today, testifying about how the central bank will use its control of interest rates to fight the price hikes. Dominic Rushe has this report: The Federal Reserve will keep raising rates until it sees “compelling evidence” that inflation is coming down, the Fed chair, Jerome Powell, told Congress on Wednesday.The US is wrestling with rates of inflation unseen in 40 years and Powell warned that “further surprises could be in store”.“Over coming months, we will be looking for compelling evidence that inflation is moving down,” Powell said. “We have both the tools we need and the resolve it will take to restore price stability.”Last week the Fed raised interest rates by 0.75 percentage-points – the largest hike since 1994. Powell and other Fed officials have signaled that further outsized increases are in the works as they try to drive inflation down to their 2% target from the current annual rate of 8.6%.Fed chief vows to keep raising rates until ‘compelling evidence’ of falling inflationRead moreBiden hasn’t even detailed his proposed three-month pause on the federal gasoline tax, which he is expected to do at a 2pm address, but it is already running into opposition in the Senate.Congress would have to approve the president’s proposal intended to deal with the high prices Americans are facing at the pump, but neither Democrats nor Republicans in the Capitol seem to have much time for it.Democratic senator Joe Manchin, who has acted as a spoiler to Biden’s agenda in the past, says he is opposed:NEW: Democrat Joe Manchin signals he won’t support Biden’s call for a gas tax holidayHe told he has several concerns.”I’m not a yes right now, that’s for sure,” Manchin said, just hours before Biden was set to speak Wednesday afternoon.On @ABC – https://t.co/G5YJGRljA2— Rachel Scott (@rachelvscott) June 22, 2022
      Nor does it appear the president can expect much support across the aisle:Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) deems the Biden administration calling for a three-month gas tax suspension “gimmicks”:“They have made it impossible to drill … They are hostile to the industry because they want everyone driving electric cars and riding buses.” pic.twitter.com/O87LZKU9fI— The Recount (@therecount) June 22, 2022
      Opposition from top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell is always a bad sign:McConnell on gas tax holiday: “This ineffective Administration’s big new idea is a silly proposal that senior members of their own party have already shot down in advance.”— Doug Andres (@DougAndres) June 22, 2022
      Congressman Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the January 6 select committee in the House, said on Wednesday that the final set of hearings into the Capitol attack will take place in mid-July.The panel will conduct its fifth hearing – examining Donald Trump’s pressure campaign on top justice department officials to overturn the 2020 election results – as scheduled on Thursday, the chairman said.But Thompson said the final few hearings, which are expected to focus on the militia groups that stormed the Capitol and Trump’s lack of action to call off the rioters, will be pushed back until after the July recess.The chairman said the reason for the delay was because of new evidence that has arisen since the hearing started, including leads on its tip line, more records obtained from the National Archives, as well as video footage. The final set of hearings were originally on a collision course with a number of major supreme court decisions, including on abortion rights, that would probably have eclipsed the hearings if they happened simultaneously.The House is currently scheduled to leave Washington, DC for its next recess on 24 June and return on 12 July2. The timetable suggests that hearings would probably resume after that date.Guardian US columnist Robert Reich has been watching the January 6 committee hearings, and shares his thoughts on what they mean for the Republican party:We tragically fool ourselves if we believe that the televised hearings of the January 6 committee will change the Republican party or end Donald Trump’s attempted coup.The Republican party is becoming ever more divorced from reality, and Trump’s attempted coup continues unabated.The first four hearings of the committee have demolished the myths of voter fraud repeated incessantly by Trump.Yet the Republican response to those hearings has ranged from indifference to hostility. Representative Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader of the House, tweeted that the members of the committee “will not stop lying about their political opponents,” and called the committee “despicable.”On Friday, speaking at the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in Nashville, Trump repeated his big lie – as if the hearings never happened.The lie is now so deeply entrenched in the Republican party that it has become a central tenet of Republican dogma.It is now the vehicle by which Republican candidates signal their fealty both to Trump and to a broad range of grievances (some imaginary, some derived from the so-called “culture wars”) that now constitute the Republican brand.So far, at least 108 Republican candidates who embrace the big lie have won their nominations or advanced to runoffs, and there is no sign that the hearings have reduced the intensity of their demagoguery.Republican voters have chosen eight big liars for the US Senate, 86 for the House, five for governor, four for state attorney general and one for secretary of state.These big lie candidates feel no pressure to respond to the findings of the committee because their districts or states already lean Republican, and most voters in them have dismissed or aren’t paying attention to the committee hearings.The January 6 hearings are damning. But Republicans don’t care | Robert ReichRead moreThe Democrat Bee Nguyen easily won her primary runoff in Georgia last night, and will now face off against Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state who has attracted praise for his refusal to endorse Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election.Raffensperger was among witnesses who testified at the January 6 committee hearing on Tuesday, about Trump and his allies’ pressure campaign on state officials. Raffensperger explained how Trump leaned on him to “find” enough votes to reverse Joe Biden’s victory in Georgia, but he refused to do so. As a result, he and his family members were subjected to violent threats from some of Trump’s supporters.Nguyen, however, wants to dispel any notion that Raffensperger is a moderate just because he stood up to Trump. “The reality is Brad Raffensperger is a conservative Republican with a long track record of undermining our voting rights,” Nguyen said on a Wednesday press call.Nguyen, who currently serves in the Georgia house, noted that Raffensperger endorsed SB 202, the 2021 state law that imposed sweeping new restrictions on voting access.“That is not the pro-democracy secretary of state that Georgians deserve,” Nguyen said.Two Democratic senators, Cory Booker of New Jersey and Jon Tester of Montana, have released a very strange video about their attempts to tackle “big ag consolidation”.In the phone-shot video, the senators repeatedly tackle each other around the Capitol. Chided by an aide, that “We’ve been through this before, you have to stop tackling each other”, Booker says: “All right. Then we’ll just tackle big ag consolidation.”Tester says: “Big ag consolidation is killing rural America. We need to get to work and help the cow-calf guys and the feeders and the consumers at the meat counter too. That’s why we introduced a couple bills, Booker. We need to get these bills done.”Booker says: “We’re gonna get them done, man. I appreciate you, you’re a good guy.”He throws a comedy elbow. Tester throws one back, and giggles. To cod-ragtime piano, the video ends with more tackles and a message: “Only 4 packers control 82% of the US beef market. Just 4 traders control at least 75% of the global grain market. It’s time to tackle big agricultural consolidation. Pass the Food & Agribusiness Merger Moratorium & Antitrust Review Act.”Tester’s last hit on Booker, from behind, is a big one. “Sorry,” he says.Consolidation in the agriculture industry is costing consumers and producers, so @SenBooker and I are teaming up to *tackle* it.pic.twitter.com/Ty6tSsXjvb— Senator Jon Tester (@SenatorTester) June 22, 2022
      Booker knows how to hit and be hit, as it happens, being not just a former candidate for the presidential nomination, in 2020, but also once a high school wide receiver, tight end and safety who was recruited to play football at Stanford.Tester has the size to deal out some big hits but gripping his opponent might be a problem, given he lost three fingers to a meat grinder when he was only nine.Finally, the Guardian would like to observe that on the rugby field, which as the world knows is superior to the football gridiron, none of the “tackles” in Booker and Tester’s video would qualify for anything other than a yellow card, given how neither senator even remotely attempts to wrap his arms around the other and thereby bring him down with any sort of control.Booker and Tester may therefore wish to contact a fellow Democratic senator, Chris Murphy of Connecticut, for instruction. He played at Williams College, you see, confirming to the Guardian last month: “Although I wasn’t very good, I loved the sport and made lifelong friends.”With the supreme court taking the day off from releasing decisions and no hearings scheduled by the January 6 committee, much of the action today has been elsewhere in Congress, where lawmakers are weighing gun control legislation and president Joe Biden’s apparently imminent call for a gas tax holiday.Here’s what’s happened today thus far:
      The supreme court has added Friday as an opinion issuance day. It was only scheduled to issue opinions on Thursday, and the extra day gives them the opportunity make public long-anticipated decisions on abortion rights, gun control and other contentious issues.
      Rusty Bowers, an Arizona lawmaker who was one of the main witnesses at yesterday’s January 6 hearing, said he would likely support Trump again.
      Biden is expected to propose a temporary holiday to the federal gas tax and will make remarks about the idea at 2 pm eastern time.
      The senate has opened debate on a gun control compromise that appears to have enough support to pass with votes from both Republicans and Democrats. More

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      US senators to start debate on breakthrough bipartisan gun violence bill – live

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      The Senate doesn’t pass gun control legislation very often, and if approved, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act would be the most significant such bill since 1993.It’s also only a small step compared to what gun control advocates would like to see happen. But Republicans have little political inclination to crack down on firearm access, and thus, this bill represents the best offer Democrats are likely to get — a fact Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer is aware of.The proposal would increase background checks on gun buyers under the age of 21, give money to states to implement red-flag laws, tighten gun ownership restrictions on people who abuse previous romantic partners and fund mental health services, among other provisions. It does not raise the minimum age to buy an assault weapon to 21, as some Democrats hoped it would, nor does it come anywhere near restoring the assault weapons ban or outlawing high-capacity magazines, as President Joe Biden has called for.A reminder of what finally spurred lawmakers to act on the contentious subject: the massacre of 21 students and teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and the racist killings of 10 Black people at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York.The Biden administration is stepping up its efforts to stop Americans from smoking by moving to cut down on nicotine content in cigarettes and banning Juul’s e-cigarettes.The Wall Street Journal reports that the Food and Drug Administration could as soon as today announce its decision against Juul following a two-year review of data provided by the company:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} Uncertainty has clouded Juul since it landed in the FDA’s sights four years ago, when its fruity flavors and hip marketing were blamed for fueling a surge of underage vaping. The company since then has been trying to regain the trust of regulators and the public. It limited its marketing and in 2019 stopped selling sweet and fruity flavors. Juul’s sales have tumbled in recent years.
      The FDA has barred the sale of all sweet and fruity e-cigarette cartridges. The agency has cleared the way for Juul’s biggest rivals, Reynolds American Inc. and NJOY Holdings Inc., to keep tobacco-flavored e-cigarettes on the market. Industry observers had expected Juul to receive similar clearance.
      Juul had no immediate comment. The company could pursue an appeal through the FDA, challenge the decision in court or file a revised application for its products.Meanwhile, Reuters yesterday reported that the Biden administration would like to put a maximum cap on nicotine content in a bid to help Americans quit tobacco use and stop getting hooked in the first place:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} The proposal comes as the Biden administration doubles down on fighting cancer-related deaths.
      Earlier this year, the government announced plans to reduce the death rate from cancer by at least 50% over the next 25 years.
      Nicotine is the addictive substance in tobacco. Tobacco products also contain several harmful chemicals, many of which could cause cancer.
      Tobacco use costs nearly $300bn a year in direct healthcare and lost productivity, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).US to propose limiting nicotine levels in cigarettesRead moreThe city of Brooklyn Center, Minnesota has agreed to pay $3.2 million and change its police training and traffic stop policies in a settlement stemming from the shooting death of Duante Wright last year, the Associated Press reports.The payment will go to the family of Wright, a Black man who was shot by Kim Potter, a white police officer who pulled him over for expired registration tags in April 2021. She was earlier this year sentenced to two years in prison after being convicted of first- and second-degree manslaughter.According to the AP:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} Wright’s family members “hope and believe the measures of change to policing, policies and training will create important improvements to the community in Daunte’s name,” said co-counsel Antonio M. Romanucci. “Nothing can bring him back, but the family hopes his legacy is a positive one and prevents any other family from enduring the type of grief they will live with for the rest of their lives.”
      The Associated Press left a message Wednesday seeking comment from the mayor’s office.
      The shooting happened at a time of high tension in the area, with former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who is white, standing trial just miles away for the killing of George Floyd, who was Black. Floyd’s May 2020 death prompted a reckoning over police brutality and discrimination involving people of color.
      The fallout from Wright’s death led the Brooklyn Center City Council to pass a series of reforms, including the use of social workers and other trained professionals to respond to medical, mental health and social-needs calls that don’t require police.
      The changes also prohibit police from making arrests for low-level offenses and require the city to use unarmed civilians to handle minor traffic violations.Brooklyn Center approves policing changes after Daunte Wright shootingRead moreThe supreme court has added a second upcoming decision release day to its calendar: Friday. The justices had already to issue their latest opinions on Thursday, and the additional day will give them more time to work through the backlog of cases they have yet to publicly announce rulings on.The court is expected to continue its rightward streak in its upcoming decisions, which could deal with some of the must contentious issues in American society, including abortion, gun access and environmental regulation. Indeed, an unprecedented leak of their draft opinion on an abortion access case before them shows the conservative majority ready to overturn Roe v Wade entirely. They are also viewed as leaning towards rolling back restrictions on carrying concealed weapons and weakening the government’s ability to enforce regulations. For an idea of how a gas tax holiday might work at the federal level, The Wall Street Journal went to Connecticut to see if the state legislature’s decision to suspend part of its gas tax made consumers any happier.It did not:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} Connecticut was one of the first states in the U.S. to suspend part of its gasoline tax, but Ana Rodriguez, after refueling her 2017 Toyota Highlander here, said she barely noticed.
      The 35-year-old social worker spent $67 and didn’t leave with a full tank as she usually does.
      “It affects the trust that I have in them,” Ms. Rodriguez said of state lawmakers. “It makes me not want to vote.”
      President Biden is planning to call for a temporary suspension of the federal gasoline tax of 18.4 cents a gallon, according to people familiar with the matter. If Connecticut’s experience with suspending its own 25-cent-a-gallon tax is any guide, a federal hiatus might not get noticed by consumers or relieve much political heat.
      “Consumers are a very poor gauge because they don’t understand that the wholesale price of fuel may be rising just as the tax holiday was implemented, so it offsets it,” said Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis for price tracker GasBuddy.The federal gas tax holiday the Biden administration is set to propose is billed as an attempt to lower prices at the pump, but as Nina Lakhani reports, it may not work:Joe Biden will call on Congress today to temporarily suspend federal gasoline and diesel taxes in an attempt to quell voter anger at the surging cost of fuel.In a speech on Wednesday afternoon, Biden is expected to ask the House to pause the federal taxes – about 18¢ per gallon for gas and 24¢ per gallon for diesel – until the end of September.Biden will also call on states to suspend local fuel taxes and urge oil refining companies to increase capacity – just days after accusing executives of profiteering and “worsening the pain” for consumers.If all the measures Biden will call for are adopted, prices could drop by about $1 per gallon at the pumps, according to senior officials who briefed CNN, although energy experts have questioned the effectiveness of gas tax holidays.Biden to urge Congress to suspend gas tax for three monthsRead moreYesterday’s January 6 hearing gave further details of the fake electors plot Trump pursued to try to throw the 2020 election his way, and The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports that the justice department has taken notice of what the committee found:The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack made the case at its fourth hearing on Tuesday that the Trump 2020 campaign tried to obstruct Joe Biden’s election win through a potentially illegal scheme to send fake slates of electors to Congress.The panel presented a text message sent on 4 January 2021 that appeared to indicate the Trump campaign was seeking to use fraudulent election certificates they would have known were not state-certified to obstruct the congressional certification of Biden’s win.“Freaking Trump idiots want someone to fly original elector papers to the Senate president,” Mark Jefferson, the executive director of the Republican party in Wisconsin said in the text, seemingly referring to the Trump campaign and then vice-president Mike Pence.Panel makes case that Trump campaign knew fake electors scheme was fraudulentRead moreThe Senate doesn’t pass gun control legislation very often, and if approved, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act would be the most significant such bill since 1993.It’s also only a small step compared to what gun control advocates would like to see happen. But Republicans have little political inclination to crack down on firearm access, and thus, this bill represents the best offer Democrats are likely to get — a fact Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer is aware of.The proposal would increase background checks on gun buyers under the age of 21, give money to states to implement red-flag laws, tighten gun ownership restrictions on people who abuse previous romantic partners and fund mental health services, among other provisions. It does not raise the minimum age to buy an assault weapon to 21, as some Democrats hoped it would, nor does it come anywhere near restoring the assault weapons ban or outlawing high-capacity magazines, as President Joe Biden has called for.A reminder of what finally spurred lawmakers to act on the contentious subject: the massacre of 21 students and teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and the racist killings of 10 Black people at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York.Good morning, US politics blog readers. After days of negotiations, a bipartisan bill to address gun violence has finally been released, and all Democratic senators as well as a handful of Republicans last night approved the start of debate on the proposal. Meanwhile, another set of primary elections gave a mixed verdict on Donald Trump’s ability to influence voters.Here’s what else is happening today:
      Joe Biden is set to propose a three-month holiday in the federal gas tax in a bid to lower pump prices, which have soared in recent months.
      The Uvalde, Texas school where last month’s mass shooting occurred will be demolished, the city’s mayor announced.
      Bill Cosby sexually abused a 16-year-old girl at the Playboy mansion nearly 50 years ago, a civil court found, and awarded her $500,000.
      Yesterday’s January 6 committee hearing dived deeper into the fake electors scheme Trump hoped would allow him to subvert the will of the voters in the 2020 election, and the justice department is investigating whether those involved in the plot should face charges. More

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      Jan 6 hearings: Raffensperger debunks Trump’s baseless fraud claim: ‘The numbers don’t lie’– as it happened

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      Using Trump’s words from a recorded phone call with Raffensperger, the committee is having the two Georgia officials debunk all of his claims of a stolen election in their state.“The numbers are the numbers and numbers don’t lie,” Raffensperger said, defending his office’s conduct. “Every single allegation, we checked, we ran down the rabbit trail to make sure that our numbers were accurate.”The FBI and Georgia Bureau of Investigation also investigated the claims and found them to be baseless.Adam Schiff, the California Democrat leading today’s question, said that the committee has learned that around the time of the dispute over Georgia’s vote, Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, wanted to send Georgia election investigators “a shitload of Potus stuff,” in the words of one White House aide. These included coins and autographed Maga hats. “White House staff intervened to make sure that didn’t happen,” Schiff said.The fourth hearing of the January 6 committee explored both the official effort to overturn the 2020 election and the impact of personal attacks by Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani against a pair of Georgia poll workers. Meanwhile, Congress is in the midst of a flurry of legislating, with lawmakers days away from taking a two-week break.Here’s what else happened today:
      South Dakota state attorney general Jason Ravnsborg lied to investigators and abused the power of his office after he struck and killed a pedestrian, prosecutors argued earlier today at the opening of an impeachment trial that could remove him from office.
      Documentary film maker Alex Holder is cooperating with a subpoena by the House select committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and related events. He filmed interviews with Trump and family.
      Congress is inching towards votes on a bipartisan gun control compromise reached between Republicans and Democrats, spurred on by the Uvalde school massacre as well as the racist killings at a grocery store in Buffalo.
      The US Supreme Court has struck down a state-funded program in Maine that covers the costs of some private schools — but only those that are nonsectarian.
      The US politics blog will return tomorrow, but for all the developments in the Russian invasion of Ukraine as they happen, including news on the visit by US attorney general Merrick Garland, the fate of American citizens fighting on Ukraine’s side, and what’s happening on the ground, do follow our global live blog on the war, here.The testimony by Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss was the emotional climax of the January 6 committee’s fourth hearing, as they detailed how being personally attacked by Trump ruined their lives. Their experience is unfortunately not unique.Alexander Vindman, a prominent witness in Trump’s first impeachment investigation, tweeted his support:Lady Ruby and Shaye,I know what it’s like to have the President of the United States attack me. Stay strong. We are better than him and we will prevail. Much love!— Alexander S. Vindman (@AVindman) June 21, 2022
      Former US attorney and Trump foe Preet Bharara weighed in:If Shaye Moss can come testify, so can Mike Pence— Preet Bharara (@PreetBharara) June 21, 2022
      A spokesman for Ron Johnson has responded to evidence presented in today’s January 6 hearing that appeared to show the Republican senator cooperated with Trump’s efforts to disrupt the 2020 election results in crucial swing states.The senator had no involvement in the creation of an alternate slate of electors and had no foreknowledge that it was going to be delivered to our office. This was a staff to staff exchange. His new Chief of Staff contacted the Vice President’s office.— alexa henning (@alexahenning) June 21, 2022
      The Vice President’s office said not to give it to him and we did not. There was no further action taken. End of story.— alexa henning (@alexahenning) June 21, 2022
      In its hearing, the committee detailed a plan by Trump supporters to create “fake elector documents,” which would say that states crucial to Joe Biden’s victory such as Georgia and Arizona actually voted for Trump. The idea was to get these into the hands of Mike Pence, who was to certify Biden’s victory on January 6, 2021. The committee showed an aide for Johnson contacted the vice-president’s staff about getting the documents to Pence, but they ultimately rejected the request.The January 6 committee has finished its hearing for the day, and as is its practice, ended with a preview of its next presentation, set for Thursday.Committee chair Bennie Thompson said the House lawmakers will explore Trump’s “attempt to corrupt and the country’s top law enforcement body, the justice department, to support his attempt to overturn the election.” He played a brief excerpt from the testimony of Richard Donoghue, the acting deputy attorney general at the end of Trump’s term.“The president said suppose I do this, suppose I replace Jeff Rosen with him, Jeff Clark, what do you do? And I said, sir, I would resign immediately. There is no way I’m serving one minute under this guy Jeff Clark,” Donoghue is heard saying.Rosen was the acting attorney general for the final weeks of Trump’s time in the White House. Clark was an assistant attorney general who is accused of plotting with Trump to overturn the election, and is now facing disbarment.Pressure mounts on ex-DoJ official Jeff Clark over Trump’s ‘election subversion scheme’Read moreThe committee also showed Trump attacking Freeman as a “vote scammer” in a call with the Georgia secretary of state. Moss and Freeman are ending their testimony with the latter describing how it feels to be personally attacked by the president.“There is nowhere I feel safe. Nowhere. Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States to target you? The President of the United States is supposed to represent every American. Not to target one. But he targeted me,” Freeman said in recorded testimony played by the committee.Earlier, Moss had described just how intense the attacks from Trump supporters against them became. People would repeatedly make large pizza orders to Freeman’s home, sending delivery drivers to her door. In one instance, Moss said, strangers turned up at Freeman’s home and tried to force their way in to attempt a “citizens arrest” of her. Around January 6, Freeman was advised by the FBI to leave her home for her safety.Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman are detailing how Trump and Giuliani’s promotion of a conspiracy theory that they somehow rigged the vote has disrupted their lives.Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman are passing around USB ports “as if they are vials of heroin or cocaine,” Giuliani said in video testimony to the Georgia senate that the committee just played. In reality, Moss testified, what’s shown being passed in that video was a ginger mint. But that allegation started the campaign of attacks by Trump supporters against the mother and daughter.Moss, who is Black, said people found her Facebook profile and left her “hateful” and “racist” messages, including one saying “Be glad it’s 2020 and 1920.”“I don’t go to the grocery store at all. I haven’t been anywhere. I gained about 60 pounds,” Moss said of the the threats’ effects on her. “I don’t want to go anywhere. I second-guessed everything that I do.”The three Republican officials have now finished their testimony before the committee, and the lawmakers are now hearing from Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, a Georgia poll worker who, along with her mother, was accused of rigging the vote in a number of conspiracies promoted by Trump supporters.Her mother is seated behind her in the hearing room.Moss has been a Fulton county election worker for 10 years, and began by confirming she never received threats before like she did during the 2020 election.Using Trump’s words from a recorded phone call with Raffensperger, the committee is having the two Georgia officials debunk all of his claims of a stolen election in their state.“The numbers are the numbers and numbers don’t lie,” Raffensperger said, defending his office’s conduct. “Every single allegation, we checked, we ran down the rabbit trail to make sure that our numbers were accurate.”The FBI and Georgia Bureau of Investigation also investigated the claims and found them to be baseless.Adam Schiff, the California Democrat leading today’s question, said that the committee has learned that around the time of the dispute over Georgia’s vote, Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, wanted to send Georgia election investigators “a shitload of Potus stuff,” in the words of one White House aide. These included coins and autographed Maga hats. “White House staff intervened to make sure that didn’t happen,” Schiff said.Sterling is detailing some of the conspiracy theories that followed Biden’s election victory in Georgia, and debunking them. But despite the evidence he outlined that the theories weren’t true, he said it was hard to get people to believe him.“It was kind of like a shovel trying to empty the ocean,” Sterling said. “It was frustrating. I even have family members who I had to argue with about some of these things, and I would show them things, and the problem you have is you’re getting to people’s hearts.”“Once you get past the heart, the facts don’t matter as much. And our job, from our point of view, is to get the facts out,” Sterling added.The January 6 committee has resumed its hearing, with the focus turning to Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state. As with Bowers before him, Raffensperger begins by confirming his bonafides as a conservative Republican who wanted Trump to win.Also answering questions is Gabriel Sterling, Raffensperger’s deputy, who went viral for his speech following the election in which he strongly denounced Trump’s baseless insistence that the 2020 election was stolen in Georgia.Sterling is addressing that speech before the committee, saying it was prompted by direct threats to staff members in his office. “I lost my temper,” Sterling said. “But it seemed necessary at the time, because it was just getting worse.” He also noted that he’s not aware of any request from Trump to his supporters not to use violence.The committee is now taking a recess, but before they concluded, Bowers, a Republican who said he voted for Trump in the 2020 election, detailed the costs of his refusal to go along with the former president’s plot to swing Arizona’s electoral votes in his favor.“We received, my secretaries would say, in excess of 20,000 emails, tens of 1000s of voicemails and texts which saturated our offices and we are unable to work,” Bowers said. Every Saturday, Bowers said organizations that he did not name would stage protests near his house. “We have various groups combined. They have had video panel trucks with videos of me, proclaiming me to be a pedophile and a pervert and a corrupt politician and blaring loudspeakers in my neighborhood, and leaving literature, both on my property and arguing and threatening with neighbors, and with myself,” Bowers said. More

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      If We Break review: Hunter Biden as horror husband and political problem

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      If We Break review: Hunter Biden as horror husband and political problemKathleen Buhle’s memoir in answer to a similar confessional from the president’s son makes uncomfortable reading Hunter Biden was a nasty husband. On top of his penchant for addiction and excess, verbal abuse littered his marriage to Kathleen Buhle. In her memoir, If We Break, Buhle recounts how the 46th president’s surviving son regularly taunted her for supposed intellectual shortcomings.Fox News’ Sean Hannity pitched Trump on Hunter Biden pardon – reportRead moreAmid booze-soaked benders and drug-fueled rages, Biden called his wife “goddam dumb”, the “dumbest person” he had met. “Get away from me, you idiot,” he purportedly thundered.Buhle discovered text messages that showed she wasn’t alone in suffering such tirades.“He was mean at times, and strangely tender, with dozens of women,” Buhle writes. “I was struck by the number of them who clearly thought they could save him.”Buhle attended a Catholic high school then graduated from St Mary’s University in San Antonio with a degree in psychology. Biden pocketed degrees from Georgetown University and Harvard Law School, but declined to look too deeply into the mirror. Socio-economic disadvantage is not to blame for his penchant for crack, prostitutes and self-pity. Buhle writes that she once told him: “Hunt … a kid from a middle-class family does not have a ballroom.” He also had a “tuxedo hanging in his closet – a tuxedo he used fairly regularly”.The conservative muckraker Peter Schweizer has shredded the Bidens for their business dealings. Yearning for catharsis as much as for score-settling, Buhle says she knows nothing of her former husband’s financial escapades.“I liked the nice things,” she admits. “I didn’t want to think about the cost at which they were coming.Otherwise, she has plenty to share. Subtitled “A Memoir of Marriage, Addiction and Healing”, her book is a dagger.The couple met in 1992, as members of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. They married the next year and had three daughters. For Hunter, alcoholism and tax problems surfaced in the early 2000s. Later, the US navy expelled him for using cocaine. In 2017, he and Buhle divorced.If We Break is easy reading, published in time for Father’s Day. It leaves you wondering how and why Joe Biden pursued the presidency in 2020 when all this family drama was percolating away. Hunter’s laptop, a computer he once owned that Republicans claim is full of incriminating material, debuted before election day. It is still producing stories. If We Break may shock but it does not surprise.Buhle demonstrates better judgment than her ex-husband, who published his own memoir last year. She knew when to walk away. He had difficulty letting go. More important, she understood that not that all broken things can be repaired.Buhle possesses an awareness of self and circumstances her ex-husband evidently lacks. For example, in 2015, just minutes after Beau Biden, his brother, was buried, Hunter contemplated running for elected office as Beau once did, becoming attorney general of Delaware. Buhle’s reaction was short and to the point.“What are you talking about? You’ve only been sober a few days … This is insane. Please don’t mention anything to the girls.”Hunter did blab – in Beautiful Things, his self-reverential confessional.“I underestimated how much the wreckage of my past and all that I put my family through still weighed on Kathleen,” he wrote.Think self-absolution and exhibitionism, rather than contrition, in an episode that preceded a fling with his late brother’s wife.“He said it was his duty to take care of Hallie and her kids,” Buhle writes. When she learned of their affair, all she could muster was: “Oh my God.” She says she didn’t cry. At that moment, she writes, she “knew in some way that he couldn’t hurt [her] any more”.For what it’s worth, the Old Testament obligates the brother of a childless man to marry the widow. But Beau had two kids and anyway, religious duty was most likely not on Hunter’s mind. In 2018, according to emails harvested from that laptop, Hunter insisted Hallie test for HIV.Joe Biden makes only rare appearances in If We Break. Buhle depicts him as a loving father and kind father-in-law. He greeted her when they first met by putting “his hands on [her] cheeks and look[ing] me in the eyes, his nose almost touching my own”. Then a senator, Biden told her: “Honey, my boy tells me he loves you, so that means I love you too. Understand? I love you.”Rough Draft review: Katy Tur’s fascinating – and flawed – story of news and familyRead moreAt the time, she was pregnant. Buhle also writes that Biden introduced her “as his daughter everywhere we went” and that the family saw the future president as “the sun around which we all revolved”.A lot revolves around Hunter. A federal criminal investigation proceeds. Taxes are only part of his worries.For his father, in terms of political pressures, inflation is on the rampage, approval numbers circle the drain. Democratic cognoscenti harbor serious doubts about the president’s capacity to govern. David Axelrod, Barack Obama’s senior strategist, casts Biden’s age as a major liability. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez declines to say if she will back a reelection bid.Yet Biden was the only Democrat capable of unseating Trump. The bench is neither wide nor deep.Count Katherine Buhle’s memoir as another addition to the canon of opposition research on the Bidens, should Joe Biden run for re-election. Buhle shouldn’t expect a thank you note from Kevin McCarthy or Mitch McConnell, but she has earned one.
      If We Break: A Memoir of Marriage Addiction and Healing is published in the US by Crown Publishing
      TopicsBooksPolitics booksAutobiography and memoirUS politicsHunter BidenJoe BidenreviewsReuse this content More