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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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      Sotomayor accuses supreme court conservatives of dismantling church-state separation

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      Sotomayor accuses supreme court conservatives of dismantling church-state separationLiberal justice delivers warning after ruling that state of Maine cannot exclude religious schools from tuition programme The liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor has warned that the US supreme court is dismantling the wall between church and state, after the conservative majority ruled that the state of Maine cannot exclude religious schools from a tuition programme.‘I got in the car and he blindfolded me. I was willing to risk death’: five women on abortions before RoeRead moreIn a dissent to the ruling in Carson v Makin, released on Tuesday, Sotomayor wrote: “This court continues to dismantle the wall of separation between church and state that the framers fought to build.“… In just a few years, the court has upended constitutional doctrine, shifting from a rule that permits states to decline to fund religious organisations to one that requires states in many circumstances to subsidise religious indoctrination with taxpayer dollars.”Progressives fear other rulings due this month, among them a case set to bring down Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling which established the right to abortion, and a ruling on a New York law set to loosen gun regulations even after several horrific mass shootings.Supreme court justices often claim not to rule according to political beliefs but few serious observers give such claims any credence.In the Maine case, John Roberts, the chief justice, wrote for the conservative majority. In Roberts’ view, the tuition programme violated the free exercise clause of the first amendment to the US constitution, because it said private schools were “eligible to receive the payments, so long as they [we]re ‘nonsectarian’”.Roberts wrote: “Regardless of how the benefit and restriction are described, the programme operates to identify and exclude otherwise eligible schools on the basis of their religious exercise.”A conservative, Roberts was appointed by George W Bush. Since Republicans rammed three new justices on to the court under Donald Trump, the chief justice has become in some cases a voice for moderation. Not this time.Sotomayor wrote: “While purporting to protect against discrimination of one kind, the court requires Maine to fund what many of its citizens believe to be discrimination of other kinds.”The main dissent was written by Stephen Breyer, at 83 the oldest of three liberals on the nine-judge panel. Breyer will soon retire, to be replaced by Ketanji Brown Jackson, Joe Biden’s first pick and the first Black woman confirmed to the court.Like her fellow liberal Elena Kagan, Sotomayor was nominated by Barack Obama.Concluding her dissent, Sotomayor wrote: “What a difference five years makes. In 2017, I feared that the court was ‘lead[ing] us … to a place where separation of church and state is a constitutional slogan, not a constitutional commitment’.“Today, the court leads us to a place where separation of church and state becomes a constitutional violation. If a state cannot offer subsidies to its citizens without being required to fund religious exercise, any state that values its historic antiestablishment interests more than this court does will have to curtail the support it offers to its citizens.“With growing concern for where this court will lead us next, I respectfully dissent.”Sonia Sotomayor says supreme court’s ‘mistakes’ can be corrected over timeRead moreHer words caused a stir. Antony Michael Kreis, a law professor and political scientist at Georgia State University, wrote: “Sotomayor is not having it today.”Nonetheless, Roberts’ ruling was further evidence of a court in conservatives’ grip.Last week, addressing progressive lawyers in Washington, Sotomayor said: “There are days I get discouraged. There are moments where I am deeply, deeply disappointed. And yes, there have been moments when I’ve stopped and said, ‘Is this worth it any more?’“And every time when I do that, I lick my wounds for a while, sometimes I cry, and then I say, ‘OK, let’s fight.’”TopicsUS supreme courtLaw (US)MaineUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      US House passes bill to expand supreme court security to justices’ families

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      US House passes bill to expand supreme court security to justices’ familiesThe bill comes after an armed man was arrested outside Brett Kavanaugh’s house as the court is due to rule on an abortion case The US House of Representatives has given final congressional approval to a bill to bolster supreme court security, ahead of an anticipated ruling curtailing abortion rights and in light of the arrest of a man charged with attempting to murder Brett Kavanaugh, a member of the court’s conservative majority.The legislation, which had already cleared the Senate, passed the House on a 396-27 vote. Joe Biden is prepared to sign it into law. It will expand police protection to families of justices and senior court officials.Man arrested near Brett Kavanaugh’s home charged with attempted murderRead moreThe House Republican leader said the bill would protect justices from “leftwing radicals”.A prominent Democrat said family members of court clerks and officials were also under threat, from “rightwing activists”.The court is due to rule in a major abortion case from Mississippi. A leaked draft opinion showed the conservative majority poised to overturn the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling that legalized abortion. Protests have ensued outside some justices’ homes.Last week, a California man carrying a handgun, ammunition, a crowbar, pepper spray and zip-tie handcuffs was arrested outside Kavanaugh’s home in Maryland.Republicans have led calls for improved protection but some progressives have contrasted such eagerness to act with many Republicans’ refusal to consider gun reform, even in the wake of a series of mass shootings.On the House floor on Tuesday, Veronica Escobar, a Democrat from El Paso, Texas, said: “It is incredible to stand here and listen to our Republican colleagues talk about the risks and the dangers that exist to the supreme court.“I want to know where they were when the risks and the dangers existed in my community. In El Paso, Texas, where 23 innocent people were slaughtered by a white supremacist with an AK-47 [in 2019]. Where were they then?“How about Uvalde? Where were they then? How about every other mass shooting? Buffalo, you name it.”Ginni Thomas pressed 29 lawmakers in bid to overturn Trump loss, emails showRead moreNineteen children and two teachers were killed in Uvalde last month. Also in May, 10 people died in a racist attack at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.Referring to gun reforms passed by the House but with no chance of passing the Senate, Escobar said: “Last week, we brought to the floor legislation intended to protect millions of Americans, especially including children.“The vast majority of our Republican colleagues voted against those protections for vulnerable people who don’t have access to 24-hour, round-the-clock US marshals protection. Who don’t have access to round-the-clock 24/7 police protection, which supreme court justices have today.“Supreme court justices have far more protection than members of Congress do. But more importantly [they have more protection] than those innocent lives that were taken in innumerable cities across America.”The US justice department is already providing additional support to court police.In the Kavanaugh case, Nicholas John Roske, 26 and from Simi Valley, California, was dressed in black when he arrived by taxi outside Kavanaugh’s home around 1am last Wednesday. According to court documents, he spotted two US marshals guarding the house and walked in the other direction, calling 911 to say he was having suicidal thoughts and planned to kill Kavanaugh.Roske said he had found the address on the internet.On Tuesday the House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, greeted passage of the bill by saying: “We are sending a clear message to leftwing radicals: you cannot intimidate supreme court justices.”House Democrats had wanted to add protections for families of clerks and other court employees who, in the words of Ted Lieu, a congressman from California, “are getting threats from rightwing activists”.But Senate Republicans objected.“The security issue is related to supreme court justices, not the nameless staff that no one knows,” the minority leader, Mitch McConnell, said on Monday.Lieu said measures to protect families of clerks and other employees would be considered separately.The federal judiciary is calling for separate legislation to offer more protection for judges. The US marshals service said judges were subject to 4,511 threats and inappropriate communications last year.TopicsUS supreme courtLaw (US)US CongressUS SenateHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Ginni Thomas pressed 29 lawmakers in bid to overturn Trump loss, emails show

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      Ginni Thomas pressed 29 lawmakers in bid to overturn Trump loss, emails showWife of supreme court justice Clarence Thomas accused of ‘undermining democracy’ after Washington Post revelation Ginni Thomas, the wife of the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, was accused of “undermining democracy” after it emerged that she emailed 29 Republican lawmakers in Arizona in her effort to overturn Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump.As America watched Capitol attack testimony, Fox News gave an alternate realityRead moreThe Washington Post had previously reported that Ginni Thomas sent emails pressuring two Arizona Republicans to reject Biden’s win and choose their own electors.On Friday, the paper said Ginni Thomas emailed 29 individuals.Thomas’s involvement in Trump’s attempt to overturn his election defeat, including events around the deadly Capitol attack, has been widely reported.That has focused attention on her husband, a stringent conservative who has not recused himself from election-related cases.When Trump tried to deny the House January 6 committee access to White House records, Thomas was the only justice to side with the former president. Texts from Ginni Thomas to Trump’s chief of staff were subsequently revealed.Supreme court justices govern themselves in ethical matters. Activists and some Democratic politicians have therefore called for Thomas to resign or be impeached.Only one supreme court justice has been impeached: Samuel Chase in 1805. He survived. But Chase was accused of “tending to prostitute the high judicial character with which he was invested, to the low purpose of an electioneering partisan” – a charge with strong echoes in the case of Clarence and Ginni Thomas.The Post said that on 9 November, two days after the election was called for Biden, Ginni Thomas used “FreeRoots, an online platform intended to make it easy to send pre-written emails to multiple elected officials”, to send identical messages to 20 members of the Arizona House and seven state senators.The emails urged the Republicans to “stand strong in the face of political and media pressure” and “fight back against fraud”.On 13 December, the day before electoral college votes were cast, Thomas emailed 22 members of the Arizona House and one senator.That message said: “Before you choose your state’s electors … consider what will happen to the nation we all love if you don’t stand up and lead.” It also “linked to a video of a man urging lawmakers to ‘put things right’ and ‘not give in to cowardice’.”Proven fraud in the 2020 election is vanishingly rare. Regardless, Arizona Republicans pursued a controversial audit – which increased Biden’s margin of victory.Ginni Thomas did not comment on the new Post report. Nor did the supreme court. Thomas has said her activism does not clash with her husband’s work.Noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or Crew, said: “We’ve now learned that Ginni Thomas’s role in pushing officials to overturn the 2020 election was significantly greater than we knew.“Justice Thomas’s failure to recuse on cases about the 2020 election looks worse and worse. This undermines democracy.”Pointing to Ginni Thomas’s position on the Library of Congress Trust Fund Board, to which she was appointed by Trump, Crew said: “Friendly reminder that Ginni Thomas has a government position and absolutely should not.”News of the Arizona emails emerged in the aftermath of a dramatic primetime hearing staged by the House committee investigating January 6. Responding to the hearing, Trump repeated his lie about electoral fraud.Amid growing calls for a criminal indictment against Trump, Wajahat Ali, a columnist and senior fellow at the Western States Center, which works to strengthen democracy, tweeted: “Democrats should aggressively put pressure on Clarence and Ginni Thomas.“You have an extremist conservative duo working the courts and the rightwing activist machine to overturn our free and fair election.”TopicsUS elections 2020RepublicansUS supreme courtLaw (US)Clarence ThomasArizonaDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

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      Rudy Giuliani charged with ethical misconduct over Trump’s big lie

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      Rudy Giuliani charged with ethical misconduct over Trump’s big lieThe complaint marks the second time a bar office has taken action against the former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani has been hit with ethics charges over baseless claims he made about the 2020 presidential election being stolen while serving as an attorney for Donald Trump.Primetime January 6 hearing shows set-piece TV can still pack a punchRead moreThe charges were filed on Friday by the District of Columbia office that polices attorneys for ethical misconduct.The DC office of disciplinary counsel alleges that Giuliani, who is a member of the DC bar, made baseless claims in federal court filings about the results of the 2020 presidential election in Pennsylvania. The charges were filed with the District of Columbia court of appeals board on professional responsibility.A lawyer for Giuliani did not have an immediate comment.The charges come a day after the US House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack had its first primetime hearing in which it outlined evidence that Trump and his allies sought to overturn the 2020 election and incite throngs of his supporters to block Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory.Giuliani, a former US attorney in Manhattan and New York City mayor, has been among Trump’s most fervent supporters and repeatedly claimed without evidence that the election had been stolen.The complaint says Giuliani sought an emergency order to prohibit the certification of the presidential election, an order to invalidate ballots cast by certain voters in seven counties, and other orders that would have permitted the state’s assembly to choose its electors and declare Trump the winner in Pennsylvania.The charges say his conduct violated two professional conduct rules in Pennsylvania that bar attorneys from bringing frivolous proceedings without a basis in law or fact and prohibit conduct that is prejudicial to the administration of justice.Charges can lead to the suspension of a license to practice law or disbarment.The charges mark the second time that a bar office has taken action against Giuliani.His New York law license was suspended in June 2021 after a state appeals court found that he made “demonstrably false and misleading” statements that widespread voter fraud undermined the election.Apart from having two of his law licenses suspended, Giuliani’s reputation has been stained by his dealings with Ukraine and he is being investigated by Manhattan federal prosecutors over those business ties.He began representing Trump, a fellow Republican and New Yorker, in April 2018 in connection with then-special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation that documented Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.Giuliani has not been charged with criminal wrongdoing. His lawyer has said the federal investigation is politically motivated.Reuters contributed reporting.TopicsRudy GiulianiDonald TrumpUS elections 2020Trump administrationUS politicsLaw (US)newsReuse this content More

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      ‘To some, guns are more important than children’: families testify at House hearing – as it happened

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      The House oversight committee has opened its hearing dubbed “the urgent need to address the gun violence epidemic,” which is likely to be a gut-wrenching look into the recent spate of mass shootings nationwide.Among those testifying is Miah Cerrillo, a fourth-grade student who survived the shooting at Robb elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, the parents of Lexi Rubio, who was killed in the massacre, local pediatrician Roy Guerrero and Zeneta Everhart, whose son was shot in the massacre at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York. Republican lawmakers, who make up a minority in the chamber, have invited Lucretia Hughes of Women for Gun Rights’s DC Project.You can watch along here.The US politics blog is ending a very busy day in the capital, which saw new developments in one of the many investigations facing former president Donald Trump, difficult-to-stomach testimony in Congress on gun violence and the arrest of a man who was allegedly plotting to kill a supreme court justice.Here’s a recap:
      Trump along with his son Donald Trump Jr and daughter Ivanka Trump will testify under oath on 15 July in New York attorney general Letitia James’s long-running inquiry into the former president’s business practices.
      The top Senate Republican, Mitch McConnell, is calling on Capitol Hill for more security for supreme court justices, after an armed man was arrested near justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home on the outskirts of Washington DC. Joe Biden condemned the actions of the individual, who the court said told police he wanted to kill the judge.
      The House oversight committee held a hearing dubbed “the urgent Need to address the gun violence epidemic”. Lawmakers heard gut-wrenching testimony from a survivor of the massacre in Uvalde, Texas, as well as the relatives of people killed and injured there and in Buffalo, New York. But the partisan divide over gun control appeared as wide as ever.
      The supreme court ruled in favor of a border agent in a case from the US-Canada frontier involving an inn that allegedly is a stopover when some people cross into Canada unlawfully.
      The blog returns tomorrow, when lawmakers will continue to negotiate over gun control legislation and the January 6 committee holds its first hearing. See you then.Donald Trump will testify under oath on 15 July in New York attorney general Letitia James’s investigation into his business practices, according to a court filing released on Wednesday.JUST IN: Donald Trump will testify under oath on July 15 alongside Don Jr. and Ivanka Trump, according to new doc from @NewYorkStateAG pic.twitter.com/BkZGNRcC6D— Frank G. Runyeon (@frankrunyeon) June 8, 2022
      His daughter Ivanka Trump and son Donald Trump Jr will also testify.The testimony is the latest development in the three-year investigation into the former president’s dealings after he failed in an attempt last month to stop her investigation and ended up paying a $110,000 fine.James has said investigators have found “significant evidence” of wrongdoing in the inquiry, which has homed in on whether the Trump Organization misstated the values of its real estate properties to obtain favorable loans and tax deductions.The attorney general previously said her investigation discovered evidence suggesting that for more than a decade, the company’s financial statements “relied on misleading asset valuations and other misrepresentations to secure economic benefits”.Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and has not been accused of committing a crime. He has called the investigation a “witch-hunt”.Trump loses bid to thwart New York inquiry into his business practicesRead moreThe gun violence hearing in the House is continuing and the California Democrat Jackie Speier, who in 1978 was shot during a visit to the Jonestown settlement in an attack that killed the congressman she was accompanying, got a turn to question witnesses.Speier asked Joseph Gramaglia, the Buffalo police commissioner, to describe what weapons like an AR-15 can do to a body.“I’ve been to numerous shootings throughout my career that were the result of high-powered rifles, assault rifles, and the cavernous holes that they leave in bodies. Decapitation is a pretty good explanation for it,” Gramaglia replied. “Some people couldn’t be buried with an open casket. The damage was absolutely devastating.”Referencing her experience in Jonestown, Speier said, “I’m a victim of gun violence. I know what it does to a body. And I cannot believe my colleagues don’t recognize that prohibiting the sale of an assault weapon until the age of 21 isn’t going to save lives.”She rejected the idea put forth by Republicans that fortifying schools was one way to stop the shootings.“We all know what the solution to this problem is. It’s comprehensive gun reform in this country. We know what it is. We are not supposed to be holding our students and our teachers responsible,” Speier said.Joe Biden has condemned a man who said he planned to kill supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh, amid heightened tensions around the court as it prepares to rule on abortion and gun rights, among other controversial topics.White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the president “condemns the actions [of] this individual in the strongest terms,” Reuters reported. “Any threats of violence or attempts to intimidate justices have no place in our society.”A man identified in court documents as Nicholas John Roske was arrested early Wednesday morning near the conservative justice’s Maryland home. According to the complaint charging Roske with attempting to kill a supreme court justice, he first got out of a taxicab near Kavanaugh’s house, then walked away and called 911, saying he was having suicidal thoughts and planned to killed a justice of the high court. Police arrested him and found a Glock 17 pistol, pepper spray, zip ties and other items in a backpack and suitcase.Armed man arrested near Brett Kavanaugh’s home over threats to judgeRead moreThe US regards Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó as the true interim president of his country, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said moments ago aboard Air Force One, more than three years after Guaidó declared himself the true victor in a disputed election over Nicolás Maduro and tried to topple the man in control of the troubled South American nation.US president Joe Biden plans to speak with Guaido at some point during this week’s Summit of the Americas meeting that the US is hosting in California for leaders from the hemisphere, Sullivan said.Biden, aides, staff and media are on board Air Force One now, en route Washington, DC, to Los Angeles, and Sullivan and White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre are gaggling – with Sullivan on right now, answering accompanying journalists’ questions.Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba were not invited to the summit, prompting a boycott by Mexico, in a debacle for Biden.Brazilian autocratic president Jair Bolsonaro will attend and Biden is expected to discuss “open, transparent and democratic elections” with him, Sullivan said.And the climate and the health of the Amazon rainforest will be on the agenda, Sullivan said.There is much hope in journalism circles that Bolsonaro can be pressed at the summit to address the topics of illegal logging and drug trafficking in vast, supposedly-protected tracts of the Amazon region and the danger to those who strive against such destructive law-making – including freelance journalist and Guardian regular Dom Phillips and his traveling companion, indigenous culture expert Bruno Araújo Pereira, missing in the region since Sunday.‘Every second counts’: wife of British journalist missing in Amazon urges actionRead moreIt’s been an extremely busy day in Washington and there is more to come. The House oversight committee hearing on the “urgent need to address gun violence” in the US, following very recent mass shootings, is now on lunch recess.White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is now “gaggling” on Air Force One, as Joe Biden heads to Los Angeles to host the Summit of the Americas. It’s a bumpy ride for those aboard the presidential plane (literally but, presumably, always metaphorically).Here’s where things stand:
      Senate minority leader and Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell is calling on Capitol Hill for more security for supreme court justices, following the reports this morning that an armed man was arrested near supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home on the outskirts of Washington DC. The court said the man told police he wanted to kill the judge.
      The supreme court ruled in favor of a border agent in a case from the US-Canadian border involving an inn that allegedly is a stopover when some people cross into Canada unlawfully.
      The House oversight committee opened its hearing dubbed “the urgent need to address the gun violence epidemic”, which became a gut-wrenching look into the recent spate of mass shootings nationwide.
      Back at the House oversight committee, Democratic and Republican lawmakers are taking turns questioning the witnesses, creating a split-screen view of the two parties’ attitudes on gun control.Louisiana Republican Clay Higgins recalls a childhood in which “we had guns everywhere” and wonders why there weren’t mass shootings back then.“I asked you all what happened to that country,” Higgins said. “A country where guns were everywhere and virtually not regulated at all, where millions of Americans, 14 million Americans came back … after world war II with incredible skills of war and weapons of war as you call them everywhere, but we didn’t have mass shootings.”Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, drew a line between increasing firearm sales and gunmakers’ profits, declaring, “This is about blood money.”“There’s also this discussion about anything but, again, but that these are about violent people, but yet we aren’t doing anything about addressing the actual root causes of misogyny, where two-thirds of mass shootings are connected to domestic violence, or the emergence of white supremacy, radicalization, mass incarceration and poverty and the connections between that and mass shootings in our communities,” Ocasio-Cortez said.Ahead of the start of the January 6 hearings tomorrow, the committee’s chair, Bennie Thompson, told NPR in an interview that democracy came close to ending in the United States that day..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Thompson says he’s calling it as he sees it on the investigation into the Jan. 6 attack that was intended to keep Congress from certifying the 2020 presidential election results. And he says he’s gained a new education about the danger the country faced that day, which he aims to share through the hearings.
      For Thompson, preserving democracy today means telling the full story of the attack on the Capitol and ensuring its moment in history is one that Americans never forget. “
      I have learned a lot about how perilously close we came on January 6 to losing this democracy as a lot of us have come to know and love it.”My colleague Hugo Lowell’s story published earlier today outlined how the first hearing will go, which will take place during the prime-time TV hour at 8 pm eastern..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} At the start of the hearing, the panel’s chairman Bennie Thompson and vice-chair Liz Cheney will make a series of opening arguments before outlining a general roadmap of how each of the six Watergate-style hearings are expected to unfold.
      For the second hour, Thompson and Cheney will hand control of the hearing to Tim Heaphy, the chief investigative counsel for the select committee, who will lead the questioning of two witnesses and walk through the key moments of the Capitol attack.
      The select committee is expected to start the questioning with testimony from Nick Quested, a British documentary film-maker who was embedded with the far-right Proud Boys group in the days and weeks leading up to January 6 and caught their activities on camera.Inaugural January 6 hearing to track activities of Proud Boys during Capitol attackRead moreThe justice department has named a nine-person panel to review the police response to the Uvalde shooting, the Associated Press reports..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}In a statement, the Justice Department said it was committed to “moving as expeditiously as possible in the development of the report.” Officials said the team would conduct a complete reconstruction of the shooting; review all relevant documents, including policies, photos and videos; conduct a visit to the school; and interview an array of witnesses and families of the victims, along with police, school and government officials.A FBI unit chief will take part in the inquiry, as will the former police chief of Sacramento, the sheriff of Orange county, Florida, and a deputy chief whose tenure included Virginia Tech. Similar investigations followed the 2015 extremist attack in San Bernardino, California and the 2016 Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando.The police response to the Uvalde shooting has been criticized after officers waited before confronting the gunman. State officials have acknowledged that hesitating was “the wrong decision,” and scrutiny has focused on Pedro “Pete” Arredondo, the police chief who was recently sworn onto the city council.Senate minority leader and Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell is calling on Capitol Hill for more security for supreme court justices, following the reports this morning that an armed man was arrested near supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home on the outskirts of Washington DC.This morning’s disturbing reports are exactly why the Senate unanimously passed a Supreme Court security bill weeks ago. But House Democrats have inexplicably blocked it. House Democrats need to stop their blockade and pass this uncontroversial bill today. pic.twitter.com/wd8UB5RDvm— Leader McConnell (@LeaderMcConnell) June 8, 2022
      McConnell said on the floor of the Senate: “This is where we are, Mr President, if these reports are correct, an assassination attempt against a sitting justice, or something close to it. This is exactly the kind of event that many feared the terrible breach of the court’s rules and norms would fuel [with the leak last month of the draft opinion that the conservative majority wants to overturn constitutional abortion rights afforded by the 1973 Roe V Wade ruling].“This is exactly that kind of event that many worried the unhinged, reckless, apocalyptic rhetoric from prominent figures towards the court going back many months and especially in recent weeks could make more likely.”He said that was why the Senate passed legislation shortly after the early May leak, to enhance police protection for sitting justices and their families.“This is common sense, non-controversial legislation that passed unanimously in this chamber, but House Democrats have spent weeks blocking. That needs to change right now.”Lawmakers on the House oversight committee are now questioning the witnesses, in a conversation that is overall a little more strident than the Senate’s similar hearing yesterday. Before questioning began, lawmakers heard from Amy Swearer of The Heritage Foundation, who was invited by the Republican minority and provided the conservative rebuttal to the officials and advocates who spoke before her.“An unspeakably horrific event, like Uvalde or Buffalo happens. Reflexively, almost compulsively, come calls for Congress to pass a whole host of gun control measures largely targeting peaceable, law abiding citizens,” Swearer said. “Should anyone dare question the constitutionality, practicality or even the effectiveness of any of these policies, their opposition is immediately framed as callous obstructionism. And their legitimate concerns are brushed aside as and I quote, bullshit.”She downplayed the effectiveness of legislation against expanded capacity magazines, and called for more armed guards at school, improvements to building security, mental health care and to “promote responsible gun ownership without simultaneously imposing financial burdens on gun owners or hindering their ability to immediately respond to violent threats.”Buffalo’s police commissioner, Joseph Gramaglia, took aim at the concept promoted by gun rights advocates that expanding firearms access could stop mass shootings.“It is often said that a good guy with a gun will stop a bad guy with a gun,” Gramaglia told the House. However, retired Buffalo police officer Aaron Salter Jr., who was working as a security guard at the Tops Market and was killed in the shooting, “Was no match for what he went up against a legal AR-15 with multiple high capacity magazines.”Noting that such mass shootings make up a minority of overall gun crime, the commissioner warned of new gun technologies that could make the problem worse.“The grim reality is that shootings have become a daily occurrence in American cities. Emerging trends like ghost guns and guns modified with switches continue to pose a challenge for law enforcement,” Gramaglia said.“Congress must update our laws to account for these new threats and carnage that has accompanied them. It will be nearly impossible to address the gun violence epidemic without first addressing the underlying violent crime problem.”Warning that it is “high noon in America,” New York’s mayor, Eric Adams, told lawmakers in the House: “The clock is ticking, every day, every minute towards another hour of death.”The New York City Police Department is overwhelmed by illegal guns, he said, despite confiscating 3,000 this year alone. Adams called for more federal aid for states and cities, the confirmation of Biden’s nominee to lead the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and for Congress to expand background check and pass other gun control legislation.“I stand with President Joe Biden in calling on Congress to act now to regulate or ban assault weapons in this country. Even if we only raise the age required to buy one of these weapons, lives will be saved,” the mayor said. “We must build a society where our youth are on a path to fulfillment, not a road to ruin.”The US Supreme Court says an armed man has been arrested near associate justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home after making threats against him, the Associated Press writes.The Washington Post was first with the story, reporting that a California man in his mid-twenties, with at least one weapon in his possession and tools used in burglaries, was apprehended near the judge’s home in Maryland and had told law enforcement that he wanted to kill Kavanaugh, and citing people familiar with the investigation. It happened at about 1.50am ET today.The Post further reports that:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Two people familiar with the investigation said the initial evidence indicates the man was angry about the leaked draft of an opinion by the Supreme Court signaling the court is preparing to overturn Roe. v. Wade, the 49-year-old decision that guaranteed a person’s constitutional right to have an abortion. He was also angry over a recent spate of mass shootings, those people said. Following the leak last month of that draft opinion – with the final opinion awaited with enormous tension across the US this month – protesters appeared near the homes of conservative members of the supreme court bench.These included Samuel Alito, who wrote the draft opinion that was leaked and slammed the Roe decision, and two of the justices nominated by Donald Trump that represented a strong swing to the right on the nine-member bench – Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.Those previous protests were entirely peaceful, though technically probably illegal, and there had apparently been no arrests.Here’s what Lauren Burke reported for the Guardian at the time:Protesters rally outside US supreme court justices’ homes ahead of pro-choice marchesRead moreAfter a brief recess, the House hearing has now moved on to testimony from elected officials, representatives from advocacy groups and other, but it wrapped up its first half with more gut-wrenching testimony from parents affected by gun violence.Kimberly Rubio described how she found out that her daughter Lexi was among those killed in Uvalde, and outlined specific policies she thinks could prevent such attacks. “We understand that for some reason, to some people, to people with money, to people who fund political campaigns, the guns are more important than children,” Rubio said. “So at this moment, we ask for progress. We seek to raise the age to purchase these weapons from 18 to 21 years of age, we seek red flag laws, stronger background checks. We also want to repeal gun manufacturers liability, immunity.”Lucretia Hughes of Women for Gun Rights’s DC Project told lawmakers how her 19-year-old son was shot and killed while playing dominoes, but unlike the witnesses before her, she did not call for more restrictions on firearms. Rather, she saw weapons as an important tool for self-defense and linked gun control laws to racism.“Something has to change. Thoughts and prayers and calls for more gun control isn’t enough. How about letting me defend myself from evil? You don’t think that I’m capable and trustworthy to handle a firearm? You don’t think that the second amendment doesn’t apply to people that look like me?” said Hughes, who is Black. “Who and you who would call for more gun controls are the same ones that are calling to defund the police? Who is supposed to protect us? We must prepare to be our own first responders to protect ourselves and our loved ones.” More

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      I’m a Black gun owner. I have mixed feelings about gun control | Akin Olla

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      I’m a Black gun owner. I have mixed feelings about gun controlAkin OllaI don’t have much faith that the state will protect me from violence – and I know that gun control laws have historically been used to target Black people, socialists and people who challenge the status quo The mass murder of elementary school students in Uvalde, Texas, and a white supremacist attack on Black residents of Buffalo, New York, have reignited the American gun control debate. Both atrocities have left me feeling more broken than I thought possible. As a Black, leftwing gun owner, however, I’m also struck by a feeling of unease.I believe in many forms of gun control, but the conversation about guns on the left often lacks complexity as we scramble for a simple answer to an extremely complicated problem. I don’t have much faith that the government will protect me or other minority Americans from the kind of violence that the police ostensibly exist to combat, and I know that gun control laws have historically been used to target Black people, particularly Black socialists like myself.I’m also not convinced that most current gun control proposals will even solve the problem. Consider the country’s deadliest school shooting, the Virginia Tech murders of 2007. The perpetrator passed his background check and used weapons that most gun control bans wouldn’t affect. A waiting period might have delayed his attack but his level of premeditation implies it was nearly inevitable. I feel sorrow for what happened. Yet I feel that as a society we tend to fight over specific gun control policies – some effective, some not – while ignoring the violent nature of the country we live in and the culture that drives almost exclusively men to commit mass murder.I never thought I’d be a gun owner. I’m not particularly fond of guns. If anything, they terrify me. I’ve generally hoped my charming personality and acumen at fisticuffs would be enough to deter would-be aggressors; it wasn’t until the terror that I experienced during the George Floyd uprising that I, like many Black Americans, was moved to become a first-time gun owner.I’d participated in protests and witnessed the sheer brutality of the Philadelphia police as they attacked my partner, threatened an elderly woman, and enveloped the entirety of my neighborhood in teargas. I watched Black parents flee their homes, gagging, eyes red, small children in tow. When I and others working as medical volunteers tried to evacuate the injured and elderly, we were met with pepper spray, rubber bullets, and batons. On the other side of the city, police officers let white vigilantes with baseball bats patrol the streets. None of this buttressed my belief that the police existed to protect me from violence.Around this time I, like other socialist organizers, received written threats. After a series of them, as well as a direct, in-person threat to my life made in front of my home, I buckled and decided I needed a weapon, and soon. Even without the specific threats, I was wrestling with a sense that society was on the brink. It may sound paranoid now, but to be Black in the midst of the George Floyd uprising and the tail end of the Trump presidency was a time to be paranoid. Guns and ammunition were sold out across the country. More than 5 million new gun owners purchased weapons in 2020, a more than 100% increase from the previous year. After a background check and a few days for the order to be processed, I picked up a gun from a store located in a man’s home in a dreamlike suburban cul-de-sac.America is steeped in violence. And the roots of that violence go deep | Moustafa BayoumiRead moreDespite owning a gun, I do think gun control is overdue and necessary. But I also can’t ignore the history of American gun control. Much of the modern debate around gun control began in the 1960s, after the state of California – with support, ironically enough, from the NRA – pushed through legislation in response to the Black Panther party and other armed militant groups. We must ensure that any new gun control laws do not disproportionately limit minority communities’ ability to own arms for reasons of legitimate self-defense, which may be impossible given that most laws in a country as steeped in racism as ours will inevitably be exploited to oppress the already oppressed.There are moments in US history when the right to own weapons made the difference between life and death for communities of color, such as the armed resistance against the Ku Klux Klan by the Lumbee Tribe in 1958. And despite the common perception of the civil rights movement, many activists kept guns in their homes or were protected by those who did. There was a time when Dr Martin Luther King Jr was described as having an arsenal in his home.To honestly address mass shootings, we must be willing to have difficult conversations about the complexity of all of this, and also accept that some solutions will involve restructuring our society. We have to accept that gun control may mean some people that reasonably fear for their lives will be left at the whim of fascists and police. We have to accept that mass shootings will absolutely still occur. We have to accept and analyze the reality that one of the most common denominators among shooters is their hate for women – as the Texas shooter, who shot his grandmother before carrying out his school massacre, sadly reminded us.And we have to realize the racist nature of this country and its violent roots. The founder of Uvalde, Texas, was shot and killed in 1867, probably not too far from where the elementary school shooting occurred. His alleged offense was opposing southern secession and supporting the presidency of Abraham Lincoln. His blood stains that town just as the blood of millions of Indigenous people and enslaved Africans stains the entirety of the United States.Gun control may be a good start to saving lives, but this country must be made new, and the lives of women, little children, and Black families made valuable. Until then, I sit uneasy.
      Akin Olla is a contributing opinion writer at the Guardian
      TopicsUS gun controlOpinionUS politicsGun crimeUS constitution and civil libertiesLaw (US)Texas school shootingBuffalo shootingcommentReuse this content More

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      Will anti-abortionists use ‘uterus surveillance’ against women in the US? | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Will anti-abortionists use ‘uterus surveillance’ against women in the US?Arwa MahdawiIf, as is expected, Roe v Wade is overturned by the US supreme court, 26 states are certain or likely to ban abortion – and data tracking could mean there’s nowhere for women to hide If you are looking for a cheerful column that will make you giggle and distract you from everything that is wrong with the world, click away now. This week I have nothing but doom, gloom and data trackers for you. If you are hoping to sink into a well of existential despair, maybe let out a few screams into the void, then you’ve come to the right place.Here goes: the US supreme court, as you are no doubt aware, is expected to overturn Roe v Wade and the federal right to an abortion very soon. At least 13 Republican-led states have “trigger laws” in place, which means that the moment Roe is overruled, abortion will be fully or partly banned. Other states will follow suit. According to the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-choice research organisation, 26 states are certain or likely to ban abortion when Roe falls.Perhaps you are the glass half-full sort. Perhaps you are thinking: “Well, at least people can travel to a state where abortion is legal.” Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. There are the obvious logistical and financial constraints, for one thing. Then there’s the fact that we live in a world of mass surveillance: pretty much everything we do these days leaves a digital footprint – one that anti-abortion extremists will not hesitate to weaponise. One Democratic senator has described the potential of new technology to track down and punish anyone who might even be thinking of having an abortion as “uterus surveillance”. Expect to see a big rise in this, not least because some anti-abortion states are providing financial incentives to snitch on your fellow citizens. Texas, for example, has passed “bounty hunter” laws promising at least $10,000 to individuals who help enforce the abortion ban by successfully suing an abortion provider.To be fair, there’s nothing new about uterus surveillance. Anti-abortion activists may be stuck in the past when it comes to reproductive rights, but they have always been adept at using modern technology to further their goals. One tactic they’ve used for decades is standing outside clinics and recording the licence plates of anyone who enters. As far back as 1993, extremists were tracing the people connected to those licence plates, obtaining their phone numbers, then calling up to harass them. Years ago tracing someone took a bit of time and effort. Nowadays, you can look up someone’s personal information with the click of a button and a small fee.The wonders of the modern world mean there are a mind-boggling number of ways in which you can now identify anyone who might be thinking about an abortion. To begin with, there’s location data. Vice media recently reported that a data location company is selling information related to Planned Parenthood facilities (many of which provide abortions). The data shows where groups of people visiting the locations came from, how long they stayed and where they went afterwards. That data is aggregated so it doesn’t provide the names of individuals; however, de-anonymising this sort of information is not very difficult. There is plenty of evidence that location data is almost never anonymous.Period-tracking apps, which are used by millions of people, are also a worrying source of potentially incriminating information in a post-Roe world. Experts have warned that rightwing organisations could buy data from these apps and use it to prove that someone was pregnant then had an abortion. Your text messages could also be used against you, as could your browser history. Indeed, authorities in Mississippi have already used a woman’s online search for abortion pills to indict her for second-degree murder after she miscarried. That happened in 2018; imagine what is going to happen in a post-Roe world. Speaking of which, I’ve just realised I Googled the word “abortion” 100 times while researching this. I’m off to scrub my search history.
      Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
      TopicsRoe v WadeOpinionAbortionUS politicsWomenHealthUS supreme courtLaw (US)commentReuse this content More