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      Liz Cheney calls new House speaker ‘dangerous’ for January 6 role

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      The new Republican speaker of the US House, Mike Johnson, is “dangerous” due to his role in Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, the former Wyoming Republican congresswoman and January 6 committee vice-chair Liz Cheney said.“He was acting in ways that he knew to be wrong,” Cheney told Politics Is Everything, a podcast from the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “And I think that the country unfortunately will come to see the measure of his character.”She added: “One of the reasons why somebody like Mike Johnson is dangerous is because … you have elected Republicans who know better, elected Republicans who know the truth but yet will go along with the efforts to undermine our republic: the efforts, frankly, that Donald Trump undertook to overturn the election.”Johnson voiced conspiracy theories about Joe Biden’s victory in 2020; authored a supreme court amicus brief as Texas sought to have results in key states thrown out, attracting 125 Republican signatures; and was one of 147 Republicans who voted to object to results in key states even after Trump supporters attacked the Capitol.The events of 6 January 2021 are now linked to nine deaths, thousands of arrests and hundreds of convictions, some for seditious conspiracy. Trump faces state and federal charges related to his attempted election subversion (contributing to a total 91 criminal counts) yet still dominates Republican presidential primary polling.Cheney was one of two anti-Trump Republicans on the House January 6 committee, which staged prime-time hearings and produced a report last year. In Wyoming, she lost her seat to a pro-Trump challenger. The other January 6 Republican, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, chose to quit his seat.Like Kinzinger, Cheney has now written a memoir, in her case titled Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning. She has also declined to close down speculation that she might run for president as a representative of the Republican establishment – her father is Dick Cheney, the former defense secretary and vice-president – attempting to stop Trump seizing the White House again.Johnson ascended to the speakership last month, elected unanimously after three candidates failed to gain sufficient support to succeed Kevin McCarthy, who was ejected by the far-right, pro-Trump wing of his party.The new speaker’s hard-right, Christianity-inflected statements and positions have been subjected to widespread scrutiny.Cheney told Larry Sabato, her podcast host and fellow UVA professor: “Mike is somebody that I knew well.”“We were elected together [in 2016]. Our offices were next to each other, and Mike is somebody who says that he’s committed to defending the constitution. But that’s not what he did when we were all tested in the aftermath of the 2020 election.“In my experience, and I was very, deeply involved and engaged as the conference chair, when Mike was doing things like convincing members of the conference to sign on to the amicus brief … in my view, he was willing to set aside what he knew to be the rulings of the courts, the requirements of the constitution, in order to placate Donald Trump, in order to gain praise from Donald Trump, for political expedience.“So it’s a concerning moment to have him be elected speaker of the House.” More

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      Kevin McCarthy dismissed Liz Cheney warning before January 6, book says

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      When Liz Cheney warned fellow Republicans five days before January 6 of a “dark day” to come if they “indulged in the fantasy” that they could overturn Donald Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden, the then House GOP leader, Kevin McCarthy, swiftly slapped her down.“After Liz spoke,” the former Wyoming representative’s fellow anti-Trumper Adam Kinzinger writes in a new book, “McCarthy immediately told everyone who was listening, ‘I just want to be clear: Liz doesn’t speak for the conference. She speaks for herself.’”Five days after Cheney delivered her warning on a Republican conference call, Trump supporters attacked Congress in an attempt to block certification of Biden’s win.McCarthy’s statement, Kinzinger writes, was “unnecessary and disrespectful, and it infuriated me”.Kinzinger details McCarthy’s “notably juvenile” intervention – and even what he says were two physical blows delivered to him by McCarthy – in Renegade: Defending Democracy and Liberty in Our Divided Country, which will be published in the US this month. The Guardian obtained a copy.Nine deaths have been linked to the January 6 riot, more than a thousand arrests made and hundreds convicted, some with seditious conspiracy. Trump was impeached a second time for inciting the attack, and acquitted a second time when Senate Republicans stayed loyal. When the dust cleared from the January 6 attack, McCarthy was among 147 House and Senate Republicans who still voted to object to results in key states.Like Cheney, Kinzinger, from Illinois, sat on the House January 6 committee, then left office. Unlike Cheney, who was beaten by a Trump ally, Kinzinger chose to retire.Cheney has maintained a high profile, warning of the threat Trump poses as he leads polling regarding the Republican nomination next year, 91 criminal charges (17 concerning election subversion) and assorted civil threats notwithstanding, and refusing to rule out a presidential run of her own.Kinzinger has founded Country First, an organisation meant to combat Republican extremism, and become a political commentator. In his book, he says he responded to McCarthy on the 1 January 2021 conference call by issuing his own warning about the potential for violence on 6 January and “calling on McCarthy to say he wouldn’t join the group opposing the electoral college states.“He replied by coming on the line to say, ‘OK, Adam. Operator, who’s up next?’”Such a “rude and dismissive tone”, Kinzinger says, “was typical of [McCarthy’s] style, which was notably juvenile”.McCarthy briefly blamed Trump for January 6, swiftly reversed course, stayed close to the former president and became speaker of the House, only to lose the role after less than a year, in the face of a Trumpist rebellion.Kinzinger accuses McCarthy, from California, of behaving less like a party leader than “an attention-seeking high school senior who readily picked on anyone who didn’t fall in line”. And while characterising McCarthy’s dismissal of Cheney’s warning about January 6 as “a little dig”, Kinzinger also details two physical digs he says he took from McCarthy himself.“I went from being one of the boys he treated with big smiles and pats on the back to outcast as soon as I started speaking the truth about the president who would be king,” Kinzinger writes.McCarthy “responded by trying to intimidate me physically. Once, I was standing in the aisle that runs from the floor to the back of the [House] chamber. As he passed, with his security man and some of his boys, he veered towards me, hit me with his shoulder and then kept going.“If we had been in high school, I would have dropped my books, papers would have been scattered and I would have had to endure the snickers of passersby. I was startled but took it as the kind of thing Kevin did when he liked you.“Another time, I was standing at the rail that curves around the back of the last row of seats in the chamber. As he shoulder-checked me again, I thought to myself, ‘What a child.’”Kinzinger is not above robust language of his own. Describing Trump’s Senate trial over the Capitol attack, the former congressman bemoans the decision of the Republican leader in that chamber, Mitch McConnell, to vote to acquit because Trump had left office – then deliver a speech excoriating Trump nonetheless.“It took a lot of cheek, nerve, chutzpah, gall and, dare I say it, balls for McConnell to talk this way,” Kinzinger writes, “since he personally blocked the consideration of the case until Trump departed.” More

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      Trump is ‘single most dangerous threat’ to the US, warns Republican Liz Cheney

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      Donald Trump is “the single most dangerous threat” the US faces as he seeks a return to the Oval Office, according to Liz Cheney, the moderate Republican whose opposition to her party leader’s presidency had cost her a congressional seat she held for six years.“He cannot be the next president because if he is, all of the things that he attempted to do but was stopped from doing by responsible people … he will do,” Cheney – the daughter of former congressman, defense secretary and vice-president Dick Cheney – said on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. “There will be no guardrails. And everyone has been left warned.”Cheney’s fiery remarks come as the former president fights more than 90 criminal charges for subversion of the 2020 election that he lost to Joe Biden, retention of government secrets after his presidency, and hush-money payments to the porn actor Stormy Daniels. He is also grappling with civil lawsuits over his business affairs and a rape allegation deemed “substantially true” by a judge.Though his popularity with the general public is low, he maintains substantial polling leads in the race to clinch the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election.If Cheney’s remarks on Sunday are any indication, it is an advantage she can hardly fathom after serving as the vice-chair of the US House committee which investigated the deadly Capitol attack staged by his supporters on 6 January 2021. Cheney and her colleagues recommended that the justice department file criminal charges against Trump in connection with the Capitol uprising before the four indictments obtained against him since March.“After January 6 … there can be no question that he will unravel the institutions of our democracy,” Cheney said, alluding to Trump supporters’ desperate but unsuccessful attack to prevent the certification of Biden’s victory over Trump in the 2020 race. “So we are facing a moment in American politics where we have to set aside partisanship, and we have to make sure that people who believe in the constitution are willing to come together to prevent him from ever again setting foot anywhere near the Oval Office.”The House Capitol attack committee’s recommendation was one of Cheney’s last congressional acts before she left office in January. She lost her bid to be re-elected to a Wyoming’s sole House seat she had held since 2017 after Trump successfully supported Harriet Hageman’s run against her in a Republican primary.Hageman subsequently won a runoff election and succeeded Cheney as their district’s House representative.Additionally, Cheney on Sunday suggested to both State of the Union and CBS’s Face the Nation that she was mulling joining the crowded field of presidential hopefuls signing up to challenge Biden in 2024.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionShe also remarked to Face the Nation that it should not be shocking for anyone to see Republicans struggle to appoint a replacement for Kevin McCarthy after far-right members of his party engineered his unprecedented removal as House speaker on 3 October.After all, McCarthy and the first two House Republicans who unsuccessfully launched bids to succeed him – Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan – all objected to certifying Trump’s 2020 defeat.“So it’s not a surprise that we are where we are,” Cheney said. “But it’s a disgrace, and it’s an embarrassment.” More

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      Liz Cheney releases Trump January 6 attack ad aimed at CNN town hall

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      The former House January 6 committee member Liz Cheney released an attack ad against Donald Trump in New Hampshire on the eve of his appearance there in a controversial CNN town hall.“There has never been a greater dereliction of duty by any president,” Cheney warns in the ad, which focuses on Trump’s incitement of the deadly Capitol attack on 6 January 2021.“Donald Trump has proven he is unfit for office. Donald Trump is a risk America can never take again.”Trump incited the attack by his supporters in an attempt to block certification of Joe Biden’s election win. Nine deaths have been linked to it. Thousands of arrests have been made and hundreds of convictions secured – some for seditious conspiracy.Trump was impeached for inciting an insurrection but acquitted by Senate Republicans.Cheney, the daughter of the former congressman, defense secretary and vice-president Dick Cheney, was vice-chair of the House committee which investigated the Capitol attack and, regarding Trump, made criminal referrals to the Department of Justice.Cheney lost her Wyoming seat to a Trump-backed challenger last year.Now working on a book – entitled Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning – she has not counted out running for the Republican nomination against Trump, or running for president as an independent conservative.Her new ad will run only on CNN in New Hampshire, where at St Anselm College on Wednesday night, CNN will host a Trump town hall with Republican voters.CNN has defended its decision to host Trump by pointing out that he is the clear Republican frontrunner. Cheney’s ad will run before and during the town hall.The same day Cheney’s ad came out, Trump was found liable for sexual assault and defamation in a case brought by E Jean Carroll, a writer who claims Trump raped her. Ordered to pay around $5m in damages, Trump responded angrily, denying wrongdoing and saying he would appeal.Trump faces legal jeopardy on a scale unprecedented for a presidential candidate, let alone the clear leader for a major party nomination.Investigators in Georgia are expected soon to announce indictments related to Trump’s attempted election subversion there.The federal investigation into his attempt to overturn his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden, and his incitement of the Capitol attack on 6 January 2021, goes on.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFederal authorities are also examining Trump’s retention of classified information after leaving office.Last month in New York, he pleaded not guilty to 34 criminal counts related to his hush money payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels, who claims an affair Trump denies.Trump also faces a New York state civil suit over his business and tax affairs.Nonetheless, Trump leads by wide margins in polling regarding the Republican nomination in 2024. Cheney barely features.Speaking to the New York Times, a spokesperson for Trump called Cheney “a stone-cold loser who is now trying to grift her way to relevance”.Conversely, the Guardian columnist Robert Reich has said Cheney “has displayed more courage and integrity than almost any other member of her party – indeed, given the pressure she was under, perhaps more than any lawmaker now alive”. More

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      Republicans try to reframe January 6 as a sightseeing tour – will it work?

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      Republicans try to reframe January 6 as a sightseeing tour – will it work?Now in control of the House, Republicans are making light of the violence of the day and assailing the investigation into the Capitol attackIt might be thought that Republicans would prefer not to remind Americans of the day their president nearly destroyed US democracy.But the party’s right wing is going all in to rewrite the history of the 6 January 2021 storming of the Capitol by Donald Trump’s supporters, and to make political martyrs of those imprisoned for assaulting police officers and sending politicians fleeing as the mob attempted to stop Congress from endorsing Joe Biden’s election victory.Fox News produced ‘zero’ evidence to back election lie, defamation case hearsRead moreTrump himself has waded in by appearing on a song sung by the “J6 Prison Choir” of men locked up for their part in the insurrection while Republican supporters in Congress are setting up a delegation to visit the prisoners in what will be seen as an act of solidarity.Meanwhile, after taking control of the House of Representatives in January, the Republicans have launched an investigation into the then Democratic-led original congressional investigation of the January 6 Capitol attack which recommended Trump’s prosecution for inciting the riot.But leading the charge in the Orwellian attempt to control the past in the hope that it will lead Republicans to control the future is the Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who pressured Kevin McCarthy, the speaker of the House of Representatives, into releasing to him thousands of hours of video of Trump supporters swarming the Capitol.Carlson presented selected snippets on his nightly show that he claimed proved the rioters were really no more than tourists who “obviously revered the Capitol”.“These were not insurrectionists. They were sightseers,” he said.Carlson, who has claimed that the January 6 attack was a “false flag” operation by the Washington establishment to discredit Trump’s supporters, said the video shows “mostly peaceful chaos”.“Taken as a whole the video record does not support the claim that January 6 was an insurrection. In fact, it demolishes that claim,” he said.Republicans in Washington are not universally happy with this revisionism. Senator Kevin Cramer said that the attack “was not just some rowdy protest of Boy Scouts” and that the Fox News interpretation was “a lie”. Senator Thom Tillis called Carlson’s description of events “bullshit”.Asked if it was a mistake for McCarthy to hand the footage over to Fox News, Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the US Senate, distanced himself from the consequences.“My concern is how it was depicted,” he said.McCarthy defended the release of the video in the name of transparency although that did not explain why he gave it only to Fox.Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, said McCarthy was driven principally by thirst for power as the Republican right made release of the video a condition of support for his election as speaker in January.“Everybody knows that McCarthy, who was once very upset about what happened on January 6 and said so, is just using this for his own purposes. This was simply an action designed to get him the final few votes needed to become speaker. He sold out his country. It was absolutely spineless,” Sabato said.“Carlson and McCarthy have given the crazies, the far-right extremists, the neo-Nazi white supremacists who are obsessed with January 6, the counter reality they’ve been looking for of a bunch of patriots taking a tour in the Capitol.”Sabato said Carlson, who is working to shore up his own credibility with Trump’s followers amid revelations that the Fox News host regularly derided the then president and said “I hate him passionately”, was a driving force behind the move.“Tucker Carlson on his own show said that if McCarthy wants these votes to become speaker then show us by releasing all of the information on the film. Everybody knew from the instant Carlson got it he was going to put together snippets that were very misleading, and which excluded all of the real action that day, all of the criminal action that day. It was totally predictable,” he said.While Carlson’s selective interpretation of the video was rapidly derided by some Republicans, as well as by the Capitol police chief and the family of an officer who died after being assaulted as “unscrupulous and outright sleazy”, plenty of others were onboard.The House Republicans’ Twitter account said that Carlson’s take on the footage was a “MUST WATCH”.Congressman Mike Collins of Georgia said the clips were proof of the innocence of the more than 1,000 people charged with crimes as the mob stormed the Capitol. Hundreds have already been convicted including some jailed for violence.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I’ve seen enough. Release all J6 political prisoners now,” Collins tweeted to considerable derision.The attempt to turn the imprisoned rioters into martyrs gained steam after Trump appeared in a song by a choir of men jailed over their involvement in the January 6 attack. They sing the national anthem as the former president recites the pledge of allegiance. Trump has praised the insurrectionists and said that if he were to win the presidency again he would “very, very seriously” consider giving them all pardons.The prisoners’ cause has been taken up by other Republicans.The far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene was among those pressing McCarthy to release the January 6 video as a condition for her support for his election as speaker. She is expected to lead a congressional delegation to a Washington DC federal prison where some of the rioters are being held, ostensibly to check on their welfare, as the result of another of her conditions for supporting McCarthy.Meanwhile, after taking control of the House of Representatives in January, the Republicans have launched an investigation of Congress’s original investigation into the events of 6 January 2021, which recommended Trump’s prosecution for inciting the assault.The latest committee to look into the riot will be led by Congressman Barry Loudermilk, who contested Biden’s victory and likened Trump’s impeachment to the crucifixion of Jesus.Loudermilk was found by the earlier House investigation to have a given tours of the Capitol to a group of people the day before the insurrection even though it was closed to visitors. They included at least one man seen photographing corridors and staircases who was later identified outside the Capitol on 6 January making threats against members of Congress.Loudermilk tweeted that he intends to revisit the January 6 investigation because, he said, the earlier inquiry was politicised.“The J6 committee chose to ignore the facts and pursue a particular political narrative. I will not do this. As chairman of the subcommittee on oversight, I’m focused on finding out what really happened on J6 to ensure it never happens again,” he said.Former congresswoman Liz Cheney, one of only two Republicans who served on the January 6 committee, and who then lost a primary race against a Trump-backed rival, challenged Loudermilk, who declined to testify at the hearings she helped chair.“If @HouseGOP wants new Jan 6 hearings, bring it on. Let’s replay every witness & all the evidence from last year. But this time, those members who sought pardons and/or hid from subpoenas should sit on the dais so they can be confronted on live TV with the unassailable evidence,” tweeted Cheney, who was hired by Sabato earlier this month as a professor at the Center for Politics.Whether revisiting what many Americans regard as a shameful day for democracy will work in the Republicans’ favor remains to be seen.Opinion polls show that views about what happened on 6 January 2021 have not shifted dramatically in the intervening two years. According to a Quinnipiac university poll in December, 45% of Americans said that Trump bears “a lot” of responsibility for the storming of the Capitol. Just 21% did not blame him at all. The country was almost evenly split over whether the former president committed a crime that day.Polls also show a deep divide over the significance of the January 6 Capitol attack, with 50% of Americans saying it represented an assault on democracy that should not be forgotten while 44% say events are being overstated.Sabato said that while the reimagining of events will play well with hardcore Republicans, it may ultimately not be good for the party as a whole.“This will stir some of the base. But it’s not all positive for Republicans because it helps Trump, the one guy who probably will lose to Biden if it turns out to be Biden versus Trump again,” he said.TopicsUS Capitol attackRepublicansJanuary 6 hearingsUS politicsHouse of RepresentativesLiz CheneyKevin McCarthyfeaturesReuse this content More

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      January 6 report review: 845 pages, countless crimes, one simple truth – Trump did it

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      ReviewJanuary 6 report review: 845 pages, countless crimes, one simple truth – Trump did it The House committee has done its work. The result is a riveting read, utterly damning of the former president and his followersWhether fomenting insurrection, standing accused of rape or stiffing the IRS, Donald Trump remains in the news. On Monday, the House select committee voted to issue its final report. Three days later, after releasing witness transcripts, the committee delivered the full monty. Bennie Thompson, Liz Cheney and the rest of committee name names and flash receipts. At 845 pages, the report is damning – and monumental.January 6 panel accuses Trump of ‘multi-part conspiracy’ in final reportRead moreTrumpworld is a crime scene, a tableau lifted from Goodfellas. Joshua Green of Bloomberg nailed that in The Devil’s Bargain, his 2017 take on Trump’s winning campaign. The gang was always transgressive, fear and violence part of its repertoire.Brian Sicknick, the Capitol police officer who died after the riot. E Jean Carroll, who alleges sexual assault. Shaye Moss, the Georgia elections worker targeted by Rudy Giuliani and other minions. Each bears witness.The January 6 report laments that “thuggish behavior from President Trump’s team, including efforts to intimidate described elsewhere … gave rise to many concerns about [Cassidy] Hutchinson’s security, both in advance of and since her public testimony”.Hutchinson is the former aide to Trump and his final chief of staff, Mark Meadows, whose testimony may have been the most dramatic and impactful.In the same vein, the committee chronicles Trump’s demand that Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state in Georgia, “find 11,780 votes”. Trump reminded Raffensperger of the possible consequences if his directive went unheeded: “That’s a criminal, that’s a criminal offense. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer … I’m notifying you that you’re letting it happen.”Now, a Fulton county grand jury weighs Trump’s fate. Jack Smith, a federal prosecutor newly appointed special counsel, may prove Trump’s match too.Transcripts released by the committee show Stefan Passantino, Hutchinson’s initial lawyer, engaging in conduct that markedly resembles witness tampering.“Stefan said, ‘No, no, no, no, no. We don’t want to talk about that.’” According to Hutchinson, Passantino was talking about Trump’s fabled post-rally meltdown on January 6, when told he couldn’t go to the Capitol too.Hutchinson understood that disloyalty would mean repercussions. It took immense courage and conscience to speak as she did. Trump’s supporting cast was retribution-ready. She knew she would be “fucking nuked”.In a woeful prebuttal, Passantino claimed to have behaved “honorably” and “ethically”. He blamed Hutchinson. His advice, he said, was “fully consistent” with the “sole interests” of his client. He is now on leave from his law firm.To quote the final report, “certain witnesses from the Trump White House displayed a lack of full recollection of certain issues”. Meadows, for one, is shown to have an allergy to the truth. The committee singles out The Chief’s Chief, his memoir, as an exercise in fabulism. Trump gave Meadows a blurb for his cover: “We will have a big future together”. In so many ways, Donald. In so many ways.Trump tested positive for Covid few days before Biden debate, chief of staff says in new bookRead moreThe book “made the categorical claim that the president never intended to travel to the Capitol” on 6 January, the committee now says, adding that the “evidence demonstrates that Meadows’s claim is categorically false”.He had needlessly cast a spotlight on himself and others. The report: “Because the Meadows book conflicted sharply with information that was being received by the select committee, the committee became increasingly wary that other witnesses might intentionally conceal what happened.”Then again, no one ever accused Meadows, a former congressman, of being the sharpest knife in the drawer. Reptilian calculation is not prudence or prescience. Last year, Trump trashed Meadows as “fucking stupid”. He may have a point. After all, Meadows confessed to Trump of possibly putting Joe Biden’s life in jeopardy at the September 2020 debate, after positive and negative Covid tests that were covered up.Trump himself derided the Chief’s Chief as “fake news”. The committee referred Meadows to the justice department.“It’s easy to imagine Meadows has flipped and is cooperating with the justice department,” said Ryan Goodman, a New York University law professor and former Pentagon special counsel. The vicious cycle rolls on.The committee also gives Kayleigh McEnany, Trump’s final press secretary, her own moment in the sun. She too attempted to cover the tracks of her boss.“A segment of McEnany’s testimony seemed evasive,” the committee concludes. “In multiple instances, McEnany’s testimony did not seem nearly as forthright as that of her press office staff, who testified about what McEnany said.”We saw this movie before – when McEnany stood at the West Wing lectern.“McEnany disputed suggestions that President Trump was resistant to condemning the violence and urging the crowd at the Capitol to act peacefully when they crafted his tweet at 2.38pm on January 6,” the report says. “Yet one of her deputies, Sarah Matthews, told the select committee that McEnany informed her otherwise.”Last year, McEnany delivered a book of her own, namely For Such a Time as This. The title riffs off the Book of Esther. McEnany repeatedly thanks the deity, touts her academic credentials and vouches for her honesty. She claims she never lied to reporters. After all, her education at “Oxford, Harvard and Georgetown” meant she always relied on “truthful, well-sourced, well-researched information”.She lauds Trump for standing for “faith, conservatism and freedom” and delivers a bouquet to Meadows. “You were a constant reminder of faith. Thank you for being an inspiring leader for the entire West Wing.”Whether Trump retains the loyalty of evangelicals in 2024 remains to be seen.The January 6 report often kills with understatement. For example, it repeatedly mocks Giuliani and his posse. The committee notes: “On 7 November, Rudy Giuliani headlined a Philadelphia press conference in front of a landscaping business called Four Seasons Total Landscaping, near a crematorium and down the street from a sex shop.”Like Giuliani’s three ex-wives, the members of the committee loathe him.“Standing in front of former New York police commissioner and recently pardoned convicted felon Bernard Kerik, Giuliani gave opening remarks and handed the podium over to his first supposed eyewitness to election fraud, who turned out to be a convicted sex offender.”If the debacle surrounding George Santos, the newly-elected New York congressman, teaches us anything, it is that you can never do enough background-checking.Trump should be barred from holding office again, January 6 panel saysRead moreGiuliani’s law license is suspended, on account of “false claims” in post-election hearings. A panel of the DC bar has recommended disbarment.Nick Fuentes, Trump’s infamous neo-Nazi dinner guest, also appears in the January 6 report, regarding his part in the insurrection. He is quoted: “Capitol siege was fucking awesome.” Recently, Fuentes reaffirmed his admiration for Hitler. Trump still refuses to disavow him.Trumpworld is a tangled web. Ultimately, though, the January 6 report is chillingly clear about the spider at its center.“The central cause of January 6 was one man, former President Donald Trump. None of the events of January 6 would have happened without him.”True.
      The Final Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol is available here.
      TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackUS politicsDonald TrumpTrump administrationUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesreviewsReuse this content More

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      From Liz Cheney to Donald Trump: winners and losers from the January 6 hearings

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      AnalysisFrom Liz Cheney to Donald Trump: winners and losers from the January 6 hearingsMartin PengellyAs the House January 6 committee is set to publish its report, here are some of the key standouts07:50The House January 6 committee is set to publish its report on the attack on the Capitol that shocked both America and the world . After a year of dramatic hearings and bombshell testimony, here are some of the key winners and losers to emerge from its work.Liz CheneyWho: Wyoming Republican congresswoman, with Adam Kinzinger of Illinois one of two GOP members of the committee.Winner or loser: Winner.Why: As vice-chair to Bennie Thompson, a Democrat who began his political career in Mississippi under Jim Crow, the Wyoming Republican and daughter of ex-vice-president and neocon’s neocon Dick Cheney helped bring genuine bipartisan spirit to the committee’s proceedings. Once the committee was in session, Cheney emerged as its star prosecutor. Witheringly focused, she rode losing her own seat in Congress to a Trump-backed challenger in August to keep her eyes on the prize: establishing Trump’s culpability for January 6 and stopping him ever returning to power.Jamie RaskinWho: Democratic Maryland congressman and professor of constitutional law who endured the attack on Congress shortly after losing his son.Winner or loser: Winner.Why: To vastly oversimplify (and not to discount the other committee members), if Cheney was the star prosecutor, Raskin was the best defense attorney the constitution, Congress and even the Capitol building could have, launching heartfelt appeals to the spirit of American democracy while making clear the enormity of the crime in hand. Never far from a reference to Abraham Lincoln or the founders, Raskin provided perhaps a softer public face than Cheney, but one no less determined.Cassidy HutchinsonWho: Former aide to Mark Meadows, Trump’s last chief of staff, and special assistant to the president.Winner or loser: Winner.01:42Why: In taped testimony and in person, Hutchinson described Trump’s approval of chants from Capitol rioters about hanging his vice-president, Mike Pence, and attempts by Republicans in Congress to have Trump issue pardons before leaving office. She added details of the behavior of Trump, Meadows, Rudy Giuliani and other key figures before January 6 and throughout that day. Among extraordinary scenes described by Hutchinson: Trump lunging for the wheel of his vehicle when told he could not go to the Capitol with his supporters; Trump throwing food at the White House walls; and Meadows refusing to do anything at all to rein in his boss.Mike PenceWho: Trump’s vice-president, who rejected the idea he could stop certification of election results.Winner or loser: Winner.Why: The panel seemed to make a political decision to portray Trump’s doggedly loyal vice-president as a hero, for not supporting the scheme to overturn Joe Biden’s win. Pence did seek counsel as to whether he could do what was asked but he did not do it and faced real danger at the Capitol as the mob shouted for him to be hanged and gallows went up outside. Since the hearings, Pence has continued to shape his likely challenge to Trump for the Republican nomination in 2024, conducting a fearsome balancing act: discussing his role in stopping Trump’s assault on democracy while evincing pride in what he says the Trump administration achieved before it.J Michael LuttigWho: Conservative judge who advised Pence he had no power to stop certification.Winner or loser: Winner.02:17Why: Luttig delivered devastating testimony with undoubted authority – and a chilling warning. “A stake was driven through the heart of American democracy on January 6, 2021,” he said, adding: “Almost two years after that fateful day … Donald Trump and his allies and supporters are a clear and present danger.” That, he said, was “because to this very day the former president and his allies and supporters pledge that in the presidential election of 2024, if the former president or his anointed successor as the Republican party presidential candidate were to lose that election, they would attempt to overturn that 2024 election in the same way they attempted to overturn the 2020 election, but succeed in 2024 where they failed in 2020.”John EastmanWho: Conservative law professor who claimed certification could be stopped.Winner or loser: Loser More

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      January 6 report expected to focus on Trump’s role and potential culpability

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      January 6 report expected to focus on Trump’s role and potential culpabilityFinal report by House select committee is scheduled for release in December – but fixation on Trump has opened a rift on the panel The House January 6 select committee’s final report into its investigation is expected to focus heavily on Donald Trump’s involvement in the Capitol attack and his potential culpability, opening a rift on the panel weeks before its scheduled release in the middle of December.Justice department asks Pence to testify in Trump investigationRead moreThe nature of the final report – alongside criminal referrals to the justice department – is expected to be the defining legacy of the investigation that brought into sharp relief Trump’s efforts to stop the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s election win and return to the White House for a second term.As the final report is currently drafted, an overwhelming focus is on the findings of the “gold team” that has been examining Trump and White House advisers’ roles in orchestrating a multi-part strategy to overturn the 2020 election, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.The move to home in on Trump, principally driven by the select committee’s vice-chair, Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney, was in part because the actions of the former president – which a federal judge has said probably violated several criminal statutes – were particularly compelling, multiple sources said.But that fixation on Trump has exposed in recent weeks a deepening rift on the panel, with the since-departed lawyers on the other teams, including the “blue team” examining issues like intelligence failures by the FBI, angered that their findings were set to be relegated to appendices.The simmering discontent from some of the current and former staff has since reached the panel’s members, and an NBC News story earlier this month has since prompted discussions about changing some of the eight chapters in the final report, though they were already broadly complete.‘Trump should be held accountable’: Guardian readers on the Capitol attack hearingsRead moreThe members, one of the sources said, have discussed inserting some of the findings of the non-gold team investigators in the January 6 narrative. But the members have been reluctant to highlight conduct by Trump’s allies that might have been unsavory but probably not criminal.The final report is still scheduled to be released in the middle of December, and after the Senate runoff election in Georgia, where the Trump-backed candidate Herschel Walker trailed the Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock in the general election in a disappointing midterms for the GOP.At the same time, the select committee is weighing what potential criminal and civil referrals to the justice department might involve; the panel was scheduled on Tuesday to receive a briefing from a special subcommittee led by congressman Jamie Raskin examining the matter.The subcommittee, which also involves Cheney, Adam Schiff and Zoe Lofgren – members with a legal background, or, in the case of Schiff, prosecutorial experience – has also been tasked with resolving other outstanding issues including how to respond to Trump’s lawsuit against his subpoena.A spokesman for the panel could not immediately be reached for comment.The question of whether and what referrals to make to the justice department has hovered over the investigation for months since the select committee’s lawyers came to believe that Trump was involved in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstruct Congress over January 6.‘Devoid of shame’: January 6 cop Michael Fanone on Trump’s Republican partyRead moreThe select committee won a substantial victory in March when the US district court judge David Carter ruled that Trump “likely” committed multiple felonies in his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and stop the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s election win.But some members on the panel in recent months have questioned the need for referrals to the justice department, which has ramped up its investigation into the Capitol attack and issued subpoenas to Trump’s allies demanding appearances before at least two grand juries in Washington.The attorney general, Merrick Garland, last week appointed Jack Smith to serve as special counsel overseeing the probe into whether Trump mishandled national security materials and obstructed justice, as well as key elements of the criminal inquiry into the Capitol attack.And even before the appointment of Smith as special counsel, the department asked former vice-president Mike Pence whether he might voluntarily testify to a grand jury hearing evidence about efforts to stop the certification on January 6, the New York Times earlier reported.TopicsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpJanuary 6 hearingsUS politicsLiz CheneynewsReuse this content More