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      Pelosi: ‘beyond belief’ that Trump DoJ chiefs didn’t know of secret subpoenas

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      The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said on Sunday it was “beyond belief” that the three top justice department officials of Donald Trump’s administration had been unaware of secret subpoenas seeking private data from the former president’s political opponents.Jeff Sessions, Trump’s first pick as attorney general, his successor, William Barr, and the long-serving deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein have all claimed to have no knowledge of the alleged attempts by their department to harvest information covertly from leading Democrats during the investigation into whether Donald Trump and his campaign utilized links with Russia during the 2016 election, according to CNN.In expressing skepticism of their claims, Pelosi, a California Democrat, said on CNN’s State of the Union that the actions of a “rogue” justice department were worse than the Watergate scandal.“What the Republicans did, what the administration did, the justice department, leadership of the former president, goes even beyond Richard Nixon,” she said.“Richard Nixon had an ending. This is about undermining the rule of law. And for these attorneys general, for Sessions, at least, to say they didn’t know anything about it is beyond belief.”In another new development, the New York Times reported on Sunday that Donald McGahn, Donald Trump’s White House counsel, was also the subject of a subpoena issued by the justice department.The newspaper said that Apple had told McGahn last month that it had released details to the FBI of accounts he had with the company, but it had not informed him of what information was handed over.The reason for the subpoenas was unclear, the Times reported, noting that a department of justice (DoJ) inquiry into a sitting White House counsel was an extraordinary move.McGahn testified to Congress and to the Russia investigation led by the special counsel Robert Mueller into alleged collusion between the Trump administration and Russia. McGahn resigned in October 2018 after falling from Trump’s favor by allegedly refusing the president’s order to fire Mueller.The DoJ announced on Friday it had launched its own internal inquiry into the scandal, first reported by the New York Times, which the newspaper said had begun when prosecutors subpoenaed Apple early in the Trump administration as the DoJ was investigating apparent leaks of classified information.Their secretive inquiries were allegedly focused on at least a dozen people connected with the House intelligence committee, including the Democratic members Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell. The Biden White House on Friday called the news “appalling”.Barr revived the languishing investigation soon after he succeeded Sessions in February 2019, the Times said, despite no evidence being found.Pelosi said Congress would instigate its own investigation and hinted that Barr, Sessions and Rosenstein could all receive subpoenas to testify.“Well, let’s hope that they will want to honor the rule of law,” Pelosi said when the CNN host Dana Bash asked what she would do if the trio refused to appear voluntarily.“The justice department has been rogue under President Trump in so many respects, this is just another manifestation of their rogue activity. The others were perpetrated by the attorneys general, but this is one they claim no knowledge of.“How could it be that there could be an investigation of other members in the other branch of government, and the press, and the rest, to the end the attorneys general did not know? So who are these people, and are they still in the justice department?”Rosenstein, as deputy attorney general, would have had authority at the beginning of the investigation because Sessions recused himself from inquiries into the Trump administration’s links to Russia.In recent days, according to CNN, he has told people he had no knowledge of subpoenas to Apple, which were the subject of multiple gag orders to keep their existence secret. Sessions said on Friday that he too was unaware, while Barr declared on Friday that he “didn’t recall” being briefed about it. More

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      Pelosi urges Senate Democrats to back voting rights bill and ‘save democracy’

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      Nancy Pelosi is urging congressional Democrats not to abandon their marquee voting-rights legislation in favor of a narrower bill, as the House speaker attempts to stave off opposition to the embattled measure from members of the party in the Senate.Pelosi said on a caucus call on Thursday that Democrats needed to prioritize HR1 – the sweeping election reform bill known as the For the People Act – to save American democracy, according to a source familiar with the matter.The legislation is teetering on the brink of collapse in the Senate after Joe Manchin, a key conservative Democrat, said he would not back the bill, nor vote to eliminate the filibuster rule that would ease its passage.But Pelosi said on the call that she was holding out hope that Senate Democrats could persuade Manchin to support the measure and force the legislation through.“I have not given up on Manchin,” Pelosi told her colleagues, according to the source.The rare, personal move from Pelosi to influence events in the Senate reflects the deep alarm among Democratic leadership about the rapidly diminishing chances of the bill passing into law in the wake of Manchin’s announcement.It also marks the second time in three days that Pelosi reiterated her position, after pressing the issue in a letter to her Democratic colleagues on Tuesday.“We are at an urgent moment because of the Republican assault on our democracy,” Pelosi said in the letter, adding that the legislation “must become law in order to respect the sanctity of the vote, which is the basis of our democracy”.In the national struggle for voting rights, Democrats have rested their hopes for rolling back dozens of new voter restrictions passed by Republican state legislatures to limit early and mail-in voting, and empower partisan poll watchers, on HR1.The 818-page bill would expand ballot access and tighten controls on campaign spending. It would also end the president’s exemption from conflict-of-interest rules, which allowed Donald Trump to maintain businesses that profited off his presidency.Manchin has said instead that he would support the passage of a narrower election reform bill, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore federal oversight over state-level election law struck down by the supreme court in 2013.But Pelosi noted sharply in her letter that the John Lewis bill was “not a substitute” for HR1, and stressed it would not be ready until after the summer as it undergoes intensive vetting to prepare for expected legal challenges.The John Lewis bill also faces further hurdles after the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, condemned the measure as Democratic power grab, all but ensuring it will be defeated by an expected Republican filibuster.The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, has vowed to force a vote on House-passed HR1 towards the end of June, but with Manchin’s vow to oppose the measure, the prospects of its passage in the Senate now appear all but impossible.Pelosi has remained undeterred. “HR1 must be passed now,” she said in the letter. More

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      Pelosi faces pressure to seize reins in investigating US Capitol attack

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      Top Democrats are making a renewed effort to press ahead with establishing a sweeping, central investigation into the 6 January attack on the Capitol in what could be the final opportunity to hold former US president Donald Trump to account for inciting insurrection.The move reflects the resolve of the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, to pursue a comprehensive inquiry even without bipartisan support, after Senate Republicans, fearful of what a full accounting of the violence might uncover, last week voted down legislation for a 9/11-style commission to scrutinize the attack by a pro-Trump mob.Pelosi said on a Democratic caucus call on Tuesday that she was prepared to create a House select committee with subpoena power to replace the commission as the principal investigation by Congress into the assault, according to sources familiar with the matter.The select committee was one of several options raised on the call that included empowering one existing committee, such as the House homeland security committee, to take charge of the congressional investigation, the sources said.Also suggested on the call was the possibility of returning the bill to create a 9/11-style commission back to the Senate for a second vote, while Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic caucus chair, floated the idea of the Department of Justice appointing a special counsel.Pelosi did not endorse any particular proposal, but she did categorically rule out a presidential commission created by Joe Biden, in large part because such a panel would lack subpoena authority or funding without a statutory change.Jim Clyburn, the House majority whip, was supportive of empowering the House homeland security committee to take charge, the sources said, while the House majority leader, Steny Hoyer, and the assistant speaker, Katherine Clark, were non-committal.It was not immediately clear how Pelosi might proceed. But rank-and-file House Democrats have agitated for weeks for Pelosi to seize the reins and adopt her longstanding fallback plan of empanelling a select committee.Select committees – among the top weapons for congressional oversight – have long been convened on issues relating to corruption and cover-up, from the investigation into presidential campaign activity during Watergate to the Benghazi terrorist attacks.The creation of a select committee could break the logjam that has persisted for months on Capitol Hill over disagreements between Democrats and Republicans over how to embark on a full accounting of the attack that left five dead and scores injured.Proponents of the select committee received a boost last week from Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, who seemingly extended his endorsement to the proposal saying it was “better to investigate with a select committee than not investigate”.Pelosi has previously suggested that a select committee would focus on lines of inquiry likely to have been explored by the commission.That kind of mandate would mean a forensic examination into the root causes of the attack, the former president’s conduct as his supporters stormed the Capitol and threatened to hang his own vice-president, as well as any potential ties between Trump and the rioters.But its work could still be stymied by Republicans, who have repeatedly resisted any comprehensive inquiry into the attack, afraid of being found complicit ahead of the 2022 midterm elections in inciting insurrection by amplifying Trump’s lies about voter fraud.The number of Republicans downplaying or even outright denying the reality of what transpired on 6 January, for instance, has only increased in recent months; Congressman Andrew Clyde described the deadly insurrection as a “normal tourist visit” to the Capitol.Likely opposition – especially from Republican leaders in Congress – could also make any new findings be viewed through a partisan lens and cause a substantial proportion of the country to reject any conclusions that cast Trump in a negative light.The last select committee convened by Congress to investigate Benghazi devolved into a partisan affair, even before the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, admitted it had been created to damage the 2016 election chances of the former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.But House Democrats have remained largely undeterred. “If Republicans won’t join us to protect our democracy, we have an obligation to do it ourselves,” said Teresa Leger Fernández, a member of the House administration committee. More

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      George Floyd family urges Biden to pass police reform bill as it stalls in Senate

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      “Say his name,” said seven-year-old Gianna Floyd. In bright sunshine outside the west wing of the White House, family members and lawyers raised their fists and said her father’s name in chorus: “George Floyd!”They were marking exactly one year since the police murder of Floyd, an African American man, in Minneapolis shook America with months of nationwide protests against racial injustice and demands for police reform.On Tuesday the family brought that conversation to Washington. Joe Biden, whose own family has been haunted by grief, apparently demonstrated an empathy many found lacking in his predecessor, Donald Trump, during a private meeting of more than an hour.Floyd’s brother, Philonise described Biden as a “genuine guy” and told reporters the family had a “great” discussion with him and Vice-President Kamala Harris. “They always speak from the heart and it’s a pleasure just to be able to have the chance to meet with them when we have that opportunity to,” he said.America’s racial reckoning across business, culture and society has not yet been matched by legislative action. Biden had set a deadline of Tuesday for the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which contains reforms such as a ban on chokeholds, to become law.It passed the House of Representatives in March but is faltering in the Senate where Republicans object to a provision ending qualified immunity, which shields officers from legal action by victims and families for alleged civil rights violations. The family urged quicker action.Philonise said pointedly: “If you can make federal laws to protect the bird which is the bald eagle, you can make federal law to protect people of colour.”Brandon Williams, Floyd’s nephew, added: “He let us know that he supports passing the bill, but he wants to make sure that it’s the right bill and not a rushed bill.” The family’s lawyer, Ben Crump, said the group was about to meet Senators Cory Booker and Tim Scott, who are working on a bipartisan deal. “We all want just policing where George Floyd will get an opportunity to take a breath without having a knee on his neck,” he said. “It has been 57 years since we’ve had meaningful legislation.”Some observers have suggested that Biden should use his bully pulpit to push Congress harder. The anniversary came as a warning that patience could wear thin.The president, who made racial justice central to his election campaign and enjoyed strong support among African American voters, issued a statement following the meeting. “The Floyd family has shown extraordinary courage, especially his young daughter Gianna, who I met again today,” he said. “The day before her father’s funeral a year ago, Jill and I met the family and she told me, ‘Daddy changed the world’. He has.”Biden added that he appreciates “the good-faith efforts from Democrats and Republicans” to pass a meaningful bill out of the Senate. “We have to act. We face an inflection point. The battle for the soul of America has been a constant push and pull between the American ideal that we’re all created equal and the harsh reality that racism has long torn us apart.”Floyd died on 25 May 2020 when the then Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on his neck for more than nine minutes, despite the 46-year-old repeatedly saying he could not breathe.The killing, captured on video by a bystander, triggered months of demonstrations at systemic racism and policing. Chauvin was convicted of murder and is awaiting sentencing next month.Floyd was honoured across America on Tuesday. In Minneapolis, a foundation created in his memory organised an afternoon of music and food in a park near the downtown courtroom where Chauvin stood trial. Nine minutes of silence were observed. Later, mourners were to gather for a candlelight vigil.Barack Obama, the first Black US president, issued a statement that acknowledged hundreds more Americans have died in encounters with police but also expressed hope.“Today, more people in more places are seeing the world more clearly than they did a year ago.” he said. “It’s a tribute to all those who decided that this time would be different – and that they, in their own ways, would help make it different.”Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate majority leader, noted how the “ stomach-churning video” of Floyd’s death rippled beyond the US.“The name of George Floyd was chanted in Rome, Paris, London, Amsterdam, Berlin and Mexico City,” he said. “As recently as this weekend, professional soccer players in the [English] Premier League knelt before the game in support of the global movement against racism touched off by George Floyd.“This was not only a fight for justice for one man and his family, who I’ve had the privilege to meet with, but a fight against the discrimination that Black men and women suffer at the hands of state power, not just here in America but around the globe.”Earlier, the Floyd family had visited the Capitol to push the police reform legislation in meetings with members of Congress including House speaker Nancy Pelosi. Karen Bass, a Democrat and the lead House negotiator, renewed her commitment to compromise with Republicans.“We will get this bill on President Biden’s desk,” she said. “What is important is that … it’s a substantive piece of legislation, and that is far more important than a specific date. We will work until we get the job done. It will be passed in a bipartisan manner.”Legislation has been pursued in all 50 states and the District of Columbia to increase accountability or oversight of police; 24 states have enacted new laws. More

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      China labels Nancy Pelosi ‘full of lies’ after call for Winter Olympics boycott

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      China has labelled the US House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, “full of lies and disinformation” after her calls for a diplomatic boycott of next year’s Beijing Winter Olympics and Paralympics on human rights grounds.“Some US individuals’ remarks are full of lies and disinformation,” a foreign ministry spokesperson, Zhao Lijian, said on Wednesday. “US politicians should stop using the Olympic movement to play despicable political games” or using “the so-called human rights issue as a pretext to smear and slander China”, he added.Zhao hit out at the US’s human rights record, citing “the continuing spread of xenophobia, white supremacy and discrimination against people of African and Asian descent and Islamophobia”.On Tuesday Pelosi criticised China’s human rights record and urged global leaders not to attend the Winter Olympics scheduled to be held in Beijing in February.“What I propose – and join those who are proposing – is a diplomatic boycott,” Pelosi said at a bipartisan congressional hearing, adding that leading countries should “withhold their attendance at the Olympics”.“Let’s not honour the Chinese government by having heads of state go to China,” she added. “For heads of state to go to China in light of a genocide that is ongoing – while you’re sitting there in your seat – really begs the question: what moral authority do you have to speak again about human rights any place in the world?”Joe Biden’s administration has called China’s treatment of its Uyghur minority “genocide”, a charge Beijing has vehemently denied. The US president has said his administration hopes to develop a joint approach with allies on participation in Beijing’s Olympics.US legislators have been increasingly critical of China’s human rights record of late, and talk of shunning the Beijing Winter Olympics has been growing among some US allies and human rights activists since last year.The Massachusetts Democratic representative Jim McGovern has proposed relocating the Winter Olympics. “If we can postpone an Olympics by a year for a pandemic, we can surely postpone the Olympics for a year for a genocide … This would give the IOC time to relocate to a country whose government is not committing atrocities.”The Republican congressman Chris Smith of New Jersey said corporate sponsors should be called to testify before Congress and be “held to account … big business wants to make lots of money, and it doesn’t seem to matter what cruelty – even genocide – that the host nation commits.”In Britain, several MPs have joined the calls for a boycott. However, a separate online petition in February calling for the UK parliament to debate a motion that would lead to a boycott from Team GB was rejected.Washington led a boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In retaliation, the Soviet bloc snubbed the 1984 Los Angeles summer Games.The recent calls for a boycott are reminiscent of the international response to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. But Sarah Hirshland, the chief executive of the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee, said past Olympic boycotts had failed to achieve their political ends.She said her organisation was concerned about the “oppression of the Uyghur population” but barring US athletes from the Games was “certainly not the answer”. More

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      Biden will be flanked by two women as he addresses Congress in historic first

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      When Joe Biden gives his first speech to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, viewers will be treated to a historic first – the sight of two women, Kamala Harris and Nancy Pelosi, seated behind the president.Harris, the first female, Black and south Asian vice-president, and Pelosi, the first female House speaker, will take up their positions as Biden reflects on the first 99 days of his presidency and lays out his vision for the 1362 days to come.Their presence demonstrates a measure of progress in the quest for gender equality in the US – even if Harris and Pelosi will be flanking an aging white, male president – and Harris, in particular, proves a contrast to the past four years, which saw Donald Trump willed on by a bewitched Mike Pence.Biden is expected to use the speech, which comes before his 100th day in office on Thursday, to address the state of the Covid pandemic, and push the $2tn infrastructure plan he unveiled at the end of March. The president will also discuss the need for better healthcare, according to the Washington Post, and will renew his call for police reform.Viewers are likely to see Harris and Pelosi rise to their feet repeatedly during Biden’s address to applaud – something Pelosi largely avoided during Trump’s speeches to Congress.Biden, as vice-president, spent eight years seated behind Barack Obama as the latter addressed joint sessions of Congress, with Harris assuming Biden’s former seat for the first time on Wednesday.Pelosi has plenty of experience in these settings, having served as speaker of the House since 2019, and previously from 2007 to 2011.In 2019 her parental-style clapping of Donald Trump during his State of the Union address became a viral moment, while a year later she was lauded by the left after she tore up a copy of Trump’s speech.A president’s first address to Congress is usually an extravagant affair, witnessed by hundreds of guests, but the Covid pandemic means the audience was scaled back for Biden’s speech. Only one member of the supreme court – Chief Justice John Roberts – was invited, and members of Congress were told not to bring guests. More

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      Madam Speaker review: how Nancy Pelosi outwitted Bush and Trump

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      John Boehner, a Republican predecessor, concedes that Nancy Pelosi may be the most powerful House speaker in history. Pelosi provided George W Bush with the votes he needed to prevent a depression, as Republicans balked. She helped make Obamacare the law of the land.Pelosi repeatedly humbled Donald Trump. Already this year, she has outlasted his acolytes’ invasion of the Capitol and helped jam Joe Biden’s Covid relief through Congress. Hers is an “iron fist” wrapped in a “Gucci glove”, in the words of Susan Page and John Bresnahan of Politico.This latest Pelosi biography traces her trajectory from Baltimore to DC. Geographically circuitous, Pelosi’s ascent was neither plodding nor meteoric.Page delivers a worthwhile and documented read, a running interview with her subject together with quotes from friends and foes. Andy Card, chief of staff to Bush, and Newt Gingrich, a disgraced House speaker, both pay grudging tribute to the congresswoman from San Francisco.In the same spirit, Steve Bannon, Trump’s pardoned White House counselor, is caught calling Pelosi an “assassin”. He meant it as a compliment.Page is Washington bureau chief for USA Today. She has covered seven presidencies and moderated last fall’s vice-presidential debate. She also wrote Matriarch, a biography of Barbara Bush.Trump made the personal political and vice versa. Pelosi had a long memory and kept grudgesMadam Speaker makes clear that the speakership was not a job Pelosi spent a lifetime craving but it is definitely a role she wanted and, more importantly, mastered. She understood that no one relinquishes power for the asking. Rather, it must be taken.Pelosi took on the boys club and won. Ask Steny Hoyer, the No2 House Democrat. Her tire tracks cover his back. As fate would have it, their younger selves worked together in the same office for the same boss.Catholicism and the New Deal were foundational and formational. Thomas D’Alesandro Jr, Pelosi’s father, served in Congress and as mayor of Baltimore, a position later held by her brother. Pelosi is a liberal, albeit one with an eye toward the practical. Utopia can wait. AOC is not her cup of tea.As a novice congressional candidate, Pelosi was not built for the stump. She chaired the California Democratic party and the finance committee of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Her specialty was the inside game. No matter. In a spring of 1987 special election, Pelosi reached out to Bay area Republicans. They provided her margin of victory.Once in Congress, Pelosi became the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee and climbed to join the party leadership. Fundraising skills and attention to detail helped.Pelosi also made common cause with unusual suspects. Page records her friendship with the late John Murtha, a gruff ex-marine and congressman from western Pennsylvania – God and Guns country.Murtha furnished Pelosi with ammo and cover in opposing the Iraq war. He also managed her quest for the speakership. After Murtha lost to Hoyer in an intra-party contest in 2006, the Pennsylvanian announced his retirement.Among Murtha’s notes found by Page was one that read: “More liberal than I but she has ability to get things done and she’s given a tremendous service to our Congress and country.” Another one: “Able to come to a practical solution.”Page’s book chronicles Pelosi’s capacity to judge talent. She took an early shine to a young Adam Schiff, another east coast transplant, but held a dimmer view of Jerrold Nadler, a long-in-the-tooth congressman from Manhattan’s Upper West Side and chair of the judiciary committee.A former federal prosecutor, Schiff wrested his California seat from James Rogan, a Republican. Nadler could not control his own committee. After a raucous hearing in September 2019, the die was set. Schiff, not Nadler, would be riding herd in Trump’s first impeachment. Seniority and tradition took a back seat to competence.Context mattered as well. Pelosi’s relationship with Bush was fraught, yet she squashed Democratic moves to impeach him over Iraq – a move Trump actually advocated. She had witnessed Bill Clinton’s impeachment and concluded that harsh political judgments were generally best left to the electorate. Impeachment was not politics as usual. Or another tool in the kit.Trump was different. Practically speaking, draining the swamp translated into trampling norms and the law. Bill Barr, his second attorney general, had an expansive view of executive power and a disdain for truth and Democrats. His presence emboldened Trump.For more than two years, Pelosi resisted impeachment efforts by firebrands in her party. She acceded when Trump’s Ukraine gambit became public. He had frozen military aid to Russia’s embattled neighbor, seeking to prod the country into investigating Joe and Hunter Biden.Trump made the personal political and vice versa. Pelosi had a long memory and kept grudges. But this was different. After Biden’s election victory, Pelosi called Trump a “psychopathic nut”. A mother of five and grandmother to nine, she knew something about unruly children.Pelosi is not clairvoyant. She predicted a Hillary Clinton win in 2016 and Democratic triumphs down-ballot four years later. Instead, Clinton watches the Biden presidency from the sidelines, the Senate is split 50-50 and Pelosi’s margin in the House is down to a handful of votes.To her credit, Pelosi quickly internalized that Trump was a would-be authoritarian whose respect for electoral outcomes was purely situational: heads I win, tails I still win. Populism was only for the part of the populace that embraced him.Hours after the Capitol insurrection, at 3.42am on 7 January 2021, the rioters were spent, the challenges done, the election certified.“To those who strove to deter us from our responsibility,” Pelosi declared: “You have failed.”Biden sits behind the Resolute desk. Pelosi wields her gavel. More

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      Matt Gaetz: Liz Cheney ‘sickened’ but stops short of calling for resignation

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      Two of the most powerful women in Congress on Sunday called allegations of sexual misconduct against the Republican representative Matt Gaetz “sickening” and in “clear violation” of House rules – but stopped short of calling for him to resign.The prominent Trump supporter faces investigations by law enforcement and the House ethics committee. Multiple reports have linked Gaetz to a political ally indicted for sex trafficking and other crimes. Gaetz is reported to be under investigation for possible sex trafficking of a 17-year-old girl; for allegedly paying for sex; for alleged use of illegal drugs; and for allegedly showing House members nude pictures of women. It has also been reported that before Donald Trump left power, Gaetz unsuccessfully sought a blanket, pre-emptive pardon.The congressman denies all claims of wrongdoing and has said he will not resign. Speaking at a pro-Trump event in Florida on Friday, he said: “The truth will prevail.”But his indicted ally, former Florida tax collector Joel Greenberg, is reported to be close to a deal with prosecutors, a move which would deepen Gaetz’s jeopardy.It’s up to the Republican leader, Mr McCarthy, to act upon that behaviourOn CBS’s Face the Nation the Democratic House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, was asked if it was time for Gaetz to go. “Well,” she said, “it’s up to the Republicans to take responsibility for that. We in the Congress, in the House, have rule 23, which says that in the conduct of our duties we are not to bring dishonour to the House of Representatives. I think there’s been a clear violation of that. “But it’s up to the ethics committee to investigate that. And it’s up to the Republican leader, Mr McCarthy, to act upon that behaviour.”The House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, has said the claims against Gaetz “have serious implications”. But the California congressman must seek to control an unruly caucus in which Gaetz is a leading pro-Trump provocateur. Few Republicans have spoken against Gaetz though few have defended him either.In January, he travelled to Wyoming to address a rally against Liz Cheney, a senior member of Republican House leadership who voted to impeach Trump for inciting the US Capitol attack. The daughter of former vice-president Dick Cheney also spoke to CBS on Sunday.Asked if she was “ready to call for his resignation”, she said: “You know, as the mother of daughters, the charges certainly are sickening. And as the speaker noted, there’s an ethics investigation under way. There are also criminal investigations under way. And I’m not going to comment further on that publicly right now.” More