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      Robert F Kennedy Jr vows to investigate January 6 prosecutions for political bias

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr, the lawyer, conspiracy theorist and independent candidate for US president, vowed to investigate “whether prosecutorial discretion was abused for political ends” in convictions of January 6 rioters – just one day after his campaign said a fundraising reference to such prisoners as “activists” was an unfortunate error.In a statement on Friday, Kennedy said that as president, he would “appoint a special counsel – an individual respected by all sides – to investigate whether prosecutorial discretion was abused for political ends in this case, and I will right any wrongs that we discover”.On 6 January 2021, Donald Trump supporters attacked the US Capitol after the former president told them to “fight like hell” to block certification of his defeat by Joe Biden. Nine deaths are linked to the attack, including law enforcement suicides. More than 1,300 arrests have been made and nearly 1,000 convictions secured, some for seditious conspiracy. Some rioters have been held before trial.Trump was impeached for inciting an insurrection but acquitted when enough Senate Republicans stayed loyal. Now the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Trump has called January 6 prisoners “hostages” and “unbelievable patriots”; promoted a rendition of the national anthem performed in a Washington jail; and said that if re-elected, he will “free the January 6 hostages being wrongfully imprisoned”.Earlier this week, the Kennedy campaign ran into a media firestorm when a fundraising email referred to “J6 activists sitting in a Washington DC jail cell stripped of their constitutional liberties” and compared them to Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency whistleblower who lives in exile in Russia, and Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder held in the UK while the US seeks extradition.Amid uproar, a Kennedy spokesperson said: “That statement was an error that does not reflect Mr Kennedy’s views. It was inserted by a new marketing contractor and slipped through the normal approval process.”But on Friday, Kennedy indicated that he does think some January 6 prisoners might be activists wrongly imprisoned.“January 6 is one of the most polarising topics on the political landscape,” he said. “I am listening to people of diverse viewpoints on it in order to make sense of the event and what followed. I want to hear every side.“It is quite clear that many of the January 6 protesters broke the law in what may have started as a protest but turned into a riot. Because it happened with the encouragement of President Trump, and in the context of his delusion that the election was stolen from him, many people see it not as a riot but as an insurrection.“I have not examined the evidence in detail, but reasonable people, including Trump opponents, tell me there is little evidence of a true insurrection. They observe that the protesters carried no weapons, had no plans or ability to seize the reins of government, and that Trump himself had urged them to protest ‘peacefully’.”That statement was in accordance with others, collected by NBC News, in which Kennedy has questioned or dismissed the severity of events on January 6.View image in fullscreenFurthermore, the House committee that investigated January 6 detailed how protesters did carry weapons, some armed with guns; how Trump whipped up the crowd before belatedly appealing for calm; and how the riot followed lengthy attempts to find a legalistic way to keep Trump in power.“Like many reasonable Americans,” Kennedy continued, “I am concerned about the possibility that political objectives motivated the vigour of the prosecution of the J6 defendants, their long sentences, and their harsh treatment.”Echoing claims by Trump and Republicans in Congress, he said: “That would fit a disturbing pattern of the weaponisation of government agencies … against political opponents. One can, as I do, oppose Donald Trump and all he stands for, and still be disturbed by the weaponisation of government against him.”Kennedy polls in double figures, has attracted millions of dollars in donations, has named a running mate (Nicole Shanahan, an attorney) and is seeking ballot access in key states. But he remains most likely to act as a spoiler in November, siphoning votes from both candidates but, many observers think, doing more damage to Biden.In his Friday statement, Kennedy claimed to be following the example of the second US president, John Adams, “a staunch patriot” who in 1770 took on an unpopular task, “defend[ing] the British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre”.Kennedy also said Democrats as well as Republicans were “using J6 to pour fuel on the fire of America’s divisions”, and charged both parties with “demonising … opponents as apocalyptic threats to democracy”.Many observers, however, view Kennedy himself as a threat to US democracy.On Friday, before Kennedy issued his statement about January 6, Rahna Epting of Move On, a progressive advocacy group, and Matthew Bennett of Third Way, a centre-left group, described to reporters plans to switch from campaigning against No Labels, the centrist group that dropped out of the presidential race this week, to targeting Kennedy and his campaign.“I want to be clear,” Epting said. “Robert Kennedy Jr’s ill-fated run for the presidency is helping put Donald Trump back in the White House and we’re going to work to stop that. Just as we organised against No Labels we’re going to organise against Robert Kennedy Jr. We’re going to let folks know we can’t win, but he can help Trump win.” More

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      Robert F Kennedy campaign calls January 6 rioters ‘activists’ in email

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      A spokesperson for the independent US presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr said a passage in a fundraising email that called January 6 prisoners “activists … stripped of their constitutional liberties” was the result of an error by an outside contractor.“That statement was an error that does not reflect Mr Kennedy’s views,” the spokesperson, Stefanie Spear, told NBC News, which first reported the fundraising email. “It was inserted by a new marketing contractor and slipped through the normal approval process.”The email, sent by Team Kennedy, asked for “help … call[ing] out the illiberal actions of our very own government”.It also said: “This is the reality that every American citizen faces – from Ed Snowden to Julian Assange to the J6 activists sitting in a Washington DC jail cell stripped of their constitutional liberties.”Snowden, who leaked information about National Security Agency surveillance to outlets including the Guardian, has lived in Russia for 10 years. Assange founded WikiLeaks, which leaked US national security information, also to outlets including the Guardian. Jailed in the UK since April 2019, he is fighting extradition to the US.On 6 January 2021, Congress was attacked by a mob Donald Trump told to “fight like hell” to block certification of his election defeat by Joe Biden, in support of Trump’s electoral fraud lie. Nine deaths are now linked to the riot, including law enforcement suicides. More than 1,300 arrests have been made and nearly a thousand convictions secured, some for seditious conspiracy.Trump was impeached for inciting an insurrection, but acquitted when enough Senate Republicans stayed loyal. As the presumptive GOP nominee for president this year, he has called January 6 prisoners “hostages” and “unbelievable patriots” and featured at rallies a rendition of the national anthem by some held in a Washington jail.Trump has said that if re-elected, he will “free the January 6 hostages being wrongfully imprisoned”.An attorney by training, Kennedy, 70, is the son of a US attorney general, Robert F Kennedy, and nephew of a former president, John F Kennedy. Though his independent campaign is unlikely to win the White House, he has polled strongly. If elected, he has said, he will pardon Snowden and Assange and “look at individual cases” regarding January 6.Kennedy has also said Biden presents “a much worse threat to democracy” than Trump, because of supposed suppression of free speech regarding the coronavirus pandemic – a comment Kennedy, a prominent vaccine skeptic and Covid conspiracy theorist, then claimed was deceptively edited.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOn Thursday, reporting the Team Kennedy email that called January 6 prisoners “activists”, NBC detailed how just 15 such Trump supporters are being held without having been convicted.“Most of them are credibly accused of violence against law enforcement officials,” NBC said.Examples included two prisoners who have killed people, one “charged with setting off an explosive in a tunnel full of police officers” during the Capitol attack and one “charged with conspiring to kill the FBI employees who worked on his case, a plot that allegedly unfolded after his initial pretrial release”. More

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      New book details Steve Bannon’s ‘Maga movement’ plan to rule for 100 years

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      Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign chair and White House strategist, believed before the 2020 election and the January 6 attack on Congress that a “Maga movement” of Trump supporters “could rule for a hundred years”.“Outside the uniparty,” the Washington Post reporter Isaac Arnsdorf writes in a new book, referring to Bannon’s term for the political establishment, “as Bannon saw it, there was the progressive wing of the Democratic party, which he considered a relatively small slice of the electorate. And the rest, the vast majority of the country, was Maga.“Bannon believed the Maga movement, if it could break out of being suppressed and marginalised by the establishment, represented a dominant coalition that could rule for a hundred years.”Arnsdorf’s book, Finish What We Started: The Maga Movement’s Ground War to End Democracy, will be published next week. The Post published an excerpt on Thursday.A businessman who became a driver of far-right thought through his stewardship of Breitbart News, Bannon was Trump’s campaign chair in 2016 and his chief White House strategist in 2017, a post he lost after neo-Nazis marched in Charlottesville that summer.He remained close to Trump, however, particularly as Trump attempted to overturn his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden.That attempt culminated in the attack on Congress of 6 January 2021, when supporters Trump told to “fight like hell” to block certification of Biden’s win attacked the US Capitol.Nine deaths have been linked to the attack, including law enforcement suicides. More than 1,200 arrests have been made and hundreds of convictions secured. Trump was impeached for inciting the insurrection but acquitted by Senate Republicans.Notwithstanding 88 criminal charges for election subversion, retention of classified information and hush-money payments, and multimillion-dollar penalties in civil cases over fraud and defamation, the latter arising from a rape claim a judge called “substantially true”, Trump won the Republican nomination with ease this year.As a Trump-Biden rematch grinds into gear, Bannon remains an influential voice on the far right, particularly through his War Room podcast and despite his own legal problems over contempt of Congress and alleged fraud, both of which he denies.The “uniparty”, in Bannon’s view, as described by Arnsdorf, is “the establishment [Bannon] hungered to destroy. The neocons, neoliberals, big donors, globalists, Wall Street, corporatists, elites.”“Maga” stands for “Make America great again”, Trump’s political slogan.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionArnsdorf writes: “In his confidence that there were secretly millions of Democrats who were yearning to be Maga followers and just didn’t know it yet, Bannon was again taking inspiration from Hoffer, who observed that true believers were prone to conversion from one cause to another since they were driven more by their need to identify with a mass movement than by any particular ideology.”Eric Hoffer, Arnsdorf writes, was “the ‘longshoreman philosopher’, so called because he had worked as a stevedore on the San Francisco docks while writing his first book, The True Believer [which] caused a sensation when it was published in 1951, becoming a manual for comprehending the age of Hitler, Stalin and Mao”.Bannon, Arnsdorf writes, “was not, like a typical political strategist, trying to tinker around the edges of the existing party coalitions in the hope of eking out 50% plus one. Bannon already told you: he wanted to bring everything crashing down.“He wanted to completely dismantle and redefine the parties. He wanted a showdown between a globalist, elite party, called the Democrats, and a populist, Maga party, called the Republicans. In that match-up, he was sure, the Republicans would win every time.”Now, seven months out from election day and with Trump and Biden neck-and-neck in the polls, Bannon’s proposition stands to be tested again.
      Biden v Trump: What’s in store for the US and the world?On Thursday 2 May, 3pm EDT join Tania Branigan, David Smith, Mehdi Hasan and Tara Setmayer for the inside track on the people, the ideas and the events that might shape the US election campaign. Book tickets here or at theguardian.live More

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      in US Politics

      Man with megaphone who led Capitol rioters gets more than seven years in prison

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      A Washington state man who used a megaphone to orchestrate a mob’s attack on police officers guarding the US Capitol was sentenced on Wednesday to more than seven years in prison.Royce Lamberth, the US district judge, said videos captured Taylor James Johnatakis playing a leadership role during the January 6 riot.Johnatakis led other rioters on a charge against a police line, “barked commands” over his megaphone and shouted step-by-step directions for overpowering officers, the judge said.“In any angry mob, there are leaders and there are followers. Mr Johnatakis was a leader. He knew what he was doing that day,” the judge said before sentencing him to seven years and three months behind bars.Johnatakis, who represented himself, with an attorney on standby, has repeatedly expressed rhetoric that appears to be inspired by the anti-government “sovereign citizen” movement. He asked the judge questions at his sentencing, including: “Does the record reflect that I repent in my sins?”Lamberth, who referred to some of Johnatakis’ words as “gobbledygook,” said: “I’m not answering questions here.”Prosecutors recommended a nine-year prison sentence for Johnatakis, a self-employed installer of septic systems.“Johnatakis was not just any rioter; he led, organized, and encouraged the assault of officers at the US Capitol on January 6,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing.A jury convicted him of felony charges after a trial last year in Washington DC.Johnatakis, 40, of Kingston, Washington, had a megaphone strapped to his back when he marched to the Capitol from Donald Trump’s so-called Stop the Steal rally near the White House on January 6, when he was claiming not to have lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden.“It’s over,” he shouted at the crowd of Trump supporters. “Michael Pence has voted against the president. We are down to the nuclear option.”Johnatakis was one of the first to chase a group of police officers who were retreating up stairs outside the Capitol. He shouted and gestured for other rioters to prepare to attack.Johnatakis shouted “Go!” before he and others shoved a metal barricade into a line of police officers. He also grabbed an officer’s arm.“The crime is complete,” Johnatakis posted on social media several hours after he left the Capitol. He was arrested in February 2021. Jurors convicted him last November of seven counts, including obstruction of the January 6 joint session of Congress that belatedly certified Joe Biden’s electoral victory. The jury also convicted him of assault and civil disorder charges.Approximately 1,350 people have been charged with Capitol riot-related federal crimes. Over 800 of them have been sentenced, with roughly two-thirds getting terms of imprisonment ranging from several days to 22 years. More

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      Supreme court rules insurrection clause bars local official despite sparing Trump

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      The US supreme court declined an appeal on Monday from a former New Mexico county commissioner who was removed from office for his role in the January 6 attack, leaving intact a significant decision that enforced a constitutional ban on insurrectionists holding office.The commissioner, Couy Griffin, is the only US public official thus far who has been removed from office for his role in the January 6 attack. Citing language in the 14th amendment that bars insurrectionists from holding office, a New Mexico judge removed him in 2022 after he was convicted of trespassing on the Capitol grounds. The New Mexico supreme court dismissed an initial appeal in the state.The US supreme court’s decision not to revisit the case comes two weeks after they said states could not use the 14th amendment to bar Trump from running for president absent legislation from Congress. While the supreme court said states cannot use the 14th amendment to disqualify people from federal office, it made it clear that “States may disqualify persons holding or attempting to hold state office.”The court gave no reason for its decision to reject Griffin’s appeal and there were no noted dissents. Griffin said he was disappointed in the court’s decision.“It’s a disappointment like I haven’t felt in a long time,” he wrote in a text message. “As I sit right now the only office I can run for is the executive office. Trump needs a vice president who can stand strong through the hardest of times. And I can only pray I’d be considered.”Griffin’s case was widely seen as one of the first tests of whether the language on the 14th amendment, drafted in the 19th century after the civil war, could be applied to actions taken on 6 January.He was one of three commissioners in Otero county, which has about 69,000 people and sits on the border with Texas. Trump overwhelmingly won the county in 2020. As a member of the body responsible for certifying the election, Griffin encouraged David Clements, a well-known election denier, to question election results in the county. In 2022, he and the other commissioners refused to certify the election, citing vague concerns of voter fraud. The New Mexico secretary of state sued the county to force them to certify the election, which they eventually did.Griffin was also the co-founder of the group Cowboys for Trump, and recruited people as part of a bus tour to come to Washington on 6 January. He appeared at events alongside violent groups and tried to normalize the idea of using violence to stay in power, Judge Francis Mathew wrote in his decision removing Griffin from office.“By refusing to take up this appeal, the Supreme Court keeps in place the finding that January 6 was an insurrection, and ensures that states can still apply the 14th Amendment’s disqualification clause to state officials,” said Noah Bookbinder, the president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew), a non-profit that backed the effort to remove Griffin.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Crucially, this decision reinforces that every decision-making body that has substantively considered the issue has found that January 6 was an insurrection, and Donald Trump engaged in that insurrection. Now it is up to the states to fulfill their duty under Section 3 to remove from office anyone who broke their oath by participating in the January 6 insurrection.” More

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      Trump calls for Liz Cheney to be jailed for investigating him over Capitol attack

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      Donald Trump has renewed calls for Liz Cheney – his most prominent Republican critic – to be jailed for her role in investigating his actions during the January 6 Capitol attack launched by his supporters in 2021, a move that is bound to raise further fears that the former president could persecute his political opponents if given another White House term.In posts on Sunday on his Truth Social platform, Trump said other members of the congressional committee that investigated the Capitol attack – and concluded he had plotted to overturn his 2020 electoral defeat to Joe Biden – should be imprisoned.Those statements followed Trump’s previous comments that he would act like a “dictator” on the first day of a second presidency if given one by voters.Cheney, who served as vice-chair of the January 6 committee and was one of two Republicans on the panel, lost her seat in the House of Representatives to a Trump-backed challenger, Harriet Hageman, in 2022. She responded later on Sunday, saying her fellow Republican Trump was “afraid of the truth”.Trump has been charged with four felonies in relation to his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, including conspiracy to defraud the United States. The US supreme court is considering Trump’s claim that he has absolute immunity from prosecution in the case because he served as president from 2017 to 2021.Trump is also facing charges of 2020 election interference in Georgia, retention of government secrets after he left the Oval Office and hush-money payments that were illicitly covered up.On Sunday, Trump wrote that Cheney should “go to jail along with the rest” of the select January 6 House committee, which he sought to insult in his post on Truth Social by calling it the “unselect committee”.Trump founded Truth after he was temporarily banned from Twitter – now known as X – in the wake of the January 6 insurrection.In a separate Truth Social post, Trump linked to an article written by Kash Patel, a White House staffer in Trump’s administration. In the article, published on the rightwing website the Federalist, Patel claimed that Cheney and the committee “suppressed evidence” which “completely exonerates Trump” from charges that he had a hand in the January 6 insurrection.Patel, who was chief of staff in the defense department under Trump, said in December that if the former president was re-elected, his administration would “come after the people in the media” who had reported on Trump’s attempts to remain in power.Trump wrote: “She [Cheney] should be prosecuted for what she has done to our country! She illegally destroyed the evidence. Unreal!!!”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe suggestions that Cheney and others should be targeted for their role in the January 6 investigation came after House Republicans released a report that they claim contradicts the testimony that Trump tried to grab the wheel of his presidential limousine on January 6 in his excitement to join his supporters attacking the Capitol.Cheney was one of 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Trump over the attack, which has been linked to nine deaths and sought to prevent the congressional certification of Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.After a series of retirements and Trump-backed primary challenges, only two of those Republicans remain in office.Cheney’s father, former US vice-president Dick Cheney, released a video in 2022 urging Republicans to reject Trump.“He is a coward. A real man wouldn’t lie to his supporters. He lost his election, and he lost big,” Dick Cheney, who served as George W Bush’s vice-president, said in the video. More

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      in Elections

      Trump says pardoning Capitol attackers will be one of his first acts if elected again

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      Donald Trump has said one of his first acts if given a second presidency would be to pardon the insurrectionists who carried out the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, referring to them as “hostages” in a Truth Social post on Monday night.“My first acts as your next President will be to Close the Border, DRILL, BABY, DRILL, and Free January 6 Hostages being wrongfully imprisoned!” Trump wrote.Though he has long said he will dismiss charges against the rioters if elected, the post is the closest Trump has come to saying that pardons for the Capitol attack rioters is a first-day priority, along with oil and gas drilling as well as a crackdown at the US-Mexico border. Trump’s post came after he has implied that he plans to be a “dictator” on his first day back in office if returned to the White House after losing to Joe Biden in 2020.“We’re closing the border and we’re drilling, drilling, drilling,” Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity at a town hall event in December when asked if he would be a dictator. “After that, I’m not a dictator.”Trump has emphasized his “drilling” plans on the campaign trail as a way to highlight the inflation that has been seen during Biden’s presidency.The Truth Social post is not the first time Trump has referred to those prosecuted for participating in the riots meant to disrupt the congressional certification of Biden’s electoral victory as “hostages”. The former president has been using the term for months in attempts to downplay the attack that left 140 police officers injured and has been linked to nine deaths.In January, a Republican-appointed federal judge – during sentencing proceedings for a January 6 attacker – said that “in my thirty-seven years on the bench, I cannot recall a time when such meritless justifications of criminal activity have gone mainstream”.“I have been dismayed to see distortions and outright falsehoods seep into public consciousness,” Judge Royce Lamberth wrote.Since the Capitol attack, 1,358 people from nearly all 50 states have been charged for participating in the riot, and many have been convicted, according to the justice department. Nearly 500 have been charged with the felony of assaulting or impeding law enforcement, with many convicted as well.Trump himself was supposed to face trial for his attempts to overturn the 2020 election. But the supreme court in April is planning to hear arguments over whether the former president is immune to prosecution.The January 6 insurrection was likely on Trump’s mind on Monday night after the Republican-led House committee investigating the attack released a report that said four former White House employees contradicted a part of ex-aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony about Trump’s behavior before the attack.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA dramatic part of Hutchinson’s testimony, which she gave in public in 2022, included her reports that an irritable Trump lunged at the steering wheel of his car after Secret Service agents refused to take him to the Capitol after he gave a speech to supporters before the attack. Hutchinson said that another former White House staffer had told her that Trump tried to grab the wheel.But the committee’s new report said: “None of the White House employees corroborated Hutchinson’s sensational story about president Trump’s lunging for the steering wheel.”Instead, an unnamed Secret Service agent told the committee that while Trump was insistent on going to the Capitol, and had clear irritation in his voice when talking to his agents, Trump never grabbed for the wheel.Hutchinson, through her lawyer, has said that she will not “succumb to a pressure campaign from those who seek to silence her”. More

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      House Republicans’ report contradicts witness account of Trump’s wheel-grab

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      US House Republicans on Monday released a report they said contradicted sensational January 6 committee testimony in which a former aide to Donald Trump described being told that as the attack on Congress unfolded, the then president was so eager to join supporters at the Capitol he tried to grab the wheel of his car.“The testimony of … four White House employees directly contradicts claims made by Cassidy Hutchinson and by the select committee in the final report,” read the report by the House administration subcommittee on oversight, which searched for alleged bias or malpractice in the January 6 investigation.“None of the White House employees corroborated Hutchinson’s sensational story about President Trump lunging for the steering wheel of the Beast,” the report said, referring to the colloquial name for cars that carry the president.“Some witnesses did describe the president’s mood after the speech at the Ellipse. It is highly improbable that the other White House employees would have heard about the president’s mood in the SUV following his speech at the Ellipse, but not heard the sensational story that Hutchinson claims Anthony Ornato, the White House deputy chief of staff for operations, told her after returning to the White House on January 6.”Hutchinson, a former aide to Trump and his final chief of staff, Mark Meadows, testified before the January 6 committee in private and in public.In public, her testimony about Trump’s anger at his inability to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden made her a star witness, compared by some to John Dean, the White House counsel whose testimony sealed Richard Nixon’s fate in the Watergate scandal.In especially memorable testimony, Hutchinson described what she said Ornato told her about Trump’s reaction, after telling supporters to “fight like hell”, to being told he could not go with them to the Capitol, to try to block election certification.According to Hutchinson, Ornato said Trump furiously lunged for the wheel before a secret service agent grabbed his arm and said: “Sir, you need to take your hand off the steering wheel. We’re going back to the West Wing. We’re not going to the Capitol.”Hutchinson said she was told “Trump then used his free hand to lunge towards Bobby Engel [an agent] and when Mr Ornato recounted the story to me, he motioned towards his clavicles”.Questioned by Liz Cheney, an anti-Trump Republican and January 6 committee vice-chair, Hutchinson said Engel did not dispute the account. It was soon reported that Engel did dispute it, and wanted to testify under oath.Among transcripts released on Monday, the unnamed agent who drove Trump said: “The president was insistent on going to the Capitol. It was clear to me he wanted to go to the Capitol.”“He was not screaming at Mr Engel. He was not screaming at me. Certainly his voice was raised, but it did not seem to me that he was irate – [he] certainly … didn’t seem as irritated or agitated as he had on the way to the Ellipse,” the area near the White House where Trump addressed supporters.The driver added: “I did not see him reach. He never grabbed the steering wheel. I didn’t see him, you know, lunge to try to get into the front seat at all. You know, what stood out was the irritation in his voice, more than his physical presence.”The transcript was among those the January 6 committee did not release, citing security concerns. The transcripts were eventually released with redactions.On Monday, the New York Times said former January 6 committee aides said its final report included details of the driver’s interview and no cover-up was attempted.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe final report said: “The committee has now obtained evidence from several sources about a ‘furious interaction’ in the SUV. The vast majority of witnesses who have testified before the select committee about this topic, including multiple members of the secret service, a member of the Metropolitan police, and national security and military officials in the White House, described President Trump’s behavior as ‘irate’, ‘furious’, ‘insistent’, ‘profane’ and ‘heated’.”It also said: “It is difficult to fully reconcile the accounts of several of the witnesses who provided information with what we heard from Engel and Ornato. But the principal factual point here is clear and undisputed: President Trump specifically and repeatedly requested to be taken to the Capitol. He was insistent and angry, and continued to push to travel to the Capitol even after returning to the White House.”On Monday, Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, the Republican select committee chair, said the report showed “firsthand testimony directly contradicts Cassidy Hutchinson’s story and the [January 6] committee’s narrative. Although the committee had this critical information, they still promoted Ms Hutchinson’s third-hand version of events.”Now 27, Hutcinson has released a memoir and become a prominent figure on the anti-Trump right. On Monday, her attorney re-released a letter to Loudermilk first sent in January.“Since Ms Hutchinson changed counsel,” the letter said, referring to her decision to stop using lawyers provided by Trump, “she has and will continue to tell the truth.“While other individuals … would not speak with the select committee, Ms Hutchinson and many other witnesses courageously stepped forward. Yet she now finds herself being questioned by you and your subcommittee regarding her testimony and on matters that may also be the subject of ongoing criminal proceedings against Mr Trump.”Trump, 77, is the presumptive Republican nominee to face Biden again in the fall. He still faces 91 criminal charges, 17 concerning attempted election subversion. Though Trump was impeached for inciting an insurrection, Senate Republicans assured his acquittal.Hutchinson, her lawyer said, would not “succumb to a pressure campaign from those who seek to silence her”. More