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      Republican senator won’t condemn Trump for defending chants of ‘Hang Mike Pence’

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      Republican senator won’t condemn Trump for defending chants of ‘Hang Mike Pence’
      John Barrasso, Senate No 3, dodges Capitol attack questions
      Retiring representative Gonzalez predicts new Trump coup
      Is Trump planning a 2024 coup?
      A senior Senate Republican refused four times on Sunday to condemn Donald Trump for defending supporters who chanted “Hang Mike Pence” during the deadly assault on the US Capitol on 6 January.‘Pence was disloyal at exactly the right time’: author Jonathan Karl on the Capitol attackRead moreTrump made the comments about his vice-president, who did not yield to pressure to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory, in an interview with ABC’s chief Washington correspondent, Jonathan Karl.John Barrasso of Wyoming, the third-ranking Republican in the Senate, appeared on ABC’s This Week. He was asked: “Can your party tolerate a leader who defends murderous chants against his own vice-president?”“Well,” said Barrasso. “Let me just say, the Republican party is incredibly united right now and … I think the more that the Democrats and the press becomes obsessed with President Trump, I think the better it is for the Republican party. President Trump brings lots of energy to the party, he’s an enduring force.”He also said the party was focused on elections and policy debate, not the past.His host, George Stephanopoulos, said: “So you have no problem with the president saying, ‘Hang Mike Pence’ is common sense?”“I was with Mike Pence in the Senate chamber during 6 January,” Barrasso said. “And what happened was they quickly got Vice-President Pence out of there, certainly a lot faster than they removed the senators. I believe he was safe the whole time.“I didn’t hear any of those chants. I don’t believe that he did either. And Vice-President Pence came back into the chamber that night and certified the election.”Stephanopoulous said: “We just played the chants. I’m asking you if you can tolerate the president saying ‘Hang Mike Pence’ is common sense.”“It’s not common sense,” Barrasso said, before pivoting to Trump’s lie that the election was subject to widespread voter fraud.“There are issues in every election,” he said. “I voted to certify the election. And what we’ve seen on this election, there are areas that needed to be looked into, like what we saw in Pennsylvania. We all want fair and free elections. That’s where we need to go for the future.”Stephanopoulos said: “But you’re not going to criticise President Trump for those views?”Barrasso said: “I don’t agree with President Trump on everything. I agree with him on the policies that have brought us the best economy in my lifetime. And I’m going to continue to support those policies.”Karl released more snippets of his interview with Trump. Asked if reports he told Pence “you can be a patriot or you can be a pussy” were accurate, Trump said: “I wouldn’t dispute that.”Trump also said he thought Pence could have sent electoral college results back to the House – the overwhelming majority of constitutional scholars say he could not – and said: “I don’t know that I can forgive him.”“He did the wrong thing,” Trump said. “Very nice, man. I like him a lot. I like his family so much, but … it was a tragic mistake.”Trump’s flirtation with another White House run has seen critics within the GOP subject to primary challenges, political ostracisation and even death threats.Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio voted for Trump’s impeachment over the Capitol attack. Like Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, one of only two Republicans on the House select committee investigating 6 January, Gonzalez will retire next year.He told CNN’s State of the Union he feared Trump was formulating plans for a coup.“I think any objective observer would come to this conclusion: that he has evaluated what went wrong on 6 January. Why is it that he wasn’t able to steal the election? Who stood in his way?“Every single American institution is just run by people. And you need the right people to make the right decision in the most difficult times. He’s going systematically through the country and trying to remove those people and install people who are going to do exactly what he wants them to do, who believe the big lie, who will go along with anything he says.“I think it’s all pushing towards one of two outcomes. He either wins legitimately, which he may do, or if he if he loses again, he’ll just try to steal it but he’ll try to steal it with his people in those positions. And that’s then the most difficult challenge for our country. It’s the question, do the institutions hold again? Do they hold with a different set of people in place? I hope so, but you can’t guarantee it.”Gonzalez said he “despised” most Biden policies and would never vote Democratic.Betrayal review: Trump’s final days and a threat not yet extinguishedRead moreBut he said: “The country can’t survive torching the constitution. You have to hold fast to the constitution … and the cold, hard truth is Donald Trump led us into a ditch on 6 January.“… I see fundamentally a person who shouldn’t be able to hold office again because of what he did around 6 January, but I also see somebody who’s an enormous political loser. I don’t know why anybody who wants to win elections would follow that … If he’s the nominee again in ’24 I will do everything I can to make sure he doesn’t win.“… 6 January was the line that can’t be crossed. 6 January was an unconstitutional attempt led by the president of the United States to overturn an American election and reinstall himself in power illegitimately. That’s fallen-nation territory, that’s third-world country territory. My family left Cuba to avoid that fate. I will not let it happen here.”Trump issued a statement on Sunday, repeating lies about election fraud and alluding to the indictment of his former strategist Steve Bannon for contempt of Congress, for ignoring a subpoena from the 6 January committee, and legal jeopardy faced by others including his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows.“American patriots are not going to allow this subversion of justice to continue,” Trump said, adding: “Our country is going to hell!”TopicsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpRepublicansUS politicsUS SenateUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘Pence was disloyal at exactly the right time’: author Jonathan Karl on the Capitol attack

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      Interview‘Pence was disloyal at exactly the right time’: author Jonathan Karl on the Capitol attackDavid Smith in Washington A new book, Betrayal, dissects the final, authoritarian spasm of the Trump presidency, and Karl warns: ‘We came close to losing it all’How did it come to this? For five wretched hours, the vice-president of the United States found himself hiding in a barren underground garage with no windows or furniture. Somewhere above, a baying mob was calling for him to hang.The story of the deadly insurrection on 6 January, when Donald Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to subvert democracy, has been told in newspapers, books and TV documentaries. But journalist Jonathan Karl has seen unpublished photographs from that day that tell a new story about Vice-President Mike Pence.‘A roadmap for a coup’: inside Trump’s plot to steal the presidencyRead moreIn his highly readable new book, Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show, Karl recounts how the rioters broke into the Senate chamber, climbed up into the chair where Pence had just been presiding, posed for pictures and left him a chilling handwritten note: “It’s only a matter of time. Justice is coming.”Congressional leaders Kevin McCarthy, Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer had been rushed to a secure location outside the Capitol. But Pence, who was resisting pressure from Trump and the mob to overturn the election result, a power he did not possess in any case, declined to follow.“They wanted to take him out of the complex immediately and he refused to leave,” Karl says in an interview at an outdoor cafe in north-west Washington. “Pence is not a yeller but he yelled at his Secret Service lead agent, saying, ‘No, I’ve got a job to do, I am staying.’“Then, as the crowd is coming in towards the Senate floor, they said we have to at least get out of here because the room he was in didn’t have anything secure.”Surveillance video from the day shows Pence and his entourage being whisked down some stairs at a brisk pace. What happened next had been a mystery. Karl, who has reviewed all the pictures taken by the vice-president’s photographer, learned that the vice-president ended up in a loading dock beneath one of the Senate office buildings.Karl, who is ABC News’s chief White House correspondent, says the images reveal Pence in a garage with concrete walls and concrete floor. The vice-presidential motorcade was there but Pence refused to get inside his vehicle, worried that they would drive away at the first sign of danger.“Their first priority was to keep him safe. His priority was to stay. Those were not necessarily consistent. So for the first couple of hours at least, he refused to go inside the car.”Pence “looks a bit distraught”, Karl recalls from the pictures. During these roughly five hours there was no communication with Trump, who was at the White House, watching the spectacle unfold on TV. But the commander-in-chief was telling the world what he thought of his deputy.Karl continues: “There are a couple of shots where his chief of staff [Marc Short] is showing Vice-President Pence his phone and I was told that, in at least one of those shots, what is being shown is Trump’s tweet where he said, ‘Mike Pence didn’t have the courage.’“Here he is, the one guy in leadership refusing to leave the complex, holed up in a concrete parking garage while people are chanting for his life upstairs. He’s being shown a tweet from the president, who has not bothered to call to see if he is safe, saying he didn’t have courage.”There was another striking photo that day, after the insurrectionists had been chased out of the building so that Joe Biden’s election win could be certified. At around midnight, in statuary hall, Pence came face to face with Liz Cheney, a Republican congresswoman who would later vote for Trump’s impeachment.“Liz Cheney says to him, thank you, you did the right thing, it was really important – something to that effect. And Pence just looks at her, no discernible expression, maybe also because he’s wearing a mask, and doesn’t really say anything. It’s as if he’s worried that he’ll be overheard saying something nice to Liz Cheney. But there’s a photo of that moment which would also be interesting to see.”The pictures were taken by an official photographer whose salary is paid by taxpayers. Karl was denied permission to publish them but is confident they will be subpoenaed by the House of Representatives select committee investigating the events of 6 January.Even when the dust had settled, Trump showed no remorse or compassion for Pence. In March, Karl raised the subject during an interview with the former president at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. The conversation went as follows:Karl: Were you worried about him during the siege? Were you worried about his safety?Trump: No. I thought he was well protected. I had heard he was in good shape. No. Because I had heard he was in very good shape.Karl: Because you heard those chants. That was terrible. I mean, you know, those –Trump: Well, the people were very angry.Karl: They were saying, ‘Hang Mike Pence!’Trump: Because it’s common sense …Karl adds now: “What he was doing was essentially justifying the chants of those that were calling for the murder of his own vice-president, and there wasn’t a second of a beat to say, ‘Now, that was outrageous, they may be angry, but we can’t –’ He didn’t say that. Not at all. It’s not present in his head.“He’s still angry at Pence. He told me flatly that he would still be president if Pence did what he wanted to do and he didn’t know that he could ever forgive Pence.”For four years, Pence had been Trump’s oleaginous lieutenant, defending his every move and keeping conservatives and Christian evangelicals on his side. But at the critical moment, with America teetering between democracy and autocracy, the vice-president and former Indiana governor chose democracy.Karl explains: “I go into excruciating detail about the pressure that Pence was under. It was massive. It was relentless. It was public. It was private. It was from all directions and Pence, to his credit, was disloyal at exactly the right time. He was disloyal when it mattered the most. He had been loyal to Trump through everything else. He had enabled, you could argue, everything else and history will judge him for all of that.“But at that moment, Pence did the right thing and it really mattered because I don’t know what would have happened. I asked a lot of people this and nobody can give me a good answer. I don’t think there is a good answer. He didn’t have the authority to overturn the election.“He didn’t have the authority to throw out these electoral votes. But what if he did? It would have been chaos. What would Pelosi have done? How does it end? How do you get out of that? Eventually it wouldn’t have stood but how? The constitution’s not going to help you at that point. He’s basically stopping the last step in the certification of an election and that step is required for Biden to become president. So what if Pence just stopped it?”The more he learned in researching the book, Karl writes, the more he became convinced that, as horrific as the events of 6 January were, America was far more imperilled than most people realised at the time. It was a miracle, he argues, that nothing more dire happened between Trump’s election defeat and Biden’s inauguration.“The most important thing for people to take away from this book is an awareness that we came close to losing it all. Our democratic system has been around for well over 200 years but it’s actually fragile and more fragile than it has been at any point during our lifetimes.”The system, no matter how ingenious its construction, ultimately relies on key individuals behaving honourably. Karl, whose previous book was Front Row at the Trump Show, continues: “There were many people along the way who, if they had done something else, the situation could have had a much worse and even more catastrophic end.“The Michigan Republican leaders stand out to me because they were brought to the Oval Office, summoned there by Trump. They are leaders of a Republican party in a state where Republican voters are overwhelmingly entirely behind Donald Trump and they said, no, we cannot overturn our state’s election results.”Another example was Chris Liddell, a White House deputy chief of staff who had served all four years. “This guy had a clandestine operation going on in the West Wing to aid the Biden transition because it’s required by law. But what if he didn’t? What if he broke that law? Who’’s going to come in?“None of these people in their background would there be any indication that they would be the ones that would stand up against Donald Trump. But they did. Again, history will judge them for everything else they did but, in that moment, they helped this from becoming an even bigger crisis than it was.”So it was that Trump did not have to be forcibly removed from the Oval Office or have his fingers prised from the Resolute desk one by one. Yet he continues to tower over the Republican party and hold grievance and vengeance-fuelled rallies. He is still pushing false conspiracy theories about a stolen election and attempting to recast the history of 6 January as a heroic stand by brave patriots.Karl says: “It was clear from the interview that Donald Trump views January 6 as a great day and one of the greatest days of his presidency, which is amazing because it’s one of the darkest days in the history of the American republic.“He, in his head, has convinced himself – and I believe he believes it – this was a tremendous day because all of these people came from all over the country to fight for him in a way that his own political allies had never been willing to fight for him. They wanted to ‘stop the steal’.”Karl, 53, first met Trump in 1994 when he was a reporter at the New York Post and the property tycoon gave him a tour of Trump Tower, where newlyweds Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley were staying. Trump hasn’t changed much, he finds, except in one important regard.“The Trump I saw in 1994 was not as obviously angry and vindictive because the Trump in Mar-a-Lago has gained something and lost it, and is eager to deny that it was him who lost it and to blame others, including primarily those closest to him.”Karl describes how, in a fit of pique after his defeat, Trump threatened to quit the Republican party and start his own but backed down after being warned that such a move would cost him millions of dollars. The author does not think Trump will run for the White House again in 2024 because of the risk of another humiliating loss.If that prediction proves accurate and Trump’s name is not on the ballot, should we still be worried about the future of American democracy? “We have to be when you have a large segment of the population that doesn’t trust the results of an election, and the ground is being set to not trust the results of another election.“The efforts that are being taken in the states where Republicans are in control to limit voting have also caused those on the other side of the political spectrum to believe that they can’t trust the results of a presidential election.”Karl adds: “Our entire system is predicated on the idea that you fight it out in a campaign. Voters go and vote and the results are honoured. The winners are congratulated, the losers concede, and the fight goes on to the next election. Once you take that out of it, we’re in real trouble. So I am really worried. Trump is the great accelerant here but he’s not the original cause. It’s not just Trump.”TopicsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpMike PenceUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Betrayal review: Trump’s final days and a threat not yet extinguished

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      Betrayal review: Trump’s final days and a threat not yet extinguished ABC’s man in Washington delivers a second riveting and horrifying read about how close America came to disasterTrumpworld is in legal jeopardy. The 45th president’s phone call to Brad Raffensperger, urging the Georgia secretary of state to “find 11,780 votes”, may have birthed a grand jury.‘A xenophobic autocrat’: Adam Schiff on Trump’s threat to democracyRead moreIn Manhattan, the outgoing district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr, has empaneled one of those, to look at Trump’s business. As a Vanity Fair headline blared, “The Trump Organization should be soiling itself right now.”In Washington, the Department of Justice ponders the prosecution of Steve Bannon, chairman of Trump’s 2016 campaign and a pivotal figure in the “Stop the Steal” movement second time round.For Trump, out-of-office has not translated into out-of-mind. He thrives on all the attention.Amid it all, Jonathan Karl dives once again into the Stygian mosh pit, this time with Betrayal, a sequel to Front Row at the Trump Show, a New York Times bestseller.In that book, in the spring of 2020, ABC News’ chief Washington correspondent prophesied that “Trump’s war on truth may do lasting damage to American democracy”. Sadly, he wasn’t wrong. Front Row preceded by months a coup attempt egged on by a defeated president. Looking back, Trump’s embrace of birtherism, “alternative facts” and crowd violence were mere prelude to the chaos that filled his time in power, his final days in office and all that has come and gone since then.In his second book, under the subtitle The Final Act of the Trump Show, Karl gets members of Trump’s cabinet to speak on the record. They paint a portrait of a wrath-filled president, untethered from reality, bent on revenge.Karl captures Bill Barr denouncing Trump’s election-related conspiracy theories and criticizing his election strategy. Appearing determined to salvage his own battered reputation, Trump’s second attorney general tells Karl his president “was making it too much of a base election. I felt that he had to repair the bridges he had burned [with moderate voters] in the suburbs.”By that metric, Glenn Youngkin, Virginia’s governor-elect, has a bright future, a politician who puts suburban dads and rural moms at ease. No wonder Republicans think they have found a star, and with him a winning formula.As for Trump’s claims about rigged voting machines, Barr “realized from the beginning it was just bullshit” and says “the number of actual improper voters were de minimus”. No matter, to Trump: he continues to demand Republican legislatures carry out post-election audits.Karl delivers further confirmation of Mitch McConnell’s fractious personal relationship with Trump, a man the Kentucky senator reportedly repeatedly mocked. According to Karl, McConnell, then Senate majority leader, sought to formally disinvite Trump from Joe Biden’s inauguration. Kevin McCarthy, the chief House Republican, leaked the plan to the White House. In turn, Trump tweeted that he would not attend.McConnell attempted to thread the needle, placating Trump while keeping the GOP’s Koch brothers wing onside. But once he acknowledged Biden’s victory, the damage was permanently done. McConnell was an object of Trumpian scorn.That the senator jammed Amy Coney Barrett on to the supreme court days before the 2020 election and before that played blocking back for Brett Kavanaugh is now rendered irrelevant. Trump wants McConnell out of Senate leadership. Adding insult to injury, Trump recently told the Washington Post McConnell wasn’t a “real leader” because “he didn’t fight for the presidency”, and said he was “only a leader because he raises a lot of money”.“You know,” Trump said, “with the senators, that’s how it is, frankly. That’s his primary power.”He’s not wrong all the time.Betrayal also documents a commander-in-chief who scared his own cabinet witless. After Trump junked the Iran nuclear deal, for example, Tehran thumbed its nose back. Drama ensued, because Trump wanted to know his options.Chris Miller, then acting defense secretary, tells Karl that to dissuade Trump from ordering the destruction of Iran’s uranium enrichment program, he chose to play the role of “fucking madman” – his words, not Karl’s – which meant advocating that very course of action. According to Karl, not even Mike Pompeo, then secretary of state and an Iran hawk, played along.“Oftentimes with provocative people, if you get more provocative than them, they then have to dial it down,” Miller explains to Karl. “They’re like, ‘Yeah, I was fucking crazy, but that guy’s batshit.’”Here, the reader might pause to imagine a campaign slogan for Trump in 2024: “Fucking crazy, but not batshit”.On a similar note, Karl depicts Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s crony and attorney, as a walking timebomb. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and chief adviser, avoided the former New York mayor. Mark Meadows, Trump’s last chief of staff, saw him as a corrosive force.“I’m not going to let Rudy in the building for any more of these,” Meadows reportedly told Chris Christie, New Jersey’s former governor, and Bill Stepien, Trump’s campaign manager, as they prepared for debates with Biden.These days, Giuliani is suspended from the bar, reportedly under investigation and unable to persuade Trump to pay his bills. Christie and Trump are at loggerheads too, over sins real and imagined, past and present.In Trump’s Shadow: David Drucker surveys the Republican runners and riders for 2024Read moreAs for Meadows and Stepien, they are in the crosshairs of the House select committee focused on the US Capitol attack. From the looks of things only Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, have so far remained intact, ensconced in Florida, sufficiently distanced from Big Daddy.Despite such fallout, Betrayal concludes with words of warning. Karl rightly contends that Trump’s “betrayal” of American democracy highlighted “just how vulnerable” the system is.“The continued survival of our republic,” he writes, “may depend, in part, on the willingness of those who promoted Trump’s lies and those who remained silent to acknowledge they were wrong.”In a hypothetical rematch, Trump leads Biden 45-43. Among independent voters, he holds a double-digit lead. Don’t hold your breath.
      Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show is published in the US by Dutton
      TopicsBooksDonald TrumpTrump administrationUS elections 2020US Capitol attackUS politicsRepublicansreviewsReuse this content More

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      Steve Bannon indicted for refusal to comply with Capitol attack subpoena

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      Steve Bannon indicted for refusal to comply with Capitol attack subpoenaFormer Trump adviser indicted by grand jury for contempt of Congress The former top Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon has been indicted by a grand jury for two counts of contempt of Congress after failing to appear before a congressional committee investigating the 6 January attack on the Capitol in Washington DC.The justice department said Bannon, 67, had been indicted on one count for refusing to appear for a deposition and the other for refusing to provide documents in response to the committee’s subpoena. It wasn’t immediately clear when he would be due in court.Steve Bannon indicted for refusing to comply with Capitol attack subpoena – liveRead moreCNN reported that an arrest warrant for Bannon had already been signed by a judge.The US attorney general, Merrick Garland, said the indictment reflected the justice department’s steadfast commitment to ensuring it adhered to the rule of law, no matter who is accused of a crime.“Since my first day in office, I have promised justice department employees that together we would show the American people by word and deed that the department adheres to the rule of law, follows the facts and the law and pursues equal justice under the law,” said Garland.Each count carries a between 30 days and a year in jail.The 6 January committee was created in the House of Representatives to investigate the attack, which saw a pro-Trump mob rampage through the Capitol in an attempt to disrupt the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory over Trump.Some of the committee’s work has been stymied by a lack of cooperation from top Trump administration officials who have refused to comply with subpoenas to testify or turn over documents.Earlier on Friday, Trump’s former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows failed to appear before the committee. He also faces a criminal referral to the justice department for contempt.Congressman Adam Kinzinger, a Republican on the committee, told CNN he hoped the move would send a “chilling message” to other subpoena recipients.“It sends a really important message to future invited witnesses … You cannot ignore Congress,” Kinzinger said.Bannon’s attorney did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.TopicsSteve BannonUS politicsUS CongressUS Capitol attacknewsReuse this content More

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      Trump defended rioters who threatened to ‘hang Mike Pence’, audio reveals

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      Trump defended rioters who threatened to ‘hang Mike Pence’, audio reveals‘It’s common sense,’ said ex-president when asked about chantsRecording of remarks with Jonathan Karl released by Axios Donald Trump defended rioters at the Capitol on 6 January who threatened to “hang Mike Pence”, his vice-president, according to recorded remarks released on Friday.‘A roadmap for a coup’: inside Trump’s plot to steal the presidencyRead moreTrump said it was “common sense” when asked about the chants.Trump was speaking to the ABC chief Washington correspondent, Jonathan Karl, for his book Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show, which will be published on Tuesday. The recording was released by Axios.Karl asked Trump if he was worried about Pence during the attack on the Capitol by rioters who aimed to stop the certification of electoral college results and thereby overturn Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden.“No,” Trump said. “I thought he was well-protected, and I had heard that he was in good shape. No. Because I had heard he was in very good shape. But, but, no, I think – ”Karl interjected: “Because you heard those chants – that was terrible. I mean – ”Trump said: “He could have – well, the people were very angry.”Karl said: “They were saying ‘hang Mike Pence’.”“Because it’s common sense, Jon,” Trump said, repeating baseless claims about election fraud. “It’s common sense that you’re supposed to protect. How can you – if you know a vote is fraudulent, right? – how can you pass on a fraudulent vote to Congress? How can you do that?”The 2020 election was not subject to widespread electoral fraud, an opinion which was relayed to Trump by his own attorney general, William Barr.Trump continued: “And I’m telling you: 50/50, it’s right down the middle for the top constitutional scholars when I speak to them. Anybody I spoke to – almost all of them at least pretty much agree, and some very much agree with me – because he’s passing on a vote that he knows is fraudulent. How can you pass a vote that you know is fraudulent?”“Top constitutional scholars” do not agree the 2020 election was subject to electoral fraud.One scholar, John Eastman, provided Pence with a memo outlining how he said the vice-president might reject slates of electors from key states and thus throw the election back to the House of Representatives, where a Republican majority in state delegations would hand victory to Trump.Pence considered the memo and then, on the advice of others, including the former vice-president Dan Quayle, rejected it.Five people died in or following the attack on the Capitol. Pence and his family were hidden in an underground loading bay during the insurrection, and then duly presided over the certification of Biden’s win.In a Republican party dominated by Trump, however, anyone with ambitions of running for president in 2024 has a stark choice to make. In trips to early voting states, Pence has sought to downplay the Capitol attack.Unlike Trump, Pence is not in legal jeopardy over attempts to overturn the election. But Eastman is, as one of many subjects of subpoenas from the House select committee investigating 6 January.Trump and other aides are contesting such summonses on grounds of presidential privilege, which Biden has largely declined to invoke. This week, a judge denied Trump’s claim, writing: “Presidents are not kings, and plaintiff is not president.” Another judge issued a temporary stay.’It’s an exhausting story’: Jonathan Karl on his up-close view of TrumpRead moreIn Betrayal, his second Trump book, Karl also reports that the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, decided Trump should not attend Biden’s inauguration on 20 January.It was a grave step, given it would make Trump the first president to miss the inauguration of his successor since Andrew Johnson, the first president to be impeached, skipped ceremonies for Ulysses S Grant in 1869. Trump is the only US president to have been impeached twice.The House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, reportedly opposed the idea and told Trump what was afoot. Trump, Karl reports, quickly said he would not attend. On 20 January, Pence took his place on the inauguration stand.TopicsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Appear before 6 January panel or risk prosecution, ex-Trump chief of staff told

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      Appear before 6 January panel or risk prosecution, ex-Trump chief of staff toldMark Meadows threatened with criminal contempt referral to DoJ should he refuse to show for deposition on Friday morning Former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows is facing a criminal referral to the justice department for contempt of Congress should he refuse to appear for an immediate deposition on Friday morning before the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack.Republican lawsuits unlikely to halt US worker vaccine mandates, experts sayRead moreThe move to threaten criminal prosecution for Meadows amounts to an abrupt and sharp escalation for the select committee as it seeks to enforce its subpoena against one of Donald Trump’s closest aides first issued in September.Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the select committee, said in a letter to Meadows’s attorney on Thursday that the panel had exhausted its patience with Meadows, and his failure to appear at the deposition would be viewed as an instance of willful noncompliance.The chairman said that would force the select committee to “consider invoking contempt of Congress procedures” that could result in a criminal referral to the justice department, as well as the possibility of a civil action to enforce the subpoena.But despite the threat of criminal prosecution, Meadows was not expected to attend his deposition, scheduled to take place with select committee counsel in a nondescript House office building on Capitol Hill, according to a source familiar with the matter.The select committee is targeting Meadows since his role as Trump’s former White House chief of staff means he is likely to hold the key to uncover Trump’s involvement in efforts on 6 January to stop the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s election victory.The select committee also believes that Meadows remained by Trump’s side for most of 6 January, and was therefore in a unique position to know what the former president was privately thinking and doing at the White House as the deadly attack on the Capitol unfolded.But after Trump instructed his former aides to defy the subpoenas on grounds of executive privilege, Meadows moved to negotiate with the select committee about the scope of his cooperation – which members on the panel suspect was an effort to stall the inquiry.Those suspicions among members on the select committee appeared to be bolstered on Thursday after Meadows’s attorney, George Terwilliger, said in a statement that Meadows was “immune” from congressional testimony under justice department opinions.“Mr Meadows remains under the instructions of former President Trump to respect long-standing principles of executive privilege. It now appears the courts will have to resolve this conflict,” Terwilliger added.Thompson said in the letter that rejected the notion that Meadows was immune from testifying to the select committee, noting that every federal court has ruled that presidential aides have no such protections in spite of the justice department opinions.The chairman also noted that Meadows had not produced any materials demanded in his subpoena – including those not covered by executive privilege – though weeks had passed since Terwilliger indicated he would review which records to release.Thompson said in the letter that his patience had expired and demanded that Meadows appear with the requested documents at a deposition on Friday. Noncompliance by Meadows would force the select committee to pursue contempt proceedings, he added.The White House on Thursday backed Thompson, notifying Terwilliger in a separate letter that Biden would not assert executive privilege – a power wielded by sitting presidents – or immunity over the documents and deposition requested by the select committee.“President Biden has determined that he will not assert immunity to preclude your client from testifying before the select committee,” deputy White House counsel Jonathan Su said in an office of legal counsel letter first reported by the Washington Post.Thompson’s warning on Thursday was his third threat against a recalcitrant witness since House investigators starting issuing subpoenas to dozens of top former Trump administration officials and pro-Trump activists connected to the 6 January insurrection.The chairman last week raised the possibility of holding former Trump justice department official Jeffrey Clark in contempt of Congress after he appeared for a deposition pursuant to a subpoena but refused to answer any questions, citing attorney-client privilege.Last month, the House voted to refer Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon to the justice department for prosecution after the select committee unanimously recommended his referral after he ignored his September subpoena in its entirety.TopicsUS Capitol attackRepublicansUS politicsnewsReuse this content More