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      Trump’s allies think they can defy the Capitol attack panel. History suggests otherwise | Sidney Blumenthal

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      Trump’s allies think they can defy the Capitol attack panel. History suggests otherwiseSidney BlumenthalIn the infancy of the Confederacy, Congress formed a committee to investigate – and everyone cooperated Donald Trump’s extraordinary claim of executive privilege as a former president to prevent any of his aides and agents from testifying before the House select committee to investigate the 6 January attack on the US Capitol rests on the premise that the privilege resides with a president even after he leaves office. Trump is asserting that the position of former president is a recognized constitutional office with permanent rights and privileges. President Joe Biden, the incumbent president who rightfully holds executive privilege, has waived that privilege from covering the relevant documents and potential witnesses Trump wishes to keep secret and silent.Want to make Jim Jordan sing about the Capitol attack? Ask Jefferson Davis | Sidney BlumenthalRead moreStanding behind Trump’s supposed shield, a number of those subpoenaed by the committee refuse to cooperate with the investigation. Stephen Bannon, a Trump White House aide early in his term but not during the insurrection, has been cited for criminal contempt and indicted by the Department of Justice. Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, who was at the center of the plot, and Jeffrey Clark, the former assistant attorney general, who plotted to have states overturn lawful election results on baseless theories of fraud, have refused to cooperate on the grounds of an unspecified legal executive privilege.The US court of appeals for the DC circuit has granted Trump a temporary administrative injunction against the National Archives from turning over certain subpoenaed documents to the committee, in order to hear full arguments in the case on 30 November. In a prior ruling, however, Judge Tanya S Chutkan stated, “Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President.”Trump’s claim of executive privilege is based on his claim that as a former president he retains a “constitutional and statutory right” to protect his “records and communications” under any and all circumstances. His lawyer, in his emergency appeal to stay the disclosure, denies that the House committee has any “legislative purpose” and is merely “a rival political branch” – a rival apparently to a former president, who is implicitly another “political branch” even though he is no longer in office. President Biden, the appeal alleges, is simply a member of “rival political party”, acting on naked partisanship. Release of Trump’s communications in question, far from serving any legitimate government purpose, is designed only to “meet a political objective”.The attempted coup to overthrow a democratic election seems so astonishing and novel that the filings in the case have failed to come up with any remotely similar situation. But there is a precedent as exact and specific as it could be – and it directly contradicts Trump’s contentions.In fact, there was a House select committee empaneled to investigate an insurrection. That committee requested the papers of the president, subpoenaed the testimony of his cabinet secretaries and members of his administration, and called for the appearance of senior military officers. No one resisted. No one invoked executive privilege. There were no legal challenges, not a single one. Everyone fully cooperated. The president handed over his records and communications, the cabinet secretaries testified under oath, and the top general forthrightly answered questions.That insurrection began with the election of Abraham Lincoln on 6 November 1860. In a planned sequence, the federal courthouse, custom house and post offices in South Carolina were seized, and secession of the state from the Union proclaimed. President James Buchanan issued a statement declaring that while secession was illegal he had no constitutional power to prevent it.Buchanan’s passivity permitted the insurrection to advance. The small garrison of US troops stationed in Charleston was menaced by local militia. Major Robert Anderson removed his troops to the safety of Fort Sumter, located on an island in Charleston Harbor. The other forts and the Charleston arsenal were at once overrun. Soon, six other states in the lower south held elections of delegates to secession conventions, which were marked by the coercion of armed militias. To whip up the secession movement, the southern governors coordinated armed attacks from 3 January to 14 January 1861 on eight federal forts and arsenals, capturing 75,000 weapons.Washington, surrounded by Maryland and Virginia, where secessionist militias had been organized, was awash in rumors of armed assaults, including on the Capitol, and of Lincoln’s assassination to prevent his inauguration. (Indeed, there would be an assassination attempt on Lincoln’s life as he passed through Baltimore in February.) On the advice of Gen Winfield Scott, Buchanan reluctantly summoned several hundred troops to guard the capital to assure the peaceful transfer of power. The Capitol itself became a veritable army base.On 9 January 1861, in the midst of the seizure of federal forts, the House created a select committee to investigate the rolling coup that was under way. The committee demanded and received the internal correspondence of the president. It held extensive hearings and examined witnesses, including cabinet members on far-ranging elements of the subversion, from Buchanan’s dealings with the South Carolina secessionists to “the “alleged hostile organization against the government within the District of Columbia” and the “seizure of forts, arsenals, revenue cutters, and other property of the United States”.“The law has been defied, the Constitution thrust aside, and the government itself assaulted,” the committee concluded, and rebuked Buchanan for claiming the president is impotent before an attempt “to overthrow the government”. Rather than being helpless before an insurrection, the committee declared that a president must suppress it. “The Constitution makes no provision for releasing any of its officers or agents from the obligations of the oath it requires them to take.” The committee’s report quoted from the oath of office for the president: “The Executive must take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” And it cited from article 1 on the “Powers of Congress” that “Congress shall have the power” to “execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections …”Less than three weeks after the committee report was released, Lincoln was inaugurated, on 4 March 1861. A month later, on 12 April, with the Confederates firing on Fort Sumter, the insurrection crossed into civil war. By the end of war’s first year, Lincoln said in his annual message to the Congress, “It continues to develop that the insurrection is largely, if not exclusively, a war upon the first principle of popular government – the rights of the people.” He cautioned against the clear and present danger of tyranny: “Monarchy itself is sometimes hinted at as a possible refuge from the power of the people. In my present position, I could scarcely be justified were I to omit raising a warning voice against this approach of returning despotism.” Lincoln closed, “The struggle of today, is not altogether for today – it is for a vast future also.”In ruling whether a former president is entitled to the immunity of a king, the DC court of appeals should be informed by the precedent of the House select committee investigating the insurrection that led to the civil war, its clarion call for the president and other elected officials to uphold their constitutional responsibility to act decisively against the destruction of democracy, and the words and example of Lincoln.
      Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth
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      Steve Bannon pleads not guilty to criminal contempt of Congress

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      Steve Bannon pleads not guilty to criminal contempt of CongressBannon faces a possible prison term and fines for refusing to cooperate with congressional investigation of the Capitol attack Steve Bannon has pleaded not guilty to two charges of criminal contempt of Congress, over his defiance of a subpoena from the House select committee investigating the deadly attack on the US Capitol.In documents filed on Wednesday, the rightwing gadfly, a former Trump campaign chair and White House strategist, waived his right to a formal reading of the indictment against him.Contempt of Congress is punishable by up to a year in prison and a fine of up to $100,000. No one has been charged with it since 1983. Bannon faces one count for refusing to appear for a deposition before the House committee and a second for refusing to produce documents.He and other Trump aides summoned by the committee have invoked executive privilege, claiming communications with Donald Trump around the Capitol attack are protected by that constitutional dictum.But the Biden White House has declined to invoke executive privilege in most cases – and Bannon was not working for Trump at the time of the attack on the Capitol, on 6 January this year. Mark Meadows, then White House chief of staff, has also ignored the House committee.The attack on the Capitol followed a rally near the White House at which Trump told supporters to “fight like hell” to overturn his election defeat by Joe Biden, which he falsely maintains was the result of electoral fraud.Five people died around the riot, including a police officer who died the next day and one rioter shot by law enforcement. About 140 officers were injured. Four later killed themselves.Trump was impeached for a second time, for inciting an insurrection. It was the most bipartisan impeachment ever, supported by 10 House Republicans. But only seven GOP senators found Trump guilty, ensuring his acquittal.Bannon is now represented by Bruce Schoen, a defense lawyer in Trump’s second impeachment trial. The judge in Bannon’s case is Carl Nichols – a Trump appointee.Bannon helped stoke “Stop the Steal” efforts which culminated in the rally near the White House and the attack on the Capitol. The House select committee is also investigating Bannon’s links to a “command centre” set up at the Willard Hotel, near the White House, in the days before the riot.The committee has noted a comment Bannon made on his podcast on 5 January: “All hell is going to break loose tomorrow.”Bannon, who has boasted of a communications strategy based on misinformation – or “flooding the zone with shit” – spoke to reporters outside court on Monday. His prosecution, he said, was a politically motivated attack by President Biden, the attorney general, Merrick Garland, and the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.TopicsUS Capitol attackSteve BannonUS politicsUS CongressnewsReuse this content More

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      US Capitol rioter who wore horned headdress sentenced to 41 months

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      US Capitol rioter who wore horned headdress sentenced to 41 monthsJacob Chansley, who wore a horned helmet and a fur hat, took part in the deadly attack by Trump followers A federal judge on Wednesday sentenced the US Capitol rioter nicknamed the “QAnon shaman” for his horned headdress to 41 months in prison for his role in the deadly 6 January attack by former President Donald Trump’s followers.Prosecutors had asked US district judge Royce Lamberth to impose a longer 51-month sentence on Jacob Chansley, who pleaded guilty in September to obstructing an official proceeding when he and thousands of others stormed the building in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s election.The sentence matches one imposed by a judge on a former mixed martial artist filmed punching a police officer, who was sentenced last week to 41 months in prison.Lamberth said he believed Chansley, who made a lengthy speech before he was sentenced, had done a lot to convince the court he is “on the right track”.Chansley’s attorneys asked the judge for a sentence of time served for their client, who has been detained since his January arrest. He appeared in court in a dark green prison jumpsuit, with a beard and shaved head.While in detention, Chansley was diagnosed by prison officials with transient schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression and anxiety. When he entered his guilty plea, Chansley said he was disappointed Trump had not pardoned him.Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives and acquitted by the Senate on a charge of inciting the 6 January riot for a fiery speech that preceded it, in which he told his followers to “fight like hell”.Four people died in the violence. A Capitol police officer who had been attacked by protesters died the day after the riot and four police officers who took part in the defense of the Capitol later took their own lives. About 140 police officers were injured.Defense lawyer Albert Watkins said the US Navy in 2006 had found Chansley suffered from personality disorder but nonetheless declared him “fit for duty”. TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsUS elections 2020Donald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

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      Mnuchin and Pompeo discussed removing Trump after Capitol attack, book claims

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      Mnuchin and Pompeo discussed removing Trump after Capitol attack, book claimsTwo cabinet members considered invoking the 25th amendment, new book by the ABC White House correspondent says Donald Trump’s secretary of state and treasury secretary discussed removing him from power after the deadly Capitol attack by invoking the 25th amendment, according to a new book.‘Pence was disloyal at exactly the right time’: author Jonathan Karl on the Capitol attackRead moreThe amendment, added to the constitution after the assassination of John F Kennedy in 1963, provides for the removal of an incapacitated president, potentially on grounds of mental as well as physical fitness. It has never been used.According to Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show, by the ABC Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl, the treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, talked to other cabinet members about using the amendment on the night of 6 January, the day of the attack, and the following day.Removing Trump via the amendment would have required a majority vote in the cabinet. Karl reports that Mnuchin spoke to Mike Pompeo, Trump’s secretary of state and an avowed loyalist.Mnuchin did not comment for Karl’s book, which is published on Tuesday. Karl writes that Pompeo responded only after Karl told Trump the former secretary of state had not done so.“Pompeo through a spokesman denied there have ever been conversations around invoking the 25th amendment,” Karl writes. “The spokesman declined to put his name to the statement.”Karl also reports that Pompeo asked for a legal analysis of the process for invoking the 25th amendment.“The analysis determined that it would take too much time,” Karl writes, “considering that Trump only had 14 days left in office and any attempt to forcefully remove him would be subject to legal challenge.”Karl says Betsy DeVos, the education secretary, and Elaine Chao, transportation, might have supported invoking the 25th amendment but both resigned after the Capitol attack.Chao is married to the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell – who broke with Trump over the Capitol riot.Karl also says that “while the discussions did happen, the idea that Trump’s cabinet would vote to remove him was, in fact, ludicrous”.Pompeo is among Republicans jostling for position ahead of the 2024 presidential primary but that is a process which demands demonstrations of fealty to Trump, who continues to dominate the party in part by toying with another White House run.Trump is free to do so because he was acquitted at his second Senate impeachment trial, on a charge of inciting the Capitol insurrection.At a rally near the White House on 6 January, Trump told supporters to “fight like hell” to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden, by blocking certification of electoral college results. Trump’s vice-president, Mike Pence, eventually declined to weaponise his role overseeing the vote count, as Trump demanded he should.Karl reports that in the aftermath of the Capitol riot, around which five people died, “at least two cabinet secretaries” asked Pence, who had been holed up at the Capitol as rioters chanted for his hanging, to convene a cabinet meeting.Betrayal review: Trump’s final days and a threat not yet extinguishedRead morePence did not do so, Karl writes, adding that there is no evidence to suggest Pence was involved in 25th amendment discussions.On 7 January, Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, and Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the Senate, formally asked Pence to invoke the 25th amendment. Pence waited five days, then refused.Pence is also a potential candidate for the Republican nomination in 2024.TopicsDonald TrumpMike PompeoTrump administrationUS politicsMike PenceUS Capitol attacknewsReuse this content More

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      Steve Bannon in court on contempt charges for defying Capitol attack subpoena

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      Steve Bannon in court on contempt charges for defying Capitol attack subpoenaTrump ally, indicted after defying subpoena from House panel, urges supporters to ‘stay focused, stay on message’

      US politics – live coverage
      Steve Bannon, a longtime ally of former president Donald Trump, appeared in court on Monday charged with contempt of Congress, regarding the investigation of the deadly Capitol attack.‘Terrifying for American democracy’: is Trump planning for a 2024 coup?Read moreBannon did not enter a plea, and the brief hearing determined that he be arraigned on Thursday. He was released after being ordered to surrender his passport, report once a week to pre-trial services and report travel plans.An audio feed of the hearing was broadcast due to coronavirus restrictions.Judge Robin Meriweather, presiding, said: “Mr Bannon, would you please stand and raise your right hand? Do you solemnly swear that you will well and truly answer the questions propounded to you by the court, so help you God?”Bannon assented and the judge thanked him.Meriweather then read the charges. Bannon faces two counts of criminal contempt: one for refusing to appear for a congressional deposition and the other for refusing to provide documents in response to the committee’s subpoena.Each count carries between 30 days and a year in jail. The indictment is the first for criminal contempt of Congress in nearly four decades.Bannon’s arraignment on Thursday at 11am will be overseen by US district judge Carl Nichols – a Trump appointee.Earlier, Bannon turned himself in to an FBI field office in Washington. He was surrounded by photographers and a protester holding a sign that said “Coup plotter” as he stepped out of a black vehicle at about 9.30am.Livestreaming on his War Room show, which has a huge following among Trump supporters, he said: “I don’t want anybody to take their eye off the ball. We’re taking down the Biden regime every day. I want you guys to stay focused, stay on message. Remember, signal not noise. This is all noise, not signal.”The 67-year-old was taken into custody.Bannon, Trump’s campaign chairman in 2016 and then White House chief strategist in the first year of Trump’s presidency, was indicted on Friday after defying a subpoena from the House committee investigating the deadly attack on the US Capitol on 6 January, by Trump supporters seeking to overturn the election.Bannon, a former executive chairman of Breitbart News, pushed false conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. On 5 January, he prophesied on his podcast: “All hell is going to break loose tomorrow.”Trump ally Michael Flynn condemned over call for ‘one religion’ in USRead moreThat evening he was part of a gathering of Trump allies at the Willard hotel in Washington that the House committee has called the “war room”.Bannon refused to cooperate with the committee, citing an assertion of executive privilege by Trump. Legal experts argue that this has little standing given that Bannon was a private citizen at the time of the insurrection. Last month, the House voted 229-202 to hold him in contempt.Joe Walsh, a Trump critic and former Republican congressman, tweeted: “Steve Bannon attacks our democracy and incites violence every day. And millions of people listen to him. And elected Republicans are afraid to call him out.”A second expected witness, the former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, defied his own subpoena from the committee on Friday. Trump has also intensified his legal battles to withhold documents and testimony about the insurrection.TopicsSteve BannonDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Bannon may not be only Trump ally indicted over Capitol attack – Schiff

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      Bannon may not be only Trump ally indicted over Capitol attack – Schiff
      6 January panel member: DoJ move may ‘shake loose’ others
      Former chief of staff Mark Meadows has ignored subpoena
      Is Trump planning a 2024 coup?
      Criminal charges are possible for more associates of Donald Trump refusing to cooperate with the House committee investigating the 6 January Capitol attack, a senior Democrat warned on Sunday, two days after the indictment of former White House adviser Steve Bannon.Republican senator won’t condemn Trump for defending chants of ‘Hang Mike Pence’Read moreAdam Schiff, chair of the House intelligence committee and a member of the panel investigating the deadly Capitol riot, also said some witnesses could be offered immunity in exchange for testimony in order to advance the inquiry.He told NBC’s Meet the Press he believed “without a doubt” that the justice department decision to charge Bannon with contempt of Congress would “shake loose” defiant Trump associates.That could include the former chief of staff Mark Meadows, who did not show up for a deposition before the select committee on Friday, shortly before Bannon’s indictment was announced.“Now that witnesses see that if they don’t cooperate, if they don’t fulfill their lawful duty when subpoenaed, that they too may be prosecuted, it will have a very strong focusing effect on their decision making,” Schiff said.“Even before the justice department acted, it influenced other witnesses who were not going to be Steve Bannon. “When ultimately witnesses decide, as Meadows has, that they’re not even going to bother showing up, that they have that much contempt for the law, then it pretty much forces our hand and we’ll move quickly.”Schiff would not be drawn on whether that meant the committee would issue a criminal contempt referral for Meadows, who, unlike Bannon, was a government employee on 6 January. But he said the panel would decide quickly, and that it wanted to make sure “we have the strongest possible case to present to the justice department, and for the justice department to present to a grand jury”.Meadows’ lawyer has said his client will not appear before the committee unless compelled to do so by a judge.Schiff conceded that certain witnesses, whom he did not identify, could receive limited immunity instead of criminal referral in exchange for their cooperation, the decisions to be made on a case by case basis.“With certain specific witnesses, we ought to consider it,” he said. “But as that kind of immunity makes it very difficult to prosecute not just them, but sometimes others, we need to think about it very carefully.”Schiff said he saw the developments “as an early test of whether our democracy was recovering” from the turmoil of the Trump administration.“Basically … the Republican party, at the top levels, that is Donald Trump and those around him, seem to feel that they’re above the law and free to thwart it. And there’s something admirable about thumbing your nose at the institutions of our government.“Bannon did what he did because for four years that’s what worked. They could hold Republican party conventions on the White House grounds. They could fire inspectors general, they could retaliate against whistleblowers. It was essentially a lawless presidency and they were proud of it. That ought to concern every American. We need a reestablishment of the rule of law in this country and I’m glad to see that that’s happening.”Bannon’s indictment, and the threat of charges for Meadows, marked a significant escalation in the House committee’s efforts to get to the bottom of the 6 January riot and Trump’s attempt to overturn defeat by Joe Biden.Trump himself is locked in legal battle with the committee over the release of White House documents related to the day of the insurrection, when his supporters ransacked the Capitol. ‘Pence was disloyal at exactly the right time’: author Jonathan Karl on the Capitol attackRead moreOn Thursday, a federal appeals court in Washington DC handed Trump a temporary victory by blocking the release by the National Archives of hundreds of pages of communication logs, memos and other materials ordered by a lower court days before. The appeals court will listen to arguments later this month on Trump’s claim the documents are protected by executive privilege before making a final decision.Schiff said he believed efforts to delay the inquiry in the courts would not succeed.“The courts themselves have recognised that Donald Trump essentially played our institutions for four years and played rope-a-dope in the courts,” he said.“[They] moved with such expedition to reject Trump’s claims in the district court a week or so ago, now the court of appeals is saying they’re going to have a hearing by the end of the month. Courts don’t generally move that fast and I think it’s a recognition that Donald Trump has relied on justice delayed meaning justice denied. So we and the courts are moving quickly.”TopicsUS Capitol attackSteve BannonUS politicsDonald TrumpTrump administrationRepublicansUS crimenewsReuse this content More

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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