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      Liz Cheney: January 6 panel will subpoena Ginni Thomas if necessary

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      Liz Cheney: January 6 panel will subpoena Ginni Thomas if necessaryWife of Justice Clarence Thomas corresponded with Trump camp about attempts to overturn 2020 election

      Robert Reich: Trump’s coup continues
      The House January 6 committee will subpoena Ginni Thomas, the wife of the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, if she will not testify voluntarily about her involvement in Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.Josh Hawley, senator who ran from Capitol mob, mocked by home paperRead more“The committee is engaged with her counsel,” Liz Cheney, the panel vice-chair, told CNN’s State of the Union. “We certainly hope that she will agree to come in voluntarily but the committee is fully prepared to contemplate a subpoena if she does not.”Thomas corresponded with Mark Meadows, Trump’s final chief of staff, and John Eastman, a law professor who shaped the congressional side of a push which culminated in the deadly attack on the Capitol.She also corresponded with Arizona Republicans about attempts to overturn Joe Biden’s victory there.Her activities have added to pressure on her husband. An arch-conservative on a court tilted firmly right, Clarence Thomas was the only justice to say Trump should not have to release records to the House committee. His wife’s communications with the Trump camp were subsequently revealed.Some on the left have called for Thomas to be impeached – a political non-starter.Cheney said: “I hope it doesn’t get to [a subpoena]. I hope [Ginni Thomas] will come in voluntarily. We’ve certainly spoken with numbers of people who are similarly situated in terms of the discussions that she was having … so it’s very important for us to speak with her.”Steve Bannon, Trump’s former White House strategist, faces jail time after being convicted of criminal contempt of Congress, for ignoring a subpoena.Meadows was also referred to the Department of Justice for failing to co-operate but the DoJ declined to pursue charges.On Sunday Elaine Luria, the Virginia Democrat who presented the committee’s case in a hearing on Thursday, told NBC’s Meet the Press: “I don’t think [the DoJ] can revisit something that they’ve already dismissed but [Meadows is] certainly someone who has probably more information than anyone, you know, other than the folks who we have already heard from who were in the White House that day.”She added: “If he’s listening, we’d love to hear from him.”Cheney would not go as far as her fellow Republican on the January 6 committee, Adam Kinzinger, who has said he thinks the panel has proved Trump broke the law in his attempts to overturn the election.She said: “I think that Donald Trump’s violation of his oath of office, the violation of the constitution that he engaged in, is the most serious misconduct of any president in the history of our nation.“The committee has not decided yet whether or not we’ll make criminal referrals … I would also say that the Department of Justice certainly is very focused, based on what we see publicly, on what is the largest criminal investigation in American history.“But there’s no doubt in my mind that the former president of the United States is unfit for further office.”Luria echoed Kinzinger, telling NBC: “I sure as hell hope [the DoJ has] a criminal investigation at this point into Donald Trump.”She also said Merrick Garland, the attorney general, “has already told us he’s listening, and if he’s watching today, I’d tell him he doesn’t need to wait on us because I think he has plenty to keep moving forward.”The House committee has held nine public hearings, eight in a summer run which ended on Thursday with almost three hours on Trump’s inaction while his supporters attacked the Capitol.There will be more hearings in September. Cheney said more interviews were scheduled and the committee “anticipate[s] talking to additional members of the president’s cabinet. We anticipate talking to additional members of his campaign.“Certainly we’re very focused as well on the Secret Service and on interviewing additional members of the Secret Service and collecting additional information from them.”The deletion of Secret Service text messages from 5 and 6 January 2021 despite an order from the committee to preserve them is another flashpoint in the continuing saga of Trump’s attempted coup.On Sunday, Cheney repeated her praise of witnesses who have come forward, including Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Meadows, and Sarah Matthews, a former White House press aide.Asked about Republican attacks on such witnesses, Cheney said: “Certainly it is the case that the attacks against some of the women witnesses have been particularly vicious. I also think the response that we’ve seen from the House Republicans is really disgraceful.“… I think our country is at a moment where we really have to all of us take a big step back and all of us say, ‘Look, the normal, sort of vitriolic, toxic partisanship has got to stop and we have to recognise what’s at stake.’ And … the leadership of the Republicans in the House need to be held accountable for their actions.”‘US democracy will not survive for long’: how January 6 hearings plot a roadmap to autocracyRead moreCheney, a stringent conservative, is nonetheless expected to lose her seat in Wyoming, over her opposition to Trump. She would not be fully drawn on whether she plans to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, when Trump is expected to mount another campaign.“I’ve not made a decision about 2024,” Cheney said, “and I am really very focused on the substance of what we have to do on the select committee, very focused on the work that I have to do to represent the people of Wyoming. And I’ll make a decision about 2024 down the road.“But I do think as we look towards the next presidential election … I believe that our nation stands on the edge of an abyss. And I do believe that we all have to really think very seriously about the dangers we face and the threats we face and we have to elect serious candidates.”TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackClarence ThomasUS politicsDonald TrumpUS supreme courtnewsReuse this content More

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      Josh Hawley, senator who ran from Capitol mob, mocked by home paper

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      Josh Hawley, senator who ran from Capitol mob, mocked by home paperKansas City Star editorial excoriates Republican as ‘laughingstock’ as memes based on January 6 video proliferate

      Robert Reich: Trump’s coup continues
      01:08Josh Hawley, the Missouri senator shown running from the mob he incited on January 6, is “a laughingstock” who should be afraid of what the Capitol attack committee might disclose next, a leading newspaper in his home state said.‘US democracy will not survive for long’: how January 6 hearings plot a roadmap to autocracyRead moreHawley was widely criticised for raising a fist to protesters outside Congress on 6 January 2021, then after the mob sent by Donald Trump failed to stop certification of Joe Biden’s election win, voting to object to results anyway.The senator cast that vote, American voters now know, after running when rioters broke into Congress.In an editorial, the Kansas City Star noted that Hawley will soon publish a book entitled Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs, but said people watching the hearing “didn’t see much virile bravado as he ran from the mob”.The Star began: “Josh Hawley is a laughingstock. During Thursday night’s televised hearings of the House committee investigating the January 6 2021 coup attempt … [Democratic] representative Elaine Luria showed video of Missouri’s junior senator that will surely follow him the rest of his life.“In the clip, Hawley sprints across a hallway as he and his fellow senators are evacuated after insurrectionists had breached the Capitol building. When it played on the screen, the audience in the room with the committee erupted in laughter.”On Twitter, users spliced the video to songs including Born to Run, Running Up That Hill and the Benny Hill theme. Charlie Sykes, a conservative Trump critic, wrote: “Running Josh Hawley is a meme for the ages.”But the Star also noted that “Hawley has become one of the defining figures of that day. A famous photo captured by Francis Chung shows him raising a fist in solidarity with the crowds that would soon break through doors, loot offices and assault law enforcement.”The senator shows no sign of backing down. Speaking at a conservative conference in Florida on Friday, apparently without irony, he said: “I just want to say to all of those liberals out there and the liberal media, just in case you haven’t gotten the message yet, I do not regret [voting to object to electoral results].“And I am not backing down. I’m not going to apologise. I’m not going to cower. I’m not going to run from you. I’m not going to bend the knee.”He has also used the image to fundraise, selling among other items mugs said to be “the perfect way to enjoy coffee, tea, or liberal tears!”Politico, which owns the image, asked Hawley to stop using it. He refused. On Friday morning, he tweeted a link to a site selling the mug.In February, Hawley told the Huffington Post: “It is not a pro-riot mug. This was not me encouraging rioters … At the time that we were out there, folks were gathered peacefully to protest, and they have a right to do that. They do not have a right to assault cops.”As the Star noted, however, in Thursday’s hearing Luria “quoted a Capitol police officer who was there and told the committee that Hawley’s gesture ‘riled up the crowd, and it bothered her greatly because he was doing it in a safe space protected by the officers and the barriers’”.Hawley was the first senator to say he would object on January 6, when he was joined by 146 other Republicans. Hawley, the Star said, “took to the floor as the very first voice calling to throw out millions of Americans’ votes cast fairly and legally for the rightful winner in a presidential election”.Any Given Tuesday: Lis Smith on Cuomo, Spitzer and a political lifeRead moreIt continued: “Funny as the visual of the self-proclaimed manly senator’s immediate retreat was, there’s absolutely nothing amusing about January 6 2021. A bipartisan Senate report concluded seven people died as a result of the attack. Two more Metropolitan police officers took their own lives shortly after.“About 150 members of law enforcement were injured, and it’s impossible to know how many others caught up in the horrific event will carry scars for life, of body and mind. We said that day Hawley has blood on his hands for his role in perpetuating the lies that drove thousands of people to violence. That remains true.”The editorial signed off with a warning. Noting the work of Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican nonetheless vice-chair of the January 6 committee, it said: “Josh Hawley might not fear a little mockery of his hasty flight from Capitol marauders.“But he might be justified if he’s afraid of what emails or text messages some previously-loyal staffer might be considering turning over to the House committee.“Stay tuned to the hearings.”TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackRepublicansUS politicsMissourinewsReuse this content More

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      Trump’s attempted coup continues – even after January 6 hearings are over for now | Robert Reich

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      Trump’s attempted coup continues – even after January 6 hearings are over for nowRobert ReichThe committee has produced history’s most detailed account of an American president’s cruel and seditious pursuit of power. Even now, Trump continues to push states to alter the outcomes of the 2020 election The House of Representatives’ select committee investigating the January 6 attack has finished its hearings, at least for now.But Trump’s attempted coup continues.He has not stopped giving speeches to stir up angry mobs with his big lie that the 2020 election was stolen. He gave another fiery address Friday evening in Arizona.How the January 6 panel set the stage for a criminal case against TrumpRead moreHe is actively backing congressional candidates who propound his big lie.Trump continues to push states to alter the outcomes of the 2020 election. Just last week he urged Wisconsin assembly speaker Robin Vos to support a resolution to retract Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes cast for Biden.He is encouraging Republican lawmakers in several states to pass legislation allowing them to take over election machinery and ignore the popular vote.Meanwhile, the lives of committee members and their families have been threatened. Witnesses have received gangster-style warnings not to cooperate.The committee’s message to all of America, including Republicans: Stop supporting this treachery.The committee has made that treachery crystal clear.It has shown the deception behind Trump’s big lie, including Trump’s attorney general William Barr, saying “I saw absolutely zero basis for the allegations” and that promoting it was “a grave disservice to the country”.It has demonstrated non-partisan repulsion toward Trump’s attempted coup, even in Trump’s White House. As former Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson said, “I was disgusted. It was unpatriotic, it was un-American. We were watching the Capitol building get defaced over a lie.”It has made open appeals to Republican lawmakers to stop supporting the attempt. The Republican vice-chair of the committee, Liz Cheney, warned her Republican colleagues “who are defending the indefensible” that “there will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain”.It has revealed how average Americans fell for Trump’s treachery, with disastrous results. Witness Stephen Ayres, who described himself as “nothing but a family man and a working man”, participated in the January 6 attack because Trump “basically put out, you know, come to the Stop the Steal rally, you know, and I felt like I needed to be down here”.And it has reminded Americans of their duties to democracy. As committee chair Bennie Thompson put it: “When you’re on the losing side, that doesn’t mean you have to be happy about it … but you can’t turn violent.”Committee member Jamie Raskin recalled Lincoln’s warning that politicians who encourage mobs to rampage and terrorize will destroy the bonds of social trust necessary for democracy to work.It is impossible to know whether the hearings will lead to criminal indictments and convictions of Trump and his enablers.But the hearings already appear to have convinced some Trump supporters that he is a dangerous charlatan.The percentage of Republicans who say Trump misled people about the 2020 election has ticked up since last month, while Trump’s enormous fundraising operation has slowed. A New York Times/Siena College poll last week showed that nearly half of Republican primary voters would rather vote for a Republican other than Trump in 2024.History teaches that it is possible to bring down an American demagogue by putting his wickedness on display for all to see.In 1954, I watched the Army-McCarthy hearings. The Wisconsin senator Joe McCarthy – whose communist witch hunt was ending careers and debasing much of the US government – had charged the US army with lax security at a top-secret army facility. The army hired Boston lawyer Joseph Welch to make its case.At a session on 9 June 1954, after McCarthy accused one of Welch’s young staff attorneys of being a communist, Welch responded in words that led to McCarthy’s undoing: “Until this moment, senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.”When McCarthy tried to continue his attack, Welch angrily interrupted, “Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?”Almost overnight, McCarthy’s immense national popularity evaporated. Censured by his Senate colleagues, ostracized by his party and ignored by the press, McCarthy died three years later, 48 years old and a broken man.Now, the January 6 committee has produced history’s most detailed account of an American president’s cruel and seditious pursuit of power.Will it be enough to stop Trump’s ongoing attempted coup? That depends on whether Americans heed the committee’s implicit plea to ensure that American democracy endures. This article was amended on 24 July 2022. McCarthy was a senator for Wisconsin, not Minnesota.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionJanuary 6 hearingsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackcommentReuse this content More

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      ‘US democracy will not survive for long’: how January 6 hearings plot a roadmap to autocracy

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      ‘US democracy will not survive for long’: how January 6 hearings plot a roadmap to autocracyTrump’s efforts to subvert the elections laid bare the system’s weaknesses, exposing it to greater exploitation They promised the January 6 hearings would “blow the roof off the house”, presenting America with the truth about Donald Trump’s attack on democracy culminating in the US Capitol insurrection. In the end, the roof of the House, where the summer season of hearings reached their finale on Thursday night, remained intact, though mightily shaken.January 6 panel: shining a light on American democracy’s nose diveRead moreIt will take time for historians to assess whether the eight public sessions were comparable to the 1973 Watergate hearings, as Jamie Raskin, a Democratic member of the January 6 committee, predicted. Yet it’s already clear that after 19 hours and 11 minutes of testimony, filmed depositions, documentary evidence and raw footage of the Capitol attack the hearings have generated a mountain of words and images that will linger long in the collective memory.We know now that on the day that the United States suffered the worst assault on the Capitol since the British ravaged it in 1814, Trump tried to grab the steering wheel from a secret service agent to turn his presidential SUV in the direction of the violent mob so he could join them. We know that when he exhorted his followers to march on the Capitol and “fight like hell” he was aware that many of them were armed with guns and wearing body armor.We know from Thursday night that when his close aides pleaded with him to call off the attack, he refused, spending 187 minutes watching events unfold on TV in the White House dining room while swatting away increasingly desperate pleas for him to act until it was clear that his hopes of violently overthrowing the election had faded.To those who track anti-democratic movements there is a chilling familiarity to this rich evocation of a president descending into an abyss of fantasy, fury and possible illegality. “The picture that the hearings depict is of a coup leader,” said the Harvard political scientist Steven Levitsky. “This is a guy who was unwilling to accept defeat and was prepared to use virtually any means to try to stay illegally in power.”Levitsky is co-author of the influential book How Democracies Die which traces the collapse of once-proud democratic nations – in some cases through wrenching upheavals, but more often in modern times through a tip-toeing into authoritarianism. Levitsky is also an authority on Latin America, a region from which he draws a compelling parallel.Levitsky told the Guardian that the Trump who emerges from the hearings was a coup leader, “but not a very sophisticated one. Not a very experienced one. A petty autocrat. A type of leader more familiar to someone like me, a student of Latin American politics.”If Trump’s Latin American-style authoritarianism rang out from the hearings for scholars like Levitsky, a more vexed question is whether it similarly pierced the consciences of the wider American people. It is in their hands that the fate of the January 6 committee’s prime objective now rests: ensuring that a head-on assault on US democracy never happens again.The committee, led by its Democratic chair Bennie Thompson and rebel Republican vice-chair Liz Cheney, went to great lengths to make the hearings as digestible as possible for the TV, streaming and social media era. They employed the British journalist and former president of ABC News, James Goldston, to produce the events as tightly as a Netflix cliffhanger, which seems broadly, like a success.The opening primetime hearing on 9 June attracted at least 20m viewers, equivalent to the TV audience for a large sporting event. The following daytime sessions dipped to around 10m people, though ratings shot back up to almost 14m on 28 June when the former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson gave explosive testimony.It is one thing to preach to the millions of Americans who are already horrified by Trump’s efforts to subvert democracy, but what about those who went along with it and internalized his lies about the stolen election?Here the evidence is less comforting. When you enter the right-wing media bubble, the vision of a South American coup leader suddenly vanishes.Over on Fox News, the opening hearing was passed over in favor of the channel’s controversial star Tucker Carlson who used his show to ridicule the proceedings as “deranged propaganda” and to shrink the insurrection into “a forgettably minor outbreak”. On Thursday night, Carlson again supplanted live coverage of the closing hearing, going on a rant instead about Biden and Covid.The further into the right-wing media jungle you venture, the more the narrative becomes distorted. NewsGuard, a non-partisan firm that monitors misinformation, reviewed output during the period of the hearings from Newsmax, the hard-right TV channel that is still carried by most major cable and satellite providers.The monitors found Newsmax aired at least 40 false and misleading claims about the 2020 election and 6 January. Several of the falsehoods were pumped out even as the live hearings were proceeding.“If you were watching only Newsmax to get information about the January 6 hearings, you would likely be living in an entirely alternate universe,” said Jack Brewster, NewsGuard’s senior analyst.The media bubble is not the only barrier standing between the January 6 committee and a major repair of the country’s damaged democratic infrastructure. While the hearings focused heavily on the figure of Trump, Levitsky argues that an arguably even greater threat is now posed by the Republican party which enabled him.“In a two-party system, if one political party is not committed to democratic rules of the game, democracy is not likely to survive for very long,” Levitsky said. “The party has revealed itself, from top to bottom, to be a majority anti-democratic party.”Levitsky cites an analysis by the Republican Accountability Project, a group of anti-Trump conservatives, of the public statements made by all 261 Republicans in the US House and Senate in the wake of the 2020 election. It found that 224 of them – a staggering 86% of all Republicans in Congress – cast doubt on the legitimacy of Biden’s win in what amounted to a mass “attack on a cornerstone of our democracy”.Levitsky warns that the hearings have illuminated two great dangers for America, both relating to Republicans. The first is that the party’s strategists have acquired through Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, a roadmap to the vulnerabilities of the electoral system.“They discovered that there is a plethora of opportunities for subverting an election, from blocking certification to sending alternate slates of electors to Congress. Armed with that knowledge, they may well do it much better next time.”The second lesson for Levitsky relates to accountability, or the lack of it. The Republicans who played with fire, openly backing the anti-democratic movement, found that they were largely immune to the consequences.“They learned that if you try to overturn the election you will not be punished by Republican voters, activists or donors. For the most part, you’ll be rewarded for it. And to me, that is terrifying.”Even now, at national level, the Republican leadership continues to stoke the flames. The minority leader of the House, Kevin McCarthy, and his top team have relentlessly striven to hinder and belittle the January 6 committee.But it is at state and local levels that the rot is most advanced. The watchdog States United Democracy Center calculates that at least 33 states are considering 229 bills that would give state legislatures the power to politicize, criminalize or otherwise tamper with elections. The group also notes that disciples of Trump’s stolen election lie are bidding for secretary of state positions in November in 17 states, which would give them, were they to win, control over election administration in a large swathe of the country.Several have already prevailed in Republican primaries, putting them one step away from being able to wreak havoc over the machinery of democracy. They include Jim Marchant in Nevada and Mark Finchem in Arizona, while in Pennsylvania a Stop the Steal peddler, Doug Mastriano, is vying to become governor which would similarly put him in the electoral driving seat.Then there is Kristina Karamo from the battleground state of Michigan who won the Republican nomination for secretary of state in April. Karamo has flirted with the baseless conspiracy theory QAnon and has accused singers Ariana Grande and Billie Eilish of putting children “under a satanic delusion”. She continues to be a fervent critic of Biden as an illegitimate president.Michigan’s current Democratic secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, who nursed the state through the traumatic contested count in 2020, is up for re-election and will go head-to-head with Karamo in the mid-terms. Benson told the Guardian that she sees the race as a test of the future for America, “between those who want to protect and defend democracy and those openly willing to deny it”.Benson’s plea is all the more urgent given signs that the willingness to embrace violence displayed on January 6 is also worming its way into the political fabric. A mega poll from UC Davis this week found that one in five adults in the US – which extrapolates to about 50 million people – believe that it can be justified to achieve your political aims through violence.Extremist groups have also stepped up their activities since the insurrection. Last month, the national chairman of the far-right Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio, and several other top leaders were charged with seditious conspiracy. Yet the indictments do not appear to have discouraged the group from audaciously moving to infiltrate the Republicans – more than 10 current or former Proud Boys, for instance, now sit on the Republican party’s executive committee in Miami-Dade, Florida.So what does accountability look like in the wake of the hearings? How do you shore up democracy when even prosecutions appear to wield little power of persuasion?There was a lot of talk about accountability on Thursday night at the final hearing of this summer season. In his opening remarks Bennie Thompson, speaking by video link from Covid quarantine, said there had to be “stiff consequences for those responsible”.It required scant translation to see that as a direct invitation to Merrick Garland, the country’s top law enforcement official, to prosecute Trump. To pile pressure on the Department of Justice, Thompson announced that the committee was still receiving new intelligence and that there will be further public hearings in September.“There’s no doubt that the justice department has followed the hearings really closely,” said Daniel Zelenko, a partner at Crowell & Moring and a former federal prosecutor. “There’s going to be a lot of scrutiny and debate about a prosecution. But if you were ever going to indict a former president, it’s hard to imagine a more compelling fact pattern.”There is also the accountability of the ballot box. Cheney picked up that theme.“Donald Trump made a purposeful choice to violate his oath of office,” she said in her closing remarks on Thursday. “Every American must consider this: can a president who is willing to make the choices Donald Trump made during the violence of January 6 ever be trusted with any position of authority in our great nation again?”TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackDemocratsRepublicansDonald TrumpUS politicsanalysisReuse this content More

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      How the January 6 panel set the stage for a criminal case against Trump

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      How the January 6 panel set the stage for a criminal case against TrumpThe committee laid out evidence in a manner federal prosecutors could use as framework for potential prosecution The House January 6 select committee advanced new evidence at its Thursday primetime hearing that Donald Trump took active steps to obstruct the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s election win, paving the way for prosecutors to construct a criminal case against the former president.‘It’s a kangaroo court’: in key state, Trump backers dismiss January 6 hearingsRead moreThe former president knew as early as 15 mins after returning to the White House from his rally at the Ellipse that the US Capitol was under attack by his supporters, and yet acted only to find ways to stop the certification by calling senators to make objections, the panel showed.And when Trump finally sent a tweet instructing the rioters to leave the Capitol, it was 4.17pm, only after it had become clear they had been unable to fully occupy the building after being repulsed by a late-arriving national guard and the Capitol attack had largely failed.Those deliberate actions to first advance the obstruction, and then refuse to intervene until the attack was essentially over, bolstered the case that Trump violated federal law that prohibits obstructing an official proceeding, through both action and inaction.Elaine Luria, the select committee member who co-led Thursday’s hearing, concluded: “In the end, this is not a story of inaction in time of crisis. It was the final action of Donald Trump’s own plan to usurp the will of the American people and remain in power.”The select committee, in effect, at the primetime hearing laid out the evidence of obstruction of an official proceeding – a violation of federal law – in such a manner that justice department prosecutors could take up their presentation as a framework for a potential prosecution.Aside from presenting new details of the former president’s actions on January 6, the panel also revealed new and potentially legally significant details about Trump’s frame of mind that the members believe revealed his intent and understanding of what had taken place that day.The select committee notably focused on a tweet that Trump sent at 6.01pm, after the attack was largely over, referring to his lie that he had won the 2020 election, that read: “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously and viciously stripped away.”Playing a clip from a deposition with Trump’s close aide Nicholas Luna, the select committee revealed that Luna had suggested that Trump might consider revising that first part of the tweet because it read to him as though Trump was responsible for the Capitol attack.Luna testified that he had told Trump the language “would lead some to believe that potentially he had something to do with the events that happened at the Capitol”.Trump did not revise the tweet, and the select committee appeared to raise the extraordinary situation that the former president did not dispute that assessment that he had something to do with the Capitol attack and therefore saw no reason to change the phrasing.The episode is significant since it came immediately after the crisis at the Capitol, which Trump had been watching live on television, as had millions of shocked Americans. Insight into Trump’s frame of mind would be an important consideration for any criminal case.Within three days, Trump’s stance had shifted from apparently not caring that he might be perceived as having a role in the events of January 6, to refusing to even discuss in a video address from the White House the attack or the US Capitol police officers who died.The reversal was noted by Trump’s former campaign chairman, Tim Murtaugh, in a text to a Trump campaign press aide, Matthew Wolking, that the select committee showed.“He’d be implicitly faulting the mob. And he won’t do that, because they’re his people. And he would be close to acknowledging that what he lit at the rally got out of control. No way he acknowledges something that could ultimately be called his fault,” Murtaugh said.From an investigative perspective, the select committee also raised the pattern of crucial missing evidence from January 6, which members and investigators on the panel increasingly see as malfeasance, according to two sources close to the inquiry.The primetime hearing on Thursday – the final one of the summer before further hearings in September – for the large part ran through how Trump chose not to act while ensconced in the White House watching Fox News as the violence at the Capitol unfolded two miles away down Pennsylvania Avenue.In order to reconstruct his actions, the select committee showed it had attempted to rely on the presidential daily diary, the presidential call logs and official photos taken by the White House photographer that day.But the panel revealed that none of those records existed for the crucial 187 minutes of the Capitol attack. The daily diary lacked entries, hours’ worth of call logs were missing and the White House photographer had been told to take no pictures during that time.The missing records fit a pattern of evidence loss, the select committee indicated: the text messages among Secret Service agents on the presidential security detail that day were erased 11 days after Congress requested the communications in January last year.TopicsUS newsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      January 6 panel says Bannon conviction is a ‘victory for the rule of law’ – live

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      A Washington jury has found Steve Bannon guilty on two counts of contempt of Congress after the former adviser to Donald Trump refused to cooperate with a subpoena from the January 6 committee.BREAKING: Steve Bannon GUILTY on both counts. https://t.co/apLhOX2dia— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) July 22, 2022
      In its latest attempt to stop gun violence, California’s Democratic leadership has taken inspiration from anti-abortion legislation first crafted in conservative Texas, the Associated Press reports:California punched back Friday against two recent landmark US supreme court decisions as the state’s governor signed a controversial, first-in-the-nation gun control law patterned after a Texas anti-abortion law.The action by Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, comes one month after conservative justices overturned women’s constitutional right to abortions and undermined gun control laws in states including California.Newsom stitched the two hot-button topics together in approving a law allowing people to sue anyone who distributes illegal assault weapons, parts that can be used to build weapons, guns without serial numbers, or .50 caliber rifles. They would be awarded at least $10,000 in civil damages for each weapon, plus attorneys fees.California signs gun control law modeled after Texas anti-abortion measureRead moreExpect to hear more from Steven Bannon about his contempt of Congress conviction, including in an interview with conservative Fox News host Tucker Carlson this evening, The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports: Hearing that Steve Bannon will return to hosting War Room podcast tonight at 5p ET and then appear on Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News at 8p ET to discuss his conviction for contempt of Congress.— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) July 22, 2022
      Speaking to reporters after his conviction, Steve Bannon declared, “We may have lost a battle today, but we’re not going to lose this war.” He added, “I stand with Trump, and the constitution.”He also attacked the House panel investigating the January 6 attack as “gutless members of that show-trial committee” who “didn’t have the guts to testify in open court”.You can watch video of his remarks below:Steve Bannon, a longtime ally of former President Donald Trump, was convicted on Friday of contempt charges for defying a congressional subpoena from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. https://t.co/ehJpCqr64t pic.twitter.com/W1L4uFcu3r— The Associated Press (@AP) July 22, 2022
      Bennie Thomspon, the Democratic chair of the January 6 committee, and Liz Cheney, the Republican vice chair, have released a statement applauding the conviction this afternoon of former Trump adviser Steve Bannon for defying the committee’s subpoenas.“The conviction of Steve Bannon is a victory for the rule of law and an important affirmation of the Select Committee’s work,” Thompson and Cheney said.“As the prosecutor stated, Steve Bannon ‘chose allegiance to Donald Trump over compliance with the law’. Just as there must be accountability for all those responsible for the events of January 6th, anyone who obstructs our investigation into these matters should face consequences. No one is above the law.”Steve Bannon convicted of contempt of Congress for defying Capitol attack subpoenaRead moreThe Secret Service has just put out a statement reaffirming its willingness to cooperate with the January 6 committee, amid an ongoing investigation over its deletion of text messages from around the time of the insurrection.“As an American and director of this incredible agency, I found the events at the Capitol on January 6th to be abhorrent. What happened on that day in January 2021 is anathema to democracy and the processes our constitution guarantees,” Secret Service director James Murray said. “Since day one, I have directed our personnel to cooperate fully and completely with the committee and we are currently finalizing dates and times for our personnel to make themselves available to the committee for follow up inquiries.”Separately, CNN reports that Adam Kinzinger, a Republican lawmaker serving on the committee, said that Donald Trump’s former deputy chief of staff and the former head of his Secret Service detail have stopped cooperating with the inquiry.I asked @RepKinzinger if he believes Trump’s fmr Dep Chief of Staff Tony Ornato and fmr Secret Service lead agent Robert Engel are still cooperating with the Jan 6 Cmte. His answer was a hard “No.”— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) July 22, 2022
      Secret Service told to begin an inquiry into erased January 6 text messagesRead moreJean-Pierre didn’t have much to say about Steve Bannon’s conviction earlier this afternoon on contempt of Congress charges for defying subpoenas from the January 6 committee.“I’m not going to comment specifically on that case, but obviously, everyone should cooperate with the January 6 committee,” she told reporters.The White House has identified 17 close contacts of President Joe Biden, who tested positive for Covid-19 yesterday.Speaking at a briefing to reporters, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the group members have all been informed, but none has tested positive.“The White House medical unit has identified and informed 17 people determined to be close contacts of the president, including members of his senior staff. None of the staff members have tested positive to date, and all of them are wearing masks around other people,” Jean-Pierre said.President Joe Biden has appeared at a White House event – virtually, due to his Covid-19 infection.“I feel much better than I sound,” he said, flashing a thumbs-up and smiling on-screen.He didn’t have much more to say about that, but the event is focusing on gas prices, which are declining nationally from their record high levels hit last month, according to GasBuddy’s Patrick De Haan:37 days in a row: #gasprices keep falling, the national average ⬇️ 2.2c to $4.419/gal. We’re likely to fall to $4.399/gal by late today. 8 states under $4: TX, SC, GA, MS, LA, AL, TN, & AR. 35k stations More

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      January 6 hearings: Trump ‘chose not to act’ during Capitol attack, Kinzinger says – live

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      Today, the Republican party remains by and large the domain of Donald Trump. He still leads in polls of potential candidates in the next election, and House Republican leadership routinely criticizes the January 6 committee.Last night’s hearing was however full of reminders that top Republicans appeared ready to break with Trump during and immediately after the insurrection – or at least were terrified by it. Case in point: the much-mocked video footage of rightwing senator Josh Hawley fleeing through the halls of the Capitol as the protesters he greeted as he walked in overwhelmed police.Then there was Kevin McCarthy, the leader of the party in the House of Representatives who could be the chamber’s next speaker, should Republicans gain seats in November’s midterms. The committee last night showed that he pleaded with Trump as the insurrection was ongoing to call off the mob – which the president refused to do. Viewers also saw a repeat of his floor speech seven days after the attack, where he pinned the blame squarely on Trump.Days later, McCarthy went to Florida, where he met with the former president and appeared in a picture beside him that is now seen as having been key to reviving Trump’s standing among the party.“The mob was accomplishing president Trump’s purpose. So of course he didn’t intervene.”That was how Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republicans on the January 6 committee, summed up what the panel uncovered last night. His statement near the start of the hearing was followed by testimony from two former White House officials present in the room and video clips from the lawmakers’ interviews with former White House officials, including attorney Pat Cipollone.“What explains President Trump’s behavior. Why did he not take immediate action in a time of crisis?” Kinzinger asked. “Because president Trump’s plan for January 6 was to halt or delay Congress’s official proceeding to count the votes. The mob… attacking the Capitol quickly caused the evacuation of both the House and the Senate. The count ground to an absolute halt and was ultimately delayed for hours.”The committee won’t host another hearing until sometime in September, and plans to use the coming weeks to continue their investigation. As the committee vice-chair Liz Cheney put it last night: “Doors have opened, new subpoenas have been issued and the dam has begun to break.”As the January 6 committee was airing evidence, Andrew Lawrence entered an alternate universe, just by watching Fox News:On Thursday night as the Congressional hearings into the January 6 Capitol riot drew to a close, Tucker Carlson directed his outrage at a president he felt had lied and was not being held accountable for falsehoods that shook popular faith in the American democratic system. But he wasn’t talking about Donald Trump inciting rioters to storm the Capitol. He was talking about Joe Biden getting Covid.Whilemillions of people last night tuned into America’s other TV news channels and heard testimony about what Trump did, or rather did not do, during the hours when the rioters stormed the Capitol, Fox News viewers saw the network’s primetime stars Carlson and Sean Hannity chide the “twice jabbed, double-boosted” president for contracting the virus they say he alleged couldn’t be caught with a vaccine.As the US watched the January 6 hearing, Fox News showed outrage – at Biden getting CovidRead moreSteve Bannon is one of the many Trump associates whose comments were shown by the January 6 committee last night, but he may be the only one currently embroiled in active criminal trial.In fact, the charges he’s facing center around his defiance of a subpoena from the committee, and both sides are today expected to finish making their cases before a jury. Politico reports that Bannon’s legal team wants to question the jury about whether they watched last night’s hearing.HAPPENING SOON: Bannon returns to court just hours after the Jan. 6 select committee featured him prominently at the close of their hearing. The case is expected to go to the jury today but I’m anticipating some discussion about whether jurors may have watched.— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) July 22, 2022
      As expected, BANNON team raises his mention in last night’s hearing as a potential problem for the jury. Here’s a filing that just arrived: pic.twitter.com/5WdvxXPzM1— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) July 22, 2022
      BANNON wants judge to question jury:”The Defendant respectfully requests…that there should be some inquiry, while assuring the jurors of the importance of candor and that they will not suffer negative consequences if they acknowledge exposure to the broadcast or its subject.”— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) July 22, 2022
      Closing arguments in the case are now underway:UPDATE: Closing arguments are now underway. Judge Nichols has already instructed the jurors, so they’ll begin deliberating as soon as this is over. Expect they’ll be deliberating by 11-11:30 a.m.— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) July 22, 2022
      Steve Bannon appears in court as contempt-of-Congress trial beginsRead moreThe Guardian’s David Smith was in the room last night as the January 6 committee conducted what some are calling its “season finale”:They did it. They pulled it off. Anyone who feared that the January 6 committee’s season finale would turn into an anti-climax – more Game of Thrones than M*A*S*H – need not have worried. There were shocks, horrors and even laughs.The eight “episodes” have exceeded all expectations with their crisp narrative and sharp editing, a far cry from the usual dry proceedings on Capitol Hill. Each has recapped what came before, teased what is to come and compellingly joined the dots against Donald Trump.Much of the credit must go to James Goldston, the former president of ABC News, who was brought in to help produce the hearings like a true crime series. Give that man an Emmy (if only to infuriate Trump, a TV obsessive).Hearing delivers gripping ‘finale’ full of damning details about TrumpRead moreToday, the Republican party remains by and large the domain of Donald Trump. He still leads in polls of potential candidates in the next election, and House Republican leadership routinely criticizes the January 6 committee.Last night’s hearing was however full of reminders that top Republicans appeared ready to break with Trump during and immediately after the insurrection – or at least were terrified by it. Case in point: the much-mocked video footage of rightwing senator Josh Hawley fleeing through the halls of the Capitol as the protesters he greeted as he walked in overwhelmed police.Then there was Kevin McCarthy, the leader of the party in the House of Representatives who could be the chamber’s next speaker, should Republicans gain seats in November’s midterms. The committee last night showed that he pleaded with Trump as the insurrection was ongoing to call off the mob – which the president refused to do. Viewers also saw a repeat of his floor speech seven days after the attack, where he pinned the blame squarely on Trump.Days later, McCarthy went to Florida, where he met with the former president and appeared in a picture beside him that is now seen as having been key to reviving Trump’s standing among the party.Good morning, US politics blog readers. Last night, the January 6 committee wrapped up its first weeks of hearings by airing evidence that showed Donald Trump resisted efforts to forcefully condemn the rioters who broke into the Capitol that day, despite the pleas of top White House officials and his own family members to do so. As Congressman Adam Kinzinger put it: “President Trump did not fail to act during the 187 minutes between leaving the Ellipse and telling the mob to go home. He chose not to act.” Expect the aftershocks from those revelations to wash through Washington today.Here’s what else is happening today:
      Trump speaks at an Arizona rally for candidates in the state he has endorsed, which kicks off at 4 pm eastern time.
      The trial of Steve Bannon, a former top advisor to Trump who featured in last night’s hearing, continues over contempt of Congress charges.
      Congress is still negotiating over a bunch of legislation, including measures to boost American competitiveness, codify same-sex marriage rights and lower prescription drug and health care costs. More

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      in US Politics

      House panel showed Trump conspired to seize the election – but was it illegal?

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      House panel showed Trump conspired to seize the election – but was it illegal?Panel lays out its case that the 45th president orchestrated a plot to keep himself in office, but its work is not done During the course of its landmark summer of hearings, the House select committee investigating the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol has sought to show that Donald Trump was at the center of a multi-layer conspiracy to seize a second term in office, accusing him of having “summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack”.Then, for 187 minutes on 6 January, the president let the firestorm he ignited burn, the panel argued in a gripping capstone presentation on Thursday.In its final midsummer hearing, one of its most dramatic of the series of eight, the panel argued that Trump betrayed his oath of office and was derelict in his duty when he refused to condemn the violence as rioters carrying poles, bear spray and the banners of his campaign, led a bloody assault on the US Capitol.House panel says Trump ‘chose not to act’ during attack on US CapitolRead moreThe primetime session recounted in harrowing, minute-by-minute detail the siege of the Capitol, while simultaneously laying out the actions Trump did – but mostly deliberately did not – take during those excruciating hours when “lives and our democracy hung in the balance,” as Congresswoman Elaine Luria, a Democrat of Virginia and a member of the committee, described it on Thursday.Amid the chaos at the Capitol, Trump was idle in the White House, watching it all unfold on a television tuned to Fox News. Even 24 hours later, Trump refused to say the election was over.Trump’s abdication of leadership on 6 January was a “stain on our history”, Congressman Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois and a committee member, said Thursday.But were his actions illegal? It’s a question at the heart of the committee’s yearlong inquiry.Over the course of the public hearings, the panel has sought to lay out the case that Trump orchestrated a multilayered plot to seize another term in office despite being told repeatedly and in no uncertain terms that his myth of a stolen election was baseless.07:50Culling from hundreds of thousands of documents and hundreds of interviews, the committee showed that Trump, having been turned back by the courts at every level, became increasingly desperate in his bid to overturn the results of an election his own attorney general deemed free and fair.The panel has sought to offer a full public accounting of the events of 6 January for the American people and for the historical record.Its work, however, is not done. The vice-chair, Liz Cheney, a Republican of Wyoming, said that the committee will spend August “pursuing and merging information”, which continues to come in, before reconvening for more hearings in September.While the committee originally set a September deadline for releasing a final report on their investigation, lawmakers now say it will only release a preliminary report by then, and a full report by the end of the year. The committee must release a full report before it disbands, which it is set to do with the start of a new Congress in early January.The committee’s report is already getting treatment similar to other major investigations such as Watergate and 9/11. Multiple publishers, including Hachette and MacMillan, have books coming out in September related to the committee’s findings.But already, the committee has presented evidence that lawmakers and aides have suggested could be used as a foundation for bringing a criminal case against the former president. Among the possible charges that have been discussed are conspiracy to defraud the American people and obstructing an official proceeding of Congress. The committee has also raised the prospect of witness tampering, announcing at its last hearing that Trump had attempted to contact a witness cooperating with its investigation.“The facts are clear and unambiguous,” Thompson said on Thursday.The Justice Department is pursuing a separate investigation into the breach of the Capitol.A federal judge has said Trump “more likely than not” committed federal crimes in his efforts to delay or disrupt the congressional count of electoral college votes on January 6.But legal experts are divided over whether the evidence shown during the hearings is enough to charge Trump. No former president has ever been prosecuted by the justice department. And in this era of polarization, there are risks that both charging Trump – or declining to do so – could further undermine Americans faith in their system of justice.The attorney general, Merrick Garland, under immense pressure by Democrats to act, has not said whether he is considering a case against Trump.“No person is above the law in this country,” he said Wednesday. “I can’t say it any more clearly than that.”Trump has dismissed the panel’s inquiry as politically motivated and a witch hunt. Perhaps the panel’s most urgent work is to show Americans that the “forces Donald Trump ignited that day have not gone away”, Kinzinger said. “The militant, intolerant ideologies. The militias. The alienation and the disaffection. The weird fantasies and disinformation. They’re all still out there, ready to go.”Millions of voters still believe the conspiracy that Trump was the rightful winner of the 2020 election. It has galvanized a new wave of Republican candidates, who openly embrace the lie that the 2020 election was illegitimate. Many are now their party’s nominee for critical positions such as governor and secretary of state.Trump was impeached for actions on 6 January, but the Senate acquitted and never attempted to bar him from holding future public office. Cheney suggested Thursday that if what was known now about Trump’s role in the tangled, brazen plot to keep him in office, the Senate may have voted differently. But the opportunity for political accountability is not presently available – Trump is out of office, for now.That is why many, including members of the committee, believe Trump must face consequences for his actions.“If there’s no accountability for January 6, for every part of this scheme, I fear we will not overcome the ongoing threat to our democracy,” Thompson warned. “There must be stiff consequences for those responsible.”
      This article was amended on 22 July 2022. Liz Cheney is a Republican member for Wyoming, not Wisconsin as an earlier version said.
      TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpUS politicsHouse of RepresentativesanalysisReuse this content More