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      US faces extreme heat as Biden’s climate crisis plan stalls – live

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      For the past year and a half, it seemed like Joe Biden would get to sign a major piece of legislation addressing climate change. The vehicle was at first his marquee Build Back Better spending plan, which would have allocated more than a trillion dollars to addressing a host of Democratic priorities. Then that died, and Democrats quietly began working on a follow-up bill that could pass both the Senate and the House of Representatives, which the party controlled with razor-thin margins.Now, it seems like Congress won’t act to curb America’s carbon emissions at all. Joe Manchin, the centrist Democrat whose vote is necessary to get any legislation that doesn’t win Republican support through the Senate, has said now is not the time to spend money fighting climate change due to the current high rate of inflation, even as extreme weather continues to batter the United States and world.The senator’s declaration last week was a major loss for the White House, but Biden may still get to use his pen by signing to-be-announced executive orders intended to keep temperatures from rising.Steve Bannon, a former top advisor to Donald Trump, is going to trial today for defying a subpoena by the January 6 committee, as Sam Levine reports:A federal criminal trial is set to begin on Monday to determine whether Steve Bannon, the influential former adviser to Donald Trump, broke the law by refusing to comply with a subpoena for documents and testimony by the panel investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol.Last fall, the congressional committee investigating the deadly Capitol riots subpoenaed Bannon to sit for a deposition and to provide a wide range of documents related to the events of January 6. Bannon refused to comply. The committee cited him for contempt and referred him to the US justice department for prosecution in October of last year.The justice department pursued the referral, and a federal grand jury indicted Bannon on two counts of contempt of Congress, both misdemeanors, in November. It is extremely rare for the justice department to pursue such charges – before Bannon, the last contempt prosecution was in 1983. Bannon faces between 30 days and a year in prison if convicted on each charge.Steve Bannon’s criminal contempt of Congress trial set to beginRead morePerhaps we are doing this whole development thing wrong. In an interview with The New York Times Magazine, Herman Daly, a lauded economist who was once a senior figure at the World Bank and is now a emeritus professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, argues that modern economics’ obsession with growth is misguided, due in part to the damage done to the planet.Economic growth is considered a major barometer of a country’s health, both for wealthy nations and the developing world. In the interview, Daly argues that we are viewing growth incorrectly, and that it’s implausible all nations can continue expanding their GDP endlessly. From the interview, here’s an encapsulation of his argument:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} It’s a false assumption to say that growth is increasing the standard of living in the present world because we measure growth as growth in G.D.P. If it goes up, does that mean we’re increasing standard of living? We’ve said that it does, but we’ve left out all the costs of increasing G.D.P. We really don’t know that the standard is going up. If you subtract for the deaths and injuries caused by automobile accidents, chemical pollution, wildfires and many other costs induced by excessive growth, it’s not clear at all. Now what I just said is most true for richer countries. Certainly for some other country that’s struggling for subsistence then, by all means, G.D.P. growth increases welfare. They need economic growth. That means that the wealthy part of the world has to make ecological room for the poor to catch up to an acceptable standard of living. That means cutting back on per capita consumption, that we don’t hog all the resources for trivial consumption.The article only briefly gets into what Daly would propose to change the growth paradigm across the world, and indeed, his ideas would be a tough lift for many countries:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} Daly’s policy prescriptions for how this would happen include, among many ideas, establishing minimum and maximum income limits, setting caps for natural-resource use and, controversially, stabilizing the population by working to ensure that births plus immigration equals deaths plus emigration.Many parts of the United States will today also face blistering heat, particularly in the south and southwest, and the Great Plains.The New York Times has published a map looking at where temperatures will be highest. The good news is that the heat will cool later this week. The bad news is that for the next few days, much of the country will face heat levels that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says warrant “extreme caution”. And the worst affected areas will face temperatures at the “danger” level, when heat cramps or exhaustion are “likely” and heat stroke is also a possibility.Britain is weathering a record-breaking heat wave that just saw Wales endure its hottest day on record. Follow The Guardian’s live coverage for more:Extreme UK weather live: Wales provisionally records its hottest day with 35.3C in Gogerddan, near AberystwythRead moreThe unhoused are one group bearing the brunt of the climate crisis – particularly in California. Sam Levin reports:In a remote stretch of southern California desert, at least 200 unhoused people live outside, battling the extremes: blazing hot temperatures in the summer, snow in winter, rugged terrain inaccessible to many vehicles, a constant wind that blankets everything with silt, and no running water for miles.For Candice Winfrey, the conditions almost proved deadly.The 37-year-old lives in a camper in the Mojave desert, on the northern edge of Los Angeles county, miles from the nearest store. During a record-breaking heatwave in July 2020, she found herself running out of water. The jug of a gallon she had left had overheated, the water so hot it was barely drinkable. It was more than 110F (43C), and no one was around to help. She recalled laying in her tent, trying not to think about the heat exhaustion and dehydration overtaking her. “I thought I was gonna die. I was seeing the light. I was just waiting it out and praying to God that I’d make it.”As police crack down on homelessness, unhoused end up in Mojave desertRead more“Collective suicide”: that’s what the UN secretary general said humanity is facing due to rising temperatures, as The Guardian’s Fiona Harvey reports:Wildfires and heatwaves wreaking havoc across swathes of the globe show humanity facing “collective suicide”, the UN secretary general has warned, as governments around the world scramble to protect people from the impacts of extreme heat.António Guterres told ministers from 40 countries meeting to discuss the climate crisis on Monday: “Half of humanity is in the danger zone, from floods, droughts, extreme storms and wildfires. No nation is immune. Yet we continue to feed our fossil fuel addiction.”He added: “We have a choice. Collective action or collective suicide. It is in our hands.”Humanity faces ‘collective suicide’ over climate crisis, warns UN chiefRead moreFor the past year and a half, it seemed like Joe Biden would get to sign a major piece of legislation addressing climate change. The vehicle was at first his marquee Build Back Better spending plan, which would have allocated more than a trillion dollars to addressing a host of Democratic priorities. Then that died, and Democrats quietly began working on a follow-up bill that could pass both the Senate and the House of Representatives, which the party controlled with razor-thin margins.Now, it seems like Congress won’t act to curb America’s carbon emissions at all. Joe Manchin, the centrist Democrat whose vote is necessary to get any legislation that doesn’t win Republican support through the Senate, has said now is not the time to spend money fighting climate change due to the current high rate of inflation, even as extreme weather continues to batter the United States and world.The senator’s declaration last week was a major loss for the White House, but Biden may still get to use his pen by signing to-be-announced executive orders intended to keep temperatures from rising.Good morning, US politics blog readers. Today, we’re going to take a closer look at the real-world consequences of American politics, specifically the collapse last week of Democratic efforts to get Congress’s approval of a plan to fight climate crisis. The United States and the world at large is today grappling with extreme heat and other calamities fueled by rising global temperatures, and experts warn if Washington and other top carbon emitters don’t change something, it will only get worse.Here’s more about what’s happening today:
      Texas and much of the central US could see their hottest temperatures of the summer this week, The New York Times reports. Meanwhile in Britain, temperatures may climb to an unheard-of 43C – or 109.4F. The Guardian has a live blog covering the crisis.
      Democrats may not be able to get a major climate change bill through Congress, but they are moving forward on several other measures with an eye towards rescuing Joe Biden’s presidency, Punchbowl News reports.
      The criminal contempt trial of Steven Bannon, a former top advisor to Donald Trump, begins today, with jury selection. More

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      Steve Bannon’s criminal contempt of Congress trial set to begin Monday

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      Steve Bannon’s criminal contempt of Congress trial set to begin MondayFormer Trump adviser refused to comply with Capitol attack subpoena for documents and testimony related to January 6 A federal criminal trial is set to begin on Monday to determine whether Stephen Bannon, the influential former adviser to Donald Trump, broke the law by refusing to comply with a subpoena for documents and testimony by the panel investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol.Last fall, the congressional committee investigating the deadly Capitol riots subpoenaed Bannon to sit for a deposition and to provide a wide range of documents related to the events of January 6. Bannon refused to comply. The committee cited him for contempt and referred him to the US justice department for prosecution in October of last year.The justice department pursued the referral, and a federal grand jury indicted Bannon on two counts of contempt of Congress, both misdemeanors, in November. It is extremely rare for the justice department to pursue such charges – before Bannon, the last contempt prosecution was in 1983. Bannon faces between 30 days and a year in prison if convicted on each charge.Bannon, whom Trump fired from the White House in August of 2017, has emerged as a powerful conservative voice since leaving the White House, and his podcast, War Room, has become a must-stop for those on the political right. He has used it to stoke baseless conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and began outlining how Trump could try to overturn the elections starting in September 2020.Days in advance, Bannon predicted that Trump would declare himself the winner on election night and take advantage of confusion that would result as Democrats picked up votes because of mail-in ballots that were counted after in person votes. Trump wound up doing exactly that.The committee said in its contempt report that Bannon appeared to have “some foreknowledge” of what would happen on 6 January. It has also said that Bannon and Trump spoke twice on 5 January. “All hell is going to break loose tomorrow,” Bannon said on a podcast after the first call. “It’s all converging and now we’re on the point of attack tomorrow.”In the leadup to the attack, Bannon was also was present at the Willard hotel, the nucleus of Trump’s legal efforts to overturn the 2020 election.Bannon is the first former Trump administration official to face a criminal trial for refusing to participate in the January 6 probe. From the moment he was indicted, he has pledged to fight the charges, saying on his podcast recently he was going “medieval” and would “savage his enemies”. But Bannon has suffered a number of defeats in the leadup to the trial as US district court Judge Carl J Nichols, a Trump appointee, has blocked many of Bannon’s main defenses.“What’s the point of going to trial if we don’t have any defences?” David Schoen, one of Bannon’s lawyers, said at a recent hearing. Nichols replied by simply by saying “agreed”.Nichols’s ruling stripped Bannon of some of his key defenses, including that he had been relying on the advice of his lawyer when he defied the subpoena. Bannon’s lawyers have also claimed that Trump invoked executive privilege to shield Bannon from compliance, but it’s not clear that Trump did so and whether or not a former president has the power to grant such protection to someone not serving in government. The Trump lawyer Justin Clark told Bannon’s attorney in a letter that he didn’t believe Bannon was immune from testimony.After the rulings, the only defenses that appear to remain for Bannon is that he might have somehow misunderstood the deadline to respond to the subpoena, and that he did not think he had defied the subpoena because the select committee told him in a letter after the deadline that they hoped he might still cooperate with the investigation.Bannon has maneuvered to try to delay the trial, citing the publicity of the committee’s public hearings and by recently offering to testify before the panel. Prosecutors argued the move was an attempt to put off the trial. Bannon had also attempted to call prominent Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as witnesses in his case, but Nichols’s rulings appear to make it more difficult for him to do so.Government prosecutors have said it will take them just a day to put on their case. Bannon’s lawyers have said their defense could take weeks.Federal prosecutors are also pursuing contempt charges against Peter Navarro, another ex-Trump administration official. Like Bannon, Navarro has pleaded not guilty.Hugo Lowell contributed to this report.TopicsUS politicsSteve BannonJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attacknewsReuse this content More

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      Steve Bannon’s criminal contempt of Congress trial set to begin

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      Steve Bannon’s criminal contempt of Congress trial set to beginFormer Trump adviser refused to comply with Capitol attack subpoena for documents and testimony related to January 6 A federal criminal trial is set to begin on Monday to determine whether Steve Bannon, the influential former adviser to Donald Trump, broke the law by refusing to comply with a subpoena for documents and testimony by the panel investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol.Last fall, the congressional committee investigating the deadly Capitol riots subpoenaed Bannon to sit for a deposition and to provide a wide range of documents related to the events of January 6. Bannon refused to comply. The committee cited him for contempt and referred him to the US justice department for prosecution in October of last year. Too old to run again? Biden faces questions about his age as crises mountRead moreThe justice department pursued the referral, and a federal grand jury indicted Bannon on two counts of contempt of Congress, both misdemeanors, in November. It is extremely rare for the justice department to pursue such charges – before Bannon, the last contempt prosecution was in 1983. Bannon faces between 30 days and a year in prison if convicted on each charge.Bannon, whom Trump fired from the White House in August of 2017, has emerged as a powerful conservative voice since leaving the White House, and his podcast, War Room, has become a must-stop for those on the political right. He has used it to stoke baseless conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and began outlining how Trump could try to overturn the elections starting in September 2020.Days in advance, Bannon predicted that Trump would declare himself the winner on election night and take advantage of confusion that would result as Democrats picked up votes because of mail-in ballots that were counted after in person votes. Trump wound up doing exactly that.The committee said in its contempt report that Bannon appeared to have “some foreknowledge” of what would happen on 6 January. It has also said that Bannon and Trump spoke twice on 5 January. “All hell is going to break loose tomorrow,” Bannon said on a podcast after the first call. “It’s all converging and now we’re on the point of attack tomorrow.”In the leadup to the attack, Bannon was also was present at the Willard hotel, the nucleus of Trump’s legal efforts to overturn the 2020 election.Bannon is the first former Trump administration official to face a criminal trial for refusing to participate in the January 6 probe. From the moment he was indicted, he has pledged to fight the charges, saying on his podcast recently he was going “medieval” and would “savage his enemies”. But Bannon has suffered a number of defeats in the leadup to the trial as US district court Judge Carl J Nichols, a Trump appointee, has blocked many of Bannon’s main defenses.“What’s the point of going to trial if we don’t have any defences?” David Schoen, one of Bannon’s lawyers, said at a recent hearing. Nichols replied by simply by saying “agreed”.Nichols’s ruling stripped Bannon of some of his key defenses, including that he had been relying on the advice of his lawyer when he defied the subpoena. Bannon’s lawyers have also claimed that Trump invoked executive privilege to shield Bannon from compliance, but it’s not clear that Trump did so and whether or not a former president has the power to grant such protection to someone not serving in government. The Trump lawyer Justin Clark told Bannon’s attorney in a letter that he didn’t believe Bannon was immune from testimony.After the rulings, the only defenses that appear to remain for Bannon is that he might have somehow misunderstood the deadline to respond to the subpoena, and that he did not think he had defied the subpoena because the select committee told him in a letter after the deadline that they hoped he might still cooperate with the investigation.Bannon has maneuvered to try to delay the trial, citing the publicity of the committee’s public hearings and by recently offering to testify before the panel. Prosecutors argued the move was an attempt to put off the trial. Bannon had also attempted to call prominent Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, as witnesses in his case, but Nichols’s rulings appear to make it more difficult for him to do so.Government prosecutors have said it will take them just a day to put on their case. Bannon’s lawyers have said their defense could take weeks.Federal prosecutors are also pursuing contempt charges against Peter Navarro, another ex-Trump administration official. Like Bannon, Navarro has pleaded not guilty.Hugo Lowell contributed to this reportTopicsUS politicsSteve BannonJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attacknewsReuse this content More

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      Trump won’t blunt January 6 inquiry by entering 2024 race, panel member says

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      Trump won’t blunt January 6 inquiry by entering 2024 race, panel member says‘No one is above the law,’ says Elaine Luria in response to whether Trump could shield himself from threat of prosecution by simply announcing run Donald Trump won’t blunt the investigation by the congressional committee investigating the deadly January 6th attack on the Capitol by announcing that he’s running for the Oval Office again, a member of the panel said Sunday.Elaine Luria, a Virginia congresswoman and one of seven Democrats on the committee, told CNN’s Dana Bash, “The bottom line is that no one is above the law – whether he’s a president, former president or a potential future presidential candidate, we are going to pursue the facts.”Luria’s remarks were in response to an oft-asked question about whether Trump could simply announce he is running for president again in 2024 and shield himself from the threat of prosecution posed by the evidence presented during the January 6 committee’s recent hearings.Secret Service’s January 6 text messages story has shifted several times, panel is toldRead moreWhile the committee itself can’t charge Trump, it can recommend that federal prosecutors do so.Federal prosecutors have historically avoided pursuing criminal cases against prominent candidates ahead of high-stakes elections. But Luria’s comments suggest the committee members won’t shelf their inquiry or avoid potentially recommending charges against Trump just because the ex-president were to announce his aspirations to seek an electoral rematch against Joe Biden.Millions of Americans have watched live as witnesses summoned by the January 6 committee have exposed the lengths to which Trump tried to keep himself in the presidency after losing to Biden in the 2020 race.Among the most alarming episodes: he is accused of trying to commandeer his armored car and turn it towards the Capitol as a mob of his supporters – whom he told to “fight like hell” – stormed the building on the day Congress was supposed to certify his defeat. And when his vice-president faced a mob trying to hang him for not impeding the certification, Trump allegedly told aides that Mike Pence “deserves it”.Luria and the Illinois congressman Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republicans on the panel, are slated to lead the committee’s next hearing on 21 July.Luria on Sunday said the committee planned to call new witnesses close to Trump and air additional “minute-by-minute” evidence to establish that he sat idly by as the attack on the Capitol unfolded. A bipartisan Senate report has linked seven deaths to the riots that day.Meanwhile, Sunday on CBS’ Face the Nation, Kinzinger pledged that the committee’s investigation is “not winding down”. He said he personally hoped the panel could set up an interview with Pence, though he acknowledged, “I am not sure we get a lot out of him.”New book claims Steve Bannon admitted Trump ‘would lie about anything’Read moreSimilarly, when asked on ABC’s This Week if the committee would seek to interview Pence or Trump himself, panel member Zoe Lofgren of California said: “Everything is on the table.”The committee over time has recommended criminal charges against four prominent Trump White House aides who refused to cooperate with its investigation: Steve Bannon, Peter Navarro, Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino.Federal prosecutors charged Bannon and Navarro, who face jail time and have pleaded not guilty, but it did not charge Scavino or Meadows.Bannon’s trial is set to start Monday with jury selection, though he’s recently offered to meet with the committee and provide sworn testimony.TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Secret Service’s January 6 text messages story has shifted several times, panel is told

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      Secret Service’s January 6 text messages story has shifted several times, panel is toldExplanation for how the messages from 5 and 6 January 2021 were deleted has gone from software upgrades to device replacements The Secret Service’s account about how text messages from the day before and the day of the Capitol attack were erased has shifted several times, the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security told the House January 6 select committee at a briefing on Friday.At one point, the explanation from the Secret Service for the lost texts was because of software upgrades, the inspector general told the panel, while at another point, the explanation was because of device replacements.Secret Service agents’ January 6 texts were erased after oversight requestRead moreThe inspector general also said that though the secret service opted to have his office do a review of the agency’s response to the Capitol attack in lieu of conducting after-action reports, it then stonewalled the review by slow-walking production of materials.After the inspector general raised his complaints, he then discussed the feasibility of reconstructing the texts. But the issues so alarmed the select committee that the panel moved hours later to subpoena the Secret Service, according to participants at the briefing.The string of fast-paced developments on Capitol Hill reflected how the erasure of the Secret Service texts – first disclosed in a letter to Congress by the inspector general, Joseph Cuffari – has become a top priority for the congressional inquiry into January 6.The circumstances surrounding the erasure of the Secret Service texts from the day before and the day of the Capitol attack have become central for the select committee as it investigates how it planned to move Donald Trump and Mike Pence as the violence unfolded.The texts are potentially significant for investigators as the Secret Service played a crucial role in preventing Donald Trump from going to the Capitol that day and wanted to remove then-vice-president Mike Pence from the complex, according to the panel.In the letter, the inspector general said that certain Secret Service texts from 5 January and 6 January 2021 were erased amid a “device replacement program” even after he had requested the messages for his internal inquiry.The Secret Service has disputed that, saying in a statement that data on some phones were lost as part of a pre-planned “system migration” in January 2021, and that Cuffari’s initial request for communications came weeks later in late February 2021.But the select committee questioned the Secret Service’s emphasis on that date, the participants said, and noted in the subpoena letter that the request for electronic communications in fact first came from Congress, ten days after the Capitol attack.The congressional request from 16 January 2021 addressed to multiple executive branch agencies – including the Homeland Security Department, which oversees the Secret Service – was for all materials referring or relating to the riot.Members on the select committee were privately skeptical of the notion that the Secret Service managed to inadvertently erase key messages during a 10-day period that was among perhaps the most tumultuous for the agency, the participants said.If some of the texts were deliberately erased after the 16 January 2021 request, that could amount to obstruction of a congressional investigation, one of the select committee’s members added on Friday.A spokesperson for the Secret Service could not immediately be reached for comment.The select committee has spent recent days trying to establish whether it was all texts from 5 January and 6 January 2021 that were lost or just some, exactly how the texts came to be erased, and whether additional days’ worth of texts from that month were missing.The participants at the briefing said Cuffari was not able to provide clear answers on those questions, beyond the fact that he understood a proportion of texts from both the day before, and the day of, the Capitol attack remain unaccounted for.The unanswered questions were because of a lack of transparency from the Secret Service, the participants said Cuffari indicated. At the briefing, Cuffari said the explanation for the lost texts shifted from software upgrades to device upgrades to still other issues.Cuffari also expressed optimism to the select committee that the erased texts could be reconstructed through previous back-ups of messages or tools available to federal law enforcement, the participants said.The justice department inspector general has previously been able to retrieve lost texts, using “forensic tools” in 2018 to recover messages from two senior FBI officials who investigated former presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and Trump and exchanged notes criticizing the latter.The controversy over the erased Secret Service texts erupted on Wednesday after Cuffari’s letter became public, and the select committee went into overdrive to asses the impact on its investigation.That prompted the select committee chairman Bennie Thompson to discuss the matter with the panel’s staff director, David Buckley, and his deputy, Kristen Amerling, and later with the full select committee, which asked Cuffari to provide a closed-door briefing.TopicsSecret ServiceUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      January 6 committee to receive deleted Secret Service texts, Democrat says

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      January 6 committee to receive deleted Secret Service texts, Democrat saysAgency’s account of how texts sent on day of Capitol attack and day before were lost has shifted several times, panel told Deleted Secret Service texts sent on January 6, the day of the insurrection at the US Capitol, and the day before will be released by Tuesday to the House committee investigating the failed attempt by supporters of Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 presidential election result, a panel member said.“You can imagine how shocked we were to get the letter from the [Department of Homeland Security] inspector general saying that he had been trying to get this information and that they had, in fact, been deleted after he’d asked for them,” committee member and California Democratic congresswoman Zoe Lofgren told ABC’s This Week.“We need all the texts to get the full picture,” Lofgren added.The Secret Service’s account about how text messages from the day before and the day of the Capitol attack were erased has shifted several times, the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security told the House January 6 select committee at a briefing on Friday.At one point, the explanation from the Secret Service for the lost texts was because of software upgrades, the inspector general told the panel, while at another point, the explanation was because of device replacements.Secret Service agents’ January 6 texts were erased after oversight requestRead moreThe inspector general also said that though the Secret Service opted to have his office do a review of the agency’s response to the Capitol attack in lieu of conducting after-action reports, it then stonewalled the review by slow-walking production of materials.After the inspector general raised his complaints, he then discussed the feasibility of reconstructing the texts. But the issues so alarmed the select committee that the panel moved hours later to subpoena the Secret Service, according to participants at the briefing.The string of fast-paced developments on Capitol Hill reflected how the erasure of the text messages – first disclosed in a letter to Congress by the inspector general, Joseph Cuffari – has become a top priority for the congressional inquiry into January 6.The circumstances surrounding the erasure of the Secret Service texts from the day before and the day of the Capitol attack have become central for the select committee as it investigates how it planned to move Donald Trump and Mike Pence as the violence unfolded.The texts are potentially significant for investigators as the Secret Service played a crucial role in preventing Donald Trump from going to the Capitol that day and wanted to remove then-vice-president Mike Pence from the complex, according to the panel.In the letter, the inspector general said that certain Secret Service texts from 5 January and 6 January 2021 were erased amid a “device replacement program” even after he had requested the messages for his internal inquiry.The Secret Service has disputed that, saying in a statement that data on some phones were lost as part of a pre-planned “system migration” in January 2021, and that Cuffari’s initial request for communications came weeks later in late February 2021.But the select committee questioned the Secret Service’s emphasis on that date, the participants said, and noted in the subpoena letter that the request for electronic communications in fact first came from Congress, ten days after the Capitol attack.The congressional request from 16 January 2021 addressed to multiple executive branch agencies – including the Homeland Security Department, which oversees the Secret Service – was for all materials referring or relating to the riot.Members on the select committee were privately skeptical of the notion that the Secret Service managed to inadvertently erase key messages during a 10-day period that was among perhaps the most tumultuous for the agency, the participants said.If some of the texts were deliberately erased after the 16 January 2021 request, that could amount to obstruction of a congressional investigation, one of the select committee’s members added on Friday.A spokesperson for the Secret Service could not immediately be reached for comment.The select committee has spent recent days trying to establish whether it was all texts from 5 January and 6 January 2021 that were lost or just some, exactly how the texts came to be erased, and whether additional days’ worth of texts from that month were missing.The participants at the briefing said Cuffari was not able to provide clear answers on those questions, beyond the fact that he understood a proportion of texts from both the day before, and the day of, the Capitol attack remain unaccounted for.The unanswered questions were because of a lack of transparency from the Secret Service, the participants said Cuffari indicated. At the briefing, Cuffari said the explanation for the lost texts shifted from software upgrades to device upgrades to still other issues.Cuffari also expressed optimism to the select committee that the erased texts could be reconstructed through previous back-ups of messages or tools available to federal law enforcement, the participants said.The justice department inspector general has previously been able to retrieve lost texts, using “forensic tools” in 2018 to recover messages from two senior FBI officials who investigated former presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and Trump and exchanged notes criticizing the latter.The controversy over the erased Secret Service texts erupted on Wednesday after Cuffari’s letter became public, and the select committee went into overdrive to assess the impact on its investigation.That prompted the select committee chairman Bennie Thompson to discuss the matter with the panel’s staff director, David Buckley, and his deputy, Kristin Amerling, and later with the full select committee, which asked Cuffari to provide a closed-door briefing.TopicsSecret ServiceUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      House January 6 panel subpoenas Secret Service for allegedly deleted text messages

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      House January 6 panel subpoenas Secret Service for allegedly deleted text messagesThe subpoena is the first to an executive branch agency in investigation focused on possible erasure of communications The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack has issued a subpoena to the US Secret Service for text messages from 5 January and 6 January 2021 understood to have been erased, pursuing what investigators suspect might be an instance of corruptly destroyed records.The subpoena issued late on Friday – the first to an executive branch agency – compelled the production of messages and after-action reports concerning the attack as part of a sweeping records demand aiming to establish the circumstances around the erasure of some communications and obtain any that remain.January 6 panel examines whether erased Secret Service texts can be revivedRead moreCongressman Bennie Thompson, the chair of the select committee, indicated in a letter to the director of the secret service, James Murray, that the agency tasked with protecting the president and the vice president, should be able to produce the messages given its spokesperson claimed none of the texts in question were lost.The disclosure that texts among secret service agents from the day before and the day of the Capitol attack were erased in a “device-replacement program” came in a letter to Congress from the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general, the watchdog for the secret service.On Friday morning, the source said, the inspector general, Joseph Cuffari, also complained to the select committee the secret service opted to have him do an internal review of the agency’s response to January 6 in lieu of after-action reports – only to stonewall that internal review.The select committee, at that briefing with the inspector general, also heard that the secret service’s story about how the texts were lost kept changing. Initially, the source said, Cuffari was told they were lost during software upgrades; later, he was told it was during a process to replace cellphones for staff across the agency.The subpoena for the texts and any after-action reports – which the panel suspects likely do not exist, according to the source – are aimed at obtaining any texts that might have not been lost, and to obtain any paper trails about how the texts that were lost came to be erased. January 6 investigators, in conjunction with Cuffari, are also examining whether the missing texts can be reconstructed using forensic tools available to federal law enforcement, the Guardian first reported.The texts are significant for January 6 investigators as the Secret Service played a crucial role in preventing Donald Trump from going to the Capitol on that day, and according to the panel, wanted to remove then-vice president Mike Pence from the complex.January 6 investigators believe that the texts from the day of the Capitol attack could shed light on how the Secret Service wanted to move Donald Trump and Mike Pence, while texts from the day before could provide greater clarity on how security plans developed, the sources said. Days before the Capitol attack, the Secret Service assessed that it could likely not guarantee Trump’s safety if he went to the Capitol on January 6 and, according to a person familiar with the report, conveyed that to senior staff in the White House. On the day of the Capitol attack, according to testimony by the former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, the Secret Service played a major part in stopping Trump going to the Capitol by driving back to the West Wing after his speech at the Ellipse.The committee believes Secret Service text messages could provide a record for security plans for January 6. It was not clear whether texts from Anthony Ornato, a former agent who became a White House deputy chief of staff, and Trump’s lead agent, Bobby Engel, were among messages erased during a “device-replacement program”.TopicsUS Capitol attacknewsReuse this content More

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      January 6 panel examines whether erased Secret Service texts can be revived

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      January 6 panel examines whether erased Secret Service texts can be revivedSources say committee investigating whether watchdog can use forensic tools to reconstruct messages from 5 and 6 January The House committee investigating the Capitol attack is examining whether Secret Service text messages from 5 and 6 January 2021 that were erased around the time of an internal review can be reconstructed, according to sources familiar with the matter.Secret Service agents’ January 6 texts were erased after oversight requestRead moreThe panel was perturbed that texts between agents on perhaps two of the most important days in the history of the Secret Service – the day before the Capitol attack and the day itself – could be lost in such an abrupt manner, the sources said.The committee is now examining whether the Department of Homeland Security inspector general, the watchdog for the Secret Service which disclosed the erasure in a letter to Congress, can use forensic tools to reconstruct the messages, the sources said.The texts are potentially significant for January 6 investigators as the Secret Service played a crucial role in preventing Donald Trump from going to the Capitol on that day, and according to the panel, wanted to remove then-vice president Mike Pence from the complex.January 6 investigators believe that the texts from the day of the Capitol attack could shed light on how the Secret Service wanted to move Donald Trump and Mike Pence, while texts from the day before could provide greater clarity on how security plans developed, the sources said.Days before the Capitol attack, the Secret Service assessed that it could likely not guarantee Trump’s safety if he went to the Capitol on January 6 and, according to a person familiar with the report, conveyed that to senior staff in the White House.On the day of the Capitol attack, according to testimony by the former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, the Secret Service played a major part in stopping Trump going to the Capitol by driving back to the West Wing after his speech at the Ellipse.The committee believes Secret Service text messages could provide a record for security plans for January 6. It was not clear whether texts from Anthony Ornato, a former agent who became a White House deputy chief of staff, and Trump’s lead agent, Bobby Engel, were among messages erased during a “device-replacement program”.But the committee is understood to have asked the DHS inspector general, Joseph Cuffari, on Friday morning if the texts can be reconstructed using forensic tools available to federal law enforcement.The meeting with Cuffari came after the committee chairman, Bennie Thompson, met his staff director, David Buckley, and deputy staff director, Kristin Amerling, before convening the full committee which decided to call Cuffari, the sources said.In the letter to Congress, reviewed by the Guardian, Cuffari said the erasure of the text messages appeared to come after his office requested the communications as part of an internal review into the Secret Service response to the Capitol attack.The Secret Service has pushed back at that characterization, saying the texts were lost during a pre-planned, agency-wide cellphone upgrade scheme in January 2021 because some agents apparently had not backed up messages as required.Zero Fail review: US Secret Service as presidential protectors – and drunken frat boysRead moreThe Secret Service has a history of abruptly losing crucial records sought by investigations, and personnel declining to cooperate or turn over materials directly to investigators, a complaint raised in Cuffari’s letter.By the time Cuffari requested internal agency communications, memorandums, emails and telephonic records such as text messages, according to a person familiar with the matter, around a third of personnel had been given new phones.The question from the committee appears to be whether the inspector general’s office could reconstruct the lost texts using messages that were backed up or not erased. Cuffari’s response was not immediately clear on Friday.The justice department inspector general has previously been able to retrieve lost texts, using “forensic tools” in 2018 to recover texts from two senior FBI officials who investigated Hillary Clinton and Trump and exchanged notes criticizing the latter.TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsDonald TrumpUS politicsUS Capitol attacknewsReuse this content More