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      ‘A dangerous cancer’: fourth hearing reveals how Trump’s big lie destroyed people’s lives

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      ‘A dangerous cancer’: fourth hearing reveals how Trump’s big lie destroyed people’s lives Former president’s attacks on state officials to overturn Biden’s election victory resulted in harassment and threats Donald Trump was the most powerful man in the world. But he was also a paranoid fantasist who did not care how his lies destroyed people’s lives.That was the picture of the former US president that came into focus with startling clarity at Tuesday’s hearing of the congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.January 6 hearings: state officials testify on Trump pressure to discredit electionRead moreDead people, shredded ballots and a USB drive that was in fact a ginger mint were all part of the delusional narrative of election fraud peddled by Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani. They would have been as comical as flat-earthers but for the way they posed a danger to both individual citizens and American democracy.“The president’s lie was and is a dangerous cancer on the body politic,” committee member Adam Schiff said at the hearing into how Trump pressured state officials to overturn overturn results.It was worth remembering that Trump once boasted that he had passed a cognitive test by reciting the words, “Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV,” in the right order. And that, according to the Washington Post, he made 30,573 false or misleading claims during his four-year presidency.Even on Tuesday, he was repeating the biggest lie of all. Just before the hearing he issued a statement claiming that witness Rusty Bowers, the speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, told him “the election was rigged and I won Arizona”.Bowers, a Republican who had wanted Trump to win the election, told the committee that this was false: “Anyone, anywhere, anytime I said the election was rigged, that would not be true.”Bowers also recalled a conversation with Giuliani and lawyer Jenna Ellis about allegations of voter fraud in Arizona. In a phrase that captured the president’s own mindset, Giuliani allegedly said: “We’ve got lots of theories but we just don’t have the evidence.”But the centerpiece of the big lie is Georgia, which Trump narrowly lost and which became his all-consuming obsession for wild conspiracy theories.The committee heard testimony from its secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, and his deputy Gabe Sterling, who observed that competing against Trump’s false statements was like a “shovel trying to empty the ocean. I even had family members I had to argue with about some of these things.”The Cannon Caucus Room resounded with Trump’s own voice from a 67-minute phone call with Raffensperger in which the president claimed the people of Georgia “know” he won the state by hundreds of thousands of voters.Not true, Raffensperger told the committee definitively, explaining that Trump had “come up short”.One by one, Trump could be heard making ludicrous assertions without foundation. One by one, Raffensperger and Sterling calmly demolished them.The president was heard claiming that votes were “in what looked to be suitcases or trunks, suitcases but they weren’t in voter boxes”. Schiff asked: “Were they just the ordinary containers that are used by election workers?” Sterling testified: “They’re standard ballot carriers that allow for seals to be put on them so they’re tamper proof.”Trump went on during the call: “But they dropped a lot of votes in there late at night. You know that, Brad.” Raffensperger told the committee: “There were no additional ballots accepted after 7pm.”The president insisted: “The other thing, dead people. So dead people voted and I think the number is close to 5,000 people. And they went to obituaries. They went to all sorts of methods to come up with an accurate number and a minimum is close to about 5,000 voters.”Raffensperger observed: “No, it’s not accurate … We found two dead people when I wrote my letter to Congress that’s dated January 6 and subsequent to that we found two more. That’s one, two, three, four people, not 4,000.”More sinister yet, Trump claimed that election workers had been shredding ballots, “a criminal offense” that could put Raffensperger at risk. “So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state.”Raffensperger told the hearing: “What I knew is we didn’t have any votes to find.”Tuesday’s hearing spelled out how the big lie has caused hurt way beyond Washington on 6 January 2021. Trump told Raffensperger on the call: “When you talk about no criminality, I think it’s very dangerous for you to say that.”The Georgia secretary of state took this as a threat. And sure enough, his family was targeted by Trump supporters.“My email, my cell phone was doxxed and I was getting texts all over the country and then eventually my wife started getting texts. Hers typically came in as sexualized texts which were disgusting … They started going after her I think just to probably put pressure on me: ‘Why don’t you quit and walk away.’”He was far from alone.In a deposition, Michigan secretary of state Jocelyn Benson talked about how her “stomach sunk” when she heard the sounds of protesters outside her home one night when she was putting her child to bed. She wondered if they had guns or were going to attack her house. “That was the scariest moment,” Benson said.But no story better illustrated the callousness of Trump’s assault than Georgia election workers Wandrea “Shaye” Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman, two African American women described by committee chairman Bennie Thompson as “unsung heroes” of democracy.Giuliani accused the pair of passing a USB drive to each other; Moss told the committee that her mother had actually been handing her a ginger mint. With astonishing cruelty, Trump was heard in a phone call describing Freeman as “a professional vote scammer and hustler”.It was false but it was the cue for an onslaught of racist hatred from Trump supporters. Moss, nervous and at times shaking, recalled: “A lot of threats wishing death upon me. Telling me that, you know, I’ll be in jail with my mother and saying things like, ‘Be glad it’s 2020 and not 1920.”Moss, who left her position, added in wrenching testimony: “It’s turned my life upside down. I no longer give out my business card. I don’t transfer calls. I don’t want anyone knowing my name. I’ve gained about 60 pounds. I just don’t do nothing anymore. I don’t want to go anywhere. I second-guess everything that I do.”Her mother Ruby Freeman said in a deposition: “I’ve lost my name, and I’ve lost my reputation. I’ve lost my sense of security – all because a group of people … scapegoat[ed] me and my daughter, Shaye, to push their own lies about how the presidential election was stolen.”At the end of his call to Raffensperger, Trump could be heard saying: “It takes a little while but let the truth comes out.”Now, finally, the truth is coming out, but not the one that occupies his fantasies.TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpArizonaGeorgiaUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      A few good Republicans stopped Trump – but his threat to democracy isn’t over

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      A few good Republicans stopped Trump – but his threat to democracy isn’t over Three Republicans testified how they resisted a relentless campaign by Trump and his allies to overturn Biden’s 2020 win Rusty Bowers, the speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, wanted Donald Trump to win the 2020 election. He worked hard to elect him and, when the time came, cast his ballot for the president.What he wasn’t willing to do was cheat.In searing and at turns emotional testimony, Bowers, a rock-ribbed conservative from battleground Arizona, recounted for the House select committee investigating the January 6 assault how he resisted a relentless campaign by the then president of the United States and his allies to do just that.“You are asking me to do something against my oath and I will not break my oath,” Bowers said he responded, when pressured repeatedly by Trump and his allies to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the state.Bowers comments helped reveal how much of a threat to American democracy Trump’s attempt to block Joe Biden’s win was – and how it was defeated by the actions of officials like Bowers. But, amid a continuing attempt by Trump and his Republican allies to peddle lies and control election races in 2024 battleground states, it also revealed the threat to the US is not over.“The president’s lie was and is a dangerous cancer on the body politic,” said California congressman Adam Schiff, who led the hearing. “If you can convince Americans that they cannot trust their own elections, that anytime they lose, it is somehow illegitimate, then what is left but violence to determine who should govern.”Trump lost the state of Arizona by less than 11,000 votes – votes that were legally cast and fairly counted, Bowers said. But Trump refused to accept his loss and in his denial concocted a plot to try to stop the state from certifying the election results based on groundless conspiracies that Bowers likened to a “tragic parody”.In perhaps his most damning disclosure, Bowers recalled a conversation in which Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani told him: “We’ve got lots of theories. We just don’t have the evidence.”Bowers said the comment was so absurd that he and his staff wondered if it was a “gaffe” and laughed about it. But he found little reason for levity during Tuesday’s hearing.Bowers was joined in the cavernous Cannon Caucus Room by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, and his deputy, Gabe Sterling, also a Republican, who testified about the pressure Trump and his legal team put on elections officials in their state.In a phone call after the November election, Trump asked Raffensperger to “find 11,780” votes – just enough to flip Biden’s election victory in the state.02:07Their refusal to obey Trump’s demands was met with a barrage of online harassment and intimidation. Raffensperger said all of his personal information was made public. His wife began receiving sexually explicit threats and someone broke into the home of his daughter-in-law, a widow with two children. Bowers at the time was caring for his dying daughter who he said was troubled by the menacing crowd that gathered outside his home,Pelting taunts and threats. During the hearing, Bowers read a passage from his journal.“It is painful to have friends who have been such a help to me turn on me with such rancor,” he wrote in December. “I do not want to be a winner by cheating. I will not play with laws I swore allegiance to.”Sterling became a standout figure when he called on Trump to stop riling up his supporters during a televised press conference held in the tumultuous post-election period while Georgia carried out a series. “Death threats, physical threats, intimidation – it’s too much, it’s not right,” Sterling said in his remarks, parts of which the committee showed during the hearing. He told his committee he “lost it” that day after being told that a young election contractor with Dominion Systems was receiving death threats from purveyors of the QAnon conspiracy theory.“I tend to turn red from here up when that happens. And that happened at that time,” he said.Lives and livelihoods were disrupted and destroyed as a result of Trump’s lies, the committee heard. Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, a former Georgia election worker, testified on Tuesday that she no longer feels safe, secure or confident since becoming the subject of one of Trump’s most pernicious fraud claims – one involving suitcases that both federal and state officials said was baseless. Tuesday’s witnesses were all that stood between what the chairman of the committee, congressman Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, described as a “close call” and a “catastrophe” for American democracy during its fourth public hearing. It also revealed new details in the brazen, if ill-conceived, scheme to put forward “fake” slates of electors in seven states as part of a last-gasp attempt to keep Trump in power.Again and again the committee has sought to show that the violent insurrection on 6 January, horrible as it was, isn’t the whole story. Nor is it the end of the story. It’s part of a coordinated and continuing plot by the former president and his allies to remain in power by any means possible.“Focus on the evidence the committee will present. Don’t be distracted by politics,” the committee’s vice-chair, Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming, urged viewers. “This is serious. We cannot let America become a nation of conspiracy theories and thug violence.”Trump’s “Big Lie,” the committee said, was a “dangerous precursor” to the deadly insurrection on 6 January. But it remains an urgent threat to democracy.Trump continues to claim that he won the 2020 election and polls suggest millions of Republicans believe him. Embracing the lie has become a requisite for his endorsement, which has delivered mixed results in Republican primaries.In Georgia, Raffensperger overcame a Trump-backed challenger to win re-election as the state’s attorney general. But elsewhere, election deniers are winning primaries in an attempt to seize control of elections administration in key states across the country. In Pennsylvania, where the governor appoints the secretary of state, Republicans chose a nominee who helped organize the rally that preceded the attack on 6 January and has openly mused about fraud in future elections.And across the country, election workers like Moss are being driven out by threats of violence and intimidation. In some instances, election watchdogs have warned, they are being replaced by partisans and conspiracy theorists.Look no further than New Mexico, Thompson said on Tuesday, where a Republican commission refused to certify the results of the state’s primary election, citing unfounded claims about the security of the voting machines. Ultimately the commission bowed to a supreme court order and certified the election but the committee said it was a blinking red warning sign ahead of the 2022 and 2024 elections.“The system held, but barely,” Schiff said. “And the question remains, will it hold again.”TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpUS elections 2020US politicsanalysisReuse this content More

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      January 6 hearings: state officials testify on Trump pressure to discredit election

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      January 6 hearings: state officials testify on Trump pressure to discredit election‘Pressuring public servants into betraying their oaths was a fundamental part of the playbook,’ says Adam Schiff State election officials testified before the January 6 committee on Tuesday, recounting how Donald Trump and his allies pressured them to overturn the results of the 2020 US presidential election in the weeks leading up to the deadly Capitol attack.Trump continued his efforts even after members of his own party repeatedly told him that reversing the election results would violate state laws and the US constitution, the officials testified.As a result of Trump’s persistence, election officials and poll workers were subjected to violent, hateful and at times racist threats from the former president’s supporters.Giuliani told Arizona official ‘We just don’t have the evidence’ of voter fraudRead moreThe hearing came days after the panel heard about Trump’s pressure campaign on his vice-president, Mike Pence, to interfere with the congressional certification of the results.“Today we’ll show that what happened to Mike Pence wasn’t an isolated part of Donald Trump’s scheme to overturn the election,” said Bennie Thompson, the Democratic chairman of the committee. “In fact, pressuring public servants into betraying their oaths was a fundamental part of the playbook.”Rusty Bowers, the Republican speaker of the Arizona house, was among those testifying at the Tuesday hearing. Less than an hour before the start of the hearing, Trump released a statement mocking Bowers as a “RINO”, meaning Republican in name only, and claiming that Bowers had said the election in Arizona was rigged.Testifying before the committee, Bowers acknowledged that he spoke to Trump in the days after the election, but he denied ever claiming his state’s results were tainted by fraud. “Anywhere, anyone, anytime who said that I said the election was rigged – that would not be true,” Bowers said.Instead, Bowers repeatedly pressed Trump and his lawyers to present valid evidence of widespread fraud in Arizona’s results. According to Bowers, Rudy Giuliani, one of Trump’s campaign attorneys, told him: “We’ve got lots of theories, we just don’t have the evidence.”Despite his failure to present any evidence to substantiate his baseless claims, Trump heavily leaned on Bowers to send a fake slate of Republican electors to Congress, as part of a larger bid to overturn the election results. Bowers said he told Trump, “You’re asking me to do something against my oath, and I will not break my oath.”The committee presented additional evidence on Tuesday that Republican members of Congress were involved in the scheme to overturn the election. Bowers said he received a call from Republican congressman Andy Biggs on the morning of January 6, asking him to decertify the Arizona electors. Bowers refused to do so.The panel then shared a text exchange between Pence’s legislative affairs director, Chris Hodgson, and an aide to Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican of Wisconsin, on January 6. In the texts, Johnson’s aide said he needed to deliver an alternate slate of electors for Wisconsin and Michigan to Pence, who oversaw the congressional certification of Biden’s victory.Hodgson replied, “Do not give that to him.” (A spokesperson for Johnson said he “had no involvement in the creation of an alternate slate of electors and had no foreknowledge that it was going to be delivered to our office”.)Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, also testified on Tuesday about Trump’s relentless campaign to reverse Biden’s victory in the battleground state. In an infamous phone call that was made public just days before the January 6 attack on the Capitol, Trump asked Raffensperger, a Republican, to “find” enough votes to reverse Joe Biden’s victory in Georgia. Adam Schiff, a member of the select committee who led the questioning at Tuesday’s hearing, said Trump’s chief of staff contacted Raffensperger’s office 18 times to arrange the call.Raffensperger refused to acquiesce to Trump’s demands, earning him praise from many Americans even as the former president’s supporters attacked him as a traitor. In the weeks and months after the election, Raffensperger and his family members received violent threats, and many people sent “disgusting”, “sexualized” texts to his wife, he told the committee. At one point, someone broke into the home of Raffensperger’s widowed daughter-in-law.Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss, a former Georgia poll worker who became the center of baseless conspiracy theories about the election, testified that she and her mother also received violent and often racist threats over their work. Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, are both Black.In her recorded testimony to the committee, Freeman said she was forced out of her home for two months after the election, because of security concerns.“There is nowhere I feel safe. Nowhere,” Freeman told the committee. “Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States target you?”Schiff echoed Freeman’s message, accusing Trump of violating his oath of office by promoting lies about the election and endangering Americans like Freeman in the process.“Whether his actions were criminal will ultimately be for others to decide,” Schiff said in his closing statement. “But what he did was without a doubt unconstitutional. It was unpatriotic, and it was fundamentally un-American.”The Tuesday hearing could bolster calls for Trump to be charged over his role in inciting the deadly January 6 insurrection. According to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll, 58% of Americans now believe that Trump should face criminal charges in connection to the Capitol attack.Schiff made a point of underscoring the ongoing threats facing American democracy in the wake of the January 6 insurrection.“If the most powerful person in the world can bring the full weight of the presidency down on an ordinary citizen who is merely doing her job, with a lie as big and heavy as a mountain, who among us is safe? None of us is,” Schiff said.“Our democracy held because courageous people like those you heard from today put their oath to the constitution above their loyalty to one man or to one party. The system held, but barely. And the question remains: will it hold again?”TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackUS politicsDonald TrumpGeorgianewsReuse this content More

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      Jan 6 hearings: Raffensperger debunks Trump’s baseless fraud claim: ‘The numbers don’t lie’– as it happened

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      Using Trump’s words from a recorded phone call with Raffensperger, the committee is having the two Georgia officials debunk all of his claims of a stolen election in their state.“The numbers are the numbers and numbers don’t lie,” Raffensperger said, defending his office’s conduct. “Every single allegation, we checked, we ran down the rabbit trail to make sure that our numbers were accurate.”The FBI and Georgia Bureau of Investigation also investigated the claims and found them to be baseless.Adam Schiff, the California Democrat leading today’s question, said that the committee has learned that around the time of the dispute over Georgia’s vote, Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, wanted to send Georgia election investigators “a shitload of Potus stuff,” in the words of one White House aide. These included coins and autographed Maga hats. “White House staff intervened to make sure that didn’t happen,” Schiff said.The fourth hearing of the January 6 committee explored both the official effort to overturn the 2020 election and the impact of personal attacks by Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani against a pair of Georgia poll workers. Meanwhile, Congress is in the midst of a flurry of legislating, with lawmakers days away from taking a two-week break.Here’s what else happened today:
      South Dakota state attorney general Jason Ravnsborg lied to investigators and abused the power of his office after he struck and killed a pedestrian, prosecutors argued earlier today at the opening of an impeachment trial that could remove him from office.
      Documentary film maker Alex Holder is cooperating with a subpoena by the House select committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and related events. He filmed interviews with Trump and family.
      Congress is inching towards votes on a bipartisan gun control compromise reached between Republicans and Democrats, spurred on by the Uvalde school massacre as well as the racist killings at a grocery store in Buffalo.
      The US Supreme Court has struck down a state-funded program in Maine that covers the costs of some private schools — but only those that are nonsectarian.
      The US politics blog will return tomorrow, but for all the developments in the Russian invasion of Ukraine as they happen, including news on the visit by US attorney general Merrick Garland, the fate of American citizens fighting on Ukraine’s side, and what’s happening on the ground, do follow our global live blog on the war, here.The testimony by Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss was the emotional climax of the January 6 committee’s fourth hearing, as they detailed how being personally attacked by Trump ruined their lives. Their experience is unfortunately not unique.Alexander Vindman, a prominent witness in Trump’s first impeachment investigation, tweeted his support:Lady Ruby and Shaye,I know what it’s like to have the President of the United States attack me. Stay strong. We are better than him and we will prevail. Much love!— Alexander S. Vindman (@AVindman) June 21, 2022
      Former US attorney and Trump foe Preet Bharara weighed in:If Shaye Moss can come testify, so can Mike Pence— Preet Bharara (@PreetBharara) June 21, 2022
      A spokesman for Ron Johnson has responded to evidence presented in today’s January 6 hearing that appeared to show the Republican senator cooperated with Trump’s efforts to disrupt the 2020 election results in crucial swing states.The senator had no involvement in the creation of an alternate slate of electors and had no foreknowledge that it was going to be delivered to our office. This was a staff to staff exchange. His new Chief of Staff contacted the Vice President’s office.— alexa henning (@alexahenning) June 21, 2022
      The Vice President’s office said not to give it to him and we did not. There was no further action taken. End of story.— alexa henning (@alexahenning) June 21, 2022
      In its hearing, the committee detailed a plan by Trump supporters to create “fake elector documents,” which would say that states crucial to Joe Biden’s victory such as Georgia and Arizona actually voted for Trump. The idea was to get these into the hands of Mike Pence, who was to certify Biden’s victory on January 6, 2021. The committee showed an aide for Johnson contacted the vice-president’s staff about getting the documents to Pence, but they ultimately rejected the request.The January 6 committee has finished its hearing for the day, and as is its practice, ended with a preview of its next presentation, set for Thursday.Committee chair Bennie Thompson said the House lawmakers will explore Trump’s “attempt to corrupt and the country’s top law enforcement body, the justice department, to support his attempt to overturn the election.” He played a brief excerpt from the testimony of Richard Donoghue, the acting deputy attorney general at the end of Trump’s term.“The president said suppose I do this, suppose I replace Jeff Rosen with him, Jeff Clark, what do you do? And I said, sir, I would resign immediately. There is no way I’m serving one minute under this guy Jeff Clark,” Donoghue is heard saying.Rosen was the acting attorney general for the final weeks of Trump’s time in the White House. Clark was an assistant attorney general who is accused of plotting with Trump to overturn the election, and is now facing disbarment.Pressure mounts on ex-DoJ official Jeff Clark over Trump’s ‘election subversion scheme’Read moreThe committee also showed Trump attacking Freeman as a “vote scammer” in a call with the Georgia secretary of state. Moss and Freeman are ending their testimony with the latter describing how it feels to be personally attacked by the president.“There is nowhere I feel safe. Nowhere. Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States to target you? The President of the United States is supposed to represent every American. Not to target one. But he targeted me,” Freeman said in recorded testimony played by the committee.Earlier, Moss had described just how intense the attacks from Trump supporters against them became. People would repeatedly make large pizza orders to Freeman’s home, sending delivery drivers to her door. In one instance, Moss said, strangers turned up at Freeman’s home and tried to force their way in to attempt a “citizens arrest” of her. Around January 6, Freeman was advised by the FBI to leave her home for her safety.Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman are detailing how Trump and Giuliani’s promotion of a conspiracy theory that they somehow rigged the vote has disrupted their lives.Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman are passing around USB ports “as if they are vials of heroin or cocaine,” Giuliani said in video testimony to the Georgia senate that the committee just played. In reality, Moss testified, what’s shown being passed in that video was a ginger mint. But that allegation started the campaign of attacks by Trump supporters against the mother and daughter.Moss, who is Black, said people found her Facebook profile and left her “hateful” and “racist” messages, including one saying “Be glad it’s 2020 and 1920.”“I don’t go to the grocery store at all. I haven’t been anywhere. I gained about 60 pounds,” Moss said of the the threats’ effects on her. “I don’t want to go anywhere. I second-guessed everything that I do.”The three Republican officials have now finished their testimony before the committee, and the lawmakers are now hearing from Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, a Georgia poll worker who, along with her mother, was accused of rigging the vote in a number of conspiracies promoted by Trump supporters.Her mother is seated behind her in the hearing room.Moss has been a Fulton county election worker for 10 years, and began by confirming she never received threats before like she did during the 2020 election.Using Trump’s words from a recorded phone call with Raffensperger, the committee is having the two Georgia officials debunk all of his claims of a stolen election in their state.“The numbers are the numbers and numbers don’t lie,” Raffensperger said, defending his office’s conduct. “Every single allegation, we checked, we ran down the rabbit trail to make sure that our numbers were accurate.”The FBI and Georgia Bureau of Investigation also investigated the claims and found them to be baseless.Adam Schiff, the California Democrat leading today’s question, said that the committee has learned that around the time of the dispute over Georgia’s vote, Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, wanted to send Georgia election investigators “a shitload of Potus stuff,” in the words of one White House aide. These included coins and autographed Maga hats. “White House staff intervened to make sure that didn’t happen,” Schiff said.Sterling is detailing some of the conspiracy theories that followed Biden’s election victory in Georgia, and debunking them. But despite the evidence he outlined that the theories weren’t true, he said it was hard to get people to believe him.“It was kind of like a shovel trying to empty the ocean,” Sterling said. “It was frustrating. I even have family members who I had to argue with about some of these things, and I would show them things, and the problem you have is you’re getting to people’s hearts.”“Once you get past the heart, the facts don’t matter as much. And our job, from our point of view, is to get the facts out,” Sterling added.The January 6 committee has resumed its hearing, with the focus turning to Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state. As with Bowers before him, Raffensperger begins by confirming his bonafides as a conservative Republican who wanted Trump to win.Also answering questions is Gabriel Sterling, Raffensperger’s deputy, who went viral for his speech following the election in which he strongly denounced Trump’s baseless insistence that the 2020 election was stolen in Georgia.Sterling is addressing that speech before the committee, saying it was prompted by direct threats to staff members in his office. “I lost my temper,” Sterling said. “But it seemed necessary at the time, because it was just getting worse.” He also noted that he’s not aware of any request from Trump to his supporters not to use violence.The committee is now taking a recess, but before they concluded, Bowers, a Republican who said he voted for Trump in the 2020 election, detailed the costs of his refusal to go along with the former president’s plot to swing Arizona’s electoral votes in his favor.“We received, my secretaries would say, in excess of 20,000 emails, tens of 1000s of voicemails and texts which saturated our offices and we are unable to work,” Bowers said. Every Saturday, Bowers said organizations that he did not name would stage protests near his house. “We have various groups combined. They have had video panel trucks with videos of me, proclaiming me to be a pedophile and a pervert and a corrupt politician and blaring loudspeakers in my neighborhood, and leaving literature, both on my property and arguing and threatening with neighbors, and with myself,” Bowers said. More

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      January 6 committee to investigate Trump’s pressure campaign on election officials – live

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      In its hearings thus far, the January 6 committee has focused on the circumstances leading up to the attack in Washington, particularly Trump’s baseless claims that the election was stolen.Viewers will be taken farther afield in today’s hearing, which will feature testimony from state officials about how Trump pushed them to interfere with their election results for his benefit.Among its guests will be Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who last month fended off a Trump-backed attempt to oust him from office. He will be joined by Arizona House speaker Rusty Bowers and Gabriel Sterling, a top official in the Georgia secretary of state’s office.The hearing will also feature an appearance by Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, a Georgia poll worker who, along with her mother, was accused of rigging the vote in a number of conspiracies promoted by Trump supporters. She is now suing Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, rightwing One America News Network and several of its senior executives for defamation, saying the claims put them in physical danger.Expect to hear more about just what she endured at the hearing today.There’s been another alarming revelation about the botched police response to the Uvalde school shooting last month.The director of Texas’s Department of Public Safety told a state Senate committee that police officers could have stopped the shooting three minutes after it began, and called their response an “abject failure,” according to the Associated Press:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} Police officers with rifles instead stood and waited in a school hallway for nearly an hour while the gunman carried out the May 24 attack that left 19 children and two teachers dead.
      Col. Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, testified at a state Senate hearing on the police handling of the tragedy.
      Delays in the law enforcement response have been the focus of federal, state and local investigations of the mass shooting.
      McCraw told the Senate committee that Pete Arredondo, the Uvalde school district police chief, decided to put the lives of officers ahead of the lives of children.
      The public safety chief began outlining for the committee a series of missed opportunities.Breaking along ideological lines, the supreme court has struck down a state-funded program in Maine that covers the costs of some private schools — but only those that are nonsectarian.The decision will allow people in the state to use public money to pay for religious schooling, as Reuter’s Lawrence Hurley explains:BREAKING: Supreme Court backs public money for religious schools in Maine case— Lawrence Hurley (@lawrencehurley) June 21, 2022
      Chief Justice Roberts: “… a neutral benefit program in which public funds flow to religious organizationsthrough the independent choices of private benefit recipients does not offend the Establishment Clause”— Lawrence Hurley (@lawrencehurley) June 21, 2022
      Case is on whether people can use public money for religious schools from funding that Maine provides for people to pay for tuition at private high school in some parts of the state that lack public high schools. Court says “yes” on 6-3 vote— Lawrence Hurley (@lawrencehurley) June 21, 2022
      The court’s conservative justices all supported the ruling, while its three liberals Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Stephen Breyer dissented.The supreme court has ended its release of decisions today with a ruling on a 233-year old statute regarding federal court orders:In its final opinion of the day, SCOTUS rules on the scope of the All Writs Act, a 233-year-old statute that gives federal courts broad power to issue orders. The case involved an Ohio death-row prisoner trying to develop new evidence to challenge his conviction and sentence.— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) June 21, 2022
      The supreme court has thus far announced three decisions, none of which deal with abortion, gun rights, environmental regulation or the other contentious topics they are expected to rule on before the current term ends.Here’s a rundown of what they’ve done so far, from SCOTUSblog:In a technical dispute about health insurance reimbursements for kidney dialysis, the Supreme Court sides with a health insurer, rejecting a claim from DaVita Inc. (one of the nation’s largest providers of dialysis) that the insurer’s low reimbursement rates violated federal law.— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) June 21, 2022
      In the second (but not final) opinion of the day, the Supreme Court narrows the definition of “crime of violence” in a federal criminal statute. The court agrees with a criminal defendant that the definition excludes attempted robbery under the Hobbs Act.— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) June 21, 2022
      The Supreme Court strikes down a Washington law that made it easier for certain workers to get workers’ comp from the federal government if they became sick while cleaning up a decommissioned nuclear site. SCOTUS says the law violates the doctrine of intergovernmental immunity.— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) June 21, 2022
      Attorney General Merrick Garland has made a surprise visit to Ukraine, expressing support for the country’s effort to prosecute the perpetrators of war crimes following Russia’s invasion.Here he is along with Ukraine’s prosecutor general Iryna Venediktova:In unannounced trip, Attorney General Merrick Garland Visits Ukraine, Reaffirms U.S. Commitment to Help Identify, Apprehend, and Prosecute Individuals Involved in War Crimes and Atrocities pic.twitter.com/GzHPGqOUYV— Anthony Coley (@AnthonyColeyDOJ) June 21, 2022
      The United States has already formally accused Russia of committing war crimes in Ukraine, and the country has started trying Russian soldiers for alleged abuses.Russian soldier pleads guilty in first Ukraine war crimes trial since invasionRead moreWhen it begins announcing decisions in a few minutes, the supreme court could release an opinion that sharply curtails abortion rights nationwide, and Democratic leaders are trying to make the most of what they hope many of their voters would see as a bad situation.As Politico reports, the party is making plans to focus voters’ attention on the ruling’s implications, and away from the issues that have swamped Biden’s approval ratings in recent months, such as gas prices and inflation overall.From their article:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s preparations, previewed by a committee official, are a window into the Democratic Party’s broader efforts to capitalize — in the middle of a brutal-looking midterm election climate — on the Supreme Court’s likely reversal of Roe v. Wade, which would change a half-century of precedent and let states decide the legality of abortion.
      Support for Roe is at an all-time high with voters, and the Democrats’ strategy is aimed at firing up a flagging Democratic base, while also trying to compete for some of the college-educated, female, suburban swing voters who backed them during the Trump era. The question, though, is how to make abortion a top issue for voters in November while facing a range of challenges, especially gas prices averaging $5 a gallon and inflation ticking up.
      “We’re not going to be able to keep it in the national news, but we’re going to put a lot of money on paid advertising — on TV, on digital ads, on mail, on radio — and in key places across the country, and that’s how this issue will matter,” said Stephanie Schriock, former president of EMILY’s List, a Democratic pro-abortion-rights group. “And in some states, it will be in the news every day, because state legislatures are going to push this issue further and further to the right with outright bans.”What else can you expect from the January 6 committee? The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell has taken a closer look at how the House lawmakers will present their witnesses and evidence at today’s hearing:The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack is expected to show at its fourth hearing on Tuesday that Donald Trump and top advisers coordinated the scheme to send fake slates of electors as part of an effort to return him to the White House.The panel is expected to also examine Trump’s campaign to pressure top officials in seven crucial battleground states to corruptly reverse his defeat to Joe Biden in the weeks and months after the 2020 election.At the afternoon hearing, the select committee is expected to focus heavily on the fake electors scheme, which has played a large part in its nearly year-long investigation into Trump’s effort to overturn the results of the election at the state level.Donald Trump plotted fake electors scheme, January 6 panel set to showRead moreIn its hearings thus far, the January 6 committee has focused on the circumstances leading up to the attack in Washington, particularly Trump’s baseless claims that the election was stolen.Viewers will be taken farther afield in today’s hearing, which will feature testimony from state officials about how Trump pushed them to interfere with their election results for his benefit.Among its guests will be Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who last month fended off a Trump-backed attempt to oust him from office. He will be joined by Arizona House speaker Rusty Bowers and Gabriel Sterling, a top official in the Georgia secretary of state’s office.The hearing will also feature an appearance by Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, a Georgia poll worker who, along with her mother, was accused of rigging the vote in a number of conspiracies promoted by Trump supporters. She is now suing Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, rightwing One America News Network and several of its senior executives for defamation, saying the claims put them in physical danger.Expect to hear more about just what she endured at the hearing today.Good morning, US politics live blog readers. At 1pm eastern time, the January 6 committee will be holding its fourth hearing into last year’s attack on the Capitol, with this session focusing on former president Donald Trump’s pressure campaign on state officials to throw the 2020 election in his direction. The committee is meanwhile continuing its search for evidence. Politico reports that it has subpoenaed a documentary film-maker who had access to Trump’s inner circle around the time of the insurrection.Here’s what else to expect today:
      Democrats and Republicans in Congress are scrambling to find agreement on gun control legislation and an innovation bill as time runs out to pass the legislation before an upcoming two-week recess.
      The supreme court will release another batch of opinions at 10 am eastern time. Among these could be their opinions on closely watched cases dealing with abortion, gun rights, environmental regulation and other controversial issues.
      Voters will head to the polls (or cast mail-in ballots) in Virginia and Washington DC, while run-off elections are being held in Alabama and Georgia.
      President Joe Biden announced he will appoint Marilynn Malerba as treasurer of the United States. She is the chief of the Mohegan Tribe and would be the first Native American in the position that oversees the US Mint, among other responsibilities. More

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      Donald Trump plotted fake electors scheme, January 6 panel set to show

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      Donald Trump plotted fake electors scheme, January 6 panel set to showCommittee also expected to probe Trump’s pressure on officials in crucial states to corruptly reverse his election defeat The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack is expected to show at its fourth hearing on Tuesday that Donald Trump and top advisers coordinated the scheme to send fake slates of electors as part of an effort to return him to the White House.The panel is expected to also examine Trump’s campaign to pressure top officials in seven crucial battleground states to corruptly reverse his defeat to Joe Biden in the weeks and months after the 2020 election.At the afternoon hearing, the select committee is expected to focus heavily on the fake electors scheme, which has played a large part in its nearly year-long investigation into Trump’s effort to overturn the results of the election at the state level.Liz Cheney’s condemnation of Trump’s lies wins over DemocratsRead moreThe panel will show how the fake electors scheme – which may have been illegal – was the underlying basis for Trump’s unlawful strategy to have his vice-president, Mike Pence, refuse to certify Biden’s win in certain states and grant him a second term.If the 2020 election cycle had been like any other when the electoral college convened on 14 December 2020 and Democratic electors attested to Biden’s victory over Trump, that would have marked the end of any post-election period conflict.But that year, after the authorized Democratic electors met at statehouses to formally name Biden as president, in seven battleground states, illegitimate Republican electors arrived too, saying they had come to instead name Trump as president.The Trump electors were turned away. However, they nonetheless proceeded to sign fake election certificates that declared they were the “duly elected and qualified” electors certifying Trump as the winner of the presidential election in their state.The fake electors scheme was conceived in an effort to create “dueling” slates of electors that Pence could use to pretend the election was in doubt and refuse to formalize Biden’s win at the congressional certification on 6 January.Kinzinger: Trump’s actions surrounding January 6 amount to ‘seditious conspiracy’Read moreAnd, the select committee will show, the fake election certificates were in part manufactured by the Trump White House, and that the entire fake electors scheme was coordinated by Trump and his top advisers, including former chief of staff Mark Meadows.“We will show evidence of the president’s involvement in this scheme,” congressman Adam Schiff, the select committee member leading the hearing alongside the panel’s chairman, Bennie Thompson, and vice-chair, Liz Cheney, said on CNN on Sunday.Members of Trump’s legal team insist this is a distorted characterization of the scheme, saying the so-called alternate slates were put together and signed in case that states did re-certify their election results for Trump and they needed to be sent right away to Congress.But that explanation is difficult to reconcile given Trump lawyer John Eastman admitted in a 19 December 2020 the Trump slates were “dead on arrival” if they were not certified, and yet still pushed Pence to reject Biden’s slates even though Trump slates were still not certified.The fake electors scheme is important because it could be a crime. The justice department is investigating whether the Republicans who signed as electors for Trump could be charged with falsifying voting documents, mail fraud or conspiracy to defraud the United States.If Trump was involved in the scheme, and the justice department pursues a case, then the former US president may also have criminal exposure. At least one federal grand jury in Washington is investigating the scheme and the involvement of top Trump election lawyers, including Rudy Giuliani.The select committee is also set to closely focus on Trump’s pressure campaign on leading Republican state officials in the weeks and months after the election, according to a committee aide who previewed the hearing on a briefing call with reporters.‘A one-sided witch-hunt’: angry Trump lashes out at January 6 hearingsRead moreAmong other key flash points that the panel intends to examine include Trump’s now-infamous 2 January 2021 call with Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger – who will testify live at the hearing – when Trump asked him to “find” votes to make him win the election.“I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump said during the conversation, a tape of which was obtained by the Washington Post and House investigators working for the select committee.The select committee will describe Trump pressuring other state officials to investigate election fraud claims his own White House and campaign lawyers knew were false, relying on testimony from Arizona House speaker Rusty Bowers.And the panel will additionally hear testimony from Shaye Moss, a Georgia election worker in Fulton County, who was falsely accused by Giuliani and others of sneaking in “suitcases” of ballots for Biden – a conspiracy debunked by election officials.TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackMike PenceUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Kinzinger: Trump’s actions surrounding January 6 amount to ‘seditious conspiracy’

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      Kinzinger: Trump’s actions surrounding January 6 amount to ‘seditious conspiracy’Republican member of the Capitol attack panel also says Trump’s actions surrounding the deadly riot had ‘criminal involvement’ A Republican member of the congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol said on Sunday that he believes Donald Trump’s actions surrounding the deadly riots amount to “seditious conspiracy” and “criminal involvement by a president”.Illinois congressman Adam Kinzinger’s remarks on ABC’s This Week came after three hearings held by the House January 6 committee presented searing testimony and mounting evidence about Trump’s central role in a complex plot to overturn his defeat at the hands of Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.While he was only one of at least four committee members scheduled to appear on the national news network’s Sunday talkshows, Kinzinger’s comments stood out for their candor and because they came from within the ex-president’s own political party.Searing testimony increases odds of charges against Trump, experts sayRead more“I certainly think the president is guilty of knowing what he did, seditious conspiracy, being involved in … pressuring the [justice department], vice-president [Mike Pence], et cetera,” Kinzinger said. “Obviously, you know, we’re not a criminal charges committee, so I want to be careful in specifically using that language, but I think what we’re presenting before the American people certainly would rise to a level of criminal involvement by a president.”Kinzinger also said that Trump’s actions, as portrayed by the committee, show he “definitely” failed to maintain his oath to uphold the US constitution.“The oath has to matter here,” Kinzinger said. “Your personal demand to stand for the constitution has to matter.”Just three days earlier, the third of six scheduled hearings by the committee examining the Capitol attack saw a former attorney to Pence recount how Trump unsuccessfully helped pressure Pence into unlawfully blocking the congressional certification of Biden’s win on the day of the riots.January 6 hearings make for gripping TV, but are voters paying attention? Read moreOne of the prongs of that plan involved sending fake pro-Trump electors from states that Biden to substitute electors pledged to Biden, which the justice department has been investigating for months now. Another prong, broadly, centered on Trump’s relentless but baseless claims that electoral fraudsters had stolen the race from him, even as his attorney general, William Barr, dismissed that argument as complete “bullshit”.Kinzinger said the only logical outcome to claims of a rigged presidential election was the mob of hundreds storming the Capitol – shortly after Trump urged his supports to “fight like hell” – in the attack to which a bipartisan Senate report connected seven deaths.The congressman added that there is more where that came from unless the country can “get a grip on telling people the truth” about things like valid election results, even when their preferred candidate lost.“There is violence in the future – I’m going to tell you,” said Kinzinger, one of two Republicans on the nine-member select committee.As Kinzinger told This Week’s host George Stephanopoulos, the January 6 committee can’t file criminal charges against Trump. And the panel chairman, Mississippi congressman Bennie Thompson, said he doesn’t expect he and his colleagues to make a referral for charges to the justice department, which is the sole entity with the power to prosecute Trump.Nonetheless, Kinzinger’s comments on Sunday made clear what he and others on the committee think federal prosecutors should do even without a formal recommendation for charges.Pence himself, as of Sunday, hadn’t appeared at the January 6 hearings. But one of the Democrats on the select committee, Adam Schiff, said the panel hadn’t ruled out subpoenaing him to testify. Trump, for his part, has condemned the work of the January 6 committee as a “one-sided witch-hunt”.At a speech in Tennessee on Friday, he singled out Kinzinger for crying during another hearing last year about the Capitol attack.“This guy’s got a mental disorder,” Trump said of Kinzinger. “He cries. Every time this guy gets up to speak, he starts crying.”Kinzinger’s decision to go on the offensive against Trump – whom many Republicans still support vehemently – are not without peril. On Sunday, he recounted how someone had recently mailed to the congressman’s home a note threatening to execute him, his wife and their five-month-old son.“This should be a position where you can tell the hard truth, and unfortunately, my party has utterly failed the American people at truth,” Kinzinger said. “It makes me sad. But it’s a fact.”TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpRepublicansUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Searing testimony increases odds of charges against Trump, experts say

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      Searing testimony increases odds of charges against Trump, experts say Former prosecutors say January 6 hearings have delivered ‘compelling evidence that Trump committed crimes’The searing testimony and growing evidence about Donald Trump’s central role in a multi-pronged conspiracy to overturn Joe Biden’s election in 2020 presented at the House January 6 committee’s first three hearings, has increased the odds that Trump will face criminal charges, say former DoJ prosecutors and officials.The panel’s initial hearings provided a kind of legal roadmap about Trump’s multi-faceted drives – in tandem with some top lawyers and loyalists – to thwart Biden from taking office, that should benefit justice department prosecutors in their sprawling investigations into the January 6 assault on the Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters.Ex-justice department lawyers say new revelations at the hearings increase the likelihood that Trump will be charged with crimes involving conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding or defrauding the United States, as he took desperate and seemingly illegal steps to undermine Biden’s election.The January 6 hearings aren’t acknowledging the elephant in the room | Thomas ZimmerRead moreTrump could also potentially face fraud charges over his role in an apparently extraordinary fundraising scam – described by House panel members as the “big rip-off” – that netted some $250m for an “election defense fund” that did not exist but funneled huge sums to Trump’s Save America political action committee and Trump properties.The panel hopes to hold six hearings on different parts of what its vice-chair, Liz Cheney, called Trump’s “sophisticated seven-part plan” to overturn the election.Trump was told repeatedly, for instance, by top aides and cabinet officials – including ex-attorney general Bill Barr – that the election was not stolen, and that his fraud claims were “completely bullshit” and “crazy stuff” as Barr put it in a video of his scathing deposition. But Trump persisted in pushing baseless fraud claims with the backing of key allies including his ex-personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and lawyer John Eastman.“The January 6 committee’s investigation has developed substantial, compelling evidence that Trump committed crimes, including but not limited to conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstruct official proceedings,” Michael Bromwich, a former inspector general at the DoJ told the Guardian.Donald Ayer, a former deputy attorney general in the George HW Bush administration, told the Guardian that “the committee hearings have bolstered the need to seriously consider filing criminal charges against Trump”.The crux of any prosecution of Trump would hinge heavily on convincing a jury that Trump knew he lost the election and acted with criminal intent to overturn the valid election results. The hearings have focused heavily on testimony that Trump fully knew he had lost and went full steam ahead to concoct schemes to stay in power.New revelations damaging to Trump emerged on Thursday when Greg Jacob, the ex-counsel to former vice-president Mike Pence, recounted in detail how Eastman and Trump waged a high-pressure drive, publicly and privately, even as the Capitol was under attack, to prod Pence to unlawfully block Biden’s certification by Congress on January 6.The Eastman pressure included a scheme to substitute pro-Trump fake electors from states that Biden won for electors rightfully pledged to Biden – a scheme the DoJ has been investigating for months and that now involves a grand jury focused on Eastman, Giuliani and several other lawyers and operatives.Eastman at one point acknowledged to Jacob that he knew his push to get Pence on January 6 to reject Biden’s winning electoral college count would violate the Electoral Count Act, and that Trump, too, was told it would be illegal for Pence to block Biden’s certification.Paul Pelletier, a former acting chief of the DoJ’s fraud section, said: “It is a target-rich environment, with many accessories both before and after the fact to be investigated.”But experts caution any decision to charge Trump will be up to the current attorney general, Merrick Garland, who has been careful not to discuss details of his department’s January 6 investigations, which so far have led to charges against more than 800 individuals, including some Proud Boys and Oath Keepers charged with seditious conspiracy.After the first two hearings, Garland told reporters, “I’m watching and I will be watching all the hearings,” adding that DoJ prosecutors are doing likewise.Garland remarked in reference to possibly investigating Trump: “We’re just going to follow the facts wherever they lead … to hold all perpetrators who are criminally responsible for January 6 accountable, regardless of their level, their position, and regardless of whether they were present at the events on January 6.”But Garland has not yet tipped his hand if Trump himself is under investigation. Despite that reticence, justice department veterans say the wealth of testimony from one-time Trump insiders and new revelations at the House hearings should spur the department to investigate and charge Trump.Barbara McQuade, a former US attorney for eastern Michigan, said the panel’s early evidence was strong, including “video testimony of Trump insiders who told Trump that he was going to lose badly, and that with regard to claims of election fraud, there was ‘no there there’,” as Trump’s ex-chief of staff Mark Meadows acknowledged in one exchange made public at the hearings.McQuade added that Barr’s testimony was “devastating for Trump. He and other Trump insiders who testified about their conversations with Trump established that Trump knew he had lost the election and continued to make public claims of fraud anyway. That knowledge can help establish the fraudulent intent necessary to prove criminal offenses against Trump.”In a novel legal twist that could emerge if Trump is charged, Bromwich said: “Bizarrely, Trump’s best defense to the mountain of evidence that proves these crimes seems to be that he was incapable of forming the criminal intent necessary to convict. That he was detached from reality, in Barr’s words. But there is strong evidence that he is not crazy – but instead is crazy like a fox.“How else to explain his attempts to pressure the Georgia secretary of state to ‘find the votes’ necessary to change the result? Or his telling DoJ officials to simply declare the election ‘corrupt’ and leave ‘the rest to me’ and Republican House allies?”Bromwich added: “All of this shows not someone incapable of forming criminal intent, but someone who understood what the facts were and was determined not to accept them. Because he couldn’t stand to lose. That was far more important to him than honoring our institutions or the constitution.”Former federal prosecutor Michael Zeldin said Trump could face charges over what Cheney called the “big rip-off”, which centers on the allegation that “Trump raised money from small-dollar donors after the election under false pretenses”.Zeldin said: “Specifically, he asked for money to fight election fraud when, in fact, the money was used for other purposes. This type of conduct could violate the wire fraud statute.”Ayer cited the importance of a justice department regulation identifying factors to consider in deciding whether to charge, and noted three of particular relevance to Trump – the nature and severity of the offence, the important deterrent effect of prosecutions, and the culpability of the individual being charged.But it might not be all plain sailing.Simmering tensions between the panel and the justice department have escalated over DoJ requests – rebuffed so far – to obtain 1,000 witness transcripts of committee interviews, which prosecutors say are needed for upcoming trials of Proud Boys and other cases. However, the New York Times has reported some witness transcripts could be shared next month.Nonetheless, as Garland weighs whether to move forward with investigating and charging Trump, experts caution a prosecution of Trump would require enormous resources, given the unprecedented nature of such a high-stakes case, and the risks that a jury could end up acquitting Trump – which might only enhance his appeal to the Republican base. Yet at the same time ,the stakes for the country of not aggressively investigating Trump are also extremely high.“No one should underestimate the gravity of deciding to criminally charge an ex-president,” said former federal prosecutor Dennis Aftergut.For Aftergut, though, charging Trump seems imperative.“Ultimately, the avalanche of documents and sworn testimony proving a multi-faceted criminal conspiracy to overturn the will of the people means one thing: if no one is above the law, even an ex-president who led that conspiracy must be indicted.”TopicsDonald TrumpJanuary 6 hearingsUS politicsUS Capitol attacknewsReuse this content More