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      Capitol attack panel scores two big wins as it inches closer to Trump’s inner circle

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      Capitol attack panel scores two big wins as it inches closer to Trump’s inner circle House select committee seizes momentum as it embarks on final push to conclude evidence-gathering phase of inquiryThe House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack is moving to capitalize on new momentum as it embarks on its final push to complete the roughly one hundred remaining depositions and conclude the evidence-gathering phase of the inquiry.The panel has scored two major wins in recent days: more than six hours of testimony from Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, and a conclusion by a federal judge that the former president committed felonies to overturn the 2020 election.Members on the select committee believe Kushner’s cooperation might prompt other Trump officials to assist the investigation as the panel inches closer to Trump’s inner circle and the former president himself, according to sources familiar with the matter.The panel has also been buoyed by the federal court ruling that said Trump “more likely than not” violated the law over 6 January, reaffirming the purpose of the investigation and making it harder for Trump’s allies to defy the inquiry, the sources said.And members on the select committee believe that opening contempt of Congress proceedings against the Trump aides Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino for ignoring their subpoenas, will reinforce the message that the panel will punish non-compliance, the sources said.“There’s a momentum to this process when there’s cooperation,” Jamie Raskin, one of the congressmen on the panel, said of the burst of recent activity. “When people see that others are doing the right thing, it gives them the courage to do the right thing.”The select committee has now conducted more than 800 depositions and interviews, obtained almost 90,000 documents and followed up on more than 435 tips received through the tip line on its website, since it started its work in earnest last August.House investigators also have more than 100 depositions remaining on the schedule, the sources said, including one with a key witness who is expected to reveal connections between the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys militia groups and the Capitol attack.That deposition – slated for 5 April – would represent another breakthrough and could play a big role in establishing for the select committee whether Trump oversaw a criminal conspiracy as part of his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.It is so crucial, the sources said, since it could form part of the evidence to connect the militia groups that stormed the Capitol to the organizers of the rallies that immediately preceded the attack – who in turn are slowly being linked to the Trump White House.But that testimony has been on the books for several weeks, and the greater challenge for the select committee remains to resolve ongoing cooperation talks with Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s one-time attorney, and Ivanka Trump, the former president’s daughter.The select committee has a special interest in Giuliani since he was in close contact with Trump as he oversaw the implementation of the scheme to have the thenvice-president, Mike Pence, stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election win and return Trump to office.The Guardian first reported that Giuliani was poised to cooperate with the investigation and reveal the roles played by Republican members of Congress with caveats – such as not discussing matters covered by executive privilege – that are not yet resolved.House investigators have also identified Ivanka Trump as a key person of interest since she appeared to have learned before 6 January that the scheme to have Pence stop the certification was unlawful – but and might shed light on why the former president still went ahead with the plan.Testimony that speaks to whether Trump knew what he was pressing Pence to do was unlawful – and when he knew it – is a central question for the panel as it seeks to establish whether Trump’s actions should warrant a criminal referral to the justice department.The panel has also privately noted in recent days that Ivanka Trump might be able to shed light on who Trump was calling from the White House as the Capitol attack unfolded, after call logs from that day showed a near eight-hour gap in communications.The Guardian has revealed at least one of Trump’s phone calls on 6 January – when he dialed the Republican senator Mike Lee trying to reach Senator Tommy Tuberville – was routed through an official White House phone and should have been in the call logs but was not.As the select committee moves towards wrapping up the evidence-gathering phase of the investigation, the hope among its members is that the recent momentum will carry the inquiry through to public hearings that are now expected to start in mid-May.The panel remains undecided whether to demand cooperation from Ginni Thomas, the wife of the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, after the Washington Post and CBS reported she pressed Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows in texts to overturn the 2020 election.The issue centers on the fact that several members on the select committee did not know about Thomas’s texts – turned over by Meadows months ago – until news reports brought them to public attention, according to two sources familiar with the matter.Some members wanted to call her in to ask her about the texts, but others who had discussed the issue months ago demurred, arguing that Thomas, a far-right activist, was unlikely to assist the panel and would try to turn the inquiry into a political circus.A spokesperson for the panel did not respond to a request for comment.The select committee may yet request cooperation from Thomas, but House investigators are pursuing myriad lines of inquiry and whether to ask her for voluntary assistance or demand documents and testimony pursuant to a subpoena is just one strand, the sources said.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsDonald TrumpTrump administrationJared KushnerIvanka TrumpnewsReuse this content More

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      Man caught with ‘small armory’ ahead of Capitol riot sentenced to nearly four years in prison

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      Man caught with ‘small armory’ ahead of Capitol riot sentenced to nearly four years in prisonJudge said Lonnie Coffman’s weaponry showed he had come to Washington ‘to do battle’ An Alabama man found with a “small armory” of guns, ammunition and molotov cocktails in his pickup truck ahead of the 6 January 2021 US Capitol riot was sentenced to almost four years in prison, one of the stiffest sentences so far handed down.US district judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said the 46-month sentence reflected the seriousness of the charges against Lonnie Coffman, 72, who had pleaded guilty to possessing unregistered firearms.Coffman’s sentence is the third-longest for a Capitol riot defendant, after sentences of 63 months and 51 months to people who attacked police officers during the assault on Congress by former President Donald Trump’s supporters.Of the more than 100 defendants who have been sentenced so far, most have received probationary sentences or short jail sentences of less than two months.“He had a small armory in his truck, ready to do battle,” Kollar-Kotelly said during a sentencing hearing. “I still can’t get over why he had this.”Coffman has been in custody since his arrest on 6 January and will get credit for time served.Coffman’s lawyer argued that further incarceration was not warranted in light of his age, health, Vietnam war veteran status, remorse and acceptance of responsibility.Police officers arrested Coffman near the Capitol after noticing the handle of a gun in his pickup truck while they were responding to pipe bombs left outside the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee, both of which are near the Capitol.Inside Coffman’s truck, officers found an AR-15-style rifle, a shotgun, a crossbow, several machetes, smoke grenades and 11 molotov cocktails. They also found a note with the name of at least one member of Congress and a judge, with the notation “bad guy”.Prosecutors said at the time that the combination of weapons and political messages “suggest that these weapons were intended to be used in an effort to violently attack our elected representatives”.About 800 people face criminal charges relating to the storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters, which forced lawmakers to go into hiding during the certification over President Joe Biden’s election victory.TopicsUS Capitol attacknewsReuse this content More

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      Jared Kushner ‘voluntarily’ gives Capitol attack panel information in testimony

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      Jared Kushner ‘voluntarily’ gives Capitol attack panel information in testimonyKushner becomes first member of Donald Trump’s family to speak to investigators Jared Kushner testified on Thursday before the House select committee investigating the 6 January attack on the Capitol, becoming the first member of Donald Trump’s family to speak to investigators.Democrat Elaine Luria, a member of the select committee, confirmed that Kushner appeared before the panel “voluntarily”, although she would not provide details on what he said.“He was able to voluntarily provide information to us to verify, substantiate, provide his own take on this different reporting,” Luria told MSNBC. “So it was really valuable for us to have the opportunity to speak to him.”Kushner appeared virtually before investigators and spoke to committee counsel, two sources told the Guardian. A spokesperson for the January 6 committee declined to comment about Kushner’s testimony.Kushner is married to Trump’s eldest daughter, Ivanka Trump, and he served as a senior adviser to the former president. However, Kushner was not at the White House on 6 January as the Capitol attack unfolded because he was traveling back to Washington after a trip to Saudi Arabia.One source said before Kushner’s interview that investigators planned to ask him about a text sent by Ginni Thomas, the conservative activist who is married to the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, in the weeks after the election.The Washington Post and CBS News reported last week that Thomas sent a text to Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff, on 13 November that seemed to reference Kushner. “Just forwarded to yr gmail an email I sent Jared this am. Sidney Powell & improved coordination now will help the cavalry come and Fraud exposed and America saved,” Thomas wrote.Kushner may have also faced questions from the committee about Trump’s efforts to spread baseless claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election. According to Bob Woodward and Robert Costa’s book Peril, Kushner was involved in conversations about how to delicately tell Trump that he had lost the election to Joe Biden.The White House said Biden would not assert executive privilege over the testimony of Kushner, allowing him to speak to the committee about conversations he may have had with Trump in the days and weeks before the Capitol attack.“The president has spoken to the fact that January 6 was one of the darkest days in our country’s history and that we must have a full accounting of what happened to ensure that it never occurs again,” the White House communications director, Kate Bedingfield, said on Tuesday. “As a result, the White House has decided not to assert executive privilege over the testimony of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.”Asked whether Biden’s decision had been communicated to Kushner’s team, Bedingfield said: “I won’t speak to private communication between our attorneys and his.”Ivanka Trump has said she is in talks to voluntarily appear before the committee, after the Guardian reported that the committee was considering issuing a subpoena to compel her to testify.In a January letter to Trump, Thompson said the committee wanted to question her about what she witnessed in the Oval Office on 6 January. According to testimony from Keith Kellogg, the former national security adviser to Mike Pence, Trump witnessed a conversation during which her father pressured the vice-president to overturn the results of the election. Kellogg also testified that Trump made multiple attempts to convince her father to take action to quell the violence at the Capitol.Thompson requested Trump’s “voluntary cooperation” with the committee, writing: “We respect your privacy, and our questions will be limited to issues relating to January 6th, the activities that contributed to or influenced events on January 6th, and your role in the White House during that period.”Thompson initially proposed that Trump speak to the committee on 3 or 4 February, but those dates came and went without any progress. It remains unclear when Trump might testify or if she will provide any substantive information to the committee.Hugo Lowell contributed to this reportTopicsUS Capitol attackJared KushnerHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Trump claims ignorance of ‘burner phones’. Here’s how they work

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      Trump claims ignorance of ‘burner phones’. Here’s how they workDisposable phones may appeal to anyone trying to hide their identity – whether a criminal or an activist Let’s say you’re the president of the United States. You’re coordinating with a team of shady lawyers, elected officials, and political extremists to pull off a coup at the nation’s Capitol. And let’s just assume – in this hypothetical scenario – that you don’t want there to be a record of your highly incriminating calls. You’d probably want to use a burner phone.Investigators are now asking whether this matches what happened in the White House on 6 January 2021. The Washington Post and CBS News reported on Tuesday that a House investigation had found a seven-hour-and-37-minute gap in Donald Trump’s official call logs that day, during which hundreds of his supporters unleashed a deadly rampage at the US Capitol.Trump has pleaded ignorance, claiming in a statement to the outlets: “I have no idea what a burner phone is, to the best of my knowledge I have never even heard the term.” But the president’s former national security adviser John Bolton has disputed this, saying Trump used the phrase several times, in discussions about how to avoid having calls scrutinized.Either way, it’s important that all of us – including the president – understand what a burner phone is and does.A burner phone is a simple idea: a disposable phone, typically purchased prepaid and without a contract, that someone buys to make calls or send messages over a short period of time before “burning” the phone.Who uses them? In the popular imagination, burner phones are associated with crime. As Detective Carlton Lassiter quipped in the American sitcom Psych: “The only people who use these are low-life criminals, like drug dealers, terrorists, and people with subpar credit.” Breaking Bad’s antihero drug lord Walter White frequently uses cheap flip phones to make calls before snapping them in half. And in The Wire, Bernard, a drug hustler, visits convenience stores to buy prepaid phones for the rest of his organization.Revealed: Trump used White House phone for call on January 6 that was not on official logRead moreBut burner phones are also used by activists protesting police brutality, Hong Kongers trying to evade Covid rules, cheating spouses, teenagers defying their parents and tourists avoiding roaming charges abroad. In short, we live in a time when mobile phones are so cheap and easy to get that anyone can use burners.Jake Moore, a cybersecurity expert and former police forensics officer in the UK, told the Guardian that burner phones can be “very difficult” for law enforcement to trace.Keeping a phone “clean” starts with keeping it disconnected from the internet. Expert users never carry the burner phone and their primary phones with them at the same time.“Your phone is a tracking device,” said the security expert. “If you are moving around with a burner phone and you’ve still got your other phone with you, then law enforcement can do some triangulation on where you were.”A burner phone can also be revealed by the people it contacts. “If a burner phone is speaking and contacting another phone, that other phone will have call records that connect the two,” said Moore. To maximize secrecy, the people you’re contacting should also use burner phones.According to the former cop, the most important burner phone principle is to discard it and replace it constantly. But not everyone remembers to do this. When he was a police officer, “often we would find a ton of these burner phones in a property”, he said. While snapping a flip phone looks cool on TV, properly “burning” a phone requires destroying the sim card, said Moore. Some people go to more dangerous lengths, including microwaving phones.There are some software alternatives to burner phones: the smartphone app Burner generates new phone numbers for users, and Signal is an example of a strongly encrypted messaging app.But while using these apps, “your phone is still emitting lots of data, especially location,” said Moore. “So it’s not a complete burner way of doing things.”Trump discussed ‘burner phones’ several times, John Bolton saysRead moreSo if someone were using a burner phone to orchestrate a coup from the White House, could law enforcement triangulate the user? While it might be possible from a technical standpoint, the greater barriers might be legal ones.“You’ve got to have a warrant to get that information on that particular person, which isn’t easy to do from a threat actor point of view, because they would have to go to prove why they need it through the courts, to the telecom provider, to get that information.” For the user, the biggest obstacle to burner phones is that they’re a huge hassle. Early in his term, Trump turned down a more secure phone, preferring to hang on to his favorite old Android phone. It wouldn’t necessarily be easy for the US president to keep switching burner phones, either.“You’re starting to kill the convenience,” said Moore. “You’re going to have to tell your nearest and dearest of the new number each time. But how can you trust it? If I get a message from Donald Trump saying this is Donald Trump’s new burner phone number, I’m going to suspect that it’s not.”TopicsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attacknewsReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      Revealed: Trump used White House phone for call on January 6 that was not on official log

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      Revealed: Trump used White House phone for call on January 6 that was not on official logTrump’s call to Republican senator should have been reflected in presidential call log on day of Capitol attack but wasn’t Donald Trump used an official White House phone to place at least one call during the Capitol attack on January 6 last year that should have been reflected in the internal presidential call log from that day but was not, according to two sources familiar with the matter.The former president called the phone of a Republican senator, Mike Lee, with a number recorded as 202-395-0000, a placeholder number that shows up when a call is incoming from a number of White House department phones, the sources said.The number corresponds to an official White House phone and the call was placed by Donald Trump himself, which means the call should have been recorded in the internal presidential call log that was turned over to the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack.Trump discussed ‘burner phones’ several times, John Bolton saysRead moreTrump’s call to Lee was reported at the time, as well as its omission from the call log, by the Washington Post and CBS. But the origin of the call as coming from an official White House phone, which has not been previously reported, raises the prospect of tampering or deletion by Trump White House officials.It also appears to mark perhaps the most serious violation of the Presidential Record Act – the statute that mandates preservation of White House records pertaining to a president’s official duties – by the Trump White House concerning January 6 records to date.A spokesperson for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Trump called Lee at 2.26pm on January 6 through the official 202-395-0000 White House number, according to call detail records reviewed by the Guardian and confirmation by the two sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.The call was notable as Trump mistakenly dialed Lee thinking it was the number for Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville. Lee passed the phone to Tuberville, who told Trump Mike Pence had just been removed from the Senate chamber as rioters stormed the Capitol.But Trump’s call to Lee was not recorded in either the presidential daily diary or the presidential call log – a problem because even though entries in the daily diary are discretionary, according to several current and former White House officials, the call log is not.The presidential daily diary is a retrospective record of the president’s day produced by aides in the Oval Office, who have some sway to determine whether a particular event was significant enough to warrant its inclusion, the officials said.But the presidential call log, typically generated from data recorded when calls are placed by the White House operators, is supposed to be a comprehensive record of all incoming and outgoing calls involving the president through White House channels, the officials said.The fact that Trump’s call to Lee was routed through an official White House phone with a 202-395 prefix – either through a landline in the West Wing, the White House residence or a “work” cellphone – means details of that call should have been on the call log.The only instance where a call might not be reflected on the unclassified presidential call log, the officials said, would be if the call was classified, which would seem to be unlikely in the case of the call to Lee. The absence of Trump’s call to Lee suggests a serious breach in protocol and possible manipulation, the officials said.It was not immediately clear how a Trump White House official might obfuscate or tamper with the presidential call log, or who might have the authority to make such manipulations.Trump’s calls on January 6 might not have been recorded in the presidential call log if he used his personal phone or the cellphones of aides, the officials said, and Trump sometimes called people with the cellphone of his then White House deputy chief of staff, Dan Scavino.But multiple current and former White House officials have noted that a copy of the call log – alongside the president’s daily schedule and the presidential line-by-line document – might be provided to Oval Office operations to help compile the presidential daily diary.That could lead to a situation where records are vulnerable to tampering, since the presidential daily diary and call log needs approval by a senior White House official before they can be sent to the White House office of records management, the officials said.And by the time of January 6, two former Trump White House officials said, there was scope for political interference in records preservation, with no White House staff secretary formally appointed after Derek Lyons’ departure on 18 December.The White House Communications Agency has also not been immune to political influence, the select committee revealed last year, when it found evidence the agency produced a letter that was intended to be used to pressure states to decertify Joe Biden’s election win.Trump’s call to Lee was not the only call missing from an unexplained, seven-hour gap in the presidential call log that day. Trump, for instance, also connected with House minority leader Kevin McCarthy as the Capitol attack unfolded.The presidential daily diary and presidential call log were turned over to the select committee by the National Archives after the supreme court refused a last-ditch request from Trump to block the release of White House documents to the panel.TopicsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackUS politicsHouse of RepresentativesnewsReuse this content More

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      Trump discussed ‘burner phones’ several times, John Bolton says

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      Trump discussed ‘burner phones’ several times, John Bolton saysRevelation from former national security adviser raises pressure on Trump as lawmakers investigate gaps in January 6 call logs John Bolton, the former national security adviser, has revealed that he heard Donald Trump use the term “burner phones” several times and that they discussed how the disposable devices were deployed by people as a way of avoiding scrutiny of their calls.Bolton’s intervention compounds Trump’s difficulties amid a billowing controversy relating to seven hours and 37 minutes that are missing in official call logs. The gap occurs in records made for 6 January last year – the day of the violent insurrection at the US Capitol.The Washington Post and CBS News disclosed on Tuesday that the House committee investigating the insurrection is looking into a “possible cover-up” of the White House records. Documents originally held by the National Archives and turned over to the committee earlier this year showed a gap in Trump’s phone calls spanning precisely the period when hundreds of his supporters stormed the Capitol building.Records show long gap in Trump phone logs as January 6 violence unfoldedRead moreThe news outlets, which obtained 11 pages of records including Trump’s official daily diary and a call log for the White House switchboard, reported that the House panel has begun an investigation into whether Trump used disposable “burner phones” to sidestep scrutiny.In a statement to the Post/CBS News, Trump said: “I have no idea what a burner phone is, to the best of my knowledge I have never even heard the term.”Not true, according to Bolton. In an interview with the Post/CBS News, the former national security adviser said that he recalled Trump “using the term ‘burner phones’ in several discussions and that Trump was aware of its meaning”.Bolton added that he and Trump had spoken “about how people have used ‘burner phones’ to avoid having their calls scrutinized,” according to Robert Costa, author of the Post/CBS News revelations along with Bob Woodward.At the heart of the January 6 committee investigation is whether Trump was directly involved in coordinating the breach of security at the Capitol on the day that Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election was to be certified by Congress. What Trump did, and whom he talked to, as the insurrection was unfolding is central to the inquiry.The call logs obtained by the committee show that Trump spoke to several close associates on the morning of January 6, including his lawyer Rudy Giuliani and former senior adviser Steve Bannon. His daily diary shows an entry at 11.17 am for a phone call with “an unidentified person”, but after that the records fall silent.The next phone log is at 6.54pm when Trump asked the White House switchboard to put him through to his communications chief, Dan Scavino.In those intervening 457 minutes Trump supporters and white supremacist groups had broken through police barricades, forcing vice-president Mike Pence, who was overseeing the certification process, into hiding. A bipartisan Senate report connected seven deaths to the attack with more than 100 law enforcement officers injured.TopicsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackUS politicsJohn BoltonnewsReuse this content More

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      Records show long gap in Trump phone logs as January 6 violence unfolded

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      Records show long gap in Trump phone logs as January 6 violence unfoldedPanel reportedly investigating ‘possible coverup’ of records, with unexplained gap of seven hours as Capitol insurrection took place The House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol is reportedly looking at a “possible cover-up” of White House records focusing on Donald Trump’s phone logs from that fateful day, which bear an unexplained gap of seven hours and 37 minutes covering the period when the violence was unfolding.‘Clank, into the hole’: Trump claims hole-in-one at Florida golf club Read moreDocuments obtained by the Washington Post and CBS News put flesh on the bones of one of the great mysteries of January 6: why White House phone logs contain holes in the record despite evidence the then president busily made calls at the height of the insurrection.The documents reveal that Trump’s diary shows an entry at 11.17am when he “talked on a phone call to an unidentified person”. The next entry is not until 6.54pm – 457 minutes later – when Trump asked the White House switchboard to place a call to his communications chief, Dan Scavino.Between those times Trump addressed a rally on the Ellipse, exhorting supporters to “fight like hell”; hundreds of Trump followers overran police barricades and stormed the Capitol building; and Mike Pence, the vice-president, who had been overseeing the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election, was forced to go into hiding.A bipartisan Senate report connected seven deaths to the attack. More than 100 law enforcement officers were injured.In an echo of history, the investigation by the January 6 committee of a possible cover-up was revealed by Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, who made his name, with Carl Bernstein, by breaking the story of Watergate and bringing down a president, Richard Nixon. Woodward’s journalistic partner on this occasion was Robert Costa, his co-author of Peril, a book on the end of the Trump presidency which was released last year.The pair reported that the long gap between call logs was of “intense interest” to elements of the January 6 committee. They quoted an unnamed member of the panel who said they were investigating a “possible cover-up”.The January 6 committee consists of nine members, seven Democrats and two Republicans, Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, participating in defiance of party leadership.According to Woodward and Costa, the committee is looking at possible ways in which Trump skirted normal accountability governing telephone calls for a sitting president. One theory is that he might have used disposable or “burner phones”.In a statement, Trump dismissed such speculation.“I have no idea what a burner phone is, to the best of my knowledge I have never even heard the term,” he said.The disclosure of evidence around the events of January 6 has been a bone of contention between Trump and the House committee. Last month the National Archives disclosed it had found boxes of classified documents the former president had improperly taken from the White House.The phone logs containing the six-hour interlude were only handed over to the committee earlier this year after the US supreme court rejected a call by Trump to block the transfer of the documents.The apparent parallels between Trump’s missing phone logs and Nixon’s Watergate cover-up – both situations enhanced by the presence of Woodward’s reporting – was too enticing for commentators to ignore.Bill Kristol, editor-at-large of the anti-Trump conservative website The Bulwark, compared the two presidents’ remarks, writing: “‘I have never obstructed justice … I am not a crook.’ – Richard M Nixon, Nov 17, 1973. ‘I have no idea what a burner phone is …” – Donald J Trump, March 29 2022.’ ”Several people noted the disparity between the infamous 18-and-a-half minutes that were missing in White House tapes of conversations between Nixon and his chief of staff, HR Haldeman, and the vastly longer gap of more than seven hours in Trump’s phone logs.The missing Nixon tapes were from 20 June 1972, three days after the Watergate break-in.The constitutional law scholar Laurence Tribe tweeted that Trump’s gap “makes the infamous 18-minute gap in Nixon’s tapes look like nothing in comparison”.Pressure on Trump over his actions on January 6 comes at an intense moment for him. Earlier this month, the committee laid out a case for the former president having violated several federal laws in his attempt to overturn the 2020 election results and stay in power.This week, a federal judge stated that Trump appeared to have committed multiple felonies in his pursuit of the “big lie” that the election was stolen. The judge, David Carter, ordered John Eastman, the conservative lawyer who advised Trump on how to delay certification of Biden’s victory, to hand over hundreds of emails to the January 6 committee.TopicsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      US Capitol attack panel votes to recommend prosecution of Trump duo

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      US Capitol attack panel votes to recommend prosecution of Trump duoSelect committee unanimously agrees to advance contempt of Congress citations against Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack voted on Monday to recommend the criminal prosecution of two of Donald Trump’s top former White House aides – Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino – for defying subpoenas in a bid to undermine the January 6 inquiry.The select committee unanimously approved the contempt of Congress report it had been examining. The citations now head for a vote before the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, which is expected to approve resolutions for referrals to the justice department.Congressman Bennie Thompson, the chair of the select committee, said at the vote that the panel was seeking the criminal prosecution for Navarro and Scavino to punish their non-cooperation over claims of executive privilege it did not recognize.Judge says Trump ‘likely’ committed crimes in bid to block Biden victoryRead more“Executive privilege doesn’t belong to just any White House official. It belongs to the president. Here, President Biden has been clear that executive privilege does not prevent cooperation with the Select Committee by either Mr Scavino or Mr Navarro,” Thompson said.“Even if a president has formally invoked executive privilege regarding testimony of a witness – which is not the case here – that witness has the obligation to sit down under oath and assert the privilege question by question. But these witnesses didn’t even bother to show up.”The vote to advance the contempt citations against the two Trump White House aides came as the select committee was expected to huddle to discuss whether to demand that Ginni Thomas, the wife of supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, assist the investigation.The panel had sought cooperation from Navarro, a former Trump senior adviser, since he helped to devise an unlawful scheme with operatives at the Trump “war room” in Washington to have then-vice president Mike Pence stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election win.Navarro worked with the Trump campaign’s lawyers to pressure legislators in battleground states won by Biden to decertify the results and instead send Trump slates of electors for certification by Congress, the panel said in the contempt report.The former Trump aide also encouraged then Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to call political operative Roger Stone to discuss January 6 and coordinated with Willard war room operative Steve Bannon in the days before the Capitol attack, the panel added.But Navarro told the select committee – without providing any evidence – that the former president had asserted executive privilege over the contents of his subpoena issued last month, and refused to provide documents or testimony.The panel for months has also sought assistance in its investigation from Scavino, the former Trump White House deputy chief of staff for communications, since he attended several meetings with Trump where election fraud matters were discussed.But after the panel granted to Scavino six extensions that pushed his subpoena deadlines from October 2021 to February 2022, the former Trump aide also told House investigators that he would not comply with the order because Trump invoked executive privilege.The select committee rejected those arguments of executive privilege, saying neither Navarro nor Scavino had grounds for entirely defying the subpoenas because either Trump did not formally invoke the protections, or because Biden ultimately waived them.Congressman Jamie Raskin, visibly furious as he read out remarks at the vote, slammed the executive privilege claims. “Please spare us the nonsense talk about executive privilege, rejected now by every court that has looked at it,” Raskin said.“This is America, and there’s no executive privilege here for presidents, much less trained advisors, to plan coups and organize insurrections against the people’s government in the people’s constitution and then to cover up the evidence of their crimes.“These two men,” Raskin said of Navarro and Scavino, “are in contempt of Congress and we must say, both for their brazen disregard for their duties and for our laws and our institutions.”The panel also said that even if it accepted the executive privilege claims, the two former Trump aides had no grounds to entirely ignore the subpoenas since they also demanded documents and testimony about non-privileged matters.The panel added the justice department’s office of legal counsel had determined they also had no basis to defy the document request in the subpoena, noting there has never been any purported immunity for producing non-privileged documents to Congress.And at the vote to recommend contempt citations, the vice-chair of the panel, Liz Cheney urged the justice department to also reject the two Trump aides’ arguments for defying their subpoenas should the House make the expected criminal referrals.“The Department of Justice is entrusted with the defense of our constitution; department leadership should not apply any doctrine of immunity that might block Congress from fully uncovering and addressing the causes of the January 6th attack,” Cheney said.TopicsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackUS politicsnewsReuse this content More