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      Attempt to bar Marjorie Taylor Greene from Congress can proceed, judge says

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      Attempt to bar Marjorie Taylor Greene from Congress can proceed, judge saysFederal judge cites ‘whirlpool of colliding constitutional interests’ in allowing 14th-amendment challenge to far-right Republican An attempt to bar the far-right Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene from Congress over her support for the January 6 attack can proceed, a federal judge said.‘Election integrity summits’ aim to fire up Trump activists over big lieRead moreCiting “a whirlpool of colliding constitutional interests of public import”, Amy Totenberg of the northern district of Georgia sent the case on to a state hearing on Friday.A coalition of liberal groups is behind the challenge, citing the 14th amendment to the US constitution, passed after the civil war.The amendment says: “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath … to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”Supporters of Donald Trump attacked the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, seeking to stop certification of his defeat by Joe Biden. A bipartisan Senate committee connected seven deaths to the riot. About 800 people have been charged, some with seditious conspiracy.Trump was impeached for inciting an insurrection. Acquitted, he is free to run again.Organisers of events in Washington on January 6 have tied Greene to their efforts. Greene has denied such links and said she does not encourage violence.In October, however, she told a radio show: “January 6 was just a riot at the Capitol and if you think about what our Declaration of Independence says, it says to overthrow tyrants.”In the immediate aftermath of the Capitol attack, Greene was one of 147 Republicans in Congress who objected to results in battleground states, an effort inspired by Trump’s lies about electoral fraud.An effort to use the 14th amendment against Madison Cawthorn, an extremist from North Carolina, was unsuccessful, after a judge ruled an 1872 civil war amnesty law was not merely retroactive.In her ruling on Greene’s attempt to dismiss her challenge, on Monday, Totenberg said: “This case involves a whirlpool of colliding constitutional interests of public import. Upon a thorough analysis of each of the claims asserted in this case, the court concludes that [Greene] has not carried her burden of persuasion.”Even if a state judge rules against Greene, she could challenge the ruling. The Georgia primary is on 25 May, cutting time short. Greene seems likely to win re-election.Writing for the Guardian this month, the Georgetown University professor Thomas Zimmer said: “Greene’s position within the Republican party seems secure … in fact, Greene is the poster child of a rising group of rightwing radicals … [not] shy about their intention to purge whatever vestiges of ‘moderate’ conservatism might still exist within the Republican party.”Extremists like Marjorie Taylor Greene are the future of the Republican party | Thomas ZimmerRead moreOne of the groups behind the challenge to Greene is Free Speech for the People. In January, the group’s legal director, Ron Fein, told the Guardian the group aimed to set “a line that says that just as the framers of the 14th amendment wrote and intended, you can’t take an oath to support the constitution and then facilitate an insurrection against the United States while expecting to pursue public office”.On Monday, Fein said: “We look forward to asking Representative Greene about her involvement [in January 6] under oath.”Mike Rasbury, an activist with the Bernie Sanders-affiliated Our Revolution group and a plaintiff in the lawsuit against Greene, said he was “elated” by Totenberg’s ruling.Greene, Rasbury said, “took an oath of office to protect democracy from all enemies foreign and domestic, just as I did when I became a helicopter pilot for the US army in Vietnam. However, she has flippantly ignored this oath and, based on her role in the January 6 insurrection, is disqualified … from holding any future public office”.TopicsRepublicansThe far rightUS Capitol attackUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsUS constitution and civil libertiesnewsReuse this content More

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      Jamie Raskin on the climate crisis: ‘We’ve got to save democracy in order to save our species’

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      InterviewJamie Raskin on the climate crisis: ‘We’ve got to save democracy in order to save our species’Ankita Rao Progressive congressman from Maryland believes that no other crisis, even the existential threat of the changing climate, can be solved without first protecting the fabric of American democracyWhen it comes to fighting for democracy and climate change – two of Jamie Raskin’s top priorities – the whole thing feels a bit like a game of chicken and egg to the Democratic congressman.On the one hand there is the planet, heating up quickly past the limit that is safe and necessary for human survival, while Congress stalls on a $555bn climate package. On the other, a pernicious movement, spurred by Donald Trump and other rightwing conspiracy theorists, to upend voting rights protections and cast doubt on the current election system.But Raskin, a progressive congressman from Maryland, is clear about which comes first: he said America can’t fix the planet without fixing its government.“We’ve got to save the democracy in order to save the climate and save our species,” he said in an interview with the Guardian in collaboration with Reuters and Climate One public radio, as part of the Covering Climate Now media collaboration.Later Raskin added: “We’re never going to be able to successfully deal with climate change if we’re spending all our time fighting the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers and Ku Klux Klan, and the Aryan nations and all of Steve Bannon’s alt-right nonsense.”In the past two years Raskin’s popularity has surged, picking up fuel after his closing remarks at Trump’s second impeachment trial in early 2021, which he led on behalf of House Democrats. “This trial is about who we are,” he said then, in video clips shared millions of times. His impassioned and meticulous rhetoric are a clear intersection of his past as a Harvard-trained constitutional law professor and son of a progressive activist.But it was an exceptional speech also because of the circumstances in which it was given, which both took place in the span of just a week. The first – the loss of Thomas (Tommy) Bloom Raskin, the congressman’s oldest son, who died by suicide at the tail end of 2020 after a long battle with depression. Just six days later Trump’s followers stormed the Capitol building in an attempt to decertify the election results.Raskin, who said Tommy “hated nothing more than fascism”, was moved to help lead the response to the insurrection through the House’s January 6 select committee.His fight to convict Trump is not only about holding the former president accountable. It’s about sending a message to the country that no other crisis, even the existential threat of the changing climate, can be solved without first protecting the fabric of American democracy.“I think for me the struggle to defend the truth is a precondition for defending our democracy, and the struggle to defend our democracy is a precondition for taking the effective action that needs to be taken in order to meet the climate crisis in a serious way and turn it around,” he said.This concept plays out clearly in the country’s uneven political representation. The majority of Americans think the government should be doing more to reduce the impacts of climate change, including taxing corporations based on their carbon emissions. But issues like partisan gerrymandering, where politicians manipulate voting district lines, often allow rightwing politicians to retain disproportionate power across state governments.“The key to understanding the collapse of civilizations is that you get a minority faction serving its own interests by dominating government,” he said, referencing Jared Diamond’s book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. “And then everything collapses, usually through the exploitation of natural resources to a point where it’s unsustainable and untenable. That fits pretty perfectly the situation that we’re in with the GOP and climate change today.”Raskin was an early adopter of the Green New Deal, and during the pandemic he sought to block his fellow representatives from using Covid relief money to further fossil fuel interests. His commitment extends to his personal life, where – inspired again by Tommy – he is a devout vegetarian, convinced that new science and technology will render a meat-centric diet unnecessary.But the stakes for protecting the Democratic party’s climate agenda are especially high right now. The climate protections in Joe Biden’s ambitious “Build Back Better” framework have been drastically whittled down. With the midterm elections revving up, and Republicans expected to dominate in state and local races, Democrats face a small window of opportunity to advance their promise of new jobs and tax credits to incentivize a shift to cleaner energy.Those same midterm races are rife with candidates who are following Trump’s “big lie” – that the 2020 election was not legitimate – and continue to hack away at voting rights protections, such as mail-in voting and weekend voting hours.Raskin remained optimistic about Congress passing climate legislation, noting last year’s climate-friendly infrastructure bill, but said the party must always “be realistic” about what that means, even if it denotes considering alternative energy legislation via Joe Manchin, the moderate Democrat from West Virginia who has stood in the way of several progressive bills in the Senate. (Manchin was also a critical roadblock in Raskin’s wife Sarah Bloom Raskin’s nomination to the Federal Reserve Board.)“The democratic governments and democratic parties and movements of the world have got to confront this reality. Nobody else is going to do it,” Raskin said.There isn’t much leeway when it comes to enacting change. Storms are getting stronger, people are being displaced from their homes, and anti-science politicians are gaining more ground. But Raskin, armed with his father’s message to “be the hope” and his children’s sense of urgency around climate change, is confident his side is going to win.“We should cut the deals that need to be cut but from a position of power and strength by mobilizing the commanding majorities of people across America that believe in climate change and know that we need to act.”TopicsClimate crisisUS Capitol attackUS politicsDemocratsinterviewsReuse this content More

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      Ex-Trump aide Stephen Miller testifies to House January 6 panel for eight hours

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      Ex-Trump aide Stephen Miller testifies to House January 6 panel for eight hoursSubpoenaed former White House adviser gives virtual deposition on whether Trump encouraged supporters to march on Capitol Former White House aide Stephen Miller testified on Thursday to the House select committee investigating January 6 about whether Donald Trump encouraged his supporters to march on the Capitol, according to a source familiar with the matter.The virtual deposition, which lasted for roughly eight hours and was earlier reported by the New York Times, also touched on Miller’s role in the former president’s schemes to overturn the results of the 2020 election and return him to office, the source said.Liz Cheney disputes report January 6 panel split over Trump criminal referralRead moreMiller was Trump’s top domestic policy adviser and chief speechwriter. His appearance made him the latest Trump White House official to speak to the select committee, a day after Trump White House counsels Pat Cipollone and Pat Philbin talked to the panel for the first time.House investigators asked Miller about the language in Trump’s speech at the rally that took place at the Ellipse on January 6, a speech that Miller helped draft, the source said.The select committee focused on the use of the word “we” throughout Trump’s speech, which it believes had the effect of encouraging the crowd to march to the Capitol in order to pressure Congress to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election win, the source said.Trump used the term repeatedly over the course of his 75-minute speech, including when he told his supporters “we are going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue … and we are going to the Capitol.”The remarks, House investigators reportedly believe, amounted to an effort by Trump to encourage his supporters to march from the Ellipse to the Capitol on a false pretense, in the hope that they would disrupt Congress from certifying Biden as president.That determination has come in part after the select committee reviewed Trump’s private schedule for that day, which showed there were no plans for the former president to join such a march, and that he was to be back to the White House, the source said.Proof of bad intention on the part of Trump could bolster the select committee’s claim in the filing that he engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States by seeking to obstruct a lawful function of the government by deceitful or dishonest means.Miller contested that characterization, and told the select committee the use of the word “we” in Trump’s remarks was not an effort to incite the crowd to storm the Capitol but a rhetorical tool used in political speeches for decades, the New York Times reported.The panel is in possession of the speech and several draft versions, the source said. Miller, who testified pursuant to a subpoena issued in November, helped draft the speech with two other Trump aides – Vince Haley and Ross Worthington – who have also been subpoenaed.The select committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Miller’s testimony.Over the course of the extended deposition, House investigators asked Miller about his role in a brazen scheme to pressure legislatures to send slates of pro-Trump electors to Congress on January 6 in battleground states actually won by Biden, the source said.The select committee also asked Miller about the former president’s claims about election fraud. Miller told the select committee that the election had been stolen, and raised several instances of the supposed fraud, the source said.Miller’s appearance was at times heated and adversarial, the source added. Miller invoked executive privilege to some questions concerning his conversations with Trump, and only testified in response to the subpoena and after protracted negotiations involving his lawyer.TopicsUS Capitol attackTrump administrationHouse of RepresentativesnewsReuse this content More

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      US Capitol rioter who blames Trump for his actions is found guilty

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      US Capitol rioter who blames Trump for his actions is found guiltyDustin Byron Thompson, 38, claimed he was following orders when he stole a coat rack from a Senate office An Ohio man who claimed he was only “following presidential orders” from Donald Trump when he stormed the US Capitol has been convicted by a jury that took less than three hours to reject his novel defence for obstructing Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s presidential victory.The federal jury on Thursday also found Dustin Byron Thompson, 38, guilty of all five of the other charges in his indictment, including stealing a coat rack from an office inside the Capitol during the riot on 6 January 2021. The maximum sentence for the obstruction count, the lone felony, would be 20 years’ imprisonment.Jurors did not buy Thompson’s defence, in which he blamed Trump and members of the president’s inner circle for the insurrection and for his own actions.One juror who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity said: “Donald Trump wasn’t on trial in this case.”The juror, a 40-year-old man, said as he left the courthouse: “Everyone agrees that Donald Trump is culpable as an overall narrative. Lots of people were there and then went home. Dustin Thompson did not.”Thompson himself, testifying a day earlier, admitted he joined the mob’s attack and stole the coat rack and a bottle of bourbon. He said he regretted his “disgraceful” behaviour.“I can’t believe the things that I did,” he said. “Mob mentality and group think is very real and very dangerous.”Still, he said he believed Trump’s false claim that the election was stolen and was trying to stand up for him. “If the president is giving you almost an order to do something, I felt obligated to do that,” he said.The US district judge Reggie Walton, who is scheduled to sentence Thompson on 20 July, described the defendant’s testimony as “totally disingenuous” and his conduct on 6 January as “reprehensible”. The judge also cast blame in Trump’s direction after the verdict was announced.“I think our democracy is in trouble,” he said, adding that “charlatans” like Trump did not care about democracy, only about power. “And as a result of that, it’s tearing our country apart.” Prosecutors did not ask for Thompson to be detained immediately, but Walton ordered him held and he was led away handcuffed. The judge said he believed Thompson was a flight risk and posed a danger to the public.Thompson’s trial was the third to go before a jury among hundreds of Capitol riot cases prosecuted by the justice department. In the first two cases, jurors also convicted the defendants of all charges.The assistant US attorney William Dreher said Thompson, a college-educated pest exterminator who lost his job during the Covid-19 pandemic, knew he was breaking the law when he joined the mob that attacked the Capitol and, in his case, looted the Senate parliamentarian’s office. The prosecutor told jurors that Thompson’s lawyer “wants you to think you have to choose between President Trump and his client.“You don’t have to choose because this is not President Trump’s trial. This is the trial for Dustin Thompson because of what he did at the Capitol on the afternoon on Jan 6,” Dreher told jurors during his closing arguments.The defence attorney, Samuel Shamansky, said Thompson had not avoided taking responsibility for his conduct.“This shameful chapter in our history is all on TV,” Shamansky told jurors. But he said Thompson, unemployed and consumed by a steady diet of conspiracy theories, was vulnerable to Trump’s lies about a stolen election. He described Thompson as a “pawn” and Trump as a “gangster” who abused his power to manipulate supporters.“The vulnerable are seduced by the strong, and that’s what happened here,” Shamansky said.The judge had barred Thompson’s lawyer from calling Trump and ally Rudolph Giuliani as trial witnesses. But he ruled that jurors could hear recordings of speeches that Trump and Giuliani delivered on 6 January, before the riot erupted. A recording of Trump’s remarks was played.Shamansky contended that Giuliani, the Trump adviser and former New York City mayor, incited rioters by encouraging them to engage in “trial by combat” and that Trump provoked the mob by saying: “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country any more.”But Dreher told jurors that neither Trump nor Giuliani had the authority to “make legal” what Thompson did at the Capitol.The juror who spoke on condition of anonymity said he was “laughing under my breath” when Thompson testified he took the coat rack to prevent other rioters from using it as a weapon against police.TopicsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpUS politicsUS crimenewsReuse this content More

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      Former Trump adviser Stephen Miller to testify before January 6 committee

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      Former Trump adviser Stephen Miller to testify before January 6 committeeHis cooperation is a blow to Trump’s efforts to shield information about his movements on the day of the insurrection Stephen Miller, Donald Trump’s former top adviser, will give testimony to the January 6 committee today, according to a source familiar with the matter.The reported cooperation of Miller is further evidence that the House investigation into the Capitol riot is lapping at the doors of the Trump Oval Office, after the former president’s daughter and son-in-law, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, both former senior White House advisers, gave their own testimony in recent weeks.According to two other sources cited by the Associated Press, it is unclear if Miller will appear in person or virtually before the nine-member bipartisan panel.The fact he is appearing at all is a significant development, however, and probably another major blow to Trump’s efforts to shield information about his movements on the day of the insurrection and subsequent efforts to overturn the presidential election he lost to Joe Biden.Miller, considered Trump’s top aide through the entirety of his single term in office, has fiercely resisted previous efforts to get him to testify after receiving a subpoena in November. At the time, Bennie Thompson, the Mississippi Democrat who chairs the panel, said Miller had “participated in efforts to spread false information about alleged voter fraud”, the basis of Trump’s big lie that his election defeat was fraudulent.How cooperative Miller will be in terms of the testimony he has to offer remains to be seen. It is likely that Miller’s decision to appear was prompted by last week’s House vote to hold former Trump advisers Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino in contempt for their refusal to comply with their own subpoenas.Miller’s testimony – if he is cooperative – could be some of the most valuable and compelling evidence the January 6 inquiry will have collected to date about Trump’s involvement in the deadly insurrection.Miller was ever-present at Trump’s side throughout his administration, a supremely loyal and focused character credited as the mastermind of some of the most controversial and harshest policies it enacted.An extremist known for his white nationalist and far-right views, Miller was central to almost every decision the former president made while in office, as well as ultra-hardline immigration policies Trump would probably have enacted had he won a second term.It is that loyalty to his old boss, and to Trumpism itself, that has analysts wondering if Miller will in fact be forthcoming or will instead plead the fifth amendment to questioning. There is already speculation that Miller’s agreement to appear – which neither he nor the panel has yet confirmed – was simply an exercise in avoiding the fate of Scavino and Navarro.Miller’s appearance tightens the committee’s focus in the final stages of its investigation on the inner circle of Trump, who has vociferously pushed the big lie that his 2020 election defeat was fraudulent. The former president’s actions on the day of the insurrection and afterward have been under scrutiny, most recently a revelation that calls he made on 6 January were hidden from the official log.The inquiry has also looked into an illegal scheme allegedly pushed by Trump and his supporters to put forward fake electors to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the electoral college.The panel has said it will probably hold public hearings this spring, and a report is expected before this year’s midterm elections. Polling shows Republicans in a strong position to seize a majority in the House, at which point most observers believe they would shut the inquiry down if it is still ongoing.TopicsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpTrump administrationHouse of RepresentativesnewsReuse this content More

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      Capitol riot defendant blames actions on Trump and false election claims

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      Capitol riot defendant blames actions on Trump and false election claimsLawyer for man charged with stealing a coat rack from the Capitol has vowed to show Trump abused his power to ‘authorize’ attack Mentions of Donald Trump have been rare at the first few trials for people charged with storming the US Capitol, but that has changed: the latest Capitol riot defendant to go on trial is blaming his actions on the former president and his false claims about a stolen election.Dustin Byron Thompson, an Ohio man charged with stealing a coat rack from the Capitol, doesn’t deny that he joined the mob on 6 January 2021. But his lawyer vowed Tuesday to show that Trump abused his power to “authorize” the attack.Describing Trump as a man without scruples or integrity, defense attorney Samuel Shamansky said the former president engaged in a “sinister” plot to encourage Thompson and other supporters to “do his dirty work”.“It’s Donald Trump himself spewing the lies and using his position to authorize this assault,” Shamansky told jurors Tuesday during the trial’s opening statements.Justice department prosecutor Jennifer Rozzoni said Thompson knew he was breaking the law that day.“He chose to be a part of the mayhem and chaos,” she said.Thompson’s lawyer sought subpoenas to call Trump and Rudolph Giuliani as witnesses at his trial this week. A judge rejected that request but ruled that jurors can hear recordings of speeches that Trump and Giuliani delivered at a rally before the riot.Thompson’s jury trial is the third among hundreds of Capitol riot prosecutions. The first two ended with jurors convicting both defendants on all counts with which they were charged.In a February court filing, Shamansky said he wanted to argue at trial that Thompson was acting at the direction of Trump and “his various conspirators.” The lawyer asked to subpoena others from Trump’s inner circle, including former White House strategist Steve Bannon, former White House senior adviser Stephen Miller and former Trump lawyers John Eastman and Sidney Powell.Prosecutors said Thompson can’t show that Trump or Giuliani had the authority to “empower” him to break the law. They also noted that video of the rally speeches “perfectly captures” the tone, delivery and context of the statements to the extent they are “marginally relevant” to proof of Thompson’s intent on 6 January.Thompson’s lawyer argued that Trump would testify that he and others “orchestrated a carefully crafted plot to call into question the integrity of the 2020 presidential election”. Shamansky claimed that Giuliani incited rioters by encouraging them to engage in “trial by combat” and that Trump provoked the mob by saying that “if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore”.Shamansky said Thompson, who lost his job during the pandemic, became an avid consumer of the conspiracy theories and lies about a stolen election.“This is the garbage that Dustin Thompson is listening to day after day after day,” Shamansky said. “He goes down this rabbit hole. He listens to this echo chamber. And he acts accordingly.”US district Judge Reggie Walton ruled in March that any in-person testimony by Trump or Giuliani could confuse and mislead jurors.More than 770 people have been charged with federal crimes arising from 6 January. Over 250 of them have pleaded guilty, mostly to misdemeanors. Thompson is the fifth person to be tried on riot-related charges.Thompson has a co-defendant, Robert Lyon, who pleaded guilty to riot-related charges in March.Thompson, then 36, and Lyon, then 27, drove from Columbus, Ohio, to Silver Spring, Maryland, stayed overnight at a hotel and then took an Uber ride into Washington DC on the morning of 6 January. After Donald Trump’s speech, Thompson and Lyon headed over to the Capitol.Thompson was wearing a Trump 2020 winter hat and a bulletproof vest when he entered the Capitol and went to the Senate Parliamentarian’s Office, where he stole two bottles of liquor and a coat rack worth up to $500, according to prosecutors.Thompson is charged with six counts: obstructing Congress’ joint session to certify the electoral college vote, theft of government property, entering or remaining in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly or disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly or disruptive conduct in a Capitol building, and parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building.Lyon pleaded guilty to theft of government property and disorderly conduct. Both counts are misdemeanors punishable by a maximum of one year imprisonment. Walton is scheduled to sentence Lyon on 3 June.TopicsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpUS politicsUS crimenewsReuse this content More

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      Former Virginia police officer convicted of storming US Capitol

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      Former Virginia police officer convicted of storming US CapitolThomas Robertson was found guilty of all six counts he faced stemming from his participation in the 6 January 2021 riots A federal jury has convicted a former Virginia police officer of storming the US Capitol with another off-duty officer, to obstruct Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory.Proud Boys member pleads guilty to role in US Capitol attackRead moreJurors on Monday convicted former Rocky Mount police officer Thomas Robertson of all six counts he faced stemming from the 6 January riot, including charges that he interfered with police officers at the Capitol and that he entered a restricted area with a dangerous weapon – a large wooden stick.His sentencing hearing was not immediately scheduled.Robertson’s jury trial was the second among hundreds of Capitol riot cases. The first ended last month with jurors convicting a Texas man, Guy Reffitt, of all five counts in his indictment.Robertson did not testify at his trial, which started 5 April. Jurors deliberated for several hours over two days before reaching their unanimous verdict.One juror, who spoke to the Associated Press only on condition of anonymity, said as she left the courthouse, “I think the government made a really compelling case and the evidence was fairly overwhelming.”Defense attorney Mark Rollins said Robertson will appeal the jury’s verdict. “While Mr Robertson disagrees with the jury’s decision, he respects the rule of law,” Rollins said in a statement.A key witness for prosecutors in his case was Jacob Fracker, who also served on the Rocky Mount police force and viewed Robertson as a mentor and father figure.Fracker was scheduled to be tried alongside Robertson before he pleaded guilty last month to a conspiracy charge and agreed to cooperate with authorities. Fracker testified Thursday that he had hoped the mob that attacked the Capitol could overturn the 2020 presidential election results.Robertson was charged with six counts: obstruction of Congress, interfering with officers during a civil disorder, entering a restricted area while carrying a dangerous weapon, disorderly or disruptive conduct in a restricted area while carrying a dangerous weapon, disorderly or disruptive conduct inside the Capitol building, and obstruction. The last charge stems from his alleged post-riot destruction of cellphones belonging to him and Fracker.During the trial’s closing arguments Friday, assistant US attorney Risa Berkower said Robertson went to Washington and joined a “violent vigilante mob” because he believed the election was stolen from then-president Donald Trump. He used the wooden stick to interfere with outnumbered police before he joined the crowd pouring into the Capitol, she said.“The defendant did all this because he wanted to overturn the election,” Berkower said.Rollins conceded that Robertson broke the law when he entered the Capitol during the riot. He encouraged jurors to convict Robertson of misdemeanor offenses but urged them to acquit Robertson of felony charges that he used the stick as a dangerous weapon and that he intended to stop Congress from certifying the electoral college vote.“There were no plans to go down there and say, ‘I’m going to stop Congress from doing this vote,”’ Rollins said.Fracker testified that he initially believed that he was merely trespassing when he entered the Capitol building. However, he ultimately pleaded guilty to conspiring with Robertson to obstruct Congress.The town of Rocky Mount, which is about 25 miles south of Roanoke and has roughly 5,000 residents, fired Robertson and Fracker after the riot.TopicsUS Capitol attackWashington DCUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Liz Cheney disputes report January 6 panel split over Trump criminal referral

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      Liz Cheney disputes report January 6 panel split over Trump criminal referralRepublican on House select committee, however, refuses to say whether Trump should be referred for criminal charges

      Is Trump in his sights? Garland under pressure to charge
      A key Republican on the House January 6 committee disputed a report which said the panel was split over whether to refer Donald Trump to the Department of Justice for criminal charges regarding his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, leading to the Capitol attack.‘Smoking rifle’: Trump Jr texted Meadows strategies to overturn election – reportRead more“There’s not really a dispute on the committee,” the Wyoming representative Liz Cheney told CNN’s State of the Union.The New York Times said otherwise on Sunday, in a report headlined: “January 6 Panel Has Evidence for Criminal Referral of Trump, but Splits on Sending.”“The debate centers on whether making a referral – a largely symbolic act – would backfire by politically tainting the justice department’s expanding investigation into the January 6 assault and what led up to it,” the paper said.Citing “members and aides”, the Times said such sources were reluctant to support a referral because it would create the impression Democrats had asked the attorney general, Merrick Garland, to investigate Trump.Cheney said: “We have not made a decision about referrals on the committee … [but] it’s actually clear that what President Trump was dealing with, what a number of people around him were doing, that they knew it was awful. That they did it anyway.”She was speaking two days after CNN reported that the January 6 committee had obtained text messages in which Donald Trump Jr laid out election subversion tactics to Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, just two days after election day.A leading legal authority, Harvard professor Laurence Tribe, called the text a “smoking rifle” in establishing culpability in Donald Trump’s inner circle.Cheney cited a decision “issued by [federal] Judge [David] Carter a few weeks ago, where he concluded that it was more likely than not the president United States was engaged in criminal activity.“I think what we have seen is a massive and well-organised and well-planned effort that used multiple tools to try to overturn an election.”Cheney pointed to a guilty plea this week by a member of the far-right Proud Boys group, Charles Donohoe, to conspiring to attack the Capitol in a bid to stop Congress certifying Joe Biden’s victory. Such planning for events in Washington on 6 January, in part broadcast by Trump, was she said “the definition of an insurrection” and “absolutely chilling”.But Cheney would not be drawn on whether Trump should be referred for prosecution.She said: “The committee has … a tremendous amount of testimony and documents that I think very, very clearly demonstrate the extent of the planning and the organisation and the objective, and the objective was absolutely to try to … interfere with that official proceeding. And it’s absolutely clear that they knew what they were doing was wrong. They knew that it was unlawful.”Asked if there was a dispute on the committee, Cheney said there was not.“The committee is working in a really collaborative way to discuss these issues,” she said, adding: “We’ll continue to work together to do so. So I wouldn’t characterise there as being a dispute on the committee … and I’m confident that we will we will work to come to agreement on on all of the issues that we’re facing.”Cheney said Ivanka Trump’s testimony this week was “helpful, as has been the testimony of many hundreds of others who have appeared in front of the committee”.Proud Boys member pleads guilty to role in US Capitol attackRead moreShe said Trump aides Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino, referred to the DoJ for criminal contempt charges this week, had been “contemptuous” in refusing to testify.On Sunday, Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader who ejected Cheney from leadership over her involvement in the January 6 committee, issued a statement in support of the fight for democracy in Ukraine, in the face of the Russian invasion.Asked if she saw irony in such words from a man who sided with Trump over the Capitol attack, Cheney said: “What I would say is that what’s happening today in Ukraine is a reminder that democracy is fragile that democracy must be defended, and that each one of us in a position to do so has an obligation to do so.“Clearly, I think Leader McCarthy failed to do that, failed to put his oath to the constitution ahead of his own personal political gains.”TopicsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpRepublicansUS politicsnewsReuse this content More