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      William Barr: Trump is full of bull – but I’ll vote for him

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      William Barr: Trump is full of bull – but I’ll vote for himBarr’s book reveals he told Trump he was ‘like a bull in a bull ring’ – in return, Trump calls his former attorney general a ‘horse’ Donald Trump’s second attorney general, William Barr, told the former US president he was “like a bull in a bull ring” and “someone’s going to come and put a sword through your head”.Trump: US should put Chinese flags on F-22 jets and ‘bomb shit out of’ RussiaRead moreIn return, Trump called Barr a “horse” who had been “broken” by the radical left.Such was the state of debate in the upper echelons of the Republican party on Monday as it digested the latest round of promotion of Barr’s memoir, One Damn Thing After Another.The book will be published on Tuesday but it has been extensively trailed – including by the Guardian. On the page and in interviews, Barr says Trump is unfit for the presidency and should not be the Republican nominee in 2024.But Barr remains a staunch conservative. On Monday, he told NBC’s Today that despite it all, if Trump was the Republican nominee in 2024, he would vote for him.“Because I believe that the greatest threat to the country is the progressive agenda being pushed by the Democratic party, it’s inconceivable to me that I wouldn’t vote for the Republican nominee,” Barr said.In his book, Barr repeatedly describes disagreements with Trump and tactics used by senior aides including the then secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, to distract or obstruct the erratic and often furious president.Speaking to NPR on Monday, Barr repeated a passage in his book when he said: “At one point, I said to [Trump]: ‘You know, Mr President, you’re like a bull in a bull ring and your adversaries have your number. They know how to get under your skin, and all they have to do is wave a red flag over here and you go charging and attack it.’“And I said, ‘At the end of the day, you’re going to be in the middle of the ring sweating and someone’s going to come and put a sword through your head.“He didn’t think much of that metaphor.”Trump evidently no longer thinks much of Barr. This weekend, the former president wrote a lengthy letter to Lester Holt, an NBC anchor who interviewed Barr on TV.“Bill Barr cares more about the corrupt Washington media and elite than serving the American people,” Trump wrote, as reported by Axios.“He was slow, lethargic, and I realised early on that he never had what it takes to make a great attorney general. When the radical left Democrats threatened to hold him in contempt and even worse, impeach him, he became virtually worthless for law and order and election integrity. They broke him just like a trainer breaks a horse.”Trump also said: “I would imagine that if the book is anything like him, it will be long, slow and very boring.”Critics might disagree. Reviewing the book for the Washington Post, Devlin Barrett said Trump’s second attorney general “was easily [his] most effective and important cabinet member” and Barr’s memoir showed he could “tell a good yarn and has a penchant for deadpan punchlines”.That said, Barrett wrote, Barr had really written “a defense of his tenure to fellow conservatives”.“Barr bided his time before taking one last swing,” Barrett said. “But as long as there are senior officials like Barr, there will be presidents like Trump.”The book has produced a flood of media attention, including charges that Barr is seeking to whitewash his role in some of Trump’s most controversial moments.Barr defends his handling of the investigation of Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow. In particular, he focuses on his decision to release a summary of the report by Robert Mueller. In that letter, Barr cleared Trump of seeking to obstruct justice despite the special counsel laying out 10 possible instances of such potentially criminal behavior.Speaking to NBC, Barr repeated his conclusion that Trump’s claims of voter fraud in his defeat by Joe Biden were baseless – he has used the word “bullshit” – while skating over criticism for using the Department of Justice to investigate such lies.He said Trump was “responsible in the broad sense of that word” for the deadly Capitol riot over which he was impeached a second time, for inciting an insurrection.William Barr’s Trump book: self-serving narratives and tricky truths ignoredRead more“It appears that part of the plan was to send this group up to the Hill,” Barr said, of the storming of Congress by Trump supporters around which seven people died. “I think the whole idea was to intimidate Congress. And I think that that was wrong.”But he also said: “I haven’t seen anything to say he was legally responsible for it in terms of incitement.”Barr also addressed an incident he left out of his book: the firing of a US attorney, Geoffrey Berman, who was supervising investigations of Trump associates and business affairs as well as an investigation of a Turkish bank which the Turkish president asked Trump to drop.“I didn’t think there was any threat to the president,” Barr told NBC, adding that the decision “was my call”.“I hadn’t really thought much of him,” he said. “I wanted to make the change.”TopicsWilliam BarrDonald TrumpUS politicsUS elections 2020US elections 2024US Capitol attackPolitics booksnewsReuse this content More

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      in Elections

      Texas man could become first Capitol rioter convicted by jury as trial ends

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      Texas man could become first Capitol rioter convicted by jury as trial endsDepartment of Justice lawyers make closing arguments against Guy Reffitt, first of 750 people charged with joining riot to face trial Federal prosecutors were on Monday expected to make closing arguments in the first jury trial of someone charged with joining in the deadly January 6 assault on the Capitol by Donald Trump’s supporters.Department of Justice lawyers were set to wrap up their case against Guy Reffitt of Texas, the first of some 750 people charged with joining the riot to face trial in Washington.The charges against Reffitt include carrying a semi-automatic handgun while on Capitol grounds and obstructing justice by threatening his children with harm if they reported him to authorities.Some 200 defendants have pleaded guilty to charges relating to the attack, which sent lawmakers running for their lives. Reffitt’s trial is an important test case as the DoJ attempts to secure convictions from the hundreds of defendants who have not taken plea deals.They face charges ranging from unlawful picketing to seditious conspiracy, with which 11 people affiliated with the rightwing Oath Keepers were charged in January.A guilty verdict for Reffitt could motivate defendants to accept plea deals. A verdict in Reffitt’s favor could motivate hundreds who have not taken deals to risk a trial.Reffitt’s estranged son Jackson, now 19, turned him into the FBI and testified against him last week. If convicted of the most serious charges against him, Reffitt faces a maximum of 20 years in prison, though defendants rarely receive maximum penalties.Thousands of people stormed the Capitol on 6 January 2021, after a fiery speech in which Trump falsely claimed his election defeat was the result of widespread fraud, an assertion rejected by multiple courts, state election officials and members of his own administration. TopicsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpUS crimeUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      Trump’s private schedule reveals no plans for him to join 6 January march

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      Trump’s private schedule reveals no plans for him to join 6 January marchEx-president said he would join crowd to US Capitol but his schedule indicates he deliberately lied to his supporters Donald Trump was aware long before he took the stage at the “Save America” rally on 6 January that he would not march to the Capitol to protest the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s election win, according to his White House private schedule from that day.William Barr’s Trump book: self-serving narratives and tricky truths ignoredRead moreThe former president started his nearly 75-minute long speech at the Ellipse by saying he would go with the crowd to the Capitol, and then repeated that promise when he said he would walk with them down Pennsylvania Avenue towards the Capitol.But Trump’s private schedule – released by the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack in a filing on Wednesday – shows Trump must have known that there were no plans for him to join such a march, and that he was being taken back to the White House.The newly-released private schedule indicates Trump deliberately lied to his supporters, raising the spectre that he made a promise he had no intention of honoring so that they would descend on the Capitol and disrupt Congress from certifying Biden as president.It is a significant revelation that could bolster the select committee’s claim in the filing that Trump 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.“Trump telling the crowd that he would join them at the Capitol was incendiary in that they thought that their field marshal would be there,” said Ryan Goodman, a former special counsel at the Department of Defense. “It is further evidence that Trump knew he was inciting an already highly volatile situation.”The former president’s private schedule may also support a parallel civil suit brought by the Democratic congressman Eric Swalwell, a former House impeachment manager, that Trump prompted the Capitol attack through his comments in his speech.“Trump directly incited the violence at the Capitol that followed and then watched approvingly as the building was overrun,” the lawsuit said. “The horrific events of January 6 were a direct and foreseeable consequence of the Defendants’ unlawful actions.”Trump’s private schedule for that day indicated the former president was to travel directly from the White House to the Ellipse, speak at the “Save America” rally there, and then immediately return to the White House once his speech had concluded.The former president was running late on 6 January, but the timestamp on the document reads 11.22am – roughly half an hour before he started to speak at the rally at 11.50am – meaning he must have known before he took to the stage that he was not going to the Capitol.Trump’s promises are significant as they served as one of the primary motivations for his supporters to march to the Capitol alongside militia groups like the Oath Keepers, and were used by far-right activists like Alex Jones to encourage the crowd along the route.Indeed, testimony in federal prosecutions of rioters charged in connection to the Capitol attack suggest Trump’s promises that he would walk with them to the Capitol was the proximate cause for them to also walk up to Congress before the march descended into a riot.An analysis of cellphone data published by the New York Times also reveals that many of Trump’s supporters who marched from the rally to the Capitol went down Pennsylvania Avenue as he had suggested, a more circuitous route than walking up the National Mall.Crucially, Trump made the false promises that led the crowd to go to the Capitol in spite of being told by the Secret Service days before the situation was too volatile for them to guarantee his security if he joined them, according to a source familiar with the matter.That raises the prospect that the former president encouraged his supporters to march on the Capitol, on a premise he knew to be false, in the hope that the security situation he had been told was volatile would lead to some event that would stop Biden’s certification.But regardless of what he agreed with the Secret Service, his private schedule from just before the speech indicates Trump deliberately and repeatedly lied to the crowd about his intentions in a way that could leave him vulnerable to criminal or civil charges.The former president’s private schedule came as part of court filings submitted by the select committee seeking to challenge former Trump lawyer John Eastman’s claim that thousands of emails demanded by the panel are protected by attorney-client privilege.The select committee said in its filing that it believed the privilege asserted over the records were not applicable because of the so-called crime-fraud exception, arguing Eastman was involved in potentially illegal efforts by Trump to overturn the 2020 election.TopicsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackUS politicsHouse of RepresentativesnewsReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      National Archives turns over Trump White House logs to January 6 panel

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      National Archives turns over Trump White House logs to January 6 panelSelect committee investigating Capitol attack also receives records from former vice-president Mike Pence The US National Archives has delivered White House visitor logs from Donald Trump’s administration to the congressional committee investigating the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol by extremist supporters of the then president, the committee said on Friday.The National Archives also turned over records from former vice-president Mike Pence, meeting a 3 March deadline.Trump strikes deal to evade deposition in New York investigation – for nowRead more“Yesterday, the select committee received additional production of records from the National Archives,” a House of Representatives select committee aide said. “This included records that the former president attempted to keep hidden behind claims of privilege.”Trump had tried to block the release of the visitor logs, but Joe Biden rejected his claim that they were subject to executive privilege “in light of the urgency” of the committee’s work and Congress’s “compelling need”.Several courts, including the US supreme court, have also ruled against the Republican ex-president’s efforts to block the release of various records to the committee.So far, more than 725 people have been charged with playing a role in the attack on the Capitol by mobs of Trump supporters, which left five people dead and more than 100 police officers injured, as, at Trump’s urgings at a rally that morning, they tried to prevent the US Congress certifying Biden’s win for the Democrats in the 2020 presidential election.Another four police officers involved in defending the Capitol later killed themselves.The bipartisan January 6 committee chaired by Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi has been investigating the events surrounding the attack – and the former president’s role in it – for more than seven months, as well as allegations of a political conspiracy by Trump and key allies to get the results overturned.The committee has made more than 80 subpoenas public, including many issued to top Trump aides and allies, and interviewed more than 560 witnesses. It has also gathered records from social media and other telecommunications firms.TopicsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackUS politicsHouse of RepresentativesnewsReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      January 6 panel subpoenas Kimberly Guilfoyle, fiancee of Donald Trump Jr

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      January 6 panel subpoenas Kimberly Guilfoyle, fiancee of Donald Trump JrHouse select committee issues subpoena after Guilfoyle abruptly cut short interview with panel last week The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack has subpoenaed Kimberly Guilfoyle, the fiancée of Donald Trump’s eldest son. House investigators issued the subpoena Thursday, after she had abruptly ended a voluntary interview with the panel last week.The committee is investigating the events surrounding the insurrection at the Capitol last year, when a mob of Trump supporters violently attacked the building in a failed attempt to halt the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.The chairman of the select committee, Bennie Thompson, said in the subpoena letter to Guilfoyle that the panel was compelling her testimony because of her proximity to the former president and the rally that preceded the Capitol attack on January 6.Thompson said the panel had been left with no choice but to force her cooperation.“Because Ms Guilfoyle backed out of her original commitment to provide a voluntary interview, we are issuing today’s subpoena that will compel her to testify. We expect her to comply with the law and cooperate,” Thompson said.US Capitol attack committee plans April hearings to show how Trump broke lawRead moreGuilfoyle met virtually with the panel for an interview last week, but cut off questioning when she learned that select committee members Adam Schiff and Jamie Raskin – in addition to counsel – had joined the call.After news of her appearance was leaked to news outlets, Guilfoyle refused to continue, and her lawyer accused the select committee of trying to “sandbag” her and not keeping participants limited to committee counsel, according to a source familiar with the interview.Members of the select committee are actively involved in the investigation, and are almost always present at depositions. But Guilfoyle’s lawyer said in a statement that the panel sought to use her cooperation as a “political weapon” against Trump.“Ms Guilfoyle, under threat of subpoena, agreed to meet exclusively with counsel for the select committee in a good-faith effort to provide true and relevant evidence,” Joseph Tacopina, Guilfoyle’s lawyer, said in a statement after she halted her interview.“However, upon Ms Guilfoyle’s attendance, the committee revealed its untrustworthiness, as members notorious for leaking information appeared,” Tacopina said, referring to the two congressmen Schiff and Raskin.The lawyer for Guilfoyle added that after he asked for a break to address the issue with House investigators, the select committee leaked the breakdown in proceedings to reporters. A spokesman for the select committee has denied Tacopina’s claim.The select committee did not address those complaints on Thursday. But the subpoena authorisation suggested the panel does not believe the matter precludes her from testifying about her contacts with Trump and rally organisers on January 6.The panel additionally noted that it had earlier informed her legal team that members would be present in her interview and even offered to reschedule Guilfoyle’s interview, but she declined.Guilfoyle was notably present for an Oval Office meeting that morning when Trump pressed then Vice-President Mike Pence to reject slates of electors for Biden at the joint session of Congress and thus return him to power, the subpoena said.House investigators added in the subpoena that they were also interested in Guilfoyle’s claims that she helped fund the “Save America” rally that preceded the Capitol attack, as well as discussions with Trump about who spoke at the rally.Guilfoyle told at least one rally organizer that she had “raised so much money for this. Literally one of my donors Julie at 3 million” – a reference to Julie Fancelli, who did in fact finance the event, the panel said.TopicsUS Capitol attackHouse of RepresentativesDonald Trump JrUS politicsDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

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      US Capitol attack committee plans April hearings to show how Trump broke law

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      US Capitol attack committee plans April hearings to show how Trump broke lawCourt filing says public hearings will address ‘in detail’ Trump’s legal culpability for obstructing Congress and defrauding the US The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack is hoping to show through public hearings in April how it believes Donald Trump came to violate federal laws in his efforts to overturn the 2020 US election results, the panel has indicated in court documents.The hearings are set to be a major and historical political event in America as the panel seeks to publicly show the extent of its investigations so far into the shocking events that saw a pro-Trump mob invade the Capitol in an attempt to stop the certification of the election of Joe Biden by Congress.Keyword list for Trump lawyer hints at focus of US Capitol attack investigationRead moreThe panel alleged in a court filing on Wednesday that Trump and his associates obstructed Congress and conspired to defraud the United States on 6 January, arguing it meant the former Trump lawyer John Eastman could not shield thousands of emails from the inquiry.But the public hearings – which are likely to come late next month, the chair of the select committee, Bennie Thompson, told the Guardian – will address just how Trump came to interfere with the joint session of Congress through rhetoric he knew to be false or unlawful.“The president’s rhetoric persuaded thousands of Americans to travel to Washington for January 6, some of whom marched on the Capitol, breached security, and took other illegal actions. The select committee’s hearings will address those issues in detail,” the filing said.The panel also said in its court submission that the public hearings would address how Trump appeared to lay the groundwork for his rhetoric inciting the Capitol attack by promoting claims of election fraud in the 2020 election that he had been told were without merit.“Despite being repeatedly told his allegations of campaign fraud were false, the President continued to feature those same false allegations in ads seen by millions,” the filing said. “The select committee will address these issues in detail in hearings this year.”The select committee indicated the public hearings would serve as the opportunity to cast a light on Trump’s secret efforts to overturn the election, from his attempts to pressure the then vice-president, Mike Pence, to return him to office, to abuse of the justice department.“We want to paint a picture as clear as possible as to what occurred,” Thompson told reporters on Capitol Hill on Thursday. “The public needs to know what to think. We just have to show clearly what happened on January 6.”Thompson said that the select committee has witnesses who have volunteered to testify before the panel in public hearings, though he did not specify whether they included former Trump administration officials or Capitol attack rioters who had been charged.The clues as to what the panel will address in the much-anticipated public hearings, which will precede an interim report of its findings, came in a filing in which the select committee said for the first time they believed Trump had engaged in criminal activity.The Guardian first broke the news earlier this year that the select committee was investigating whether Trump oversaw a criminal conspiracy that connected the “political elements” of his scheme to return himself to office with the violence perpetrated by far-right militias.The fact that the panel said it had evidence of criminality does not mean House investigators will ultimately refer Trump to the justice department for prosecution. But its inclusion in the brief suggested the panel thinks it has sufficient materials to convince a judge.TopicsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsnewsReuse this content More