US Capitol attack
Subterms
More stories
- in Elections
Ex-Trump aides move step closer to being held in contempt of Congress
Ex-Trump aides move step closer to being held in contempt of CongressPeter Navarro and Dan Scavino have refused to cooperate with House panel investigating January 6 insurrection Two of Donald Trump’s top former advisers, Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino, are facing mounting legal peril after the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol moved a step closer to recommending criminal charges against them.Capitol attack panel expects to hear how militia groups coordinated plans before insurrectionRead moreThe members of the committee were expected to meet on Monday night to discuss whether to hold Navarro, Trump’s former trade adviser, and Scavino, his former deputy chief of staff, in criminal contempt of Congress.A contempt report released on Sunday accused the two men of ignoring subpoenas that require them to hand over documents and face questions from the committee.The committee is expected to vote unanimously to recommend charges, triggering a House vote. The recommendation would then pass to the Department of Justice, which would decide whether to prosecute.Scavino, 46, and Navarro, 72, were intimately involved in efforts to subvert the results of the 2020 election so Trump could hang on to power. The contempt report says Scavino attended “several meetings with the president in which challenges to the election were discussed”.It also refers to Scavino having monitored a website, TheDonald.win, on which individuals planned violence in the run-up to January 6.Navarro was a prominent advocate of false claims of voter fraud. He has openly talked about a plan known as the “Green Bay Sweep”, which involved attempting to persuade lawmakers in battleground states to object to Joe Biden’s victory, in the hope of delaying certification in Congress.Both former Trump aides are accused by the committee of having failed to meet the demands of their subpoenas. Scavino, who was subpoenaed in September, has been granted six extensions but has yet to produce a document or testify, the contempt report said.Navarro, who was issued a subpoena last month, has declined to discuss any issues with the committee despite having addressed several in his own book, In Trump Time, published last November. The committee argues that his voluntary disclosures as an author make a mockery of his claim of executive privilege as justification for non-cooperation.Scavino also insists he is not able to testify because Trump has invoked executive privilege. The Biden administration has said it will not use executive privilege to shield individuals from having to provide documents and other information.The supreme court in February rejected Trump’s request to block the transfer of thousands of documents from the National Archives. Scavino and Navarro argue that the wider question of executive privilege is unsettled.The Capitol riot erupted after Trump exhorted supporters to “fight like hell” to stop Congress certifying Biden’s victory. The US Senate has linked seven deaths to the riot, in which more than 100 law enforcement officers were injured. Nearly 800 people have been charged in connection with the attack, some with seditious conspiracy.Contempt referrals have been sent to the DoJ for two other central Trump figures. Steve Bannon, Trump’s former strategist, was charged in November by a federal grand jury. He has pleaded not guilty. Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff at the time of the Capitol assault, was referred to the DoJ. It is still reviewing the evidence.The January 6 committee also made a contempt referral for Jeffrey Clark, a former DoJ official who promoted an attempt to delay certification of results in key states. He was spared a vote in the House after he agreed to appear before the committee – though he went on to invoke his right to silence more than 100 times.TopicsUS Capitol attackTrump administrationnewsReuse this content More
- in US Politics
Capitol attack panel expects to hear how militia groups coordinated plans before insurrection
Capitol attack panel expects to hear how militia groups coordinated plans before insurrection Testimony could play a major role in establishing whether Trump oversaw a criminal conspiracy in efforts to overturn 2020 electionBehind closed doors in a nondescript conference room at the foot of Capitol Hill, the House select committee investigating 6 January next week expects to hear testimony about the connections between the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys militia groups and the Capitol attack.The panel expects to hear how the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys coordinated their plans and movements in the days before the insurrection to the same level of detail secured by the justice department and referenced in recent prosecutions for seditious conspiracy.And the select committee hopes to also hear in the 5 April deposition – arranged by a senior counsel for the panel – private conversations between the leaders of the two militia groups and whether they might have communicated with any Trump advisers.The panel should get the evidence both on the record and under oath, according to two sources familiar with the arrangement, to add to raw video footage of a meeting between the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys leaders in a garage across from the Capitol on the eve of 6 January.The expected testimony and materials represent another significant breakthrough for the investigation and could play a major role in establishing for the select committee whether Donald Trump oversaw a criminal conspiracy as part of his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.Most crucially for the panel, it could form part of the evidence to connect the militia groups that stormed the Capitol on 6 January to the organizers of the Save America rally that immediately preceded the attack – who in turn are slowly being linked to the Trump White House.As the select committee moves closer to Trump – who House investigators alleged in a recent court filing that the former president violated federal laws including obstructing Congress and conspiring to defraud the United States as he sought to return himself to power – it is redoubling its efforts.The information that Sean Tonolli, the senior investigative counsel who set up the deposition, should obtain about the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys in the first week of April means the panel has managed to get all the major evidence for all the big moments.In December, the select committee revealed that it had in its possession 2,320 text messages from Trump’s former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, emails such as one with a PowerPoint presentation on staging a coup, and other documents he had turned over to the inquiry.That alone has been seen as a treasure trove of materials, including messages to and from House Republicans who apologized for not being able to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election win, and more recently, messages with Ginni Thomas, the wife of supreme court justice Clarence Thomas.In January, the panel got from the National Archives thousands of pages of Trump White House documents that the former president unsuccessfully sought to shield over claims of executive privilege in a case that Justice Thomas reviewed and emerged as the sole dissenter.Those included documents in the files of Meadows and former deputy White House counsel Pat Philbin, among others, and Trump’s private schedule for 6 January that showed he gave the crowd a false pretense to go to the Capitol perhaps in the hope that they might stop Biden’s certification.Then the select committee learned of the fake electors ploy – a scheme to send “alternate” slates of Trump electors to Congress in states won by Biden – that ensnared the White House and showed the involvement of some of Trump’s most senior aides.Earlier this month, the panel also revealed in separate litigation that Trump lawyer John Eastman knew that his plan to have then-vice president Mike Pence reject Biden’s wins in select battleground states and return Trump to office was an unlawful violation of the Electoral Count Act.The panel has so far conducted the vast majority of its investigation in private, conducting nearly 750 depositions behind closed doors, amassing more than 84,000 documents and pursuing more than 430 tips that have come through on its website tip line.But notwithstanding the secrecy, the select committee has uncovered extraordinary information that have put them several steps closer to potentially forcing them to make criminal referrals to the justice department once the inquiry is complete, the sources said.What the panel has found and made public so far, the sources said, could also lay the groundwork to sketch out a criminal conspiracy that connects Trump’s political plan to return himself to office with the attack itself – its ultimate suspicion, the Guardian first reported.From its nondescript offices boarded up with beige boards and wood-paneled conference rooms with blinds always drawn, the select committee has spent the last eight months working in color-coded teams in an attempt to untangle Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election results.The gold team is examining Trump’s plans to stop the certification of Biden’s election win with the help of Republican members of Congress, and his pressure campaign on state, local and justice department officials to return himself to office.The red team is looking at the Save America rally organizers and the Stop the Steal Movement, while the purple team is scrutinizing the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys, the 1st Amendment Praetorian and how militia groups helped lead the Trump mob into the Capitol building.As the panel moves into the second phase of its investigation, its members have said they want to release in narrative form the evidence of wrongdoing in a series of public hearings that are likely to be delayed from April to May but still focus on how Trump broke the law.The select committee’s purpose remains to recommend legislative reforms to prevent a repeat of 6 January, but the evidence collected by the panel is fast hurtling it towards a conclusion of criminal behavior that could implicate Trump – and necessitate a referral – the sources said.TopicsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpUS elections 2020US politicsThe far rightnewsReuse this content More
- in US Politics
Republican won’t say whether Capitol attack panel will question Ginni Thomas
Republican won’t say whether Capitol attack panel will question Ginni ThomasAdam Kinzinger vows to ‘get to the bottom’ of insurrection after Clarence Thomas’s wife reportedly urged White House to overturn Trump’s election defeat Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republican members on January 6 committee, on Sunday vowed to “get to the bottom” of events surrounding the 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol but refused to reveal whether the panel intends to question Ginni Thomas – wife of US supreme court justice Clarence Thomas – over reports of her urging the White House to overturn Donald Trump’s election defeat.Senior Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar said Clarence Thomas must recuse himself from relevant cases and warned the integrity of the supreme court is at stake.Kinzinger refused to confirm or deny the existence of text messages Ginni Thomas is reported to have exchanged with then White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, although he did not contest the Washington Post and CBS’s joint revelation last week that they obtained copies of such messages from materials submitted to the congressional committee by Meadows.“The question for the committee in this or any exchange is ‘was there a conspiracy, or how close did we get to overturning the election?’” he told CBS’s Face the Nation show on Sunday.Kinzinger, one of two Republicans on the House select committee investigating the events surrounding 6 January 2021, said of witnesses being summoned to give evidence to the committee: “We’ll call in whoever we need to call in.”He added: “Was there an effort to overturn the legitimate election of the United States? What was January 6 in relation to that? And what is the rot in our system that led to that and does it still exist today?…We are going to get to the bottom of this.”He did not say whether that “rot” extended to the nation’s highest court.Thomas and her husband are rightwing political darlings who have described themselves as “one being – an amalgam,” according to the New York Times.Amid the latest reports, Justice Thomas is now facing calls to recuse himself from any cases surrounding the 2020 presidential election, the insurrection and potentially the 2024 presidential election, should Trump run for re-election.Time for Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from election cases – his wife’s texts prove itRead moreMeanwhile Klobuchar of Minnesota, chairwoman of the Senate rules committee and a member of the Senate judiciary committee, which quizzes nominees for the supreme court, demanded that Clarence Thomas be removed from any such cases.“This is unbelievable,” Klobuchar told ABC’s This Week. “You have the wife of a sitting supreme court justice advocating for an insurrection, advocating for overturning a legal election, to the sitting president’s chief of staff. And she also knows this election, these cases, are going to come before her husband. This is a textbook case for removing him, recusing him, from these decisions.”The 29 exchanges reported between Ginni Thomas and Meadows reveal how the wife of one of the land’s top jurists disseminated disinformation related to the QAnon conspiracy theory and other inaccurate arguments during the tempestuous days following the November 2020 election when right-wingers were claiming Democrat Joe Biden had not won.Even as Trump strategized efforts to overturn his defeat through the courts, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas “spread false theories, commented on cable news segments and advocated with urgency and fervor that the president and his team take action to reverse the outcome of the election,” the Post reported.It reported she wrote to Meadows: “Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!!…You are the leader, with him, who is standing for America’s constitutional governance at the precipice. The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History.”Pressed about how he and his colleagues would broach Thomas’s alleged attempts to undermine a legitimate US election, Kinzinger said they want to ensure their work is “not driven by a political motivation, it’s driven by facts”.The House select committee has so far hesitated to demand cooperation from Thomas in part because they are worried she may “create a political spectacle to distract from the investigation”, the Guardian previously reported.Klobuchar said: “All I hear is silence from the supreme court right now. And that better change in the coming week because every other federal judge in the country except supreme court justices would have guidance from ethics rules that says you got to recuse. The entire integrity of the court is on the line here.”TopicsUS elections 2020US Capitol attackClarence ThomasUS politicsUS supreme courtLaw (US)newsReuse this content More
- in Elections
House January 6 panel members weigh seeking cooperation from Ginni Thomas
House January 6 panel members weigh seeking cooperation from Ginni ThomasWife of supreme court justice Clarence Thomas sent texts to Trump’s chief of staff urging overturning of 2020 election result Members of the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack are weighing whether to demand that Ginni Thomas, the wife of the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, cooperate with the inquiry, according to two sources familiar with the matter.A move to request cooperation from Ginni Thomas, who was revealed to have pushed in text messages to Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows to overturn the results of the 2020 election, would mark one of the most aggressive steps taken by the panel.Ginni Thomas texts spark ethical storm about husband’s supreme court roleRead moreThe select committee did not formally decide on whether to summon Thomas after a series of private deliberations on Friday, the sources said, even as the members discussed whether to request her voluntary cooperation or compel documents and testimony with a subpoena.But the renewed discussions – the panel weighed the matter for weeks after it first obtained the text messages – are likely to continue in huddles and on the House floor on Monday before the select committee moves to hold two Trump aides in contempt of Congress, the sources said.The hesitation to date about demanding that Thomas cooperate with the inquiry appears to have centered in part from concerns that she likely has scant interest in assisting the panel and could seek to create a political spectacle to distract from the investigation.Thomas, for instance, remains a close friend of prominent rightwing political operatives including Trump’s former strategist Steve Bannon, who last year openly defied a subpoena as he sought to undermine the legitimacy of the select committee.The other principal concern among some members on the panel is whether it would be worth it to pursue testimony from Thomas at potential political cost if she appears for questioning but then stonewalls the inquiry, one of the sources said, for instance by asserting the fifth amendment.At least one member on the select committee also appeared to only just learn about the content of the text messages after reading them in news reports on Thursday, one of the sources said.Justice Thomas remains an icon among the Republican base and some members have warned that a move against his wife would almost certainly be perceived as a partisan attack by Democrats trying to tarnish his reputation, the sources said.The worries about political backlash has increasingly become a point of contention for the select committee in recent months. The Guardian first reported in January the panel had similar reservations about issuing subpoenas to House Republicans.The select committee could yet demand cooperation from Thomas, seeking information on whether Thomas knew about the scheme to have then vice-president Mike Pence stop the certification of Joe Biden’s win or plans for Trump supporters to descend on the Capitol January 6.Other lines of inquiry might include whether she connected lawyer John Eastman, who drew up the Pence scheme and clerked for Justice Thomas, to Trump, and whether she communicated with Meadows during a gap of unexplained correspondence between 24 November and 10 January.The select committee would then find itself in the bizarre position of having John Wood, also a former clerk for Justice Thomas who now leads the “gold team” examining Trump’s role in the Capitol attack, questioning the senior justice’s wife.A spokesperson for the select committee declined to comment.Thomas is facing heightened scrutiny for working as a Republican activist while her husband sits on the supreme court after the Washington Post and CBS reported that she pushed Trump’s most senior White House aide to overturn the 2020 election results.In one of 29 text messages from Ginni Thomas that Meadows turned over to the select committee, Thomas also pressured the former White House chief of staff to have Trump appoint the conspiracy theorist and lawyer Sidney Powell to lead his post-election legal team.The communications are significant as they represent the first evidence that she was advising the White House on how to return Trump to office by any means, while her husband ruled on cases attempting to change the outcome of the election.But Meadows did not turn over any text messages between 24 November and 10 January, the Washington Post and CBS reported – a gap in communications that overlaps with the Capitol attack and would almost certainly be an area of interest to the panel.TopicsUS Capitol attackHouse of RepresentativesnewsReuse this content More
- in Elections
Ginni Thomas texts spark ethical storm about husband’s supreme court role
Ginni Thomas texts spark ethical storm about husband’s supreme court roleStash of messages from Clarence Thomas’s activist wife released to January 6 committee have raised conflict-of-interest concerns Calls have erupted for ethical conflict-of-interest rules on America’s top court after it was revealed that Ginni Thomas, wife of the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, pressed Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.The Washington Post reported that it had obtained a stash of 29 text messages between Ginni Thomas and Mark Meadows, then Trump’s top White House aide, which were exchanged in the tumultuous days after the November 2020 election. In the texts, Thomas blatantly urged Meadows to do anything he could to subvert the democratic result so as to frustrate Joe Biden’s victory and keep Trump in power.Ginni Thomas urged Trump’s chief of staff to overturn election resultsRead moreEthics groups, members of Congress, law professors, media pundits and a slew of other interested parties have responded to the revelations with astonishment and concern. The Thomas-Meadows texts were contained in a trove of 2,320 digital communications that Meadows has handed to the House select committee investigating the storming of the US Capitol by Trump supporters on 6 January.Those communications were only obtained by the committee after the supreme court ordered them to be transferred to Congress, rejecting claims by Trump that they were covered by executive privilege. The court forced disclosure of the material, including the Ginni Thomas texts, by a vote of 8 to 1 – with Clarence Thomas providing the only dissent.Norman Ornstein, a senior emeritus fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, called the development “a scandal of immense proportions”. Branding Ginni Thomas a “radical insurrectionist”, he said it was time for the January 6 committee to subpoena her texts and emails to see what other incriminating evidence was out there.Laurence Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard law school, called on the justice department to investigate the apparent conspiracy between Thomas, Meadows and Trump. “Hard to see Justice Thomas not recusing when that reaches” the supreme court, he said.Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, which campaigns for reform of the supreme court, told the Guardian that the rule of law depended not just on impartiality, but on the appearance of impartiality.“There is a lack of moral authority on the supreme court right now, there is a lack of trust, and the court needs to acknowledge it and take steps to ameliorate it,” Roth said.The commotion has come at a torrid time for the supreme court. On Friday Clarence Thomas himself was discharged from hospital having been treated for days with an infection.Millions of Americans also viewed the televised spectacle of the first Black woman to be nominated for the highest court, Ketanji Brown Jackson, being subjected to bizarre and hostile questioning by Republicans in her confirmation hearings. Senators including Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley pressed her on her sentencing record of sex offenders in child-abuse imagery cases, and on anti-racist teaching in schools in ways that at times came closer to dog-whistle politics than a solemn constitutional process.That Ginni Thomas was using her considerable network of contacts to try to subvert democracy came as little surprise to close observers of US politics. For decades she has acted as a prominent champion of ultra-rightwing causes, heading her own lobbying firm, Liberty Consulting, since 2010.In recent months, concern about apparent conflicts of interest relating to Clarence Thomas, who is the longest-serving of the nine justices on the supreme court, and his wife has been intensifying. Investigative articles by Jane Mayer in the New Yorker and by the New York Times have raised red flags about the interplay of such a leading rightwing lobbyist and her powerful judicial husband.The direct connection between Ginni’s texts and Clarence’s dissent in the supreme court’s ruling over disclosure of those same texts to Congress takes the issue to a new level. It raises the question of whether Clarence Thomas had any awareness of what was in the material that the January 6 committee demanded to see.As Dan Rather, the former CBS News anchor, put it: “What does Clarence Thomas know? And when did he know it?”The Thomases have always denied that they discuss each other’s work. In one of her texts, however, written three weeks after the 2020 election, she responded to Meadows – who described the attempt to overturn Biden’s win as “a fight of good versus evil” – by saying:“Thank you!! Needed that! This plus a conversation with my best friend just now … I will try to keep holding on.”“My best friend”, although veiled, was beyond doubt a reference to her husband, according to Mayer of the New Yorker, who tweeted: “‘best friend’ is how the Thomases refer to one another”.Mayer is one of many commentators who are now wondering whether it is time for an ethics code to be imposed on the supreme court – which is the only federal judicial panel in the country not to be governed by any such safeguards against corruption or conflict of interest.All other federal judges, including appeals court judges, are subject to a rule that says that they must recuse themselves in any matter in which “he or his spouse” is a party to, or has an interest in, the proceedings.Supreme court justices are required to recuse if their impartiality “might reasonably be questioned”. But as the constitutional law expert Steve Vladeck noted, there is no effective enforcement mechanism, underlining the need for a more solid set of ethics rules.The exposure of Ginni Thomas’s texts was revealed by Bob Woodward, of Watergate fame, and his Washington Post colleague Robert Costa, adding a patina of journalistic royalty to the furore, which has left even observers well versed in Thomas’s extreme politics astounded by how far she was willing to go in espousing a political coup on behalf of Trump.In her Meadows texts she regurgitated a conspiracy theory embraced by QAnon supporters that Trump had watermarked ballots sent by mail supposedly in order to detect voter fraud.She also sent Meadows a video – backing Trump’s big lie that the election was stolen from him – created by a far-right “truther”. The video maker had previously claimed that the 2012 gun massacre at Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut, in which 20 children were murdered, was an invention cooked up by gun-control advocates.Before the text messages emerged, Thomas’s links to Trump’s big lie were already known. She attended the January 6 “Save America” rally in Washington hours before the Capitol insurrection, posting on Twitter: “LOVE MAGA people!!!!” GOD BLESS EACH OF YOU STANDING UP or PRAYING!”“This is a really sad state of affairs,” Roth told the Guardian. “That a longtime political operative like Ginni Thomas should go down such a rabbit hole saddens me deeply.”TopicsUS supreme courtUS Capitol attackClarence ThomasnewsReuse this content More
- in US Politics
Bannon’s escape plan: how the Trump strategist is trying to dodge prison
Bannon’s escape plan: how the Trump strategist is trying to dodge prisonBannon is advancing a high-stakes defense as he battles a case that could mean up to a year in federal prison and thousands of dollars in fines if convicted As the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack was negotiating with Donald Trump’s former strategist Steve Bannon to cooperate with its inquiry, the panel affirmed one of their rules: no third-party lawyers could attend witness depositions.That meant when Bannon’s then-attorney asked whether a lawyer for Trump could be present for the closed-door interview to decide what issues were covered by the former president’s invocation of executive privilege, the select committee flatly refused.‘Morally bankrupt’: outrage after pro-Israel group backs insurrectionist RepublicansRead moreNow, that refusal appears set to feature as one of Bannon’s central arguments to defend against his contempt of Congress indictment that came after he entirely skipped his deposition last October and refused to produce documents as required by his subpoena.The former Trump aide is advancing a high-stakes – and arcane-sounding – defense as he battles the justice department (DoJ) in a case that could mean up to a year in federal prison and thousands of dollars in fines if convicted – but potentially defang congressional power should he prevail.The all-or-nothing nature of the defense is characteristic of Bannon, a fierce defender and confidante of the former president even after he departed the White House seven months into the Trump administration after a turbulent tenure as his chief strategist.It was precisely because of his contacts with Trump in the days before January 6 that the select committee made Bannon one of the panel’s first subpoena targets as it seeks to uncover whether Trump oversaw a criminal conspiracy that culminated in the Capitol attack.The crux of Bannon’s argument is that he could reasonably believe the subpoena was invalid when the select committee refused to allow a Trump lawyer to attend the deposition, after the former president asserted executive privilege over the materials covered by the subpoena.The argument rests on a 2019 justice department office of legal counsel opinion (OLC) that says congressional subpoenas that prevent executive branch counsel from accompanying executive branch employees to depositions are “legally invalid” and not enforceable.Bannon’s attorneys say the doctrine at issue is protecting the president’s constitutional authority to limit the disclosure of privileged information, which typically involves discussions with close presidential aides who need to be able to offer candid advice. In that sense, the principle extends to Bannon, they argue: the supreme court decided in Nixon v GSA 1977 that former presidents could “assert” executive privilege, while a 2007 OLC opinion found executive privilege could cover discussions with private, non-executive branch employee advisers.And since the select committee issued only one subpoena for both documents and testimony, when the subpoena was invalidated by the panel’s refusal to allow a Trump lawyer to attend, Bannon’s attorneys contend the document request element of the subpoena also became void.“We don’t read OLC opinions in isolation,” David Schoen, one of three attorneys defending Bannon in this case – the others are Evan Corcoran and Bob Costello – told the Guardian in a text message. “They build on each other.”The justice department does not think the OLC opinions protect Bannon, in part because he was not an executive branch employee at the time of January 6, and the select committee contends Trump did not formally assert executive privilege over subpoenaed materials.The assistant US attorney Amanda Vaughn also indicated in recent court filings that Bannon’s argument – that the subpoena was invalid because House deposition rules excluded third-party lawyers – was in bad faith since his then-attorney, Bob Costello, never raised it as an issue at the time.“Costello inquired – but said that he did not need an immediate answer – whether there was a way for a lawyer for President Trump to appear at the defendant’s deposition,” Vaughn said in the justice department’s response to Bannon.But Bannon won an initial victory on the dispute last week after the judge in the case ordered the justice department to turn over OLC “writings” about its position on prosecuting current or former US officials claiming immunity from congressional subpoena over executive privilege.US district judge Carl Nichols granted the request by Bannon’s attorneys, who suggest Costello was relying on the OLC opinions to current and former White House aides when he advised Bannon not to appear for his deposition since the select committee subpoena was invalid.A spokesman for the select committee and a spokesman for the US attorney for the District of Columbia declined to comment.The defense that Bannon is advancing – using broad readings of parts of the justice department’s own positions and amalgamating them into a wider argument – is controversial, but it underscores the complexities facing the justice department in pursuing the case.“Bannon’s trying to use the OLC opinions as a shield that doesn’t quite cover him, but gives him enough of a defense to fend off the DoJ’s necessity of proving criminal intent,” said Jonathan Shaub, a law professor at the University of Kentucky and a former OLC attorney-adviser.To establish criminal contempt of Congress, the justice department has to prove Bannon’s subpoena defiance was “willful” – which Bannon’s attorneys say should be interpreted as meaning whether the former Trump aide knew his conduct was unlawful or wrong.The combined force of Bannon’s arguments, his attorneys say, demonstrate that he did not know his defiance was unlawful, and shifts the burden onto the justice department to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Bannon did not believe the privilege claims were valid.The former Trump aide is also coupling the argument that the subpoena was invalid with the defenses that he relied on the advice of counsel when he defied the subpoena, and that he cannot be prosecuted because OLC opinions – considered binding on the justice department – forbid it.Bannon’s attorneys say the former Trump aide ignored his subpoena entirely on the advice of Costello, who relied on the OLC opinions about immunity for former presidential aides and was the only point of contact with the select committee during negotiations about his cooperation.It is far from clear whether Bannon will prevail.In a hearing last week, Nichols cast doubt on the advice of counsel argument, noting that the relevant case law, Licavoli v United States 1961, holds that relying on legal advice to defy a subpoena is no defense.The justice department argued in their brief that the interpretation of “willful” should in fact remain the standard established by the Licavoli court: “a deliberate and intentional failure to appear or produce records as required” by a congressional subpoena.But Bannon’s lawyers have noted that the Licavoli case did not involve executive privilege and therefore does not apply to Bannon, not least because the justice department has itself maintained that executive privilege cases are unique because of the constitutional implications.“He’s reaching for all the straws that he can,” Shaub said of Bannon. “It may succeed or it may not. But if Nichols rules against him, he’s certainly going to take it to the DC circuit or even up to the supreme court. He’s definitely playing a longer game here.”TopicsSteve BannonDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More
- in Elections
Ginni Thomas urged Trump’s chief of staff to overturn election results
Ginni Thomas urged Trump’s chief of staff to overturn election resultsIn texts to Mark Meadows, the wife of supreme court justice Clarence Thomas pushed Trump’s ‘big lie’ In the weeks following the 2020 election, the conservative activist Ginni Thomas – who is married to the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas – repeatedly implored Donald Trump’s chief of staff to help overturn the results, according to text messages obtained by the Washington Post and CBS News.In one of 29 messages seen by the news outlets, Thomas wrote to Mark Meadows on 10 November: “Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!! … You are the leader, with him, who is standing for America’s constitutional governance at the precipice. The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History.”Republican says Trump asked him to ‘rescind’ 2020 election and remove Biden from officeRead moreThe messages shed light on Thomas’s direct line to the White House and how she used it to push the “big lie” that Trump had won the election – with Meadows’ apparent support, the Post reported. The exchanges are among 2,320 texts Meadows handed to the House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.“This is a fight of good versus evil,” Meadows wrote in a 24 November message. “Evil always looks like the victor until the King of Kings triumphs. Do not grow weary in well doing. The fight continues. I have staked my career on it. Well at least my time in DC on it.”Meadows’ lawyer, George Terwilliger III, acknowledged the messages’ existence to the Post but said they did not raise “legal issues”.Thomas did not respond to the newspaper’s requests for comment. She has previously said that she does not discuss her activist work with her husband, and the messages do not mention him or the supreme court, according to the Post.Terwilliger and Thomas did not immediately reply to requests for comment from the Guardian. Messages left for the supreme court’s public information office were not immediately returned.When the supreme court rejected Trump challenges over the election in February 2021, Clarence Thomas dissented, calling the decision “baffling”, the Post notes.The text messages – 21 of which are from Thomas and eight from Meadows – contain references to conspiracy theories. Thomas, for instance, highlighted a claim popular among QAnon followers that the president had watermarked certain ballots as a means of identifying fraud.She also suggested the Bidens were behind supposed fraud. “Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators … are being arrested & detained for ballot fraud right now & over coming days, & will be living in barges off GITMO to face military tribunals for sedition,” she wrote.Thomas seemed to condemn some Republicans in Congress for being insufficiently loyal to Trump. “House and Senate guys are pathetic too… only 4 GOP House members seen out in street rallies with grassroots,” she wrote in a 10 November message, adding later that night: “Where the heck are all those who benefited by Presidents coattails?!!!”Other messages refer to conservative commentators and lawyers who supported Trump’s cause, including Sidney Powell, whom Thomas apparently wanted to be “the lead and the face” of Trump’s legal team. Powell was behind a slate of lawsuits seeking to overturn the election and faces investigation by the Texas State Bar Association over alleged false claims in court. Thomas expressed repeated support for Powell even as she became a divisive figure in pro-Trump circles, the Post notes. “Sidney Powell & improved coordination now will help the cavalry come and Fraud exposed and America saved,” she wrote on 13 November.“Listen to Rush. Mark Steyn, Bongino, Cleta,” Thomas urged Meadows in another message, apparently referring to the commentators Rush Limbaugh, Mark Steyn and Dan Bongino, along with Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who backed Trump’s claims in Georgia.“I will stand firm. We will fight until there is no fight left,” Meadows replied. “Our country is too precious to give up on. Thanks for all you do.”Thomas has acknowledged attending Trump’s rally prior to the Capitol attack on 6 January 2021, though she says she left before the then president spoke. She condemned the ensuing violence.TopicsUS elections 2020Clarence ThomasDonald TrumpMark MeadowsUS Capitol attackUS politicsnewsReuse this content More
