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      Ivanka Trump in talks to cooperate with January 6 panel, reports say

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      Ivanka Trump in talks to cooperate with January 6 panel, reports sayEx-president’s daughter may voluntarily appear for an interview, according to congressional committee Ivanka Trump is in talks with the January 6 House select committee about potentially cooperating with the panel, according to multiple US media reports.“Ivanka Trump is in discussions with the Committee to voluntarily appear for an interview,” a spokesperson for the daughter of former President Donald Trump said in a statement on Wednesday, CNN reported.According to the New York Times, which first reported the discussions, it remains unclear whether the preliminary negotiations would result in Trump actually providing substantial information to the committee.US Capitol attack panel discusses subpoena for Ivanka TrumpRead moreEarlier this month, the Guardian reported that the committee was considering issuing a subpoena to Trump to force her cooperation with the inquiry into the former president’s efforts to return himself to power on 6 January 2021.Any move to subpoena Trump and, for the first time, force a member of Donald Trump’s own family to testify against him, would mark a dramatic escalation in the January 6 inquiry that would amount to a treacherous legal and political moment for the former president.In January, the committee released a public letter addressed to Ivanka Trump in which committee members called upon her to provide “voluntary cooperation with our investigation”.“We write to request your voluntary cooperation with our investigation on a range of critical topics … We respect your privacy, and our questions will be limited to issues relating to January 6th, the activities that contributed to or influenced events on January 6th, and your role in the White House during that period,” the letter said.Sources familiar with the discussions told the New York Times that Trump had not yet agreed on a date for when she might speak with the committee and that the panel had not made any subpoena threats.Trump reportedly does not plan to follow in the steps of Steve Bannon, a staunch ally of her father who refused to cooperate with the panel and was later indicted for contempt of Congress. The sources added that Donald Trump had not requested his daughter refuse the committee’s requests.In the letter addressed to Ivanka Trump last month, the committee revealed new details about attempts to urge Donald Trump to condemn the violence on 6 January 2021.According to Keith Kellogg, a retired lieutenant general and the former vice-president Mike Pence’s national security adviser, Ivanka Trump and White House officials urged the president twice to condemn the violence.Donald Trump allegedly said no to aides, including his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and the White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany. Kellogg then asked Ivanka Trump to speak to the president, saying: “She went back in, because Ivanka can be pretty tenacious.”In an interview with the Washington Examiner last month, the former president criticized the committee’s investigation into his children, saying, “It’s a very unfair situation for my children … Very, very unfair.”TopicsUS Capitol attackIvanka TrumpDonald TrumpUS CongressnewsReuse this content More

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      Rudy Giuliani poised to cooperate with January 6 committee

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      Rudy Giuliani poised to cooperate with January 6 committeeTrump’s former lawyer may reveal the roles played by Republicans to prevent certification of Joe Biden’s election victory Donald Trump’s former attorney Rudy Giuliani is expected to cooperate with the House select committee investigating January 6, and potentially reveal his contacts with Republican members of Congress involved in the former president’s effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.The move by Giuliani to appear before the panel – in a cooperation deal that could be agreed within weeks, according to two sources briefed on negotiations – could mark a breakthrough moment for the inquiry as it seeks to interview key members of Trump’s inner circle.That is the case because even though Trump’s allies and Republican members of Congress already known to have been involved in such efforts have refused to help the panel, Giuliani is now in a position to inform House investigators about any possible culpability.Broadly, Giuliani has indicated through his lawyer to the select committee that he will produce documents and answer questions about Trump’s schemes to return himself to office on 6 January that House investigators had outlined in a subpoena issued to him last month.Rudy Giuliani and Michael Flynn to see honorary university degrees revokedRead moreThe former president’s attorney is prepared to reveal his contacts and the roles played by Republican members of Congress in the scheme Giuliani helped orchestrate to have then-vice-president Mike Pence stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory.Giuliani is also prepared to divulge details about Trump’s pressure campaign on Pence to adopt the scheme, and the effort coordinated by him and the Trump White House to have legislatures certify slates of electors for Trump in states actually won by Biden.But the former president’s attorney has indicated that he will assist the select committee only if his appearance is not pursuant to his subpoena, and does not have to give records or discuss his contacts with Trump over executive and attorney-client privilege concerns.Giuliani is prepared to make exceptions in instances where the panel can demonstrate that meetings with Trump that would have otherwise been subject to those protections might have been broken, and that the protections should not apply.The demands surrounding the circumstances of his cooperation reflect comments he made on Newsmax last week when he falsely claimed the select committee was “illegal”, and claimed that “it doesn’t have minority membership and really can’t subpoena anybody.”The select committee appears to have ignored his remarks as they move to finalize an agreement with Giuliani. The comments did not come up in recent talks and the panel last week allowed Giuliani to postpone his document production deadline for a second time, one of the sources said.That may be explained in large part because of the panel’s determination to get the cooperation of one of Trump’s closest if problematic advisers who was involved in efforts to overturn the 2020 election from the start – and has a penchant for sometimes revealing too much.Giuliani could speak to events such as a 18 December 2020 meeting in the Oval Office where Trump reviewed a draft executive order to seize voting machines and verbally agreed to install conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell as special counsel to investigate election fraud.The Guardian has reported that Giuliani then led the Trump “war room” at the Willard hotel in Washington DC when Trump called from the White House and discussed ways to stop Biden’s certification – and could speak to non-privileged elements of the plan.The cooperation deal would also technically involve Giuliani turning over documents in addition to appearing before the select committee, the sources said, but the logistics were unclear given the FBI last year seized his devices that he used on 6 January.Giuliani is committed to appearing before the panel, the source said, but it was not clear whether he would testify under oath in a closed-door deposition, for which the select committee has been pushing, or appear in a more informal interview on Capitol Hill.A spokesperson for the select committee declined to comment on negotiations with witnesses. The sources added negotiations could still collapse, but if a deal could be agreed, Giuliani would probably appear before the panel at least before the end of March.The select committee has been quietly making substantial progress in its investigation into the events of 6 January, securing records from the National Archives, as well as documents and testimony from some of Trump’s top aides and advisers.‘Rudy is really hurt’: Giuliani reportedly banned from Fox NewsRead moreLast month, the chairman of the panel, congressman Bennie Thompson, revealed that House investigators had spoken to more than 500 witnesses and obtained more than 50,000 documents, including thousands from Trump’s former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows.The willingness by Giuliani to negotiate what appears to be an expansive cooperation deal has come in stark contrast to the defiance expressed by the initial set of Trump aides and advisers who were subpoenaed by the select committee last year.Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon refused to comply with his subpoena in its entirety, boasting executive privilege protection – only to be referred to the justice department for criminal contempt of Congress and indicted on two counts about four weeks later.That has served as a warning to other witnesses. Even if his cooperation deal ultimately falls through, Giuliani may be engaging with the select committee at least to avoid a similar fate to Bannon and a potentially costly legal battle to fight such charges.The benefits of partial cooperation have also become apparent, after Meadows was held in contempt of Congress for refusing to appear for a deposition as required by his subpoena, but remains unindicted two months after his initial referral to the justice department.TopicsRudy GiulianiDonald TrumpUS politicsUS Capitol attackUS elections 2020newsReuse this content More

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      Far-right Oath Keepers leader to stay in jail until Capitol attack trial, judge rules

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      Far-right Oath Keepers leader to stay in jail until Capitol attack trial, judge rulesStewart Rhodes ‘presents a clear and convincing danger’ after spending thousands on weapons before riot, judge says The founder of the far-right Oath Keepers, Stewart Rhodes, will remain in jail until his seditious-conspiracy trial for allegedly helping plot the assault on the US Capitol, a US judge said, calling him a “clear and convincing danger”.The US district judge Amit Mehta said during a Friday court hearing that Rhodes spent thousands of dollars on weapons and other equipment ahead of the 6 January 2021 attack on the Capitol by Donald Trump’s supporters and also made “substantial purchases” of weapons afterwards.“He presents a clear and convincing danger, in my view,” Mehta said.Rhodes’s lawyers had proposed he be released into the custody of relatives in California, where he would stay in a separate residence on their property without access to the internet.Mehta said he was not satisfied with that arrangement, stating that Rhodes “has been extremely sophisticated with his ability to communicate”.Criminal defendants are often released pending trial, since they are presumed innocent until convicted, but can be held if they are deemed dangerous or likely to flee the country.How the arrest of a far-right militia leader signals a new chapter in the January 6 inquiryRead moreRhodes, 56, is the most high-profile defendant of the more than 725 people charged with playing a role in the attack. His lawyer said there was no evidence that Rhodes conspired to block Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s election.He is one of 11 members or associates of the Oath Keepers facing a seditious conspiracy charge.Rhodes is accused of spearheading a conspiracy to block the certification of the presidential election by recruiting others and even stationing armed “quick reaction force” units outside of Washington to be ready to stop the peaceful transfer of power.A US magistrate judge in Texas last month ruled Rhodes should be detained, after hearing testimony from an FBI agent as well as Rhodes’ ex-wife, who expressed concerns for her safety. Rhodes appealed that decision to Mehta. TopicsUS Capitol attackThe far rightnewsReuse this content More

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      US Capitol attack panel discusses subpoena for Ivanka Trump

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      US Capitol attack panel discusses subpoena for Ivanka TrumpHouse select committee is considering best way to get evidence from ex-president’s daughter about his efforts to cling to power The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack is considering issuing a subpoena to Ivanka Trump to force her cooperation with the inquiry into Donald Trump’s efforts to return himself to power on 6 January, according to a source familiar with the matter.Any move to subpoena Ivanka Trump and, for the first time, force a member of Trump’s own family to testify against him, would mark a dramatic escalation in the 6 January inquiry that could amount to a treacherous legal and political moment for the former president. Biden orders release of Trump White House visitor logs to January 6 panelRead moreThe panel is not expected to take the crucial step for the time being, the source said, and the prospect of a subpoena to the former president’s daughter emerged in discussions about what options remained available after she appeared to refuse a request for voluntary cooperation.But the fact that members on the select committee have started to discuss a subpoena suggests they believe it may ultimately take such a measure – and the threat of prosecution should she defy it – to ensure her appearance at a deposition on Capitol Hill.The select committee did not address a possible subpoena for Ivanka Trump at a closed-door meeting last Friday, and the panel wants to give her a reasonable window of opportunity to engage with the investigation before moving to force her cooperation, the source said.The panel would also have to formally vote to move ahead with such a measure, the source said, and Thompson would probably inform the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, of the decision before formally authorizing a subpoena to the former president’s daughter.But members on the select committee are not confident that Ivanka Trump would appear on her own volition, the source said, and the discussion about a subpoena reflected how important they consider her insight into whether Trump oversaw a criminal conspiracy on 6 January.The chairman of the select committee, Bennie Thompson, said in an 11-page letter requesting her voluntary cooperation last month that the panel wanted to ask about Trump’s plan to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory to return himself to office.Ivanka Trump was close to the former president in the days leading up to the Capitol attack, Thompson said, and appeared to have learned the plan to have the then vice-president, Mike Pence, refuse to certify Biden’s election win in certain states was possibly unlawful.“The committee has information suggesting that President Trump’s White House counsel may have concluded that the actions President Trump directed Vice-President Pence to take would … otherwise be illegal. Did you discuss these issues?” the letter said.The letter added House investigators had additional questions about whether Ivanka Trump could say whether the former president had been told that such an action might be unlawful, and yet nonetheless persisted in pressuring Pence to reinstall him for a second term.Thompson also said in the letter that the panel wanted to learn more about Trump’s indifference to the insurrection, and discussions inside the White House about his tweet castigating Pence for not adopting his plan as a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol in his name.The letter said a persistent question for Ivanka Trump – who White House aides thought had the best chance of persuading the former president to condemn the rioters – was what she did about the situation and why her father did not call off the rioters in a White House address.The select committee said in the letter that they also wanted to ask her about what she knew with regard to the long delay in deploying the national guard to the Capitol, which allowed the insurrection to overwhelm law enforcement into the afternoon of 6 January.Thompson said that House investigators were curious why there appeared to have been no evidence that Trump issued any order to request the national guard, or called the justice department to request the deployment of personnel to the Capitol.A spokesperson for the select committee declined to comment on whether the panel was considering a subpoena for Ivanka Trump or the content of the Friday meeting. Neither a spokesperson for the former president nor Ivanka Trump responded to requests for comment.But Ivanka Trump has appeared to suggest she is not prepared to appear voluntarily, and said in a statement at the time of the letter requesting voluntary cooperation that “as the committee already knows, Ivanka did not speak at the January 6 rally”.TopicsUS Capitol attackIvanka TrumpDonald TrumpHouse of RepresentativesnewsReuse this content More

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      Biden orders release of Trump White House visitor logs to January 6 panel

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      Biden orders release of Trump White House visitor logs to January 6 panelEx-president had insisted that details of who visited him in the White House were protected by executive privilege Joe Biden has delivered another blow to Donald Trump’s efforts to keep secret his actions around the time of the deadly January 6 Capitol insurrection by refusing to exert executive privilege over the former president’s White House visitor logs, according to a report published on Wednesday.The president has directed the National Archives to turn over the records within 15 days to the House committee investigating the attack by Trump supporters as a “in the light of the urgency” of the panel’s work, the New York Times says.Donald Trump’s legal woes threaten to engulf him as accountants abandon shipRead moreTrump had insisted that details of who visited him in the White House were protected by executive privilege, a claim identical to the one Biden rejected last year over hundreds of pages of documents, including call logs, daily presidential diaries, handwritten notes and memos from aides. Trump took that case to appeal but lost in the supreme court last month.The investigation by the House select committee has become increasingly focused on Trump’s Oval Office in recent weeks as it also attempts to unravel his efforts to overturn his defeat by Biden in the 2020 presidential election.Knowledge of who visited the White House and when is seen as crucial to the panel’s inquiry, following recent revelations that a “war room” of Trump insiders, including his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, was set up to plot ways to try to prevent Biden from taking office.Trump, meanwhile, continues to expound the big lie that his election defeat was fraudulent as he mulls his decision to run again in 2024.Biden’s decision to reject the privilege claim came on Monday in a letter to the National Archives by the White House counsel, Dana Remus, the NYT reported.The letter stated that Biden had considered Trump’s claim that because he was president at the time of the attack on the US Capitol the records should remain private, but determined that it was “not in the best interest of the United States” to do so, the Associated Press reported.Echoing arguments given in Biden’s previous rejection of executive privilege claims, Remus said that “Congress has a compelling need” to see the documents judiciously, and that “constitutional protections of executive privilege should not be used to shield, from Congress or the public, information that reflects a clear and apparent effort to subvert the Constitution itself”, the Times account states.The newspaper said it had obtained a copy of the letter sent on Tuesday to David Ferriero, the official archivist of the US, and that the White House planned to notify Trump’s lawyers on Wednesday. It was not immediately clear if Trump will appeal the decision legally given his earlier supreme court defeat.The bipartisan House panel has interviewed dozens of witnesses and reviewed thousands of documents as it tries to untangle the events following Trump’s defeat, with the waters beginning to lap at the doors of the former president’s Oval Office.Members on both sides insisted at the weekend that they expected Giuliani, who has so far resisted efforts to appear, to give what could be crucial testimony. The former New York mayor and Trump adviser has been implicated in an alleged plot to seize voting machines in several contested states.Other key Trumpworld insiders have refused to cooperate with the committee, including the former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon. The House of Representatives recommended criminal contempt charges for Meadows in December, and Bannon pleaded not guilty to a contempt of Congress charge in November.Others from the Trump administration have been more talkative, with aides close to Mike Pence, the former vice-president, providing evidence. Pence has become embroiled in a public dispute with his former boss, openly rebutting Trump’s false claims that he had the power to refuse to certify Biden’s victory.According to Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republicans on the January 6 panel, public hearings could begin in the spring or summer, as the clock ticks towards November’s midterm elections and a likely shutting down of the inquiry by any new Republican House majority.Pressure is mounting on Trump, who is facing at least 19 separate legal challenges, according to a Guardian tally this month. The Washington Post reported last week that Trump took boxes of records, including top secret documents, to Mar-a-Lago, his Florida retreat, when he left office, in possible violation of government record-keeping laws.And an upcoming book from New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman claims that Trump periodically clogged White House toilets by attempting to flush away printed papers. Trump has denied the allegations.TopicsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpJoe BidenUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Donald Trump’s legal woes threaten to engulf him as accountants abandon ship

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      Donald Trump’s legal woes threaten to engulf him as accountants abandon shipMazars’ cutting ties with ex-president mark significant step in New York investigation of his financial affairs, among 19 current cases The news that the longtime accounting firm for the Trump Organization has cut ties with the company and retracted 10 years of its financial statements is a new and serious blow to Donald Trump’s increasingly frenzied battle to fend off the legal investigations that are rapidly engulfing him.The revelation that Mazars USA last week ended its relationship with the Trump family comes at a perilous moment for the former president as he strives to protect himself, his family and his business from legal threats that are now coming thick and fast.A Guardian tally this month found that Trump was facing a total of 19 legal challenges, six of which involve alleged financial irregularities.By withdrawing its stamp of approval from the documents, Mazars leaves Trump potentially exposed to substantial legal and financial trouble.The papers, known as statements of financial condition, were used by Trump and his family business to attract and secure hundreds of millions of dollars in loans. They are also at the centre of an escalating investigation by the New York state attorney general, Letitia James.Last month James tightened the screws on Trump and the Trump Organization by releasing details in a filing of several instances involving golf courses, real estate and other assets where the family had allegedly “falsely and fraudulently valued multiple assets and misrepresented those values to financial institutions for economic benefit”.In a letter dated 9 February, Mazars’ general counsel, William Kelly, told the Trump Organization that the annual financial statements it had prepared for the family business between 2011 and 2020 were no longer reliable.The accountants said they had based their decision partly on their own investigation into Trump’s finances and on the “totality of the circumstances”, concluding that “we are not able to provide any new work product to the Trump Organization”.On the back of James’s latest attack, Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney and an ex-vice president of the Trump Organization, told the Guardian that in his opinion “the House of Trump is crumbling”.James’s investigation is one of the most advanced and potentially dangerous of all the 19 legal actions bearing down on Trump. The inquiry is being pursued on both civil and criminal lines.James is working in tandem with a separate criminal investigation by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg. That inquiry is also looking into whether Trump and his family concern defrauded lenders or underpaid taxes by falsely representing his assets.The disclosure that Mazars had broken off relations with Trump was included in a new court filing from James on Monday as part of her ongoing attempt to force Trump and his two eldest children, Donald Jr and Ivanka, to testify under subpoena.Trump has consistently denied financial impropriety and has attempted to cast doubt on James’s investigation by denouncing it as a partisan witch-hunt. James is a Democrat, while Trump won the presidency in 2016 as a Republican.The Trump Organization said it was “disappointed” by Mazars’ decision but tried to spin the development in a positive light. It selectively cited a line in the Mazars letter that said that “we have not concluded that the various financial statements, as a whole, contain material discrepancies”, adding that the comment rendered the James and Bragg investigations “moot”.As Trump’s legal and financial woes deepen, he is also being assailed by a flurry of bad news surrounding the congressional investigation into the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol. Trump, who is at the centre of the House select committee inquiry given that his “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen from him drew thousands of his supporters to the Capitol building that day, has been trying to persuade his closest advisers not to cooperate.This week it was revealed that John Eastman, a conservative law professor who was integral to attempts to persuade the then vice president, Mike Pence, to delay certification of Joe Biden’s victory on January 6, has handed over 8,000 pages of emails to the committee.It has also become known that Rudy Giuliani, who as Trump’s lawyer was a key figure in the campaign to overturn the presidential election results, has opened a dialogue with the committee that could see him testifying in some form.TopicsDonald TrumpNew YorkUS Capitol attacknewsReuse this content More

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      Capitol attack investigators target Trump circle over fake elector ploy

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      Capitol attack investigators target Trump circle over fake elector ployCommittee to examine coordination behind brazen effort to submit false electoral certificates in states won by Joe Biden The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack issued subpoenas on Tuesday to top Trump campaign and Republican officials involved in the scheme to send false electors for Donald Trump in states won by Joe Biden, as it examines the coordination behind the effort.The panel sent subpoenas to six individuals who were involved in a brazen attempt to meet and submit fake electoral college certificates that formed the backbone of a Trump-connected scheme to have Congress return the former president to office.Congressman Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the select committee, suggested in a statement that the subpoenas aimed to compel cooperation from the key actors about whether the Trump White House oversaw the effort to have so-called alternate electors participate in the scheme.“We’re seeking records and testimony from former campaign officials and other individuals in various states who we believe have relevant information about the planning and implementation of those plans,” Thompson said.The second set of subpoenas to people involved in the scheme comes weeks after the deputy attorney general, Lisa Monaco, confirmed that the justice department had opened its own investigation into the matter, raising the stakes for the fake electors and the Trump White House.The select committee subpoenaed two senior Trump campaign officials: Michael Roman and Gary Michael Brown, who served, respectively, as the director and deputy director for election day operations for the Trump 2020 re-election campaign.Both Trump campaign officials – Roman and Brown – participated in efforts to promote allegations of fraud in the November 2020 election and encourage state legislators to appoint false “alternate” slates of electors, Thompson said.In separate subpoena letters, Thompson said the panel had communications showing the pair coordinated a pressure campaign urging Republican members of state legislatures to send Trump slates, and oversaw Trump campaign staffers involved in the effort.The select committee also targeted four state Republican allies of Trump: the chair of the Arizona Republican party Kelli Ward, former Michigan Republican party chair Laura Cox, Pennsylvania state senator Douglas Mastriano, and Arizona house member Mark Finchem.Ward signed a fake election certificate, Cox was a witness to the Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani pressuring states to disregard Biden’s win in Michigan, Mastriano had knowledge of the fake electors scheme, and Finchem communicated with organizers of the Save America rally on 6 January, Thompson said.Trump’s plan to return himself to office rested on two elements: the existence, or possible existence, of alternate slates, that then-vice president Mike Pence could use to declare that “dueling slates” meant he was unable to certify those states in favor of Biden.The effort to subvert the results of the 2020 election at the joint session of Congress on 6 January fell apart after Pence refused to abuse his ceremonial role to certify the results, and it was clear the “alternate slates” were not legitimate certificates.The panel is seeking to examine whether the effort was coordinated by the Trump White House and whether it amounted to a crime, according to a source close to the investigation. The subpoenas compel the production of documents and testimony through March.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More