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      House panel gathers mountain of evidence in Capitol attack investigation

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      House panel gathers mountain of evidence in Capitol attack investigationPanel on track to interview more than 300 witnesses, chair says, with more than 30,000 documents already turned over The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack has amassed a huge trove of evidence as it seeks to connect the Trump White House to the 6 January insurrection, three months after it issued its first subpoenas to the former president’s most senior administration officials.The select committee revealed on Monday that members had reviewed thousands of documents turned over by Trump’s former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, which showed the White House played a far more substantial role in overturning the 2020 election than previously known.Trump Jr and Fox News hosts begged Meadows to help stop Capitol attack, texts showRead moreBut those communications and other documents that Meadows turned over represent just a small sample of evidence potentially incriminating the Trump White House collected since September.The committee expects this week to depose more top aides, including the Trump justice department official Jeffrey Clark, from whom they hope to learn more about Trump’s efforts to reinstall himself as president – even if Clark invokes his fifth amendment right against self-incrimination.That hope stems from the fact that Clark agreed to appear for a deposition just moments before the select committee would have recommended his prosecution for defying a subpoena – a circumstance that members believe means he will cooperate.Bennie Thompson, the panel chair, said on Monday that after depositions this week, the panel was on track to interview more than 300 witnesses and add to the more than 30,000 documents already turned over.The select committee also obtained about 6,000 documents from Meadows as part of a delicate cooperation agreement requiring the production of non-privileged material, before Meadows abruptly broke off the deal last week.Part of the reason Meadows ended the cooperation deal was that he had learned from his personal cellphone carrier – believed to be Verizon – that the committee had started pursuing his call detail records, his attorney George Terwilliger said in a letter.The select committee has in recent weeks issued subpoenas for the call detail records of several hundred phone numbers, which typically reveal the date, time, duration and target numbers of calls, according to a source close to the investigation.Such records are expected to prove a boon for the inquiry, the source said, since it enables House investigators to map a pattern of which phone numbers were being dialed, and to connect key phone numbers to others on 6 January and the days and weeks before.The release of Meadows’ cellphone records could come around the same time the committee potentially gains access to the several hundred pages of documents from the Trump White House held by the National Archives.The select committee is on track to obtain those records, which Trump has claimed are subject to executive privilege and cannot be given to Congress, after the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia last week upheld a lower court ruling approving their release.In a unanimous decision, the federal appeals court denied Trump’s request for an injunction, saying in a blunt ruling that in a dispute between a current and former president over whether to release White House records, the sitting president’s view must prevail.Those records, so aggressively defended by Trump, the select committee believes, might help members make the case that the former president interfered with Biden’s certification with corrupt intent, a potential crime, the source said.In the cache of communications Meadows furnished, the select committee said, were text messages he received from Republican members of Congress, in the days before the Capitol attack and on 6 January, from Fox News hosts and Donald Trump’s eldest son, Donald Jr.Among the messages to Meadows that the committee disclosed was one from an unidentified Republican lawmaker, who apologized to Meadows after the Capitol attack for not succeeding in stopping Joe Biden from being pronounced president.“Yesterday was a terrible day,” the text message from the Republican lawmaker read, referring to the Capitol attack, before saying of the attempt to prevent Biden’s certification: “We tried everything we could in our objection to the 6 states. I’m sorry nothing worked.”TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsDonald TrumpTrump administrationUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesMark MeadowsnewsReuse this content More

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      Mark Meadows: House votes to recommend criminal contempt charges against Trump ex-chief of staff

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      Mark Meadows: House votes to recommend criminal contempt charges against Trump ex-chief of staffMove comes after senior Trump figure ceased cooperating with panel investigating Capitol attack The US House of Representatives has approved a measure recommending criminal contempt charges against Mark Meadows, the former chief of staff to Donald Trump, a week after he ended his cooperation with the chamber’s committee investigating the Capitol insurrection.The approval marks the first time the House has voted to hold a former member in contempt since the 1830s, according to the chamber’s records.It is the latest show of force by the 6 January panel, which is leaving no angle unexplored as it investigates the worst attack on the Capitol in more than 200 years. Lawmakers are determined to get answers quickly, and in so doing reassert the congressional authority that Trump eroded while in office.“History will be written about these times, about the work this committee has undertaken,” said Bennie Thompson, the committee’s chairman. Meadows, a former North Carolina congressman, left in March 2020 to join Trump’s administration. Before he left Congress, Meadows “continually insisted that people and high-ranking government officials respect the authority of Congress to do its job, and investigative powers are implicit in and intertwined with our powers to legislate this”, said Jamie Raskin, a member of the committee.Raskin began Tuesday’s debate by reading from newly released, frantic texts from the day of the attack revealing members of Congress, Fox News anchors and even Trump’s son urging Meadows to persuade the outgoing president to act quickly to stop the three-hour assault by his supporters.Tuesday’s vote followed a recommendation by the committee that Meadows be charged. The matter now heads to the justice department, which will decide whether to prosecute.Republicans on Tuesday called the action against Meadows a distraction from the House’s work, with one member calling it “evil” and “un-American”. Trump has also defended Meadows in an interview, calling him “an honorable man”. The committee’s leaders have vowed to punish anyone who doesn’t comply with their investigation, and the justice department has already indicted Trump’s longtime ally Steve Bannon on two counts of contempt after he defied his subpoena. If convicted, Bannon and Meadows could face up to one year behind bars on each charge.However, in a Tuesday statement, Meadows’ attorney George Terwilliger said the former chief of staff had never stopped cooperating but maintained he could not be compelled to appear for an interview. The attorney said Meadows had “fully cooperated” with respect to documents that are in his possession and are not privileged.Meadows himself has sued the panel, asking a court to invalidate two subpoenas that he says are “overly broad and unduly burdensome”.Members of the committee said the text messages sent to Meadows on the day of the insurrection raised fresh questions about what was happening at the White House, and what Trump himself was doing, as the attack was under way. The committee had planned to question Meadows about the communications, including 6,600 pages of records taken from personal email accounts and about 2,000 text messages. The panel has not released any of the communications in full.The Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the panel’s vice chairwoman, said at the committee’s Monday evening meeting that an important issue raised by the texts was whether Trump had sought to obstruct the congressional certification by refusing to send a strong message to the rioters to stop.“These texts leave no doubt,” Cheney said. “The White House knew exactly what was happening at the Capitol.”The investigating panel has already interviewed more than 300 witnesses, and subpoenaed more than 40 people, as it seeks to create the most comprehensive record yet of the lead-up to the insurrection and of the violent siege itself.TopicsUS Capitol attackHouse of RepresentativesMark MeadowsUS CongressUS politicsDonald TrumpTrump administrationnewsReuse this content More

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      Instagram CEO testifies before Congress over platform’s impact on kids

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      Instagram CEO testifies before Congress over platform’s impact on kidsAdam Mosseri defends platform and calls for creation of body to determine best practices to help keep young people safe online The head of Instagram began testimony before US lawmakers on Wednesday afternoon about protecting children online, in the latest congressional hearing scrutinizing the social media platform’s impact on young users.Adam Mosseri defended the platform and called for the creation of an industry body to determine best practices to help keep young people safe online. Mosseri said in written testimony before the Senate commerce consumer protection panel the industry body should address “how to verify age, how to design age-appropriate experiences, and how to build parental controls”.“We all want teens to be safe online,” Mosseri said in opening statements. “The internet isn’t going away, and I believe there’s important work that we can do together – industry and policymakers – to raise the standards across the internet to better serve and protect young people.”Instagram and its parent company, Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook), have been facing global criticism over the ways their services affect the mental health, body image and online safety of younger users.In opening statements, Senator Richard Blumenthal promised to be “ruthless” in the hearing, saying “the time for self-policing and self-regulation is over”.“Self policing depends on trust, and the trust is gone,” he said. “The magnitude of these problems requires both and broad solutions and accountability which has been lacking so far.”In November, a bipartisan coalition of US state attorneys general said it had opened an inquiry into Meta for promoting Instagram to children despite potential harms. And in September, US lawmakers grilled Facebook’s head of safety, Antigone Davis, about the impacts of the company’s products on children.The scrutiny follows the release of internal Facebook documents by a former employee turned whistleblower, which revealed the company’s own internal research showed Instagram negatively affected the mental health of teens, particularly regarding body image issues.Ahead of Wednesday’s hearing, Instagram said it will be stricter about the types of content it recommends to teens and will nudge young users toward different areas if they dwell on one topic for a long time.In a blogpost published on Tuesday, the social media service announced it was switching off the ability for people to tag or mention teens who do not follow them on the app and would enable teen users to to bulk delete their content and previous likes and comments.In the blogpost, Mosseri also said Instagram was exploring controls to limit potentially harmful or sensitive material, was working on parental control tools and was launching a “Take a Break” feature, which reminds people to take a brief pause from the app after using it for a certain amount of time, in certain countries.Democratic senator and chair of the panel, Richard Blumenthal called the company’s product announcement “baby steps”.“They are more a PR gambit than real action done within hours of the CEO testifying that are more to distract than really solve the problem,” he told Politico.Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn criticized the company’s product announcement as “hollow”, saying in a statement: “Meta is attempting to shift attention from their mistakes by rolling out parental guides, use timers and content control features that consumers should have had all along.”An Instagram spokeswoman said the company would continue its pause on plans for a version of Instagram for kids. Instagram suspended plans for that project in September amid growing opposition to the project.TopicsInstagramUS CongressUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Biden voices ‘deep concerns’ over Ukraine escalation in call with Putin – live

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      Key events

      Show

      3.48pm EST

      15:48

      Capitol attack committee warns Meadows of potential contempt charge

      3.09pm EST

      15:09

      White House urges Putin to embrace ‘de-escalation and diplomacy’ toward Ukraine

      1.35pm EST

      13:35

      White House: Biden confronted Putin over Ukraine troop escalation

      1.30pm EST

      13:30

      Today so far

      1.03pm EST

      13:03

      One of suspected killers of Jamal Khashoggi held in Paris

      12.36pm EST

      12:36

      Biden-Putin summit ends after two hours

      12.10pm EST

      12:10

      Biden to speak with European leaders after Putin summit

      Live feed

      Show

      Show key events only

      4.38pm EST

      16:38

      The White House has released a readout of Joe Biden’s afternoon call with French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
      “President Biden briefed leaders on his call with President Putin, in which he discussed the serious consequences of Russian military action in Ukraine and the need to de-escalate and return to diplomacy,” the White House said.
      “The leaders underscored their support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, as well as the need for Russia to reduce tensions and engage in diplomacy. They agreed their teams will stay in close touch, including in consultation with NATO allies and EU partners, on a coordinated and comprehensive approach.”

      4.18pm EST

      16:18

      The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly and David Smith report:
      Mark Meadows’ attorney, George Terwilliger, wrote in a letter on Tuesday that a deposition would be “untenable” because the 6 January select committee “has no intention of respecting boundaries” concerning questions that Donald Trump has claimed are off-limits because of executive privilege.
      Executive privilege covers the confidentiality or otherwise of communications between a president and his aides. The Biden administration has waived it in the investigation of 6 January. Trump and key allies entwined in events leading up to the storming of the Capitol, around which five people died, have invoked it.
      Terwilliger also said he learned over the weekend that the committee had issued a subpoena to a third-party communications provider that he said would include “intensely personal” information.
      In an interview on the conservative Fox News network, the attorney added: “We have made efforts over many weeks to reach an accommodation with the committee.”
      But he said the committee’s approach to negotiations and to other witnesses meant Meadows would withdraw cooperation.

      3.48pm EST

      15:48

      Capitol attack committee warns Meadows of potential contempt charge

      The House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection has warned Mark Meadows that lawmakers will move forward with holding him in criminal contempt if he does not appear for his scheduled deposition tomorrow.
      Meadows, who previously served as Donald Trump’s chief of staff, indicated earlier today that he would no longer cooperate with the committee’s investigation.
      The chair and vice-chair of the select committee, Democrat Bennie Thompson and Republican Liz Cheney, warned Meadows of the potential contempt charge in a new statement.

      January 6th Committee
      (@January6thCmte)
      Mark Meadows has informed the Select Committee that he does not intend to cooperate further despite his apparent willingness to provide details about the January 6th attack, including conversations with President Trump, in the book he is now promoting and selling.

      December 7, 2021

      “Mark Meadows has informed the Select Committee that he does not intend to cooperate further with our investigation despite his apparent willingness to provide details about the facts and circumstances surrounding the January 6th attack, including conversations with President Trump, in the book he is now promoting and selling,” Thompson and Cheney said.
      The two lawmakers noted investigators have many questions and requests for Meadows that do not fall under potential executive privilege claims, including “voluminous official records stored in his personal phone and email accounts”.
      “Tomorrow’s deposition, which was scheduled at Mr. Meadows’s request, will go forward as planned,” Thompson and Cheney said.
      “If indeed Mr. Meadows refuses to appear, the Select Committee will be left no choice but to advance contempt proceedings and recommend that the body in which Mr. Meadows once served refer him for criminal prosecution.”

      3.30pm EST

      15:30

      National security adviser Jake Sullivan described the summit between Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin as a “useful meeting,” although he declined to characterize the Russian leader’s remarks during the discussion.
      “He can speak for himself,” Sullivan said of Putin, noting that the Russian president was “direct and straightforward” in his conversation with Biden.
      “This was a real discussion. It was give and take. It was not speeches,” Sullivan said. “It was back and forth. President Putin was deeply engaged.”

      3.16pm EST

      15:16

      National security adviser Jake Sullivan said Joe Biden will speak with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Thursday, after the US president held a virtual summit with Vladimir Putin today.
      Sullivan said the White House does not believe that Putin has yet made a decision about whether to approve an invasion of Ukraine, as Russia builds up its troop presence along the border.
      “What President Biden did today was lay out very clearly the consequences if he chooses to move,” Sullivan said of the summit.
      “I will look you in the eye and tell you, as President Biden looked President Putin in the eye and told him today, that things we did not do in 2014, we are prepared to do now,” Sullivan added, referring to the US response to the Russian annexation of Crimea.

      3.09pm EST

      15:09

      White House urges Putin to embrace ‘de-escalation and diplomacy’ toward Ukraine

      The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, is now holding her daily briefing with reporters, and she is joined by national security adviser Jake Sullivan.
      Sullivan provided more details on Joe Biden’s virtual summit with Vladimir Putin this morning, saying the US president was “direct and straightforward” with the Russian leader.
      The president warned Putin that the US would respond with “strong economic measures” if Russia invaded Ukraine, Sullivan said.
      The national security adviser added that Biden urged his Russian counterpart to embrace “de-escalation and diplomacy” toward Ukraine rather than continuing to build up a military presence along the border.

      2.47pm EST

      14:47

      The Republican National Committee criticized Joe Biden’s foreign policy agenda after the US president’s virtual summit with Vladimir Putin this morning.
      “Biden’s weak leadership on the international stage has emboldened our enemies and shaken our allies’ trust,” RNC chair Ronna McDaniel said in a statement.
      “While claiming to be tough on Russia, Biden gifted Putin the Russian Nord Stream 2 pipeline while simultaneously embarking on a job-killing crusade against the U.S. energy industry. Today’s meeting underscores how Biden’s weak global leadership, Afghanistan disaster, and failure at our border is emblematic of his America last agenda.”
      In its readout of the summit, the White House said Biden “voiced the deep concerns of the United States and our European Allies about Russia’s escalation of forces surrounding Ukraine and made clear that the U.S. and our Allies would respond with strong economic and other measures in the event of military escalation”.

      2.16pm EST

      14:16

      Edward Helmore

      Donald Trump’s plan to launch “Truth Social”, a special purpose acquisitions backed social media company, early next year may have hit a roadblock after US regulators issued a request for information on the deal on Monday.
      The request from the SEC and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority for information from Digital World Acquisition Corp (DWAC), a blank-check SPAC that is set to merge with Trump Media & Technology Group, comes as a powerful Republican congressman, Devin Nunes, announced he was stepping out of politics to join the Trump media venture as CEO.
      The twin developments set the stage for a major political battle over Truth Social, a platform that purportedly plans to challenge Twitter and Facebook, social platforms that have banned or curbed the former president over his involvement in stoking the 6 January Capitol riot.

      1.51pm EST

      13:51

      About 200 officers have left the US Capitol police since the 6 January insurrection, according to the force’s inspector general.
      Giving testimony before a Senate committee hearing, Michael Bolton also said the Capitol police had not done enough to improve its practices in the 11 months since the attack.

      CSPAN
      (@cspan)
      Sen. @RoyBlunt: “How many officers have left the department since January the 6th?”U.S. Capitol Police IG Bolton: “I believe it’s around 200 or so.” pic.twitter.com/IvTBDRsLrv

      December 7, 2021

      Bolton also said that out of “200 security enhancements” the department told him it would make, “only 61 of those items have supporting documentation to support that those enhancements have occurred”.
      The Senate Rules Committee hearing was also notable for a suggestion from Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican senator for West Virginia, that Congress should conduct large-scale drills, in the same way many US schools are forced to, in case of an active shooter.

      Updated
      at 1.58pm EST

      1.35pm EST

      13:35

      White House: Biden confronted Putin over Ukraine troop escalation

      Joe Biden voiced “deep concerns” about the escalation of Russian forces surrounding Ukraine during his call with Vladimir Putin today, according to a summary of the conversation published by the White House.
      The call took in a “range of issues”, the White House said, including the Ukraine situation and ransomware.
      From the White House:

      President Biden voiced the deep concerns of the United States and our European allies about Russia’s escalation of forces surrounding Ukraine and made clear that the US and our allies would respond with strong economic and other measures in the event of military escalation.
      President Biden reiterated his support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and called for de-escalation and a return to diplomacy. The two presidents tasked their teams to follow up and the US will do so in close coordination with allies and partners.
      The presidents also discussed the US-Russia dialogue on strategic stability, a separate dialogue on ransomware, as well as joint work on regional issues such as Iran.

      This is Adam Gabbatt, taking over from Joan for a little while.

      Updated
      at 1.45pm EST

      1.30pm EST

      13:30

      Today so far

      Here’s where the day stands so far:

      Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin held a virtual summit that lasted roughly two hours. The meeting comes as Putin has built up Russia’s troop presence along the country’s border with Ukraine, raising concerns of a potential invasion.
      Biden is speaking with several European leaders this afternoon to provide an update on his conversation with Putin. The White House said Biden will speak with French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
      Mark Meadows, the former chief of staff to Donald Trump, is no longer cooperating with the House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection. Meadows’ attorney said the panel wanted the former official to discuss matters over which Donald Trump has claimed executive privilege, although lawmakers have rejected the legitimacy of the former president’s claims.

      The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

      1.16pm EST

      13:16

      The White House has shared a photo of Joe Biden’s virtual summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin this morning, which wrapped up about an hour ago.
      The photo shows the US president, accompanied by secretary of state Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan, in the Situation Room.
      “.@POTUS held a secure video call with President Putin of Russia today to discuss a range of topics in the US-Russia relationship, including our concerns about Russian military activities on the border with Ukraine, cyber and regional issues,” the White House said on Twitter. More

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      Republican Devin Nunes to quit Congress and head Trump’s social media platform

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      Republican Devin Nunes to quit Congress and head Trump’s social media platformCalifornia congressman has claimed without evidence that social media companies seek to censor Republicans Devin Nunes, the California congressman and close ally of Donald Trump, will be retiring from the US House of Representatives next year to join Trump’s new social media venture.The Republican congressman, who represents a rural California district, announced his retirement from the House on Monday, writing in a letter to constituents that he was leaving his position to pursue a “new opportunity to fight for the most important issues I believe in”.Shortly after, Trump Media & Technology Group announced Nunes would become the company’s chief executive in January.Republican Devin Nunes to leave Congress and run Trump’s social media venture – liveRead moreIn a statement, Nunes said: “The time has come to reopen the internet and allow for the free flow of ideas and expression without censorship.”Nunes, 48, has served as a congressman since 2003. He was a member of the intelligence committee during Donald Trump’s first impeachment and emerged as one of Trump’s staunchest defenders in the House.Nunes has long been a critic of major social media companies. The congressman has repeatedly claimed without evidence that platforms have been trying to censor Republicans.In 2019, he filed a lawsuit against Twitter over mocking tweets from two parody accounts, “Devin Nunes’ Mom” and “Devin Nunes’ Cow”. In the lawsuit, Nunes claimed he had endured “an orchestrated defamation campaign, one that no human being should ever have to bear and suffer in their whole life”. The suit also accused Twitter of censoring “viewpoints with which it disagrees”.The parody accounts pretending to be the congressman’s cow and his mother mocked him over revelations that his family had moved its farm to Iowa from California even as he used his agricultural roots as part of his campaign in central California.Later, the Trump justice department subpoenaed Twitter for information related to a parody account that criticized Nunes, federal court records revealed – even though a judge ruled that the representative could not sue the social media company for defamation.Earlier on Monday, the blank-check company that aims to take Trump Media & Technology Group public acknowledged that two regulatory agencies are scrutinizing the $1.25bn deal.Digital World Acquisition, which is often referred to by its trading symbol, DWAC, said it was cooperating with “the preliminary, fact-finding inquiries” by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.TopicsUS CongressDonald TrumpRepublicansUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Massie’s gun collection: ‘They shouldn’t be in the hands of civilians’

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      Massie’s gun collection: ‘They shouldn’t be in the hands of civilians’Analysis: furore continues over ‘Christmas card’ by US Congressman of group holding military weapons It is the Christmas card that has sent shockwaves across the world – and provided a chilling reminder of the size and type of weapons that are perfectly legal to own and carry in large parts of the US.An analysis by the Guardian indicates the guns in the photograph published by the Republican congressman Thomas Massie are military grade and – in some cases – similar to those used in recent notorious deadly incidents.The furore began on Sunday when Massie posted on Twitter a picture of himself and what appear to be members of his family, smiling and posing with an assortment of weapons, just days after four teenagers were killed in a shooting at a high school in Michigan.He wrote: “Merry Christmas! PS Santa, please bring ammo.”The tweet provoked an immediate response – with other Republicans criticising him for his insensitivity.Yet Kentucky law allows people aged over 21 to possess and carry guns – and no permit or licence is required for rifles, shotguns or handguns, according to the National Rifle Association.The calibre and range of the weapons on display horrified one expert. Philip Ingram, a former British military intelligence officer, told the Guardian: “There is no way in a modern society these weapons should be in hands outside law enforcement or the military … They are designed for one purpose: to kill people.” The weapon held by Massie, bottom left, has been identified as an M60 machine gun, first developed for the US military in the late 1950s and which, with its belt-fed ammunition, became one the best known weapons of the Vietnam war.A collector’s item, the M60 is relatively hard to buy on the open market, with sales prices estimated by some auctioneers at $69,000 or more.Machine guns made since 1986 are banned in the US – but US federal law allows any weapons that were registered before 1986 to be traded on an approved basis. According to Calibre Obscura, a military blogger and weapons expert, the other guns in the photograph are almost certainly semi-automatics, meaning an owner has to squeeze the trigger each time they want a shot to be fired.At the front, to the left of Massie, a woman is holding an Uzi, the Israeli submachine-gun, which can fire up to 600 rounds a minute.Massie’s wife, Rhonda, appears to be holding a Thompson M1SB, most likely a replica of the second world war submachine-gun, sold by its original manufacturer in the US.In the back row, other family members appear to be holding, from left to right, a Spanish military rifle, a Belgian rifle, and two AR-15s – the AR stands for ArmaLite, the original manufacturer. One of the most popular semi-automatics available in the US, its sales have soared over the last decade. An AR-15 was taken by Kyle Rittenhouse on his notorious trip to Kenosha, Wisconsin, last year, which saw him kill two people and injure a third as he roamed the streets acting as a self-described militia, following public protests after police shot a black man in the back. Rittenhouse was found not guilty last month after a jury concluded that he had acted in self-defence.Giffords Law Center, which campaigns against gun violence, said official US figures showed that 726,951 machine guns remain listed as in legal circulation. Over the weekend, Massie was condemned by political opponents, particularly for releasing the Christmas family picture days after the shooting at Michigan’s Oxford high school by a 15-year-old that left four dead. “I promise not everyone in Kentucky is an insensitive asshole,” said John Yarmuth, a Kentucky Democratic congressional representative.TopicsUS gun controlRepublicansKentuckyUS CongressUS politicsanalysisReuse this content More