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      January 6 panel to take up key unanswered questions in final hearing

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      January 6 panel to take up key unanswered questions in final hearingWednesday’s session is committee’s last chance to show potential culpability of Donald Trump before midterm elections The House January 6 select committee is expected to hold its final public hearing next Wednesday, with the congressional investigation into the US Capitol attack nearing its conclusion as staff counsel prepare to produce an interim report of its findings before the 2022 midterm elections.The specific topic of the final hearing that the panel’s chairman, Congressman Bennie Thompson, will convene starting at 1pm is unclear.But the select committee is expected to make headway on some of the most pressing questions about January 6 that remain unanswered since the panel last convened in July and made the case that Donald Trump violated the law by refusing to take action to call off the Capitol attack, sources said.Virginia Thomas agrees to interview with House January 6 panelRead moreThe principal issues at play include whether there was a concrete through-line from the former president to political operatives like Roger Stone and Michael Flynn, who were in close contact with the far-right extremist groups – including the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers – that stormed Congress.The select committee has found some circumstantial evidence about such ties and previously revealed that Trump directed his then White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to call both Stone and Flynn the night before January 6 as the extremist groups finalized their plans for the day.Another issue for House investigators is whether Trump’s ouster of former defense secretary Mark Esper was an effort to install in his place a loyalist who might have had no objection to using the national guard to seize voting machines or delay their deployment to stop the Capitol attack.The select committee has viewed the plot to seize voting machines – suggested by Flynn during a contentious White House meeting in December 2020, hours before Trump sent a tweet urging his supporters to attend a “wild protest” on January 6 – as a crucial moment in the overall timeline.House investigators have also spent time in recent weeks examining Microsoft Teams chats and emails sent between Secret Service agents on security details for Trump and former vice-president Mike Pence that day, as well as discussions about invoking martial law even after the Capitol attack.The hearing on Wednesday is likely to touch on some of those issues, the sources said, in the last opportunity for the select committee to show potential culpability by Trump and Republican members of Congress on national television before the midterm elections take place in early November.Trump’s attempts to delay Mar-a-Lago inquiry largely fail as legal woes mountRead moreWith their control of the House and Senate hanging in the balance, this hearing is also widely being seen on Capitol Hill as the final chance for Democrats to persuade voters that the midterms are a referendum on the Republican party’s role in January 6.Part of the reason the Wednesday hearing is expected to be the final one is because next week is the last that the House is in session until the midterms, and the panel was reluctant to schedule an event during campaign season, when committee members like Elaine Luria face uphill re-election battles.The select committee is also starting to shift its focus away from the made-for-television hearings – which have required time-consuming preparation and rehearsals – and towards putting together an interim report in the coming weeks as well as a final report by the end of the year.The panel remained undecided on the final direction of each of the reports, the sources said, as well as whether to make a criminal referral to the justice department against Trump and key aides, including his former lawyer John Eastman, who orchestrated the fake elector scheme.Once a major priority, the need for such a referral appears to have diminished in recent weeks. Subpoenas reviewed by the Guardian show the justice department is pursuing at least three investigations examining January 6 and issued more than 30 subpoenas to top Trump aides.TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackUS politicsUS elections 2020newsReuse this content More

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      The Long Alliance review: sure guide to Biden and Obama’s imperfect union

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      The Long Alliance review: sure guide to Biden and Obama’s imperfect union Gabriel Debenedetti masters the crosscurrents of the Democratic party as well as relations between two presidentsGabriel Debenedetti is the national correspondent for New York magazine. His first book brings depth and context to the near-two-decade relationship between the 44th and 46th presidents. Under a telling subtitle, The Imperfect Union of Joe Biden and Barack Obama, Debenedetti captures the two men’s closeness – and distance.The Divider review: riveting narrative of Trump’s plot against AmericaRead moreThe Long Alliance emphasizes that the pair’s time in power together was not a buddy movie. Obama was the star. Biden played a supporting role until he too seized the brass ring, to send Donald Trump into exile.Obama was a first-term senator, just 47 years old, when he vanquished the Clintons, bulldozed John McCain and entered the White House. Biden’s trajectory was markedly different. Late in life, on his third quest for the presidency, he took down another septuagenarian amid a deadly pandemic.The union of Obama and Biden was always moored in intergenerational convenience. Obama was the agent of change, Biden a relic of an older time. Obama’s aides cast a wary eye toward the senator from Delaware. To Biden, politics was tactile. He did not readily inspire.Walloped by Obama in Iowa in 2008, Biden immediately withdrew. Over time, the two men bonded. There was greater warmth between them than between Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush, let alone Bush and Dan Quayle. Obama always heard Biden out. On the other hand, the Obamas never invited the Bidens to the White House residence. Barack and Joe shared lunches, not dinners and movies with popcorn.Hiccups and speed bumps left marks. Biden got ahead of Obama on gay marriage. Hunter Biden made headlines with his schemes and hustles. Confronted with the younger Biden boy’s foray into Ukraine and the energy business, Obama’s spokesman, Jay Carney, expressed discomfort. Like Trump, Hunter’s fate now rests with federal prosecutors.Obama empathized with his vice-president. When Beau Biden, Biden’s older son, was dying, Obama offered a shoulder to lean on. He delivered a stirring eulogy. In their final days in office, Obama gave Biden the presidential medal of freedom. The honor, suffused with affection and tenderness, surprised its recipient. Biden’s successor as vice-president, Mike Pence, met a very different fate.Yet for all Obama’s smarts, he could get things terribly wrong. He failed to anticipate the magnitude of the backlash to the Affordable Care Act, the resonance of birtherism, abhorrent as it was, and the depth and breadth of the emerging national chasm beneath him. Democratic losses in the 2010 and 2014 midterms and the Tea Party with its tricorn hats presaged a sustained demand for a return to the past, the rise of Trump and a tolerance for autocracy within the Republican party.Obama also messed up by viewing Hillary Clinton as his rightful successor, if not his political heir. In 2008, competing against her for the nomination, he derided her as “likable enough”. In 2016, in hindsight, little had changed.Clinton lacked her husband’s capacity to emote and connect. Like Ted Cruz, the Republican Texas senator, there was something awkward, off-putting, which she could not shake. Her comments on Trump’s “deplorables” hurt her much as Mitt Romney’s take on the “47%” did him in 2012. Looking back, Obama miscalculated – much as his brain trust would do in 2020 with Biden.Under Trump, Romney showed a deeper appreciation of where the US stood. It wanted a president not named Trump. A shot at normalcy. Nothing else.On the night of the 2018 midterms, Romney urged Biden to wage one more campaign. “You have to run,” Romney said in a call. Anti-Trump sentiment cost the Republicans the House but at the same moment Utah was sending Romney to the Senate.During the 2020 primaries, Obama and Biden stayed in touch. But until the former vice-president emerged as the presumptive nominee, his president’s endorsement was not forthcoming. Biden lost Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada. Heading to South Carolina, he was low on cash and short on delegates. There, the backing of James Clyburn, the House whip, together with the state’s Black voters, righted Biden’s ship. Debenedetti shows mastery of the tugs and crosscurrents that shape the Democrats’ upstairs-downstairs coalition.African Americans could be among the most socially conservative components of the party. They were not clamoring for open borders or Medicare for All. Obamacare stood as the legacy of the first Black president. Their patrimony was the cruel lash of slavery, not the Harvard faculty lounge or the yoke of the tsar. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders did not speak to them or for them.Obama aides badmouthed Biden in print and on TV. David Axelrod, a senior Obama campaign and White House hand, never cottoned to Biden, and Biden knew it. And yet, behind the scenes, Obama helped clear the field.In the end, Covid and the need for national leadership put Biden over the top. No other Democrat could have beaten Trump.The Destructionists review: brilliant study of Republican rage pre-TrumpRead moreAs president, Biden’s record is uneven. The withdrawal from Afghanistan put a dent in his standing from which he has not recovered. In contrast, US support for Ukraine appears the product of thoughtful conviction. As for the economy, Biden’s efforts to placate his base may well have heightened inflation. Gas prices are coming down but the rest remains stubbornly up.Biden competes with Obama’s legacy and the ghost of FDR. The Democrats hold only 50 Senate seats, control on a knife-edge as the November election looms.“I am confident that Barack is not happy with the coverage of this administration as more transformative than his,” Biden reportedly told one adviser, according to another big political book, This Will Not Pass by Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns, of the New York Times and CNN respectively.The two men still talk, though.
      The Long Alliance: The Imperfect Union of Joe Biden and Barack Obama is published in the US by Macmillan
      TopicsBooksJoe BidenBarack ObamaBiden administrationObama administrationDemocratsUS elections 2020reviewsReuse this content More

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      Alarm as Koch bankrolls dozens of election denier candidates

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      Alarm as Koch bankrolls dozens of election denier candidates Election watchdogs say Koch’s about face after pledging change following January 6 is disturbing given the threats to democracy Fossil fuel giant Koch Industries has poured over $1m into backing – directly and indirectly – dozens of House and Senate candidates who voted against certifying Joe Biden’s win on 6 January 2021.Koch, which is controlled by multibillionaire Charles Koch, boasts a corporate Pac that has donated $607,000 to the campaigns or leadership Pacs of 52 election deniers since January 2021, making Koch’s Pac the top corporate funder of members who opposed the election results, according to OpenSecrets, which tracks campaign spending.In addition, the Super Pac Americans for Prosperity Action to which Koch Industries has given over $6m since January 2021, has backed some election deniers with advertising and other communications support, as well as a few candidates Donald Trump has endorsed who tried to help him overturn the 2020 election, or raised doubts about the final results.A top official with AFP Action told Politico after the January 6 insurrection by Donald Trump supporters that it planned to “weigh heavily” future spending and back “policy makers who reject the politics of division”.Altogether, 139 House members and eight senators voted against certifying Biden’s win in Arizona or Pennsylvania.Election and campaign finance watchdogs say that the financial support for candidates who were election deniers by Koch’s Pac and the Super Pac AFP Action is very disturbing given the threats to democracy posed by election deniers. “There’s a unique danger in having politicians who cast doubt on the validity of the last election results play a role in certifying the next election,” said Ian Vandewalker, a senior counsel for the Democracy program at the Brennan Center for Justice.“Even if they don’t take any overt action to reject the will of the voters, the election denial message itself harms voter confidence in the system. Democracy requires the losing side to accept the results – without that we could see civil unrest on a much larger scale than January 6.”Although the Koch-funded Super Pac AFP Action had suggested it would not back election deniers after 6 January, analysts aren’t shocked given Koch’s lobbying and legislative priorities, which include fighting various tax and regulatory measures related to fossil fuel issues including climate change that affect the company’s bottom line. Koch spent $12.2m last year on lobbying – more than any other oil and gas company during 2021.“Like other corporations pledging change following January 6, Koch Industries has returned to business as usual,” said Sheila Krumholz, who leads OpenSecrets.” Without repercussions and continued public attention, companies will go back to funding politicians who support their agenda.”“Like many big business spenders, Koch seems more interested in their favored party controlling Congress than the characteristics of specific members,” Vandewalker added.To be sure, the Koch Pac’s support for 52 election deniers included a number of members whose votes are often helpful to fossil fuel interests.Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, who is often a staunch ally of fossil fuel interests, received $20,000 from Koch’s Pac, a sum only matched by the corporate Pac of Capital One. Kennedy teamed up with other senators in January 2021 on a statement that claimed the 2020 election was “rife with allegations of fraud and irregularities that exceed any in our lifetimes”.Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas, where Koch is headquartered, also voted against certifying Biden’s election and has received support from Koch’s Pac. Marshall is not up for re-election this year.Separately, Americans for Prosperity Action, to which Koch has donated $6m, has spent almost $20m on ads and other communications much of which has gone to support some election deniers running for the Senate and House, plus Senate candidates who tried to help Trump reverse the 2020 election results or who have raised doubts about its outcome.For instance, House member Ted Budd, who voted against certifying Biden’s win on 6 January, and now hopes to win a Senate seat in North Carolina, has benefited from almost $3.1m that AFP Action has spent to help him win the seat of the retiring senator Richard Burr. Budd has also told CNN that he had “constitutional concerns” about the election while acknowledging that Biden is president.Similarly, two House members who opposed certifying Biden’s victory, Kat Cammack of Florida and Steve Chabot of Ohio, have both attracted backing from AFP Action. AFP Action has spent $369,750 to help Cammack and $287,902 to help Chabot.Moreover, AFP Action has spent $4.9m to boost the Missouri attorney general, Eric Schmitt, who filed a lawsuit in December 2020 in tandem with the Texas attorney general to overturn the election results, and is running for an open seat.The Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson also has benefited from $4.2m spent by AFP Action to help him in what seems to be a tight re-election race. According to revelations at a House January 6 committee hearing in June, an aide to Johnson reportedly helped promote efforts to substitute fake electors for Trump for legitimate ones that Biden won in the run up to 6 January when Congress certified the election results.And Mehmet Oz, the GOP Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, whose campaign has been backed by over $2m of ad and other support from AFP Action, told Fox News in September that “lots more information” was needed to assess whether Trump won the 2020 election, contradicting prior Oz remarks that he would have certified Biden’s election if he was senator.Election objectors won substantial donations from other corporate Pacs besides Koch’s. OpenSecrets reported in August that altogether members who voted against certifying Biden’s win received a whopping $22m post-January 6 from the Pacs of 700 corporations. Besides Koch’s Pac, the other top corporate Pacs were those of Home Depot and Boeing that respectively ponied up $593,000 to 44 members and $520,000 to 27 members.Still, at least one veteran of a thinktank that Charles Koch co-founded and has helped fund says that the company’s ongoing support for election deniers is very troubling.“When the only elected officials who will carry your political water are proto-fascists, what is one to do?” said Jerry Taylor, a former vice-president at the Cato Institute in DC where he oversaw climate and energy issues. “Charles Koch has made his choice. This self-proclaimed voice of freedom and liberty has apparently decided that advancing the public policies he desires is more important than democracy.“His choice is not unlike the choices that most German industrialists made in the Weimar Republic.”TopicsUS elections 2020Koch brothersUS politicsUS midterm elections 2022newsReuse this content More

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      Virginia Thomas agrees to interview with House January 6 panel

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      Virginia Thomas agrees to interview with House January 6 panelHer lawyer said she is eager to ‘clear up any misconceptions’ in helping Donald Trump overturn the 2020 US election Conservative activist Virginia Thomas, the wife of supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, has agreed to participate in a voluntary interview with the House panel investigating the January 6 insurrection, her lawyer said Wednesday.Attorney Mark Paoletta said Thomas is “eager to answer the committee’s questions to clear up any misconceptions about her work relating to the 2020 election”.The committee has sought an interview with Thomas in an effort to know more about her role in trying to help former president Donald Trump overturn his election defeat. She texted with White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and contacted lawmakers in Arizona and Wisconsin in the weeks after the election and before the insurrection.Liz Cheney and Zoe Lofgren to propose bill to stop another January 6 attackRead moreThomas’s willingness to testify comes as the committee is preparing to wrap up its work before the end of the year and is writing a final report laying out its findings about the US Capitol insurrection. The panel announced Wednesday that it will reconvene for a hearing on 28 September, likely the last in a series of hearings that began this summer. The testimony from Thomas was one of the remaining items for the panel as its work comes to a close. The panel has already interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses and shown some of that video testimony in its eight hearings over the summer.The extent of Thomas’ involvement ahead of the Capitol attack is unknown. In the days after news organizations called the presidential election for Biden, Thomas emailed two lawmakers in Arizona to urge them to choose “a clean slate of electors” and “stand strong in the face of political and media pressure”. The Associated Press obtained the emails earlier this year under the state’s open records law.She has said in interviews that she attended the initial pro-Trump rally the morning of 6 January 2021 but left before Trump spoke and the crowds headed for the Capitol.Thomas, a Trump supporter long active in conservative causes, has repeatedly maintained that her political activities posed no conflict of interest with the work of her husband.“Like so many married couples, we share many of the same ideals, principles and aspirations for America. But we have our own separate careers, and our own ideas and opinions too. Clarence doesn’t discuss his work with me, and I don’t involve him in my work,” Thomas told the Washington Free Beacon in an interview published in March.Thomas has been openly critical of the committee’s work, including signing on to a letter to House Republicans calling for the expulsion of Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger from the GOP conference for joining the January 6 congressional committee.CNN first reported that Thomas agreed to the interview.Clarence Thomas was the lone dissenting voice when the supreme court ruled in January to allow a congressional committee access to presidential diaries, visitor logs, speech drafts and handwritten notes relating to the January 6 attack.It’s unclear if the hearing would provide a general overview of what the panel has learned or if it would be focused on new information and evidence, such as an interview with Thomas. The committee conducted several interviews at the end of July and into August with Trump’s cabinet secretaries, some of whom had discussed invoking the constitutional process in the 25th amendment to remove Trump from office after the insurrection. Liz Cheney, the Republican vice chairwoman, said the committee “has far more evidence to share with the American people and more to gather”.TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsClarence ThomasDonald TrumpUS elections 2020US Capitol attackUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Fox News anchor Bret Baier wanted Arizona ‘put back’ in Trump’s column, book says

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      Fox News anchor Bret Baier wanted Arizona ‘put back’ in Trump’s column, book saysNews of ‘stunning’ attempt to rescind dramatic election night call contained in The Divider, by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser Fox News anchor Bret Baier wanted the network to withdraw its famous call of Arizona for Joe Biden on election night in 2020, citing pressure from Donald Trump’s campaign and saying the swing state should be “put back in his column”, a new book says.The Divider review: riveting narrative of Trump’s plot against AmericaRead moreNews of Baier’s email is contained in The Divider: Trump in the White House 2017-2021, published in the US on Tuesday.The authors, Peter Baker of the New York Times and Susan Glasser of the New Yorker, call Baier’s request “stunning”, as Arizona “was never in Trump’s column. While the margin of his defeat in the state had narrowed since election night, he still trailed by more than 10,000 votes.”Trump did win Arizona in 2016. Its call for Biden four years later did not give the Democrat the White House but it did signal Trump was in deep trouble. Accounts of his fury at the surprisingly early call, which other networks did not follow, are legion.According to the author Michael Wolff, Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox News, both personally approved the call and said of Trump: “Fuck him.”Fox News denied that but Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, wrote in his own book that on election night, Murdoch told him Arizona was “not even close”.The election was called for Biden on 7 November, four days later, when he was agreed to have won Pennsylvania.But Baker and Glasser report that “turmoil” reigned at Fox News over Arizona, amid worries that rightwing rivals including Newsmax, firmly in the van for Trump, might take viewers away.“Fox executives were freaking out,” the authors write, adding that Suzanne Scott, the chief executive, wanted Fox News to stop calling any more states until they were certified by election authorities – a process that takes weeks.Baker and Glasser say Bill Sammon, the Washington managing editor, rejected that plan, saying: “Our enemies – and there are many – will portray this as follows: For the first time in its history, Fox News refuses to project the next president, who just happens to be the Democrat who defeated Donald Trump.”Baker and Glasser report that though Baier had “long insisted that he was different than the Trump-cheerleading opinion hosts” at Fox News, he felt White House pressure to rescind the Arizona call.In an email on Thursday 5 November, they report, the anchor said “the Trump campaign was really pissed” and added: “This situation is getting uncomfortable. Really uncomfortable. I keep having to defend this on air.”Baier reportedly “accused the [Fox News] Decision Desk of ‘holding on for pride’ and added: ‘It’s hurting us. The sooner we pull it – even if it gives us a major egg – and we put it back in his column, the better we are in my opinion.’”They also say the Decision Desk was not allowed to call Nevada for Biden even after other networks did, because doing so would have made Biden Fox News’s projected winner, given the Arizona call.Broken News review: Ex-Fox News editor has broadsides for both sidesRead moreTrump continues to lie about mass voter fraud in Arizona, even after an “audit” by state Republicans did not find fraud – and instead slightly increased Biden’s margin of victory.In the aftermath of the Arizona call, Baker and Glasser write, Bill Sammon and Chris Stirewalt, senior members of the Fox News politics team, were “summarily fired”.Fox News insists Sammon retired while Stirewalt – who has written his own book – was let go because of “restructuring”.Baker and Glasser write: “Whatever they called it, Fox had decided that deference to Trump was more important than getting the story right.”Quoting another email, they say Jay Wallace, the Fox News president and executive editor, told Sammon: “I respect the hell out of you, but it’s turned into a war.”TopicsBooksFox NewsUS politicsUS elections 2020RepublicansPolitics booksUS television industrynewsReuse this content More

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      The Divider review: riveting narrative of Trump’s plot against America

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      The Divider review: riveting narrative of Trump’s plot against America Peter Baker and Susan Glasser offer a beautifully written, utterly dispiriting history of the man who attacked democracyThe US labors in Donald Trump’s shadow, the Republican party “reborn in his image”, to quote Peter Baker and Susan Glasser. Trump is out of office but not out of sight or mind. Determined to explain “what happened” on 6 January 2021, when Trump supporters attacked the Capitol, the husband-and-wife team examines his term in the White House and its chaotic aftermath. Their narrative is riveting, their observations dispiriting.Trump chief of staff used book on president’s mental health as guideRead moreThe US is still counted as a liberal democracy but is poised to stumble out of that state. The stench of autocratization wafts. Maga-world demanded a Caesar. It came close to realizing its dream.In electing Trump, Baker and Glasser write, the US empowered a leader who “attacked basic principles of constitutional democracy at home” and “venerated” strongmen abroad. Whether the system winds up in the “morgue” and how much time remains to make sure it doesn’t are the authors’ open questions.Trump spoke kindly of Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un. He treated Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine as a plaything, to be blackmailed for personal gain.In a moment of pique, Trump sought to give the Israeli-controlled West Bank to King Abdullah of Jordan. For Benjamin Netanyahu, the former and possibly future prime minister of Israel, he had a tart “fuck him”.At home, the US is mired in a cold civil war. Half the country deems Trump unfit to hold office, half would grant him a second term, possibly as president for life. Trump’s “big lie”, that the 2020 election was stolen, is potent.The tectonics of education, religion and race clang loudly – and occasionally violently. The insurrection stands as bloody testament to populism and Christian nationalism. The cross and the noose are icons. The Confederacy has risen.Baker is the New York Times’s chief White House correspondent. Glasser works for the New Yorker and CNN. Their book is meticulously researched and beautifully written. Those who were in and around the West Wing talk and share documents. Baker and Glasser lay out receipts. They conducted more than 300 interviews. They met Trump at Mar-a-Lago, “his rococo palace by the sea”, to which we now know he took more than 300 classified documents.“When we sat down with [him] a year after his defeat,” Baker and Glasser write, “the first thing he told us was a lie.”Imagine that.Trump falsely claimed the Biden administration had asked him to record a public service announcement promoting Covid vaccinations. Eventually, he forgot he had spun that yarn. It never happened.Baker and Glasser depict a tempestuous president and a storm-filled presidency. Trump’s time behind the Resolute Desk translated into “fits of rage, late-night Twitter storms, abrupt dismissals”. The authors now compare Trump to Napoleon, exiled to Elba.Congress impeached him twice. He never won the popular vote. His legitimacy flowed from the electoral college, the biggest quirk in the constitution, a document he readily and repeatedly defiled. Tradition and norms counted little. The military came to understand that Trump was bent on staging a coup. The guardrails nearly failed.The führer was a role-model. Trump loudly complained to John Kelly, his second chief of staff, a retired Marine Corps general and a father bereaved in the 9/11 wars: “You fucking generals, why can’t you be like the German generals?”“Which generals?”“The German generals in world war II.”“You do know that they tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off?”It’s fair to say Trump probably did not know that. He dodged the Vietnam draft, suffering from “bone spurs”, with better things to do. He is … not a reader.In Trump’s White House, Baker and Glasser write, Kelly used The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, a study by 27 mental health professionals, as some sort of owner’s manual.A week before Christmas 2020, Trump met another retired general, the freshly pardoned Michael Flynn, and other election-deniers including Patrick Byrne, once a boyfriend of Maria Butina, a convicted Russian agent. Hours later, past midnight, Trump tweeted “Big protest in DC on January 6th … Be there, will be wild!”In that moment, the fears of Gen Mark Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff who saw the coup coming, “no longer seemed far-fetched”. Now, as new midterm elections approach, Republicans signal that they will grill Milley if they retake the House.Baker and Glasser also write of how Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump sought refuge from the Trumpian storm, despite being his senior advisers. They endeavored to keep their hands clean but the muck cascaded downward.Not everyone shared their discomfort. Donald Trump Jr proposed “ways to annul the will of the voters”. Rick Perry, the energy secretary, pushed for Republican state legislatures to declare Trump the winner regardless of reality.“HERE’s an AGGRESSIVE STRATEGY,” a Perry text message read.Trump’s increasing tirade against FBI and DoJ endangering lives of officialsRead moreIn such a rogues’ gallery, even the wife of a sitting supreme court justice, Ginni Thomas, stood ready to help. Mark Meadows, Trump’s last chief of staff, was a child who yearned for his parent’s affection. He would say and do anything. And yet he managed to spill the beans on Trump testing positive for Covid before debating Biden. Trump called Meadows “fucking stupid”. Meadows has since complied with subpoenas issued by the Department of Justice and the January 6 committee.Baker and Glasser conclude by noting Trump’s advanced age and looking at “would-be Trumps” who might pick up the torch. They name Ron DeSantis, Josh Hawley and Tucker Carlson.On Thursday, Trump threatened violence if he is criminally charged.“I think you’d have problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen before,” he said. “I don’t think the people of the US would stand for it.”As Timbuk 3 once sang, with grim irony: “The future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades.”
      The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021 is published in the US by Penguin Random House
      TopicsBooksDonald TrumpTrump administrationUS Capitol attackUS politicsRepublicansThe far rightreviewsReuse this content More

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      My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell has phone seized by FBI at fast-food outlet

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      My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell has phone seized by FBI at fast-food outletProminent proponent of Donald Trump’s stolen election lie says he was questioned about Colorado electoral official Tina Peters Mike Lindell, the pillow salesman who became an enthusiastic mouthpiece for Donald Trump’s lie about a stolen election, has said he was forced to hand his phone to FBI agents who surrounded him at a fast-food drive-through.Trump says Pence is out as potential running mate, book revealsRead moreThe incident happened on Tuesday as Lindell, chief executive of My Pillow, was in line at a branch of Hardee’s in Mankato, Minnesota, his home town, following a hunting trip.“Cars pulled up in front of us, to the side of us, and behind us and I said those are either bad guys or the FBI,” the conspiracy theorist said on his internet show, the Lindell Report. “Well, it turns out they were the FBI.”Lindell said the agents questioned him about Tina Peters, a fellow election denier facing criminal charges in Colorado for tampering with voting machinery as a county clerk, and who in June lost a Republican primary to become the state’s top election official.Lindell campaigned for Peters, who in May was removed by a judge from running elections in Mesa county.An FBI spokesperson confirmed agents were “at that location executing a search warrant authorized by a federal judge” but would not give other details.Lindell, a close Trump ally, is one of the loudest proponents of Trump’s false claims that his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden was rigged, and has been widely ridiculed for his frequent claims that he has enough “evidence” to see Trump reinstated to the presidency.Lindell admitted earlier this month that he had spent up to $40m of his own money in the pursuit, including underwriting lawsuits in numerous states to try to eliminate voting machines he insists were to blame for Trump’s defeat.There is no evidence to support his allegations and Lindell has lost numerous legal challenges over machines manufactured by Smartmatic and Dominion.In April, he was sued for defamation by a Dominion Voting Systems employee, who claimed Lindell was engaged in “efforts to undermine faith in American democracy and enrich himself in the process”.Lindell said on Tuesday the FBI demanded his phone, which he handed over only after consulting his attorney.“They surrounded me at a Hardee’s and took my phone that I run all my business, everything with,” he said. “What they have done is weaponise the FBI, it’s disgusting. I don’t have a computer, that phone, everything was on everybody.”In a later interview with CNN, Lindell said he was surprised when the agents started asking questions about Peters, having assumed they were about to serve him a subpoena as part of the justice department investigation into the 6 January insurrection and other attempts to reverse Trump’s election defeat.“I said, ‘Come on, bring me to January 6. I want to be part of that show’,” he said he told them.“They thought they were there to intimidate me. They won’t intimidate me.“I want to say this for the record, they were pretty nice guys. None of them had an attitude.”TopicsUS newsUS elections 2020FBInewsReuse this content More

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      US issues 40 subpoenas about Trump’s failed bid to overturn the 2020 election

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      US issues 40 subpoenas about Trump’s failed bid to overturn the 2020 electionThe justice department has cast a wide net seeking tips on efforts by Donald Trump and his allies to submit alternatives slates of fake electors The US Justice Department has issued about 40 subpoenas over the past week seeking information about efforts by Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election, the New York Times reported on Monday.Trump backed failed campaign coup against Kushner, Navarro book saysRead moreBoris Epshteyn, a longtime Trump adviser, and Mike Roman, a campaign strategist for Trump, had their phones seized last week as evidence, the Times said, citing people familiar with the situation.Dan Scavino, Trump’s former social media director, was also among those who were subpoenaed, according to the paper, which said the group included low-level aides as well as senior advisers.An attorney for Scavino did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters, while Reuters was unable to contact Roman and Epshteyn.The subpoenas seek information on a failed bid by the former president and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election by submitting alternative slates of fake electors.The inquiry is also looking at the assault on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 by Trump supporters.Some of the subpoenas also seek information on Trump’s Save America political fundraising group, which the Times said was a new line of inquiry by the justice department.TopicsUS elections 2020US Capitol attackDonald TrumpUS politicsnewsReuse this content More