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      US officials warn Putin may cite Ukraine war to interfere in American politics

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      US officials warn Putin may cite Ukraine war to interfere in American politicsIntelligence believes Russia’s president may see US backing of Ukraine as direct affront, giving him further incentive to meddle

      Ukraine crisis – live coverage
      Vladimir Putin may use the Biden administration’s support for Ukraine as a pretext to order a new campaign to interfere in American politics, US intelligence officials have assessed. Understanding Vladimir Putin, the man who fooled the world Read moreIntelligence agencies have not found any evidence Putin has authorized measures like the ones Russia is believed to have undertaken in the 2016 and 2020 elections in support of Donald Trump, according to several people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity. But given Putin’s antipathy toward the west and his repeated denunciations of Ukraine, officials believe he may see the US backing of Ukraine’s resistance as a direct affront, giving him further incentive to target another US election, the people said. It is not yet clear which candidates Russia might try to promote or what methods it might use. The assessment comes with the US electoral system under pressure. The US public remains sharply divided over the last election and the insurrection that followed at the US Capitol, when supporters of Trump tried to stop the certification of his loss to Joe Biden. Trump has repeatedly assailed intelligence officials and claimed investigations of Russian influence on his campaigns to be political vendettas. Tensions between Washington and Moscow have reached levels not seen since the end of the cold war. The White House has increased military support for Ukraine, which has mounted a robust resistance against Russian forces accused of committing war crimes, and helped impose global sanctions that have crippled Russia’s economy. There is no sign the war will end soon, which some experts say could delay Moscow from pursuing retaliation while its resources are mired in Ukraine. But “it’s almost certain that a depleted Russian military after Ukraine is going to again double down on hybrid tactics to wreak havoc against us and other allied countries”, said David Salvo, deputy director of the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy. In Ukraine and in past campaigns, Russia has been accused of trying to spread disinformation, amplifying pro-Kremlin voices and using cyberattacks to disrupt governments. Top US intelligence officials are still working on plans for a new center authorized by Congress focusing on foreign influence campaigns by Russia, China and other adversaries. Avril Haines, the US director of national intelligence, recently appointed a career CIA officer, Jeffrey Wichman, to the position of election threats executive several months after the departure of the previous executive, Shelby Pierson. “Our Election Threats Executive continues to lead the intelligence community’s efforts against foreign threats to US elections,“ said Nicole de Haay, a spokesperson for Haines. “We’re also continuing to work to deliver on the legislative requirement to create a center to integrate intelligence on foreign malign influence.” De Haay declined to comment on what intelligence officials think of Putin’s intentions. Russia’s embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment. Foreign adversaries have long looked to interfere in US politics. The US has accused Putin of ordering influence operations to try to help Trump in 2020. A bipartisan Senate investigation of the 2016 election confirmed intelligence findings that Russia used cyber-espionage and information efforts to boost Trump and disparage his opponent, Hillary Clinton. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s near-two-year investigation found no conclusive evidence the Trump campaign conspired with Russia, but Mueller declined to pass judgment on whether Trump obstructed justice. Trump continues to falsely insist the election he lost to Biden was stolen, with Republicans following his lead and opposing election security measures. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies continuously investigate foreign influence efforts. The US justice department last month charged five men with acting on behalf of China to harass Chinese dissidents in the US and derail a little-known congressional candidate. Experts say the proposed Foreign Malign Influence Center would bring much-needed direction to efforts across government studying adversaries. Congress provided partial funding for the center in the budget passed last month. The center has been delayed over questions within the intelligence director’s office and on Capitol Hill about its structure and size and whether it would unnecessarily duplicate efforts that already exist. Congress last month required the director’s office to complete within six months a report on the “future structure, responsibilities, and organizational placement” of the center. Mike Turner of Ohio, the top Republican on the House intelligence committee, said the committee was closely watching “the malign activities of our adversaries” and the proposed center could be one way to help. “As Russia continues to use disinformation campaigns in Ukraine, we are reminded to be strategic in our response to countering their tactics,” Turner said. “It is no secret that our adversaries use disinformation to undermine the national security interests of the US, so we must take into account all viable options to protect our democracy.”TopicsUS politicsRussiaVladimir PutinEuropenewsReuse this content More

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      Stacey Abrams win in Georgia will lead to ‘cold war’ with Florida, DeSantis says

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      Stacey Abrams win in Georgia will lead to ‘cold war’ with Florida, DeSantis saysFlorida governor and potential Republican presidential contender says, ‘I can’t have Castro to my south and Abrams to my north’

      DeSantis takes on Disney in latest culture war battle
      The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, predicted a “cold war” with Georgia if it elects the Democrat and voting rights campaigner Stacey Abrams as governor this year.Star Trek makes Stacey Abrams president of United Earth – and stokes conservative angerRead more“If Stacey Abrams is elected governor of Georgia, I just want to be honest, that will be a cold war between Florida and Georgia,” DeSantis said at a press event in the north-west of his own state.“I can’t have [former Cuban leader Raúl] Castro to my south and Abrams to my north, that would be a disaster. So I hope you guys take care of that and we’ll end up in good shape.”DeSantis polls strongly among potential Republican nominees for president in 2024, with or without Donald Trump in the race. Accordingly, he has positioned himself as a major player on culture-war issues, recently signing a bill regarding the teaching of LGBTQ+ issues which critics labeled “don’t say gay”.In California, Los Angeles county has banned business travel to Florida and Texas over anti-LGBTQ+ policies. Such moves have also led DeSantis into direct confrontation with Disney, a major employer and economic engine in his state.On Friday, he said: “I don’t really care what the media says about that. I don’t care what, you know, very leftwing activists say about that. I do not care what big companies say about that. We are standing strong. We will not back down on that.”Abrams has become a major player in her own state and a hate figure among conservatives. A former state representative and a successful author, she ran for governor in 2018 and lost narrowly to Brian Kemp, refusing to concede while protesting his role as secretary of state in controlling his own election.Abrams’ work to turn out Democratic votes, particularly among minorities, helped flip Georgia to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election and then elect two Democratic senators in runoffs in January the following year.She is running unopposed in the Democratic gubernatorial primary this year but trails both the incumbent governor, Kemp, and his Trump-backed primary challenger, former senator David Perdue, in early polling.Abrams did not immediately comment on DeSantis’s comment.A spokeswoman for DeSantis’s office said: “If Stacey Abrams wins the governorship of Georgia, we know that her approach to leadership will involve more heavy-handed government, taxes and bureaucratic influence.”Amid controversy, Craig Pittman, a Florida reporter and author, said the governor was “trying desperately to get attention from Fox News for saying something outrageous to own the libs and diss Black people”.TopicsStacey AbramsRon DeSantisUS politicsFloridaGeorgiaRepublicansDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘The model is listening’: union’s win at Amazon hatched in a small apartment

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      ‘The model is listening’: union’s win at Amazon hatched in a small apartment A suburban two-bedroom apartment was the HQ from which Amazon’s multimillion-dollar anti-union effort was defeatedThe living room of the small two-bedroom apartment in Staten Island – sometimes called New York City’s “forgotten borough” – is overflowing with office supplies, mail, red union stickers, and flyers with information about unions.It seems almost unbelievable that amid this chaos, and armed with just $120,000 that they raised on GoFundMe, its occupants, Amazon workers Brett Daniels and Connor Spence, helped successfully unionize workers at the nearby gargantuan 855,000-square-foot Amazon warehouse – the first of the company’s warehouses in the US to vote for a union.‘The revolution is here’: Chris Smalls’ union win sparks a movement at other Amazon warehousesRead more“This is a monstrous win for the working class,” said Daniels. “The Amazon Labor Union showed what seemed impossible is possible.”The apartment in a two-floor suburban house was the headquarters from which Amazon workers pulled off one of the biggest wins for US unions in decades. Beating Amazon’s multimillion-dollar efforts to stop them organizing involved tireless organizing, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook and a lot of free homemade food. But most of all, said 29-year-old Julian Mitchell-Israel, an Amazon worker and one of the original organizers with the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), they listened.“It’s not that we’ve established a new model of organizing here,” said Mitchell-Israel. “The model is listening and highlighting people’s stories, and when we build a platform, using it to lift up their stories, because that’s what’s been compelling for the workers, that’s what’s gotten people to vote yes.”Amazon Labor Union defied the odds without any affiliation to national labor unions and precious little support from the political class which has seen other efforts to organize at Amazon rebuffed.The surprise victory has been hailed as historic in the US media, and its organizers have been bombarded with interview requests from around the world. Elected officials and prominent figures have issued public declarations of support, including Joe Biden and several members of Congress, all attention that had been lacking leading up to the vote as most media outlets and elected officials, including ostensible supporters of labor unionizing efforts, ignored the ALU’s efforts.The union has also received inquiries from Amazon workers at warehouses and delivery stations around the US and internationally, requesting assistance and asserting interest in organizing unions at their own work sites. There are meetings scheduled with New York elected officials in Albany and with Sean O’Brien, president of the powerful Teamsters union, who has also pledged to unionize Amazon.For Mitchell-Israel the noise is distracting attention from how ALU achieved its victory. “There’s just so much talk about this union in a way that, I think, abstracts it and makes it into a phenomenon that it’s not. It’s just people and stories and love and necessity, and that’s what it comes down to,” he said. “You go and you listen and rather than telling them they should vote yes, telling them here’s how you organize, you just ask them the right questions, and people will come up with their own answers to it. People have different answers, and because they’re the workers, they’re the ones being affected, it’s going to be the right answer.”With more than 1 million employees in the US, Amazon is the country’s second largest private employer. The company has faced public scrutiny for years over workers reporting abhorrent working conditions, high injury rates, and immense productivity pressures, which have contributed to annual turnover rates of about 150%.On Staten Island the Covid-19 pandemic brought the clash between Amazon and its workers to a head. ALU founder Chris Smalls, then as assistant manager at Amazon, helped lead a walkout in March 2020 over lack of Covid-19 protections and was fired shortly after. Leaked memos showed Amazon executives denigrating Smalls as “not smart or articulate” in a meeting with the Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, and suggesting it would be a win for them if they made him “the face of the entire union/organizing movement”.“Welp there you go!” Smalls tweeted last week.@amazon wanted to make me the face of the whole unionizing efforts against them…. welp there you go! @JeffBezos @DavidZapolsky CONGRATULATIONS 🎉 @amazonlabor We worked had fun and made History ‼️✊🏾 #ALU # ALUfortheWin welcome the 1st union in America for Amazon 🔥🔥🔥🔥— Christian Smalls (@Shut_downAmazon) April 1, 2022
      “The workers that I organize with are like my family now,” Smalls told the Guardian. “To bring this victory to them is the best feeling in the world next to my kids’ birth.”Smalls’s story proved a powerful one on Staten Island. “When I do talk to workers, I tell them I was fired wrongfully because I tried to protect workers’ health and safety, and that can happen to you,” Smalls said after helping to form the group. “You can complain or submit a grievance, and they could just terminate you or target you to be terminated, or retaliate against you. And there’s no protection, so the only way we’re going to be protected is by forming that union.”The ALU’s fight is far from over. Organizers are currently bracing for the upcoming union election at the LDJ5 sorting center in Staten Island, which begins on 25 April, and cementing resources, such as finding office space, ahead of the fight to negotiate a first union contract with Amazon, which continues to vehemently oppose unions.The tech company may have lost this battle but it continues the fight. “We’re disappointed with the outcome of the election in Staten Island because we believe having a direct relationship with the company is best for our employees,” said Amazon in response to the union win. “We’re evaluating our options, including filing objections based on the inappropriate and undue influence by the NLRB that we and others (including the National Retail Federation and US Chamber of Commerce) witnessed in this election.”Shortly after the union victory, internal documents leaked to the Intercept revealed a planned internal messaging app for employees would block the use of words or phrases such as “union”, “pay raises”, “living wage” or “representation”.Amazon has a record of firing workers involved in organizing activities and automatically terminating workers for minor infractions, including Jason Anthony, a picker at JFK8 on Staten Island and a labor organizer and founding member of ALU.In the summer of 2020, Anthony was automatically fired from Amazon when his unpaid time off went in the red. He had run out of his prescription medications and transportation to the warehouse was limited due to Covid-19 restrictions and staffing issues with public transit.Anthony had to wait over a year to be able to get rehired, but currently has a case being investigated with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission about Amazon’s alleged lack of accommodations for workers with mental disabilities. He is currently on short-term disability leave from a back injury sustained at Amazon during peak season in December 2021.He has known Chris Smalls from long before Smalls emerged as a celebrity in the US labor movement. “Chris was the best person you could work with. He cared about his employees from a human perspective, not just as a manager,” said Anthony, “When he got fired in 2020, I went to the building to support him and when I got fired several months later, I called him and asked him for his support, so since then, we developed a brotherhood that will never ever be broken. We could argue, have internal disagreements here and there, but at the end of the day we always come together.”Now the ALU will begin its negotiations with Amazon with the aim of improving working conditions, pay, breaks and their lives as workers. The union plans on building out these efforts in the US and abroad at Amazon.New York is a union town and replicating the Staten Island victory may prove difficult across the US. Another effort to organize in Alabama hangs in the balance with Amazon currently ahead in the votes. But Anthony is convinced change is coming. “This victory is only the beginning of a global revolution,” he said.TopicsAmazonThe ObserverUS unionsUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Lara Logan, who compared Fauci to Mengele, says Fox News pushed her out

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      Lara Logan, who compared Fauci to Mengele, says Fox News pushed her outLogan says network ‘does not want independent thinkers’ as Fox stays quiet on reports it dropped her after November remark The former CBS reporter Lara Logan, who compared Dr Anthony Fauci to the Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, has claimed she was “pushed out” at Fox News because the conservative network does not want “independent thinkers”.“I was definitely pushed out,” Logan told Eric Metaxas, a conservative radio host, this week. “I mean, there is no doubt about that. They don’t want independent thinkers. They don’t want people who follow the facts regardless of the politics.”Fox News has not commented on reports that it “quietly benched” Logan over her remark about Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser. On Friday, a spokesperson for Fox News said the network would not comment.Logan has not appeared as a guest on Fox News since making the comment about Fauci. There have been no new episodes of her show on the Fox Nation streaming service, Lara Logan Has No Agenda, which is still available.Logan made the comment about Mengele, the “Angel of Death” who conducted medical experiments at the Auschwitz concentration camp, in November, during a discussion of the Covid pandemic on Fox News Primetime.Logan said: “Dr Fauci, this is what people say to me, that he doesn’t represent science to them.“He represents Josef Mengele, Dr Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor who did experiments on Jews during the second world war and in the concentration camps, and I am talking about people all across the world are saying this.”The show’s host, Pete Hegseth, and another guest, the Fox News host Will Cain, did not respond.The Auschwitz Memorial said: “Exploiting the tragedy of people who became victims of criminal pseudo-medical experiments in Auschwitz in a debate about vaccines, pandemic and people who fight for saving human lives is shameful. It is disrespectful to victims and a sad symptom of moral and intellectual decline.”Kremlin memos urged Russian media to use Tucker Carlson clips – reportRead moreJonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, said: “There’s absolutely no comparison between mask mandates, vaccine requirements and other Covid-19 mitigation efforts to what happened to Jews during the Holocaust.”Fauci, whose work has generated threats to his safety and that of his family, told MSNBC Logan’s remark was “unconscionable” and “absolutely preposterous and disgusting … an insult to all of the people who suffered and died under the Nazi regime in the concentration camps”.Fauci also said he found it “striking … how she gets no discipline whatsoever from the Fox network – how they can let her say that with no comment and no disciplinary action?”Logan rose to fame with CBS during the Iraq war and the Arab spring. After leaving CBS in 2013 over errors in a report about the Benghazi attack, she moved into conservative media.In March, Logan told a rightwing online show she was “dumped by Fox” and added: “I was taken off the air at Fox just before they went into a whole marathon of war porn in Ukraine.”She also repeated Russian talking points about “Nazis” in Ukraine and said Fox News had “a few people like Jesse Watters and Tucker Carlson who are doing their best to add some context and to show what this war is really about”.Speaking to Metaxas, Logan also said she did not like being called a “darling of the right wing”.TopicsFox NewsUS politicsUS television industryTelevision industrynewsReuse this content More

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      Mood as light as spring air as Ketanji Brown Jackson delivers words to remember

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      Mood as light as spring air as Ketanji Brown Jackson delivers words to remember After 232 years, a Black woman is on the supreme court – and the atmosphere on a sunny Washington day was celebratoryThey could all feel the weight of history. Yet the mood was as light as spring air when Ketanji Brown Jackson looked out at the crowd of smiling faces.‘It means the world to us’: Black lawmakers’ euphoria greets Jackson confirmationRead more“It has taken 232 years and 115 prior appointments for a Black woman to be selected to serve on the supreme court of the United States,” the judge said in bright sunshine. “But we’ve made it!”The audience on the South Lawn of the White House rose and clapped and hollered with a rare purity of emotion.Jackson added: “We’ve made it – all of us. All of us. And our children are telling me that they see now more than ever that here in America anything is possible.”It felt like the culmination of a journey. A day earlier, Jackson was confirmed by the Senate as the first African American female supreme court justice. In moving remarks on Friday, she spoke not only of her journey but that of her ancestors: the 400-year story of African Americans meeting slavery and segregation with resilience, creativity and hope.The atmosphere at the White House was joyful and celebratory – not a sentence there has been much cause to write over the past five years. No doom and gloom over Donald Trump’s lies, the deadly pandemic or the war in Ukraine. Instead, the marine band played songs from the shows, including West Side Story. (“I like to be in America…”)And after a week of sombre grey skies, lashing rain and surging coronavirus, the White House looked a little more majestic than usual in radiant sunlight. Fifty Stars and Stripes flags fluttered in a row. Birds could be heard singing. The relaxed, jovial crowd of hundreds erupted as Joe Biden, wearing shades, Vice-President Kamala Harris and Jackson strode to the podium, to the strains of “Hail to the chief”.But it was Jackson’s grace note at the end of the 45-minute pageant that will linger in the memory – and the heart – and be studied by future historians and, she evidently hoped, generations yet unborn.The 51-year-old invoked figures such as Martin Luther King, the civil rights leader, Thurgood Marshall, the first Black supreme court justice, and her “personal heroine”, Judge Constance Baker Motley, a former district court judge and New York state senator.“They and so many others did the heavy lifting that made this day possible. And for all the talk of this historic nomination and now confirmation, I think of them as the true path-breakers. I’m just the very lucky first inheritor of the dream of liberty and justice for all.”Becoming tearful, putting a tissue to her nose, Jackson continued: “To be sure, I have worked hard to get to this point in my career and I have now achieved something far beyond anything my grandparents could have possibly ever imagined. But no one does this on their own.“The path was cleared for me so that I might rise to this occasion, and, in the poetic words of Dr Maya Angelou, I do so now, while ‘bringing the gifts my ancestors gave’.”There was applause and she took a deep breath.“‘I … I am the dream and the hope of the slave’.”It was a quotation from Angelou’s poem Still I Rise.A shiver of emotion ran through the crowd, which rose as one. It included Jesse Jackson, 80, a civil rights veteran who was there when King was assassinated.Her voice quivering with feeling that seemed to match the enormity of the moment, Jackson, watched by her parents, husband and daughters, went on.“So as I take on this new role, I strongly believe that this is a moment in which all Americans can take great pride.“We have come a long way toward perfecting our union. In my family, it took just one generation to go from segregation to the supreme court of the United States.”It was hard to believe this was the same country that less than two years ago staged a similar outdoor event for the justice nominated before Jackson, Amy Coney Barrett.On that grey day, Trump gloated at the prospect of tipping the court firmly in conservatives’ favour. The audience was appreciably less than diverse than for Jackson. It also proved to be a Covid super-spreader event. Time will tell if Friday goes the same way.Ketanji Brown Jackson brings a personal narrative no other justice can matchRead moreJackson is replacing the retiring Stephen Breyer, 83, and so liberals will remain firmly in the minority when, from October, she begins hearing vital cases on affirmative action, gay rights and voting rights.This week, Mitch McConnell refused to say whether he would even grant another Biden pick a hearing if Republicans regain the Senate majority. Friday’s heady euphoria was only a brief respite from demands for structural reform to restore balance to the court.But what a respite it was. Trump presented one vision of America, infused with white identity politics and great men of history. This presented another, more generous in spirt, more authentic to the nation’s true origin story.Biden said: “This is not only a sunny day. I mean this from the bottom of my heart. This is going to let so much sun shine on so many young women, so many young Black women, so many minorities that it’s real. It’s real! We’re going to look back – and nothing to do with me – we’re going to look back and see this as a moment of real change in American history.”TopicsKetanji Brown JacksonThe US politics sketchUS politicsDemocratsUS supreme courtUS constitution and civil libertiesLaw (US)RacenewsReuse this content More

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      ‘Fake’ US federal agent claimed ties to Pakistani intelligence, prosecutors say

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      ‘Fake’ US federal agent claimed ties to Pakistani intelligence, prosecutors sayArian Taherzadeh, 40, and Haider Ali, 35, accused of posing as homeland security officials and cultivating Secret Service access One of two American men arrested in Washington for posing as US federal security officials and cultivating access to the Secret Service, which protects Joe Biden, claimed ties to Pakistani intelligence, a federal prosecutor told a judge.Justice department assistant attorney Joshua Rothstein asked a judge not to release Arian Taherzadeh, 40, and Haider Ali, 35, the men arrested on Wednesday for posing as Department of Homeland Security investigators.Pakistan court orders Imran Khan confidence vote to go aheadRead moreThe men also stand accused of providing lucrative favors to members of the Secret Service, including one agent on the security detail of the first lady, Jill Biden.Rothstein told the court that in 2019, just months before the two began cultivating security professionals in their Washington apartment building, Ali had travelled to Pakistan, Turkey, Iran and Qatar, and transited Doha multiple times.In addition, Rothstein said, Ali “made claims to witnesses that he had connections to the ISI, which is the Pakistani intelligence service”.The Department of Justice (DoJ) is treating the case as a criminal matter and not a national security issue. But the Secret Service suspended four agents over their involvement with the suspects.“All personnel involved in this matter are on administrative leave and are restricted from accessing Secret Service facilities, equipment, and systems,” the Secret Service said in a statement.According to an affidavit filed with the court, Taherzadeh and Ali, both US citizens, lived in an apartment building in Washington where numerous federal security-related employees live.They convinced some of those agents that they themselves were special homeland security investigators, displaying uniforms and documents in support of those claims.Both were initially charged with one count of false impersonation of an officer of the US, which could bring up to three years in prison.But Rothstein told the court that the charge could be expanded to conspiracy, which carries a maximum of five years in prison.The motives of the two men were unclear, but at one point they recruited a third person to work for them, assigning him “to conduct research on an individual that provided support to the Department of Defense and intelligence community”.Taherzadeh meanwhile provided several Secret Service and homeland security employees with rent-free units costing as much as $4,000 a month, according to the affidavit.He also gave them iPhones, surveillance systems, a television, and law enforcement paraphernalia, according to the affidavit.Taherzadeh offered a $2,000 assault rifle to the Secret Service agent who worked on Jill Biden’s team, and did favors for the agent’s wife, including lending her his car.The affidavit said Taherzadeh and Ali appeared to control several units in the apartment complex, and that Taherzadeh had access to the building’s entire security system.Like many in law enforcement, the two drove large black GMC-brand SUVs affixed with emergency lights.Taherzadeh carried handguns that are used by US federal law enforcement, and demonstrated to others that he had secure access to what appeared to be homeland security computer systems.TopicsUS newsUS foreign policyUS domestic policyPakistanSouth and Central AsiaUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Capitol attack investigators zero in on far-right Oath Keepers and Proud Boys

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      Capitol attack investigators zero in on far-right Oath Keepers and Proud BoysPanel appears to believe militias coordinated to physically stop certification of Joe Biden’s election victory on 6 January last year The House select committee investigating January 6 appears to believe the Capitol attack included a coordinated assault perpetrated by the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys militia groups that sought to physically stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory.Trump says he regrets not marching on Capitol with supporters on January 6 Read moreThe panel’s working theory – which has not been previously reported though the justice department has indicted some militia group leaders – crystallized this week after obtaining evidence of the coordination in testimony and non-public video, according to two sources familiar with the matter.Counsel on the select committee’s “gold team” examining Donald Trump, the “red team” examining January 6 rally organizers, and the “purple team” examining the militia groups, are now expected to use the findings to inform the direction for the remainder of the investigation, the sources said.The panel has amassed deep evidence about the connections between the connections between the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys in recent weeks after it obtained hours of non-public footage of the leaders of the militia groups in Washington ahead of the Capitol attack, the sources said.And the select committee has also now heard testimony from award-winning documentary film-maker Nick Quested on Wednesday about contacts between the militia group leaders, far-right political operatives and the Save America rally organizers, the sources said.The information, which could play a large role in establishing for the select committee whether Trump oversaw a criminal conspiracy as part of his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, is being viewed internally as a significant breakthrough, the sources added.Most crucially for the panel, it could form part of the evidence to connect the militia groups that stormed the Capitol on 6 January to the organizers of the Save America rally that immediately preceded the attack – who in turn are slowly being linked to the Trump White House.In essence, the sources said, the select committee now appears to have the same degree of evidence as secured by the FBI and the justice department referred to in recent prosecutions for seditious conspiracy and other charges related to the Capitol attack.A spokesperson for the panel declined to comment on witness testimony.The gold, red and purple teams have been focused on the video footage for several weeks, the sources said, with initial attention turned towards a now-infamous meeting between the militia group leaders in a parking garage near the Capitol on 5 January.But the select committee was unable to discern from the video whether the militia group leaders even discussed the Capitol or their plans for January 6 at that rendezvous, the sources said, and suspect the meeting was a set up to provide them an alibi.The panel has reviewed the tape repeatedly, the sources said, and House investigators have come away with an uneasy feeling that Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, the former leader of the Proud Boys, sought to have the meeting documented to later absolve himself of wrongdoing.Tarrio last week pleaded not guilty in a separate DoJ prosecution that accuses him of organizing the Capitol attack. The indictment states Tarrio on 4 January told other Proud Boy members: “I didn’t hear this voice note until now, you want to storm the Capitol.”The select committee has instead become more interested recently in communications both between the militia group leaders and the purported January 6 rally organizers, including Ali Alexander and far-right media personality Alex Jones, the sources said.That topic was one of the central lines of inquiry that the gold, red and purple teams attempted to establish during a seven-hour recorded interview with Quested, the source said.At that interview, the select committee also examined in excruciating minute-by-minute detail a 17-minute edited clip of footage shot by Quested that documented the Capitol attack, and video that tracked Alexander’s movements around the Capitol building, they said.TopicsUS Capitol attackThe far rightUS politicsDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More