As the House January 6 committee is set to publish its report, here are some of the key standouts
The House January 6 committee is set to publish its report on the attack on the Capitol that shocked both America and the world . After a year of dramatic hearings and bombshell testimony, here are some of the key winners and losers to emerge from its work.
Continue reading...The evidence points to the fact that the former commander-in-chief is likely a criminal who committed a ‘crime against democracy’
Whodunnit? He did it.
Donald Trump – businessman, celebrity president, golfer and digital trading card star – is also a likely criminal, the congressional panel investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol concluded on Monday.
Continue reading...Pavone had been investigated for placing an aborted foetus on an altar and posting a video of it online
The Vatican has defrocked the anti-abortion US priest Frank Pavone for what it said were “blasphemous communications on social media” as well as “persistent disobedience” of his bishop.
A letter to US bishops from the Vatican ambassador to the US, Archbishop Christophe Pierre, said the decision against Pavone, who heads the anti-abortion group Priests for Life, had been taken and that there was no chance for an appeal.
Continue reading...Pence also seems to blame anti-Trump Lincoln Project for angering former president with political ad, fueling Capitol attack
Shortly before the January 6 insurrection, Donald Trump warned Mike Pence he was “too honest” when he hesitated to pursue legalistic attempts to stop certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory and would make Trump’s supporters “hate his guts”, the former vice-president writes in his memoir.
Pence also seems, bizarrely, to blame the anti-Trump Lincoln Project for enraging Trump with a political ad, thereby fueling the anger that incited the Capitol attack.
Continue reading...New book by Arkansas senator, a Republican presidential hopeful, also suggests president did not understand military procedures
In January 2020, the rightwing Arkansas Republican Tom Cotton said he would vote to acquit Donald Trump in his first impeachment trial because despite senators having “heard from 17 witnesses … and received more than 28,000 pages of documents”, Democrats had not presented their case correctly.
According to Cotton, the senators who sat through so much evidence would “perform the role intended for us by the founders, of providing the ‘cool and deliberate sense of the community’, as it says in Federalist 63”.
Continue reading...Messages include group chat among cabinet officials and plans by lawmakers to object to election certification
Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s former White House chief of staff, was at the center of hundreds of incoming messages about ways to aid Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, according to texts he turned over to the House January 6 select committee that have been published in a new book.
The texts included previously unreported messages, including a group chat with Trump administration cabinet officials and plans to object to Joe Biden’s election certification on January 6 by Republican members of Congress and one former US attorney, as well as other Trump allies.
Continue reading...Ebrahim Raisi says he sees no ‘changes in reality’ from Trump administration as hopes to revive nuclear talks dampen
Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, has ruled out a meeting with Joe Biden on the margins of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) this week, saying he saw no “changes in reality” from the Trump administration.
Raisi underlined the firm position of his government and dampened hopes that a week of summitry at UNGA in New York might yield any progress in negotiations to revive the 2015 nuclear deal. Washington has rejected the latest Iranian bargaining positive as “not constructive”, and most observers believe there will be no breakthroughs at least until after the US congressional elections in November.
Continue reading...DoJ seeks to continue reviewing a batch of classified documents seized during an FBI search of Donald Trump’s Florida home
The justice department asked a federal appeals court on Friday to lift a judge’s order that temporarily barred it from reviewing a batch of classified documents seized during an FBI search of former president Donald Trump’s Florida home last month.
The department told the 11th circuit US court of appeals in Atlanta that the judge’s hold, imposed last week, had impeded the “government’s efforts to protect the nation’s security” and interfered with its investigation into the presence of top-secret information at Mar-a-Lago. It asked the court to remove that order so work could resume, and to halt a judge’s directive forcing the department to provide the seized classified documents to an independent arbiter for his review.
Continue reading...One longtime Bannon watcher says it’s too early to count him out – even a prison term could enhance his status among the Maga crowd
When Steve Bannon heard that he was, after all, going to face charges last week for allegedly ripping off contributors to a multimillion-dollar fund to build a wall on the Mexican border, he claimed it was a sign of his success.
Donald Trump’s former strategist said his arrest on Thursday was an attempt to shut down his War Room pod and video cast because it is driving grassroots support for the former president’s Make America Great Again (Maga) movement and reshaping the Republican party ahead of the midterm elections.
Continue reading...Ex-adviser says president in 2020 agreed that his son-in-law had to be replaced by Steve Bannon but did not dare try to fire him
In June 2020, less than five months before polling day, Donald Trump agreed to a “coup d’état” to remove his son-in-law Jared Kushner from control of his presidential re-election campaign and replace him with the far-right provocateur Steve Bannon.
The coup had support from Donald Trump Jr but according to a new book by the former Trump aide Peter Navarro it did not work, after Trump refused to give Kushner the bad news himself.
Continue reading...Inventory of what was seized at Mar-a-Lago caused ‘transatlantic freakout’ between Paris and Washington
Donald Trump boasted to close associates that he knew secrets about Emmanuel Macron’s sex life from US intelligence sources, it has been reported.
The report in Rolling Stone magazine comes in the wake of the release of court documents on the classified and national defence documents found in a search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home on 8 August, which mention a file referred to as “info re: President of France”.
Continue reading...Unsealing the document could reveal the scope of the inquiry against Donald Trump, whose team is rattled by recent events
The US Justice Department has asked a judge not to release the affidavit that gave the FBI probable cause to search Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, worsening distrust among top aides casting about for any insight into the intensifying criminal investigation surrounding the former president.
The affidavit should not be unsealed because that could reveal the scope of the investigation into Trump’s unauthorized retention of government secrets, the Justice Department argued, days after the Mar-a-Lago search warrant showed it referenced potential violations of three criminal statutes.
Continue reading...President says he declassified secret and sensitive documents – but that may not matter for him to be prosecuted.
Over the course of Friday, the circumstances of Monday’s FBI search of Donald Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago have come into much sharper focus, which makes them look much worse for the former president.
The unsealed search and seizure warrant shows that it was carried out, in part, under the Espionage Act, a set of statutes dating to 1917 that have been used aggressively to go after leakers, whistleblowers and the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange. The code quoted in the warrant carries a maximum penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment.
Continue reading...Watchdog group calls on Merrick Garland asked to investigate deleted phone messages from senior Trump officials
The US attorney general, Merrick Garland, has been asked to investigate yet another deletion of text messages and other communications by senior officials on 6 January 2021, this time by the Pentagon.
American Oversight, a non-partisan watchdog group, revealed the shock deletion on Tuesday, having discovered it through freedom of information requests to the Department of Defense.
Continue reading...House committee wants all communications from day before and day of Capitol attack but agency indicates such messages are lost
The Secret Service turned over just one text message to the House January 6 committee on Tuesday, in response to a subpoena compelling the production of all communications from the day before and the day of the US Capitol attack, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
The Secret Service told the panel the single text was the only message responsive to the subpoena, the sources said, and while the agency vowed to conduct a forensic search for any other text or phone records, it indicated such messages were likely to prove irrecoverable.
Continue reading...The Guardian’s Ashifa Kassam and Ramon Antonio Vargas report:
Fifty suspected migrants were found dead and at least a dozen others were hospitalized after being found inside an abandoned tractor-trailer rig on Monday on a remote back road in south-west San Antonio, officials have said.
Continue reading...The complaint marks the second time a bar office has taken action against the former New York mayor
Rudy Giuliani has been hit with ethics charges over baseless claims he made about the 2020 presidential election being stolen while serving as an attorney for Donald Trump.
The charges were filed on Friday by the District of Columbia office that polices attorneys for ethical misconduct.The DC office of disciplinary counsel alleges that Giuliani, who is a member of the DC bar, made baseless claims in federal court filings about the results of the 2020 presidential election in Pennsylvania. The charges were filed with the District of Columbia court of appeals board on professional responsibility.
Continue reading...Navarro in custody after indictment on two counts of contempt of Congress after he defied subpoena issued by January 6 committee
Peter Navarro, a top former White House adviser to Donald Trump, was taken into custody after being indicted by a federal grand jury on Friday on two counts of contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena issued by the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack.
The indictment against Navarro marks the first time that the justice department has pursued charges against a Trump White House official who worked in the administration on January 6 and participated in efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.
Continue reading...Former White House adviser reveals federal subpoena, which also calls for documents to be handed over, in court filing
Peter Navarro, a top White House adviser to Donald Trump, revealed in a court filing on Monday that he had been ordered to testify before a federal grand jury and produce to prosecutors any records concerning January 6, including communications with the former president.
The grand jury subpoena to Navarro, which he said was served by two FBI agents last week, compels him to produce documents to the US attorney for the District of Columbia and could indicate widening justice department action ensnaring senior Trump administration officials.
Continue reading...Title 42, which cites the pandemic, is behind nearly 2m expulsions since March 2020
Pandemic-era restrictions on people seeking asylum on the southern border must continue, a judge ruled Friday in an order blocking the Biden administration’s plan to lift them early next week.
The ruling is just the latest instance of a court derailing the president’s proposed immigration policies along the US border with Mexico.
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