Three Republicans testified how they resisted a relentless campaign by Trump and his allies to overturn Biden’s 2020 win
Rusty Bowers, the speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, wanted Donald Trump to win the 2020 election. He worked hard to elect him and, when the time came, cast his ballot for the president.
What he wasn’t willing to do was cheat.
Continue reading...Committee also expected to probe Trump’s pressure on officials in crucial states to corruptly reverse his election defeat
The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack is expected to show at its fourth hearing on Tuesday that Donald Trump and top advisers coordinated the scheme to send fake slates of electors as part of an effort to return him to the White House.
The panel is expected to also examine Trump’s campaign to pressure top officials in seven crucial battleground states to corruptly reverse his defeat to Joe Biden in the weeks and months after the 2020 election.
Continue reading...Republican member of the Capitol attack panel also says Trump’s actions surrounding the deadly riot had ‘criminal involvement’
A Republican member of the congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol said on Sunday that he believes Donald Trump’s actions surrounding the deadly riots amount to “seditious conspiracy” and “criminal involvement by a president”.
Illinois congressman Adam Kinzinger’s remarks on ABC’s This Week came after three hearings held by the House January 6 committee presented searing testimony and mounting evidence about Trump’s central role in a complex plot to overturn his defeat at the hands of Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.
Continue reading...Former president attacks ‘disgraceful performance of the unselect committee’ and denies he bullied Mike Pence to overturn election
Donald Trump has launched an angry verbal attack on the congressional January 6 hearings, dismissing them as a “rigged deal” and “one-sided witch-hunt” that are “getting terrible ratings”.
In his first public appearance since the televised sessions began, Trump on Friday claimed without evidence that the House of Representatives panel has made its case using doctored videos and deceptively edited witness depositions.
Continue reading...President Joe Biden has cheered the Food and Drug Administration’s decision today to authorize Covid-19 vaccines for children younger than five years old, the last group of Americans that didn’t have access to the jabs.
“Today is a day of huge relief for parents and families across America. Following a rigorous scientific review, the Food and Drug Administration has authorized the first COVID-19 vaccines for kids under the age of five. As early as next week, pending recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), parents will finally be able to get their youngest kids the protection of a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine,” Biden said in a statement released by the White House.
Continue reading...Attorneys general say material is needed for criminal cases but congressional inquiry says it must be left to do its work
Tensions between the US justice department and the House of Representatives January 6 select committee have escalated after federal prosecutors complained that their inability to access witness transcripts was hampering criminal investigations into rioters who stormed the Capitol.
The complaint that came from the heads of the justice department’s national security and criminal divisions and the US attorney for Washington Matthew Graves showed a likely collision course for the parallel congressional and criminal probes into the Capitol attack.
Continue reading...If the vice-president had acquiesced to Trump’s demand, the country could have plunged into an unprecedented crisis
The January 6 select committee showed on Thursday that Mike Pence withstood an intense pressure campaign from Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Trump’s advisers repeatedly tried to convince Pence to disrupt the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s victory on January 6, even after they themselves acknowledged that there was no constitutional basis for the vice-president to do so.
Continue reading...The former VP rejected the plot to overturn the election – the death knell for Trump and Pence’s marriage of convenience
Mike Pence was described as the hero of the hour, the man who stood his ground to Donald Trump’s coup plot and saved America from a violent “revolution”.
Yet among the rows of committee members, witnesses, reporters, congressmen and women and young citizens at Thursday’s January 6 hearing into the attack on the Capitol, the former vice-president was nowhere to be seen. Pence was 500 miles away in Ohio to promote “American energy dominance”.
Continue reading...Document reveals plans for entering buildings and blocking traffic to prevent law enforcement access
A document revealed in court on Wednesday has exposed a detailed plan by the Proud Boys to occupy government buildings in Washington DC, including the supreme court.
The document, titled “1776 Returns”, laid out the plans for which buildings to target, the number of members required for each building, and tactics, including instructions to use the pandemic as an excuse for wearing masks and face shields without raising suspicion.
Continue reading...The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell explain why the January 6 committee has opted to make today’s hearing about the actions of Mike Pence, who played a major role in torpedoing Trump’s plan to stop Biden from taking office:
The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack intends to outline at its third hearing on Thursday how Donald Trump corruptly pressured then vice-president Mike Pence to reject the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 presidential election and directly contributed to the insurrection.
Continue reading...Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said the text of the gun control compromise reached by senators this weekend should come in the “coming days.”
Before the chamber can vote on the proposal, it needs to see a bill first, following this weekend’s announcement of an agreement that could pass the evenly divided Senate.
Continue reading...US attorney general says official guidelines do not prevent him from investigating ex-president
The US attorney general said on Monday that he was watching the House January 6 select committee’s hearings, as he faces mounting pressure from congressional Democrats to open a criminal investigation into Donald Trump over his role in the Capitol attack.
Merrick Garland also said at a press conference at the justice department’s headquarters in Washington that internal office of legal counsel guidelines did not prevent him from opening an investigation into the former president.
Continue reading...It looks like William Barr, Trump’s final attorney general during the time of the 2020 election, will be playing a major role in the today’s hearing.
The committee last Thursday aired video in which he said he thought Trump’s claims of election fraud were “bullshit,” and committee members say he will reappear today to elaborate on his views.
Continue reading...Bennie Thompson says second hearing will tell story of how ‘Trump decided to wage an attack on our democracy’
The House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection in 2021 reconvened on Monday to scrutinize the conspiracy theories that led a group of Donald Trump’s supporters to attack the US Capitol.
The Democratic chair of the committee, Mississippi congressman Bennie Thompson, has said the second hearing would focus on “the lies that convinced those men and others to storm the Capitol to try to stop the transfer of power”.
Continue reading...Anchor Bret Baier said Trump looked ‘really bad’ last week as hosts continue to call the proceedings a sham
Last week, Fox News was the only major outlet not to air the primetime hearing hosted by the House committee investigating the January 6 riot at the US Capitol. But for the committee’s daytime session on Monday, Fox plans to join the rest of the pack.
Fox officials are apparently justifying the switch by saying that the network’s hosts set the agenda for prime time, and they rejected live coverage of Thursday evening’s hearing, CNN reported. Daytime, however, is for news, opening the door for Fox to televise Monday’s session live at 10am ET.
Continue reading...‘I’d like to see DoJ investigate any credible allegation of criminal activity,’ says Adam Schiff as pressure builds on Merrick Garland
Members of the House committee investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat called on Sunday for the US justice department to consider a criminal indictment for the former president and warned that “the danger is still out there”.
Their comments on the eve of the second of the panel’s televised hearings into the January 6 2021 insurrection and deadly Capitol attack will add further pressure on attorney general Merrick Garland, who has angered some Democrats by so far taking no action despite growing evidence of Trump’s culpability.
Continue reading...If Merrick Garland acts on the committee’s revelations and decides to prosecute, Trump will play the victim of a deep state conspiracy
Donald Trump achieved another first in US presidential history on Thursday night. He was, in front of millions of people, accused by a congressional panel of attempting to overthrow the US government.
“January 6th was the culmination of an attempted coup,” said Bennie Thompson, chair of the House of Representative’s select committee investigating the insurrection at the US Capitol. “President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack,” added his vice-chair, Liz Cheney.
Continue reading...Did the January 6 committee really cut through the “thick fog of propaganda” around the attack? Not if you watched Fox News, which didn’t broadcast the hearing. My colleague Adam Gabbatt took a look at what they showed in its place:
The millions of people who tuned into America’s main television channels on Thursday heard how the January 6 insurrection was “the culmination of an attempted coup”, a “siege” where violent Trump supporters mercilessly attacked police, causing politicians and staffers to run for their lives.
Continue reading...Vivid evidence around Capitol attack laid out by committee, but Republicans dismiss first primetime hearing as political theatre
The jagged divide in American politics was on full display on Friday, in the wake of the first primetime hearing staged by the House January 6 committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol.
Democrats responded to the dramatic presentation of new evidence and stark testimony about the deadly insurrection in Washington with promises of more to come, especially around the role of Donald Trump.
Continue reading...First of public Capitol attack hearings delivered precision and panache – and a narrative arc designed for maximum effect
It was one of the more unexpected takeaways of the night: in the age of six-second videos and frenetic social media posts around the clock, primetime set-piece television can still land a punch.
The first of the public hearings from the US congressional committee investigating the insurrection at the US Capitol in Washington by extremist supporters of Donald Trump on 6 January last year was delivered with all the choreographed panache of an old-school TV spectacular or the Super Bowl.
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