As thousands turn out to hear the former president, midterm candidates vie for his backing by pushing ‘stolen’ election myth
On a chilly open field in Texas, Dan Patrick was delivering prepared remarks about the spectre of socialism when the crowd broke into a chant about the 2020 presidential election.
“Well, we all know who won in 2020, don’t we?” the state’s lieutenant governor ad-libbed. “Who won?” There was apparently not a soul who believes the answer is Joe Biden.
Continue reading...The chairman of the congressional committee investigating the US Capitol attack and Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election revealed on Sunday that the panel has spoken to the former attorney general William Barr, a further indication that the inquiry has moved closer to the ex-president’s inner circle.
Bennie Thompson told CBS’s Face the Nation that Barr, who was accused of making the justice department Trump’s tool but who resigned before Trump left office, had spoken more than once with the panel.
Continue reading...Investigators seek testimony from former first daughter, with panel increasingly focused on Donald Trump’s inner circle
The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack is asking Ivanka Trump, the daughter of the former president, to appear for a voluntary deposition to answer questions about Donald Trump’s efforts to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory.
The move by the panel marks an aggressive new phase in its inquiry into the 6 January insurrection, as House investigators seek for the first time testimony from a member of the Trump family about potential criminality on the part of the former president.
Continue reading...Stephanie Grisham gave more significant details than expected about what Trump was doing before 6 January, sources say
The former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham told the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack that Donald Trump hosted secret meetings in the White House residence in days before 6 January, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
The former senior Trump aide also told House investigators that the details of whether Trump actually intended to march to the Capitol after his speech at the Ellipse rally would be memorialized in documents provided to the US Secret Service, the sources said.
Continue reading...Court’s move leaves no legal impediment to turning National Archives documents over to congressional committee
The US supreme court has rejected a request by Donald Trump to block the release of White House records to the congressional committee investigating the deadly January 6 attack on the Capitol, dealing a blow to the former president.
The order, which casts aside Trump’s request to stop the House select committee from obtaining the records while the case makes its way through the courts, means more than 700 documents that could shed light on the attack can be transferred to Congress.
Continue reading...House special committee demands documents and testimony from ‘war room’ team involved in effort to overturn election result
The US congressional committee investigating the Capitol attack has issued a blitz of subpoenas to some of Donald Trump’s top lawyers – including Rudy Giuliani – as it examines whether the former president oversaw a criminal conspiracy on 6 January 2021.
The House panel subpoenaed four of Trump’s legal team on Tuesday: the former president’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and his associate Boris Epshteyn, as well as Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis, who all defended Trump’s baseless voter fraud claims as he attempted to overturn the election result.
Continue reading...The committee is undecided on making the near-unprecedented step as the threat of Republican retaliation looms
The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack is weighing whether to subpoena some of Donald Trump’s top allies on Capitol Hill as it considers its options on how aggressively it should pursue testimony to move forward its inquiry into the January 6 insurrection.
The Republican House minority leader Kevin McCarthy and Republican members of Congress Jim Jordan and Scott Perry may have inside knowledge about Trump’s plan to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election and whether it was coordinated with the Capitol attack.
Continue reading...Subpoenas are an escalation in the committee’s efforts for answers as companies ignored information requests
The House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol has ordered several social media firms to hand over data relating to the attack, asignificant step toward transparency that could have broader privacy implications.
The committee on Thursday subpoenaed Twitter, Meta, Alphabet and Reddit for private messages exchanged on the platforms about the attack aas well as information regarding moderation policies that allowed communities to remain online even as they incited violence in early 2021.
Continue reading...Subpoenas suggest committee examining whether Trump’s rally speech suggests White House had prior knowledge of attack plans
The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack closed in on Donald Trump’s inner circle on Tuesday, issuing subpoenas to three new White House officials involved in planning the former president’s appearance at the rally that preceded the 6 January insurrection.
The new subpoenas show the select committee is moving ever nearer to Trump in its investigation and suggests the panel is now examining whether the former president’s speech suggested that the White House had advance knowledge of plans to attack the Capitol.
Continue reading...North Carolina group files candidacy challenge, citing Republican congressman’s alleged involvement in 6 January attack
A group of North Carolina voters told state officials on Monday that they want Republican congressman Madison Cawthorn to be disqualified as a congressional candidate, citing his involvement in the 6 January attack on the Capitol.
Cawthorn questioned the outcome of the presidential election during the “Save America Rally” before the Capitol riot later that day that resulted in five deaths.
Continue reading...With the country polarised and Republicans embracing authoritarianism, some experts fear a Northern Ireland-style insurgency but others say armed conflict remains improbable
Joe Biden had spent a year in the hope that America could go back to normal. But last Thursday, the first anniversary of the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol, the president finally recognised the full scale of the current threat to American democracy.
“At this moment, we must decide,” Biden said in Statuary Hall, where rioters had swarmed a year earlier. “What kind of nation are we going to be? Are we going to be a nation that accepts political violence as a norm?”
Continue reading...President strikes different tone in tacit admission that ignoring the most powerful force in the Republican party is risky
In the first moments of his presidency, Joe Biden called on Americans to set aside their deep divisions inflamed by a predecessor he intentionally ignored. He emphasized national unity and appealed to Americans to come together to “end this uncivil war”.
Nearly a year later, as a divided nation reflects on the first anniversary of the 6 January assault on the US Capitol, the uncivil war he sought to extinguish rages on, stronger than ever. In a searing speech on Thursday, Biden struck a different tone.
Continue reading...Messages between Mark Meadows and others suggest the Trump White House coordinated efforts to stop Joe Biden’s certification
The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack is examining whether Donald Trump oversaw a criminal conspiracy on 6 January that connected the White House’s scheme to stop Joe Biden’s certification with the insurrection, say two senior sources familiar with the matter.
The committee’s new focus on the potential for a conspiracy marks an aggressive escalation in its inquiry as it confronts evidence that suggests the former president potentially engaged in criminal conduct egregious enough to warrant a referral to the justice department.
Continue reading...Analysis: Republican strategy has focused on sowing doubt about 2020’s result, passing new laws and taking over key election offices
On 6 January 2021, it seemed like the stitching holding America’s democracy together might finally collapse. As armed supporters of a defeated president laid siege to the Capitol, the US Congress did something extraordinary – it suspended the official procedure to certify the winner of a presidential election.
The attack was eventually put down and Congress returned to officially certify Joe Biden’s victory. “They tried to disrupt our democracy. They failed,” Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, said when the Senate came back into session.
Continue reading...FBI and DHS flagged content that could ‘inspire violence by lone offenders against government officials’
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has warned of an increase in extremist content and threats against US lawmakers in the days leading up to the anniversary of the 6 January insurrection, according to a memo obtained by the Guardian.
The memo, sent on Thursday to state and local law enforcement, said that DHS had no indication of a specific and credible plot, but that the agency and the FBI had “identified new content online that could inspire violence, particularly by lone offenders, and could be directed against political and other government officials, including members of Congress, state and local officials, and high-profile members of political parties, including in locations outside of [Washington DC]”.
Continue reading...Joe Biden on Thursday forcefully denounced Donald Trump for spreading a “web of lies” about the legitimacy of the 2020 election in a desperate attempt to cling to power, accusing the former president and his allies of holding a “dagger at the throat of American democracy”.
The US president condemned his predecessor’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election as a “failed” pursuit, but one that continues to imperil American democracy one year after the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol, when a violent mob of Trump loyalists breached the Capitol in an effort to stop the certification of Biden’s presidential election victory.
Continue reading...Analysis: This was the moment the president realized the clear and present danger posed to US democracy by an ex-leader gone rogue
Here, at last, was the Joe Biden that anyone on vigil for America’s teetering democracy had been waiting for.
In historic National Statuary Hall at the US Capitol, a year to the day after it was overrun by an authoritarian mob, the US president gave his clearest dissection of “the big lie” and his clearest denunciation of his predecessor, Donald Trump.
Continue reading...The US president spoke directly against Trump, saying the former president had created and spread a 'web of lie's that resulted in the deadly
insurrection.
On the one-year anniversary of the 6 January Capitol attack, the US president said his predecessor had refused to accept the result of an election, like no former president had ever done
Continue reading...Representative Dean Phillips describes the day that ‘changed him’ after a pro-Tump mob overran police and reached the doors of the House chamber
It was a visceral cry at the moment of maximum peril for American democracy.
A furious mob had overrun police and was nearly at the door of the House of Representatives. Inside the chamber, Republican Paul Gosar was launching a spurious challenge to Joe Biden’s election victory in Arizona.
Continue reading...While the Republicans of Congress may be a little wishy-washy when it comes to the 6 January attack on the US Capitol - and exactly who bears responsibility for it - the White House said Americans should be prepared for Joe Biden to speak tomorrow about “the singular responsibility of President Trump for the chaos and carnage that we saw”.
“President Biden has spoken repeatedly about how the former president has abused his office, undermined the constitution and ignored his oath to the American people in order to amass more power for himself and his allies,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at today’s press briefing.