Category Archives: US Capitol attack

FBI was reportedly warned agents were ‘sympathetic’ to Capitol rioters – as it happened

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The Oath Keepers were mentioned repeatedly at yesterday’s January 6 hearing, and Politico reports their lawyers have attempted to make that an issue as they stand trial for seditious conspiracy – without success:

Investigators with the January 6 committee are looking into communications between a Secret Service agent and the Oath Keepers militia group, one of the most violent actors during the attack on the Capitol, NBC News reports:

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January 6 panel’s case against Trump lays out roadmap for prosecution

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Devastating testimony, nearly all from Republicans, will have given attorney general Merrick Garland plenty of food for thought

After more than a year of work that consisted of interviewing 1,000-plus witnesses and reviewing hundreds of thousands of documents, the committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol chose a simple message for its final public hearing: Donald Trump was singularly responsible for the attack.

Since its first hearing in June, the committee’s work has been aimed at two audiences. One of those has been the broad American public. Tactfully using video, the committee has told a disciplined, clear story of what happened on January 6, and the days leading up to it, filled with jaw-dropping soundbites from Trump’s closest aides.

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Capitol attack panel votes to subpoena Trump – ‘the central cause of January 6’

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The committee expressed it had ‘no doubt’ the ex-president led the effort to overturn the election

A congressional panel has voted to compel Donald Trump to testify under oath after naming the former president as the “central cause” of the deadly attack on the US Capitol on January 6.

The House of Representatives select committee investigating last year’s riot voted unanimously on Thursday to subpoena Trump for testimony and documents in what may prove a mostly symbolic gesture given time constraints and his likely legal resistance.

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Jan 6 hearing updates: panel votes to subpoena Donald Trump – as it happened

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The bipartisan group of House lawmakers investigating the January 6 insurrection has started what is expected to be its last public hearing, where lawmakers are set to focus on Donald Trump’s actions during the attack.

Follow this blog for coverage of the hearing as it happens. A live video feed of the session will be embedded above.

The United States and Saudi Arabia are waging a war of words over the Opec+ oil production cut and Washington’s claim Riyadh has aligned itself with Russia.

The New York attorney general has warned Trump and his business are taking steps to undermine her lawsuit against them, and asked a judge to step in.

Social security recipients are getting a big increase in monthly payments – but only because inflation is so high.

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‘We must defeat them’: new evidence details Oath Keepers’ ‘civil war’ timeline

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Testimony from government’s first witness showed militia group’s leader had planned resistance well before election results were out

It was just two days after the presidential election that his preferred candidate Donald Trump lost, and Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes fired off a text to members of his extremist group.

“We aren’t getting through this without a civil war,” the text read.

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Capitol attack officer Fanone hits out at ‘weasel’ McCarthy in startling interview

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Michael Fanone makes candid and profane remarks about Republicans in Rolling Stone interview as he promotes memoir

In an extraordinarily candid and profane interview with Rolling Stone, Michael Fanone – the former Washington police officer who was seriously hurt at the US Capitol during the January 6 attack – called the Republican House leader, potentially the next speaker, a “fucking weasel bitch”.

Fanone said past Republican giants would be unimpressed with Kevin McCarthy.

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Oath Keepers to stand trial on charges of seditious conspiracy

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Group allegedly discussed paramilitary training and ‘quick reaction force’ to get weapons to Capitol quickly on January 6

The highest-profile prosecution to stem from the January 6 attack on the US Capitol gets under way on Monday in Washington DC, where the founder and four members of the far-right Oath Keepers group will stand trial in federal court on civil war-era charges of seditious conspiracy.

It’s a high-stakes trial for the US government, which will attempt to prove that Stewart Rhodes and his associates spent weeks marshaling members of the group to prepare to use violence to deny the certification of the 2016 election and keep Donald Trump in the White House.

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Pelosi reportedly resisted Democrats’ effort to impeach Trump on January 6 – as it happened

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For all the supreme court’s pomp and ceremony, a new poll finds Americans increasingly are holding it in low regard.

According to Monmouth University, a majority of Americans find it out of touch with their beliefs:

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Senate passes short-term deal to avoid government shutdown – as it happened

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Top Democrat says he hopes to finalize deal to fund government until mid-December by the end of today

With a speech on the Capitol steps, top House Republican Kevin McCarthy was stumping again today for his party’s Commitment to America platform and plans for “firing Nancy Pelosi”.

McCarthy last week debuted the plan, which offered a broad if vague outline of what the party would do should they take Congress’s lower chamber in the 8 November midterms:

Kevin McCarthy’s pitiful display this morning is only further proof that the MAGA cult in his conference has him in a chokehold. House Republican Leaders spent their morning detached from reality: bragging about their dangerous, extreme, unpopular agenda to ban abortion in all fifty states, send prescription drug costs soaring and steal your right to choose your leaders. Truthfully, a desperate press conference is about par for the course for an uninspiring and incoherent politician like the Minority Leader, whose only real accomplishment to date is typing up a radical right-wing wish list that sends a clear message to the American people that House Republicans have gone off the deep end.

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House January 6 committee postpones public hearing, citing Hurricane Ian

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Storm bearing down on Florida nixes session that had been expected to feature footage of Trump ally Roger Stone

The House January 6 select committee announced that it would postpone what was expected to be its final investigative hearing scheduled for Wednesday over concerns about a hurricane and as it considers how best to present a number of unresolved questions surrounding the US Capitol attack.

“In light of Hurricane Ian bearing down on parts of Florida, we have decided to postpone tomorrow’s proceedings,” the panel’s chairman Bennie Thompson and the vice-chair Liz Cheney said in a joint statement. “We’re praying for the safety of all those in the storm’s path.”

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January 6 committee postpones Wednesday hearing over hurricane – as it happened

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Panel cites threat of Hurricane Ian bearing down on parts of Florida, and says the ‘investigation goes forward’

As the January 6 committee enters what is likely to be the home stretch of its investigation, a new poll has found it hasn’t meaningfully shifted beliefs about what happened that day.

Monmouth University finds that around four in 10 Americans hold Donald Trump responsible for the insurrection at the Capitol, slightly less than in late June, while three in 10 believe the election was stolen from him, a figure that’s moved little since November 2020.

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Republican ex-congressman suggests colleagues ‘had serious cognitive issues’

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Paul Gosar and Louie Gohmert were eager to believe ‘wild, dramatic fantasies’, claims Denver Riggleman in new book

The Republican congressmen Louis Gohmert and Paul Gosar adopted such extreme, conspiracy-tinged positions, even before the US Capitol attack, that a fellow member of the rightwing Freedom Caucus thought they “may have had serious cognitive issues”.

Denver Riggleman, once a US representative from Virginia, reports his impression of his former colleagues from Texas and Arizona in a new book.

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Former January 6 committee staffer says texts show evidence of ‘attempted coup’ – live

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Denver Riggleman tells 60 Minutes that texts from Mark Meadows amounted to a ‘roadmap to an attempted coup’

The supreme court’s overturning of Roe v Wade allowed states to curtail abortion rights completely, potentially transformed the midterms and, as Maya Yang reports, complicated access to other medicines in unexpected ways:

A few weeks after the supreme court’s 24 June decision to overturn the nationwide abortion rights established by Roe v Wade, the pharmacy chain Walgreens sent Annie England Noblin a message, informing her that her monthly prescription of methotrexate was held up.

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

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Wednesday’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.

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Nick Clegg to decide on Trump’s 2023 return to Instagram and Facebook

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Meta’s president of global affairs said it would be a decision ‘I oversee’ after the ex-president’s accounts were suspended in 2021

Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, is charged with deciding whether Donald Trump will be allowed to return to Facebook and Instagram in 2023, Clegg said on Thursday.

Speaking at an event held in Washington by news organization Semafor, Clegg said the company was seriously debating whether Trump’s accounts should be reinstated and said it was a decision that “I oversee and I drive”.

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Biden touts efforts to boost electric vehicles at Detroit auto show – as it happened

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President is in Detroit to promote the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes incentives for buying electric cars

A presidential run may be Mike Pence’s best hope of getting back into the White House. The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports that Donald Trump has thoroughly disavowed his former vice president:

Donald Trump will not pick Mike Pence as his running mate if he runs for the presidency again, according to an interview with the authors of a new book on his time in the White House.

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Doug Mastriano prayed for Trump to ‘seize the power’ before Capitol attack

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The Republican candidate for Pennsylvania’s governor spoke during a video call hosted by a Christian nationalist group member

A week before the Capitol attack, on a video call organised by a member of a Christian nationalist group, a Pennsylvania state senator who is the Republican candidate for governor in the battleground state prayed that supporters of Donald Trump would “seize the power” on 6 January 2021.

Doug Mastriano attended the pro-Trump rally in Washington that day, after which supporters, told by Trump to “fight like hell” to overturn his election defeat, stormed Congress in an attempt to stop certification of Joe Biden’s victory.

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January 6 committee assumes Mike Pence will testify, Jamie Raskin says

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Congressman says of former vice-president, ‘I would assume he is going to come forward and testify voluntarily’

The January 6 committee assumes the former vice-president Mike Pence will testify before it, a panel member said on Sunday.

“I would assume he is going to come forward and testify voluntarily,” Jamie Raskin, a Democratic congressman from Maryland, told CBS’s Face the Nation.

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House select panel asks Newt Gingrich to testify in effort to overturn election

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The former Republican House speaker is believed to have repeatedly contacted White House aides about fake electors

The House January 6 select committee on Thursday asked former Republican House speaker Newt Gingrich to testify about his repeated contacts with White House aides in Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, even in the evening after the Capitol attack had taken place.

The request to Gingrich was for voluntary cooperation – though the select committee showed it now appears to believe he was involved in a potential conspiracy planned ahead of time to lay the groundwork that would lead to reversing Trump’s defeat on January 6.

Congressman Bennie Thompson, the committee chair, said in a letter to Gingrich that investigators were interested in him counseling Trump aides to make TV ads about debunked election fraud conspiracies to pressure state legislators into decertifying Biden electors.

The letter detailed that it had communications that showed he tried to liaise with former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone about the fake elector scheme, asking whether anyone was coordinating Trump slates to Congress so that he could be declared the winner.

The select committee noted that Gingrich then furthered that effort as he emailed Meadows at 10.42pm on January 6 – hours after the Capitol attack had already largely concluded and Congress was preparing to confirm Biden’s win – asking whether there were “letters from state legislators about decertifying electors”.

“Surprisingly, the attack on Congress and the activities prescribed by the Constitution did not even pause your relentless pursuit. On the evening of January 6, you continued to push efforts to overturn the election results,” the letter said.

The select committee stopped short of issuing a subpoena to Gingrich, but also asked him to preserve his communications with Trump, the White House and the Trump legal team led by Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, as well as anyone else connected to January 6.

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Retired NYPD officer receives longest sentence yet for attack on Capitol

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Thomas Webster was given a 10-year prison time for six charges, including assaulting an officer with a metal flagpole

A retired New York police department officer has received a record-setting 10- year sentence for his involvement in the Capitol attack, during which he used a metal flagpole to assault one of the police officers trying to hold off a mob of Donald Trump supporters.

Thomas Webster was sentenced on Thursday, and his prison time will represent the longest punishment so far for the roughly 250 people facing punishment for their role in the January 6 attack.

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