Category Archives: US Politics

Garland says he is watching January 6 hearings amid pressure to investigate Trump

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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.

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Jan 6 hearings: Trump ‘lit the fuse that led to horrific violence’, committee chair says – live

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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.

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Jan 6 panel to focus on ‘lies’ that led Trump supporters to attack US Capitol

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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”.

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Retired US general resigns as Brookings president amid FBI lobbying inquiry

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New court filings detail Gen John Allen’s behind-the-scenes efforts to help Qatar influence US policy in June 2017

The president of the Brookings Institution resigned Sunday amid a federal investigation into whether he illegally lobbied on behalf of the wealthy Persian Gulf nation of Qatar.

John Allen, a retired four-star Marine general, wrote in a letter to the thinktank that he was leaving with a “heavy heart” but did not offer a direct explanation.

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Fox News will air January 6 hearings, reflecting split between news and hosts

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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.

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Capitol attack panel members urge DoJ to consider criminal charges for Trump

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‘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.

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AOC refuses to endorse Biden for 2024 as Democrats doubt his ability to win

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Congresswoman says she’s focused on trying to preserve Democrats’ congressional majority in November’s midterms

Left-wing congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Sunday refused to endorse Joe Biden for another run at the White House, adding to growing anxiety in Democratic circles over the president’s ability to run in and win the 2024 election.

The powerful progressive New Yorker said she could not commit to supporting Biden during an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union, saying she was more focused on trying to preserve Democrats’ congressional majority in November’s midterms.

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Sarah Palin leads in special primary for Alaska’s House seat in comeback bid

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Run by former Republican vice-presidential candidate marks first bid since resigning as governor partway through her term in 2009

Former Alaska governor and Republican ex-vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin leads in early results from Saturday’s special primary for the state’s only US House seat in what could be a remarkable political re-emergence.

Voters in the far north-western state are whittling down the list of 48 candidates running for the position that was held for 49 years by the late US Representative Don Young.

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‘Enough is enough’: thousands rally across US in gun control protests

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The March for Our Lives rallies come after mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas and Buffalo, New York

Rallies for gun reform were held in Washington, New York, other US cities and around the world on Saturday, seeking to increase pressure on Congress to act following a spate of mass shootings.

In Washington, the son of an 86-year-old victim in the Buffalo supermarket shooting said: “Enough is enough. We will not go quietly into the night.”

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The January 6 panel said Trump incited an ‘attempted coup’. Will it kill him or make him stronger?

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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.

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Ginni Thomas pressed 29 lawmakers in bid to overturn Trump loss, emails show

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Wife of supreme court justice Clarence Thomas accused of ‘undermining democracy’ after Washington Post revelation

Ginni Thomas, the wife of the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, was accused of “undermining democracy” after it emerged that she emailed 29 Republican lawmakers in Arizona in her effort to overturn Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump.

The Washington Post had previously reported that Ginni Thomas sent emails pressuring two Arizona Republicans to reject Biden’s win and choose their own electors.

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Rudy Giuliani charged with ethical misconduct over Trump’s big lie

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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.

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Biden says forces behind January 6 attack ‘remain at work today’ – as it happened

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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.

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Democrats promise more on Trump’s January 6 role after dramatic TV hearing

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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.

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Primetime January 6 hearing shows set-piece TV can still pack a punch

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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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January 6 hearing: five key takeaways from the first primetime Capitol attack inquiry

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The House select committee presented their findings that the US Capitol attack was the ‘culmination of an attempted coup’

The first primetime hearing from the House select committee investigating January 6 presented gut-wrenching footage of the insurrection, and a range of testimony to build a case that the attack on the Capitol was a planned coup fomented by Donald Trump.

After a year and half investigation, the committee sought to emphasize the horror of the attack and hold the former president and his allies accountable.

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As America watched Capitol attack testimony, Fox News gave an alternate reality

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Tucker Carlson leads January 6 counter-programming, petulantly refusing to show the hearing: ‘We’re not playing along’

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.

On the Fox News channel, however, there was a different take on the historic congressional hearings exploring the attack on the Capitol in Washington DC.

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January 6 hearing: Trump was at heart of plot that led to ‘attempted coup’

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House panel makes case in primetime broadcast featuring eyewitnesses and video clips of Trump aides and family members

The House select committee investigating the deadly January 6 assault on the US Capitol in 2021 said Donald Trump was at the center of a sprawling conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election that culminated in an “attempted coup”.

With a shocking new accounting of the worst attack on the halls of Congress in more than two centuries, the committee outlined in gripping detail over the course of two hours on Thursday night the grave threat posed to American democracy then and now by the former president’s actions.

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‘It was a war scene’: Caroline Edwards describes Capitol attack violence

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The Capitol police officer, who was injured in the insurrection, said she saw colleagues ‘bleeding, on the ground, throwing up’

Caroline Edwards, a Capitol police officer who sustained a brain injury during the January 6 attack, gave a chilling recollection of the brutal violence of that day on Thursday, telling the committee investigating the attack it was a “war scene”.

Her testimony offered key evidence for underscoring the stakes of the congressional hearing. It showed viewers at home that the attack on the Capitol in Washington DC was not an accident, but rather an intentional effort to inflict violence.

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US braces for House committee’s primetime January 6 hearings – live

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The US Department of Justice has announced a federal civil rights investigation into the Louisiana State Police following a raft of brutality cases and the fatal beating of a Black motorist, Ronald Greene, in 2019.

Greene, an unarmed 49-year-old, was arrested by six white officers with body camera footage of the incident, obtained years later by the Associated Press, revealing he had been punched, tasered and placed in a chokehold and later dragged face down in handcuffs and left prone for over nine minutes.

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