Trump

House select committee hears evidence that then-president expressed approval of rioters calling for his VP to be punished. Plus, how average summer ...

It all began in 1983, when newly married couple Sue and Keith Blazye were given a teapot as a gift by Sue’s grandmother to put in their kitchen glass display cabinet. With days probably numbered for the constitutional right to abortion in the US, read about how the Red Transfronteriza are working to support safe abortions. The sheriff said the victims and suspect were all employees at the facility. You’re not imagining it: American summers really are hotter than ever, research has shown, with summer average temperatures rising in a staggering 235 out of 246 US locations since 1970. The panel made its case during a primetime broadcast on Thursday night that featured witnesses and clips of Trump aides and family members. The sheriff said the suspect used a semi-automatic handgun, but did not specify the caliber or model.

Donald Trump was at the center of a conspiracy to attack the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Rep. Bennie Thompson said Thursday.

Barr said there was “absolutely zero basis” for allegations that voting machines were used to steal the election. “Tonight and over the next few weeks, we’re going to remind you of the reality of what happened that day,” he said. Please see our republishing guidelines for use of photos and graphics. “But for Donald Trump, that was only the beginning of what became a sprawling, multi-step conspiracy aimed at overturning the presidential election… “Mike Pence ‘deserved it.’” The cause of our democracy remains in danger.” Barr called those allegations “complete nonsense,” “crazy stuff” and said “it was doing a great, great disservice to the country.” “I made it clear I did not agree with the idea of saying the election was stolen and putting out this stuff, which I told the president was bullshit,” Barr said in the taped testimony. Thompson said part of the purpose of the hearing was to remind the American people what happened on Jan. 6. “And ultimately, Donald Trump — the president of the United States — spurred a mob of domestic enemies of the Constitution to march down the Capitol and subvert American democracy,” Thompson said. The committee showed video of a group of Proud Boys initiating a breach of a line of bike racks outside the Capitol on Jan. 6. aimed at throwing out the votes of millions of Americans — your votes — your voice in our democracy — and replacing the will of the American people with his will to remain in power after his term ended,” said Thompson.

Vivid evidence around Capitol attack laid out by committee, but Republicans dismiss first primetime hearing as political theatre.

At a rally near the White House on January 6, Trump told supporters to march on the Capitol and “fight like hell” to overturn the election. Republican leaders are betting on the January 6 hearings failing to impact jaded voters. In light of the Thursday hearing, amid growing calls for criminal charges against Trump by the Department of Justice, the conservative anti-Trump writer Tim Miller said: “I’m never going to forgive the 43 miserable cowards in the Senate who didn’t convict this asshole. Polling shows the Republican party favored to retake Congress this year. Trump was impeached for inciting the insurrection but acquitted when only seven Senate Republicans voted for his guilt. Doubt was cast on Ivanka Trump’s claim not to have indulged her father.

Videos showed Ivanka Trump, former Attorney General William Barr and Trump campaign advisers testify that the former president had really lost the 2020 election ...

The committee also showed how Trump’s tweet attack on his own vice president, Mike Pence — just minutes after rioters smashed their way into the Capitol — was quickly digested by the swelling crowd and exacerbated the violence. “I think it’s very important,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a committee member, said in a brief interview about using the clips. Those defendants, who cooperated with the select committee, all claimed that they went to the Capitol for one reason: because Trump asked them to. Miller, according to a previously released excerpt of his transcript, said Trump responded to their arguments by saying they had underestimated the likelihood of prevailing in court. The Proud Boys would later respond to Trump’s call for a “wild” protest in D.C. on Jan. 6 and become some of the key instigators of the day’s most devastating violence, congressional and Justice Department investigators say. “You will hear that President Trump was yelling, and ‘really angry at advisers who told him he needed to be doing something more,’” she continued. The multimedia-heavy strategy is a direct acknowledgment that Congress’ previous efforts to unfurl high-profile investigative findings have often failed to connect with the broader public. It’s an extension of the strategy they used during the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump, when they aired early videos of the Jan. 6 violence. The committee’s vice chair, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), summarized in her opening statement what some of the more explosive clips would show. “These aren’t partisan voices that are speaking out and saying we don’t like Donald Trump,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), one of dozens of Democratic lawmakers who sat in the audience for the hearing. The panel has for 10 months quietly amassed an enormous trove of video depositions, compiled from its more than 1,000 witness interviews. In one of them, Ivanka Trump said she agreed with Bill Barr’s assessment.

Trump's social media supporters moved quickly to defend the former president and themselves after Thursday night's televised hearing of the Jan.

But much of the video also came from social media, like Parler, the right-wing social network popular then with Trump supporters. “And it was very clear when he tweeted about exiting the building and going in peace that people did start to listen and did follow his directives.” “Have you ever seen a video with more fake edits and SPLICES?” he wrote. However, the billionaire Elon Musk, who is in the process of acquiring Twitter, has said he would reinstate Trump. The platforms’ response in the days after the attack took away much of that power, Donovan said. Joan Donovan, research director at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, suggested that it would be difficult to overstate the importance of Trump’s tweets to the events of Jan. 6. The tweet, which Trump had sent minutes before, said that Vice President “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done” and that “USA demands the truth!” Starting at 6:50 a.m. Friday, Trump called former attorney general William P. Barr “weak and frightened” and deflected blame for the riot. Trump had used Twitter aggressively to rally his supporters to overturn what he falsely labeled a fraudulent election, tweeting in December 2020, “WE HAVE JUST BEGUN TO FIGHT!!!” and “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Remember this day forever!” Two days later, Twitter and Facebook suspended his account, citing the risk that he would incite more violence. Those tweets were widely shared by his fans, and congressional investigators on Thursday shared video testimony from rioters who said they saw them as calls to action. It also underscored how the social media landscape has shifted in the 17 months since Trump was suspended by the leading online platforms for his role in fanning the violent attempts to overturn Joe Biden’s election as president.

Former US president Donald Trump used his social media platform to claim the “rush on the Capitol” was not caused by him but a “stolen election”.

“I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible,” she said. The event of January 6 left several people dead and about 150 police officers injured. “We have to protect our democracy,” he said. Over two hours, the committee laid out in meticulous detail the extent of Trump’s efforts to keep himself in office. Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. He also said his daughter Ivanka - who gave evidence to the committee showing she did not agree with her father’s view of election fraud - had “long since checked out” and “was not involved in looking at, or studying, election results.”

We'll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest US Capitol attack news every morning. Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney had two jobs on Thursday ...

Former president Donald Trump has demanded that many of his aides and advisers claim privilege and resist subpoenas from the House select committee ...

In another sign of the couple’s uneasy independence, they have in the past shown a rare willingness among Trump insiders to cooperate with investigators. “They could float in and out when they wanted to, while the rest of everybody else didn’t have that luxury,” the former White House official said. Ivanka Trump has long participated in her father’s business ventures, including a New York condo project that recently drew prosecutors’ scrutiny but no charges, and the Washington hotel at the center of multiple conflict-of-interest investigations and lawsuits during his presidency. As the couple sidestepped anti-nepotism rules to take White House jobs, Ivanka Trump initially presented herself as a moderating force. “The Ivanka Trump clip has gotten a lot of attention, but its inclusion was entirely gratuitous and clearly meant simply to embarrass her,” National Review’s editor in chief, Rich Lowry, said on Twitter. The aim of his statement, the former adviser said, was to emphasize that Ivanka wasn’t involved in legal discussions. On the day of the Capitol riot, she repeatedly tried to convince the president to make a statement or video calling for his supporters to stop the attack, The Post has reported. But another former Trump adviser disputed that Trump was angry with his daughter over the testimony. Before Jan. 6, Ivanka Trump broke with her father and siblings in avoiding baseless fraud allegations and attempts to overturn the election results. The clip made for one of the most dramatic moments in the first hearing, which drew a television audience of almost 19 million Americans. Committee sources viewed Ivanka Trump and Kushner as sometimes helpful and at times frustrating, according to multiple advisers — but particularly useful in understanding Trump’s psyche. “It affected my perspective,” Ivanka Trump said in the clip.

The former president, responding to videotaped testimony played at the Jan. 6 hearing, said Ivanka Trump had been “checked out” and was not involved in ...

Ms. Trump was a senior adviser in the White House, and she continued to work in the administration until the end. Her husband, Jared Kushner, who was also a senior adviser in the White House, attended several meetings about postelection strategy with a range of political and West Wing advisers, as well as lawyers like Rudolph W. Giuliani. “I NEVER said, or even thought of saying, ‘Hang Mike Pence,’” Mr. Trump wrote on the social media site. In another post on the site, Mr. Trump described the committee as a “totally partisan, POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!” And in two other posts, he attacked Mr. Barr, calling him a “coward,” “weak and frightened,” “stupid” and “scared stiff of being impeached.” “She had long since checked out and was, in my opinion, only trying to be respectful to Bill Barr and his position as Attorney General (he sucked!).” She testified that she respected Mr. Barr and “accepted what he was saying.”

Probably not, says Aaron Blake, but "the court of public opinion is very important as well."

- Audio shows Kevin McCarthy planned to urge Trump to resign after Capitol riot - Audio shows Kevin McCarthy planned to urge Trump to resign after Capitol riot

An image of a mock gallows on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. The Capitol riot was “the culmination of an attempted coup” in which “the violence was no ...

Several representatives of Latin American nations said that they appreciated the president’s ambitions but feared they fell short of the grim reality in the region.” NEW DETAILS ON KAVANAUGH THREAT — WaPo’s Dan Morse has new details of the 9-1-1 call that led to the arrest of NICHOLAS ROSKE, the man who showed up to BRETT KAVANAUGH’s house with the intention of killing the justice. “Over multiple months, Donald Trump oversaw and coordinated a sophisticated seven-part plan to overturn the presidential election and prevent the transfer of presidential power.” “Donald Trump, the president of the United States,” Thompson said, “spurred a mob of domestic enemies of the Constitution to march down the Capitol and subvert American democracy.” And WaPo’s Ann Marimow and Emma Brown report that Barrett “received $425,000 last year as part of a book deal.” WAPO FIRES FELICIA SONMEZ — After a week of public and private drama, The Washington Post fired reporter FELICIA SONMEZ “over email on Thursday afternoon,” NYT’s Katie Robertson reports. Our colleague Daniel Lippman reports that Gorsuch is “writing a new book about judicial and regulatory policy” for HarperCollins to be released potentially in 2024, with an initial advance payment of $250,000. Puck’s Dylan Byers has a look inside the WaPo newsroom with new details about the episode, including dinners that publisher and CEO FRED RYAN, owner JEFF BEZOS and his partner LAUREN SANCHEZ held with executive editor candidates, in which Bezos and Sanchez “expressed their personal frustrations with Twitter and social media, particularly as it related to the tabloid-like coverage of their relationship. She promised that in the coming days, they’d provide “evidence of what motivated this violence” and was unequivocal about its source. THE PLAYBOOK INTERVIEW: DUSTY JOHNSON — Thirty-five House Republicans voted for the Jan. 6 select committee, earning them the wrath of Trump. On Tuesday, five of them faced primaries — and they all survived. He quickly got to the main point: Jan. 6 was a “sprawling multistep conspiracy aimed at overturning the presidential election,” he said. “I’m from a part of the country where people justified the actions of slavery, Ku Klux Klan and lynching,” he said.

Fruit is still flying in a legal battle pitting Trump against five "Make America Racist Again" protesters. Now a Daily Beast reporter is involved.

Oral arguments in the fruit fracas have been scheduled for June 22. "It was kind of just a lark" that Dictor and Cohen happened to speak in the first place, he said. In the brief exchange, the reporter asks Cohen to reach out to protester attorney Benjamin Dictor, and Cohen agrees.

The new aircraft are estimated to replace the VC-25A planes in 2026, years behind schedule.

Trump, in 2018, directed that the new jumbo jets shed the iconic Kennedy-era robin’s egg blue and white design for a deeper navy and streak of dark red. Trump’s design used the colors of the American flag. They currently sport a simple white and blue paint job with U.S. Air Force markings as the work proceeds.

The danger to US democracy didn't end on 6 January – his followers are busy ripping up the safeguards that foiled them, says Guardian columnist Jonathan ...

On Thursday night, Liz Cheney, vice-chair of the House committee investigating 6 January, did an admirable job, telling her fellow Republicans that when Trump is gone their “dishonour will remain”. But she is an outlier, isolated and ostracised from her party. On 6 January, the determination of the pro-Trump forces to subvert a democratic election was not in doubt. More alarmingly, several Republican state legislatures have sought to put themselves or their allies in charge of what used to be non-partisan election machinery, installing Republicans – including “stop the steal” Trump loyalists – in the offices where votes get counted and certified. The US only narrowly survived Trump on 6 January 2021 – and the defences that kept the peril at bay are steadily getting weaker. Methodically and across the US, Republicans have been working to dismantle the guardrails that keep American democracy on track. Nearly a decade ago, the scholar David Runciman wrote a book called The Confidence Trap. It argued that the problem with democracy is that each time it survives a crisis, people wrongly assume that it’s indestructible. Polls find hefty majorities of Republican voters believing the lie, adamant that Trump was the real winner in 2020. Of course, he remains utterly unrepentant about the events of 6 January. On the eve of Thursday’s hearing, he posted on his new social media site that that day “represented the greatest movement in the history of our Country to Make America Great Again”. The House committee that has been investigating the attempted insurrection for the past year – gathering in excess of 140,000 documents and speaking to more than 1,000 witnesses – discovered that Donald Trump’s response, on learning that the rioters were chanting “Hang Mike Pence”, was to say that his vice-president “deserves” it. Whether the nominee is the former president himself or a more disciplined politician – the likes of Florida governor Ron DeSantis – Trumpism, with its commitment to permanent culture war and its contempt for democratic norms, is now a central feature of the American landscape. Some Republicans take comfort from the thought that voters have got other things on their minds just now, that as midterm elections approach Americans will be more preoccupied with Biden’s failures to tame inflation than Trump’s incitement of an insurrection. Because none of this is about the past.

Former President Donald Trump on Friday dismissed his own daughter's testimony to the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riot, ...

It worked for him, but not for our Country!” “Our Country is in such trouble!” “It affected my perspective,” Ivanka Trump responded. “How do you not get impeached? Stream more US news live & on demand with Flash. 25+ news channels in 1 place. New to Flash? Try 1 month free.

The former president has continued to push unfounded conspiracy theories that the 2020 presidential election was riddled with fraud, claims that led to a mob of ...

We invite you to join the discussion on Facebook and Twitter. “Those who invaded our Capitol and battled law enforcement for hours were motivated by what President Trump had told them: that the election was stolen, and that he was the rightful president,” Cheney said. “Our Country is in such trouble!”

Americans were served up an engrossing night of television as a congressional panel laid out in damning detail Donald Trump's culpability in last year's US ...

"The facts that the January 6 committee will be presenting will either offer evidence that the president of the United States directed thousands of his supporters to disrupt the certification of the Electoral College or it will not," Hernandez, who works for the Telemundo 51 South Florida network, told AFP. The challenge for Democrats -- burned by the lukewarm public reaction to Trump's two impeachments and numerous other revelations of misconduct -- will be to ensure that his latest calumny registers with voters. "It's important the American people understand what truly happened, and to understand that the same forces that led to January 6 remain at work today," President Joe Biden said Friday as he was discussing the hearing -- a reference in part, at least, to Trump's transgressions.

Former President Trump knocked Ivanka Trump, his daughter and former White House adviser, after the House select committee investigating the Jan.

“Ivanka Trump was not involved in looking at, or studying, Election results. “I respect Attorney General Barr, so I accepted what he was said.” Donald Trump himself has long claimed that the election was “rigged” and tainted by widespread voter fraud.

Former US president Donald Trump hits back at his daughter Ivanka, saying she had "checked out" on election issues, after she testifies that she did not ...

- Mr Trump said Ms Trump had "checked out" of election issues and Mr Barr "sucked" In the recording from April, Ms Trump said she believed then attorney-general William Barr's assessment that there was no significant evidence of electoral fraud. - In a video clip from April, Ivanka Trump said she accepted her father had lost the election

Constitutional democracies are rarely destroyed by a single blow. Their citizens often sleepwalk into catastrophe, discovering too late that a degree of ...

At the very least, Thursday’s hearing showed that defenders of democracy have a fighting chance to awaken a brooding and preoccupied nation. This goes to one other aspect of authoritarian practice that the committee is confronting: Abusers of power cultivate cynicism. Last, Cheney showed that the mayhem was part of a much broader effort to subvert a free election. The more evidence there is that he knew perfectly well that he was peddling, well, “bulls---,” the harder it will be for him to evade the consequences of his actions. Five people died on that day or in the immediate aftermath, and 140 police officers were assaulted. It will share it’s findings in a series of hearings starting June 9. And if the story being told is “partisan,” why are so many of the credible witnesses Republicans? Charges: Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and four lieutenants have been charged with seditious conspiracy, joining Oathkeepers leader Stewart Rhodes and about two dozen associates in being indicted for their participation in the Capitol attack. Congressional hearings: The House committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol has conducted more than 1,000 interviews over the last year. Trump’s defenders do not want Americans to grapple with the facts. She needed to overcome the temptation of the complacent to write off the desecration of our seat of government as the work of mad extremists disconnected from the broader political system. Cheney’s standing as a loyal conservative Republican certainly added to her credibility and guarantees her a place on history’s honor roll.

We now know Trump expressed support for hanging Pence and did little to stop the violence — actions that suggest some very dark historical parallels.

And this, in the end, is why using fascism as a framework for understanding January 6 is worthwhile. It’s that the official organs of the Republican Party saw their job as covering for Trump, even as evidence emerged that he literally suggested that a Republican vice president should be lynched. They help us understand the clarifying and organizing power of violence, the way in which banding together to hurt others can help solidify dangerous political tendencies. This is precisely how the mainstream Republican Party has approached Trump, even after a violent attempt to seize power exposed just how far he’s willing to go to hold power. In 2017, he described some of the white supremacists at Charlottesville as “ very fine people.” During a 2019 rally, he “joked” about shooting migrants at the border, to cheers from the crowd. On the first point, committee chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS) suggested in an interview they had evidence Trump’s team was in direct contact with both the Proud Boys and the Oathkeepers, the other militia group that spearheaded the attack. That he would sometimes frame these comments as jokes, or even backtrack after offering them, is characteristic of fringe right political movements — which often cast their most extreme positions in a kind of ironic tone that allows for their supporters to simultaneously embrace radical ideas while also distancing themselves from them. Unlike interwar fascists, Trump has not laid out an ideological alternative to liberal democracy that involves abolishing elections — in fact, he doesn’t seem to possess a coherent ideology at all. The committee found that the president took no steps to defend the Capitol building, failing to call in the National Guard, or even speak to his secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security. What this record shows is that the potential for a Trump-led political movement to lead to bloodshed was always there. One key factor that was missing, at least for most of Trump’s presidency, was the violence. This doesn’t prove that fascism is, in all respects, a perfect analogy for the Trump presidency.

On Jan. 6, Donald Trump professed his love for Jan. 6 rioters. After a lengthy detour, the Republican is right back where he started.

Presidential historian Michael Beschloss wrote yesterday about what future Americans might say about Jan. 6, and the degree to which the answer depends on whether the United States is a democracy or an autocracy. Reading from a prepared text, Trump added, “The demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American democracy.... And so, Trump, mindful of the public’s revulsion toward the assault, shifted his message in order to be seen as a mainstream figure. By May 2021, the former president was suggesting the rioters were victims. More than three hours after the violence began, Trump released a video urging his mob of radicalized followers to disperse. But even then, the Republican made clear that he and the rioters were on the same side. In the months that followed, Trump struggled to keep up the pretense that he almost certainly never believed in the first place. Donald Trump seems to realize that the Jan. 6 committee, its evidence, and its presentations are a major public event. - Trump then said the rioters areinnocent “patriots”and their attack “represented the greatest movement in the history of our Country to Make America Great Again.” The missive read in part: With this in mind, the Republican is eager to push back against the revelations. But putting all of that aside, what obviously stands out about the Republican’s message yesterday was his insistence that Jan. 6 “represented the greatest movement in the history of our Country to Make America Great Again.”

The former president continued to walk back his past public statements about the former Senate aide.

Going into the runoff, Brooks’ campaign sought to frame the race as “MAGA versus Mitch” — and Brooks has proven his MAGA bona fides in recent years. “I’m thankful to have President Trump’s endorsement and strong support,” Britt said in a statement to POLITICO. “President Trump knows that Alabamians are sick and tired of failed, do-nothing career politicians. Trump’s endorsement of Britt is a striking contrast to the statement he released about the Senate candidate just under a year ago. Britt finished 15 percentage points ahead of Brooks, but fell short of the 50 percent threshold necessary to avoid a runoff. The decision deals a second major blow to Brooks, who Trump initially endorsed last year before pulling his support in March as Brooks’ campaign floundered. “She is not in any way qualified and is certainly not what our country needs,” Trump said at the time.

The former first daughter should probably consider the witness protection program.

Also, his denials would be a lot more convincing if he wasn’t literally on tape defending the “Hang Mike Pence” calls. But the fact that she did, to the January 6 committee, obviously makes her father look even worse than he already did—and clearly, he knows it. For the entirety of her 40 years on earth, Ivanka Trump has had the dubious honor of being Donald Trump’s favorite child.