The Associated Investigative Committee on the 2021 Capitol Violations: Report of the Combined House Select Committee on ”The Case of Donald Trump and the White House”
That means the House select committee will not be able to incorporate in its final report some of the information it long sought about the communications of top witnesses around Donald Trump and the White House in late 2020 and January 2021. The panel plans to release the report next week.
The members focused on how the former president’s involvement in the attempt to overturn the 2020 election made him responsible for the violence that erupted at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and it made him ineligible to hold future office.
The committee will present new evidence at the hearing, which will take place on Thursday.
There won’t be live witnesses, but the hearing will have new testimony from witnesses. Some have appeared in previous hearings and some the committee has not presented before. The witnesses were not named by the aides.
The panel found out about the deleted text messages from when the siege began while digging into the role the Secret Service played in the attack. The panel issued a subpoena to the Secret Service to get additional records after learning the Homeland Security watchdog was aware of the missing texts.
There will be new video footage of efforts to respond to the violence on January 6. Unlike previous hearings that examined one topic, Thursday’s session will take “a step back.” The former president’s involvement in the events will be the focus of the panel.
The aides declined to say if this is a closing argument from the committee, emphasizing this is an “ongoing investigation” and the panel’s charter tasks it with producing a comprehensive report by the end of this year.
There will be a public meeting by the House select panel on Monday in order to vote on their plans to issue criminal referrals and other recommendations.
It’s not clear if the committee will allow testimony from the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who appeared behind closed doors last month.
Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., who chairs the committee, told reporters that transcripts of non-sensitive interviews they conducted will be released between now and the end of the year, when the panel officially sunsets.
Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wy., has served as the unofficial lead prosecutor for much of the hearings, laying out in the first hearing in June what the panel would demonstrate: “President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack.”
After the weeks of the hearings in June and July, there was some indication that Trump’s position as the leader of his party was damaged. But the Justice Department search of his Florida residence in early August served to rally most congressional Republicans around him and his argument that the expanding federal investigations were politically motivated.
There’s new information that we have received since our hearings, which is helpful to our investigation and we look forward to sharing it.
Thompson or Cheney would usually open or close the presentations, with a particular committee member leading the discussion. This time, each panel member will play an equal role, Thompson and others have said.
Also, California Democratic Rep. Pete Aguilar, a member of the panel, said the hearing could cover new evidence relating to former Vice President Mike Pence. Earlier hearings illustrated the pressure campaign he faced from Trump to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.
Friday is the deadline for former-President Donald Trump to turn over documents as part of a subpoena issued by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. They referred to various electronic messages, call logs, photos and videos, as well as hand-written notes, from as early as September 2020.
Bennie Thompson, Chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform said in an October hearing that Trump tried to replace the will of the American people with his will to remain in power. “He is the one person at the center of the story of what happened on Jan. 6.”
Evidence of Campaigning in Congress and the Implications for the Ethics of the 2016 Insights into the Fort McNair Absorber
With the congressional session over and the Republican Party about to take control of the House, it’s not likely that the ethics panel will launch a new investigation.
The committee aired previously unseen footage from Fort McNair, the DC-area Army base where congressional leaders took refuge during the insurrection and scrambled to respond to the unfolding crisis.
The footage shows Pelosi, Schumer and others coordinating with the Trump administration and other officials to secure the Capitol’s safety during the insurrection.
There were two phone calls between then Vice President Mike Pence and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who took on a leadership role in coordinating the emergency response.
The new footage showed Schumer dressing down then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen. During the phone call, Schumer told Rosen to tell Trump to stop the mob. Pelosi said that the pro- Trump rioters were acting at the instigation of the president.
Elaine Chao, who resigned from her post as Trump’s secretary of Transportation a day after the insurrection, spoke in personal terms about her disgust toward the attack when she testified to the committee.
The events made it impossible for me to continue because of my personal values and philosophy. I came as an immigrant to this country. I believe in this country. I believe in the peaceful transfer of power. I believe in democracy. She said it was a decision that she made alone.
CNN previously reported that a former White House aide told the committee that someone tried to influence her testimony.
“I remember looking at Mark, and I said ‘Mark, he can’t possibly think we’re going to pull this off. Like, that call was crazy.’ He just started shaking his head when he looked at me. He knows that it’s over. He knows he lost. Hutchinson told the committee that they were going to keep trying.
Hutchinson also said that she witnessed a conversation between Meadows and Trump where he was furious the Supreme Court had rejected a lawsuit seeking to overturn the election result.
The president did something to the effect that he wouldn’t want people to know we lost. This is embarrassing. Figure it out. We need to figure it out. I don’t want people to know that we lost,’” Hutchinson said.
While there are still questions surrounding erased text messages from Secret Service agents around the insurrection, the panel obtained messages and emails showing the agency receiving warnings before January 6, 2021, about the prospect of violence, as well as real-time reports of weapons in the crowd ahead of Trump’s speech at the Ellipse.
The committee subpoenaed Meadows for documents and testimony in September of last year, and he handed over more than 2,000 text messages he sent and received between Election Day 2020 and Joe Biden’s inauguration. The text messages show how the top Republican Party officials and Trump’s family discussed what the president should do after the election and in the middle of the insurrection.
In Thursday’s hearing, Democrat Adam Schiff states that the Secret Service received online threats against Vice President Mike Pence if he didn’t do the right thing.
Demystifying Donald Trump During the 2020 Primary Primary: New Evidence and Implications for the Joint Select Committee and the Department of Justice
The committee also revealed new evidence Thursday that Trump had devised a plan, well before any votes were counted, to declare victory no matter what the election results were.
On November 3, 2020, Jacob drafted a memo for Short after their conversation, which the committee presented for the first time on Thursday.
The Vice President should not be viewed as having decided questions concerning disputed electoral votes before the full developments of all relevant facts is known, according to the memo.
Two Trump advisers were sent new emails by conservative legal activist Tom Fitton days before the election. A draft statement was sent to Trump by email on Election Night.
Her absence was notable because the panel used testimony from high-profile witnesses who had been interviewed since the committee’s most recent hearing.
There is no indication that the ex-president will be charged in either of the probes. But the sense that Trump is approaching a moment of maximum legal peril is being driven both by signs of an increasingly aggressive investigation by special counsel Jack Smith and the realities of a calendar that offers limited time for any potential prosecutions before the 2024 campaign is in full swing. Trump’s already questionable hopes of winning a national election, meanwhile, could absorb new blows with the unveiling of the January 6 committee’s final report next week and its possible criminal referrals to the Department of Justice.
Donald Trump is headed for a period of maximum legal and political risk over his role in US Capitol insurrection and his efforts to become a White House candidate.
As the House select committee hearing went on, the Supreme Court sent word from across the road that it’s got no interest in getting sucked into Trump’s bid to derail a Justice Department probe into classified material he kept at Mar-a-Lago.
The court turned down his emergency request to intervene, which could have delayed the case, without explaining why. No dissents were noted, including from conservative justices Trump elevated to the bench and whom he often seems to believe owe him a debt of loyalty.
What Can Congress Tell Us About Trump’s January 6 Associated With Mar-A-Lago, and How to Stop Trump from Moving Assets Unless a State Court Interdicts
For all the political drama regarding the revelations of January 6, it’s the battle over classified documents that represents the most clearcut risk of criminal exposure to the ex-President.
One question hanging over the congressional committee, however, is whether the higher standard of evidence required by a court could lead prosecutors to believe it would be hard to convict the former president. Despite a lot of evidence suggesting a long-term pattern of wrongdoing by Trump, witnesses were not subjected to the kind of challenge and cross-examination they see in court, so it is hard to judge the strength of a criminal case.
CNN previously reported that the panel has also weighed criminal referrals for a number of Trump’s closest allies, including former Trump attorney John Eastman, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, former DOJ official Jeffrey Clark and former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, according to multiple sources.
According to a CNN report on Wednesday, a Trump employee told the FBI that he was ordered by the ex- President to remove boxes from a basement storage room at his club after his legal team received a subpoena. In addition, the FBI has video of a staffer moving boxes.
On the face of it, this development is troubling since it could suggest a pattern of deception that plays into a possible obstruction of justice charge. The FBI told a judge on the initial search warrant that there was evidence of obstruction at Trump’s resort.
Still, David Schoen, who was Trump’s defense lawyer in his second impeachment, told CNN’s “New Day” that though the details of what happened at Mar-a-Lago raised troubling questions, they did not necessarily amount to a case of obstructing justice.
The federal judge in California who wrote earlier this year that Trump and his associates were scheming to defraud the US government can be used to support obstruction of an official proceeding.
On Thursday morning, New York Attorney General Letitia James asked a state court to block the Trump Organization from moving assets and continuing to perpetrate what she has alleged in a civil lawsuit is a decades-long fraud.
There is every reason to believe that the defendants will engage in the same fraudulent conduct again and again, unless this court intervenes and prevents them from doing so, James wrote in the application.
Will the ex-president of the USA be charged with a crime after the House committee investigating the US Capitol insurrection?
Multiple federal and state investigations are ongoing regarding the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, his handling of sensitive government documents and his family business.
Trump’s Unselect Committee: The Case for a Second White House in the First Three Years and a New Look at a Times of Trouble
On Thursday, when the seriousness of a crisis he is facing can often be seen by the vehemence of the rhetoric he uses to respond, Trump came out fighting.
The unanimous vote in favor of subpoenaing the former President for documents and testimony was mocked by the first Trump spokesman.
Pres Trump won’t be intimidated by their rhetoric or actions. Budowich wrote that America First leadership and solutions will be restored after the Mid-terms when Trumpendorsed candidates sweep them.
Then the former President weighed in on his Truth Social network with another post that failed to answer the accusations against him, but that was clearly designed to stir a political reaction from his supporters.
“Why didn’t the Unselect Committee ask me to testify months ago? Why did they wait until the end of the meeting? The Committee is a waste of money. Trump wrote.
The suit claims that “no president or former president has ever been compelled to provide testimony in response to congressional subpoenas.”
The committee declined to comment on the filing, which comes days before the the deadline set by the committee for Trump to begin cooperating. But the suit likely dooms the prospect of Trump ever having to testify, given that the committee is expected to disband at the end of the legislative session in January.
Given the slim chance of Trump complying with a congressional subpoena then, many observers will see the dramatic vote to target the ex-President as yet another theatrical flourish in a set of slickly produced hearings that often resembled a television courtroom drama.
The investigation was no longer just about what happened in January, it was also about the future, according to Rep. Liz Cheney.
The Wyoming lawmaker who lost her primary to a Trump supporter and won’t be returning to congress said that the country was at risk of losing its identity because of the conduct of the former President.
She said that they are obligated to seek answers from the guy who started it all. “And every American is entitled to those answers, so we can act now to protect our republic.”
The rule of law, free elections and accountability are in jeopardy as a result of Donald Trump and his movement.
Trump dropped his clearest hint yet Saturday of a new White House run at a moment when he’s on a new collision course with the Biden administration, the courts and facts.
Trump never really went away after losing reelection in 2020, but a dizzying catalog of confrontations is vaulting him back into the center of US politics. It’s likely to deepen polarization in an already deeply divided nation. And Trump’s return to the spotlight probably means next month’s midterm elections and the early stages of the 2024 presidential race will be rocked by his characteristic chaos.
Those controversies also show that given the open legal and political loops involving the ex-President, a potential 2024 presidential campaign rooted in his claims of political persecution could create even more upheaval than his four years in office.
And while fierce differences are emerging between Democrats and Republicans over policy on the economy, abortion, foreign policy and crime in the 2022 midterms – while concerns about democracy often rank lower for voters – there is every chance the coming political period revolves mostly around the ex-President’s past and future.
The Case for the Trump Organization in New York: The New York Trial of the Ex-President and Two Other Pro-Trump Activists
The Trump lawyers tapped to deal with the committee’s subpoena demands have been coordinating with other members of the former president’s legal team while determining how to proceed, according to a source familiar with the matter.
In Arizona, one of the ex-President’s favorite candidates, GOP gubernatorial hopeful Kari Lake – a serial spreader of voter fraud falsehoods – is again raising doubts about the election system. Lake told AZTV7 that he was worried that it probably wouldn’t be fair.
With the ex-president holding over the House GOP there is a chance that next month’s election will install a Republican majority in the house and bring back Trumpism to political power. Some leading “Make America Great Again” Republicans are already speaking of a possible drive to impeach Biden and have already signaled they will use their powers to investigate to rough up Biden for a possible clash with Trump in 2024.
An already pro-Trump Republican presence in Washington is likely to expand after the midterms. It is questionable whether the candidates will accept the result in their races if they lose their seats in less than two weeks.
On Monday, the Trump Organization is going to go on trial in New York. The ex-President hasn’t been personally charged but the trial could impact his business empire and prompt fresh claims from him that he is being persecuted for political reasons that could inject yet another contentious element into election season. In a separate civil case, New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, has filed a $250 million civil suit against Trump, three of his adult children and the Trump Organization, alleging that they ran tax and insurance fraud schemes to enrich themselves for years.
Democrats are attempting to bring Trump back into the political spotlight. President Joe Biden equated MAGA followers with “semi-fascism” and some campaigns have tried to scare critical suburban voters by warning pro-Trump candidates are a danger to democracy.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/24/politics/donald-trump-circus-analysis/index.html
The Committee on Extremist Political Investigations (RAIS): High-profile people in the committee examining the case of the ex-President Trump
But raging inflation and spikes in gasoline prices appear to be a far more potent concern before voters head to the polls, which could spell bad news for the party in power in Washington.
The ex-President told supporters at a rally in Texas on Saturday regarding the possibility of a new White House bid, “I will probably have to do it again.”
“It may take multiple days, and it will be done with a level of rigor and discipline and seriousness that it deserves,” Cheney told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“This isn’t going to be, you know, his first debate against Joe Biden and the circus and the food fight that that became. This is a far too serious set of issues.”
Video testimony over an intense period of days or hours is not likely to be attractive to the ex- President because it would be harder for him to control how his testimony is used.
Trump has tried to use claims that justice is being used against him as a reason to run for president. Any prosecution of Trump must balance the national interest and the precedent that would be set if a president were to get away with trying to overthrow an election.
A decision to charge an ex-president running for a non-consecutive second White House term would undoubtedly cause a firestorm. Should there be evidence of a crime sparing him from accountability would be harmful to future presidents with strongman instincts.
It’s unclear at least for now if the committee will make a criminal referral to the Justice Department if Trump doesn’t cooperate. Cheney didn’t want to put the cart before the horse when she was asked about the panel’s likely actions.
The former president’s production of the documents is questionable at best, so he may not produce them by the end of the day. The committee has been lenient when it comes to deadlines in the past, at least when there’s ongoing communication with a subject’s legal team.
One set of records the panel is after involves communications with the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, both designated as far-right extremist groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The committee ordered Trump to give them details on any conversations that took place between him and either group from September 2020 to the present.
Other high-profile people found in the committee’s order include Roger Stone, Stephen Bannon, retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Jeffrey Clark, John Eastman, Rudolph Giuliani and more.
AFTER JUSTICE POST THE MAGIC ATTACK ON THE PHOENIX CENTRAL BACKGROUND VIOLATION AT THE CIOLOGICAL STUDY
“The committee has been working in a very collaborative way and I would anticipate we won’t have disagreements about that,” she said. “But we’ll have to make those decisions as we come to it.”
On the same day that the House committee ordered Trump to turn over the documents and testify, U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols sentenced Steve Bannon, Trump’s political advisor, to four months in prison for criminal contempt of Congress after failing to comply with a different committee subpoena.
The source said that Jack Smith wrote a letter to the committee on December 5, requesting all of the information about the investigation.
WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump is suing the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol to avoid cooperating with a subpoena requiring him to testify.
Trump engaged with the committee in a good faith effort to resolve these concerns consistent with Executive Branch prerogatives and separation of powers but the panel “insists on pursuing a political path leaving President Trump without a choice but to involve the third branch, the judicial branch.”
The letter requested personal communications between Trump and members of Congress, as well as information on extremist groups. The nine member panel extended its deadline to this week after Trump’s response to that request was due last week.
“I think he has a legal obligation to testify, but that doesn’t always make up for Donald Trump,” Cheney said last week.
Trump and his company deny any wrongdoing or criminality in all matters, state and federal, and have aggressively maintained innocence. Trump has also won dismissals of two lawsuits this week in cases brought by his niece and his former attorney.
Mar-a-Lago documents: Did Trump mishandle classified material? The Justice Department is investigating if some documents from the Trump administration were mishandled when they went to his Mar-a-Lago resort after he left office. A federal grand jury in Washington has been empaneled and has interviewed potential witnesses to how Trump handled the documents. The National Archives, charged with collecting and sorting presidential material, has previously said that at least 15 boxes of White House records were recovered from Mar-a-Lago, including some classified records.
The justice department is investigating the post-2020 election period. While the DOJ has not acted publicly during the so-called quiet period leading up to the midterms, a grand jury in Washington has been hearing from witnesses. Recently, the DOJ moved to compel additional testimony from former White House counsel Pat Cipollone and deputy White House counsel Patrick Philbin.
The panel is weighing criminal referrals for former President Donald Trump and a number of other individuals, sources say, including former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, right wing lawyer John Eastman, former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark and Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani, as CNN previously reported.
A referral represents a recommendation that the Justice Department investigate and look at charging the individuals in question. A January 6 panel is the only body that can approve a referral, it’s not binding on prosecutors to bring a case.
Committee Chair Bennie Thompson told reporters he expected to make a decision on criminal referrals at the virtual meeting on Sunday. But Schiff reiterated on Sunday that the committee will wait to announce its decision until December 21, when it plans to present the rest of its report.
A Subcommittee Report on Criminal Referrals to the House Select Committee on Investigating the Gravest Offense in Constitutional Terms
“I think the more we looked at the body of evidence that we had collected, we just felt that while we’re not in the business of investigating people for criminal activities, we just couldn’t overlook some of them.”
Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who leads the January 6 subcommittee tasked with presenting recommendations on criminal referrals to the full committee, said Thursday, “I think anyone who engages in criminal actions needs to be held accountable for them. And we are going to spell that out.”
“The gravest offense in constitutional terms is the attempt to overthrow a presidential election and bypass the constitutional order,” Raskin told reporters. It is supported by a whole host of statutory offenses, which support the gravity and magnitude of that violent assault on America.
But two Republicans volunteered to join the panel: Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who was the No. 3 House Republican at the time, and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, a six-term lawmaker who was a rising star in the party. The staff of the GOP brought along their own people, who worked for the committee.
The House committee decided to hold Meadows in criminal contempt of congress and refer his case to the Department of Justice as he refused to testify. Given his position in the Trump West Wing and his claims of executive privilege, the Justice Department decided against indicting him for evading his subpoena.
The previous referrals to the DOJ for contempt of Congress would not impact how the panel handles the criminal referrals, according to a suggestion Thursday by Raskin.
“We are as a subcommittee, several of us that were charged with making the recommendations about referrals, going to be making that recommendation to the full committee today,” panel member Rep. Adam Schiff said prior to the meeting on CBS “Face the Nation.” Members on the committee would then need to approve the recommendations.
Sessions of the Subcommitte on Investigating the Campaign to Overturn a 2020 Election: Sessions of a High-Dimensional Special Session on the Trump-Bush Campaign
The opinion was handed down by US District Judge David O. Carter in a dispute over whether the House could access certain emails sent to and from former Trump attorney John Eastman. The judge stated that Trump was aware that voter fraud claims being made in court were false and that a plot was being hatched to cheat the government.
The former President embraced a legal theory that was roundly rejected by the Trump White House attorneys and the Pence team, but which was nonetheless put forward by Eastman in the hearing.
During his deposition with the committee, Clark used the Fifth Amendment 100 times. Federal investigators have raided Clark’s home as part of their own criminal investigation.
The panel dedicated much of a June hearing to Clark’s role in Trump’s attempts to weaponize the Justice Department in the final months of his term as part of the plot to overturn the 2020 election and stay in power.
The committee focused on the efforts of Rep. Scott parry who helped Clark get into the White House.
The committee in the court filings released the text messages that were exchanged byPerry andMeadows about Clark.
Cassidy Hutchinson said at the hearing that he wanted Jeff Clark to take over the Department of Justice.
In May, Giuliani met with the panel for more than nine hours and was a leader in the attempt to overturn the 2020 election results.
The subcommittee tasked with investigating criminal referrals presented its recommendations to the full panel at a 1 p.m. ET virtual meeting, but it is unclear if those recommendations were officially adopted. The meeting was described as successful by a source.
The decision has loomed large over the committee. Members of the panel have been in wide agreement that Trump and some of his closest allies have committed a crime when he pushed a conspiracy to prevent the peaceful transfer of power, as they’ve laid out in their hearings. They have differing opinions on what to do about it.
Schiff reiterated Sunday that he believes there is evidence that Trump committed criminal offenses related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The Corrupt Insurrection Against Ex-President Marjorie Taylor Greene in Georgia: The Last of Trump’s Corrupt Proposals?
“So I think it’s an important decision in its own right if we go forward with it,” he said. The Department ought to give due consideration to that one.
But each sign that once slow burning efforts to work through the trauma of the post-election period are heating up brings a parallel warning that the future threat to truth and democracy remains acute. Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, for instance – a key force in the incoming GOP House majority that is likely to try to shut down or obstruct investigations into Trump – is embroiled in yet another controversy over the insurrection.
The Georgia Republican said that the mob that smashed into the Capitol would have been armed if she had her way. The White House disapproved of her comments, but she insisted she was joking. This came more than a week after the ex-president pushed for the destruction of the Constitution in a sign of how his potential second term could play out if he returns to the White House.
It is remarkable how tight a hold Trump’s unprecedented attempt to overturn a presidential election still has on Washington politics – even if many Americans are more concerned with feeding their families and paying rent amid raging inflation. The impact of Trumps lies is having a damaging effect. Even after Republicans won the House last month, a new CNN/SSRS poll published Monday found that only 34% of Republican-aligned adults are even somewhat confident that elections reflect the will of the people – down from 43% in October.
CNN reported Sunday that Smith is speeding ahead on twin probes into Trump’s role in an effort to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power in 2020 and his apparently haphazard storage of classified documents at his Florida residence and resort. It emerged Monday that Smith’s team subpoenaed Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who was on the other end of the then-president’s phone call designed to convince him to “find” sufficient votes to overturn Joe Biden’s win in the Peach State in 2020. Smith has been issuing a number of grand jury subpoenas since Thanksgiving, including ex-Trump adviser Stephen Miller.
It has been over 700 days since the Washington Post published the full hour audio of the phone call, and the DOJ finally got around to subpoena him. When does it happen? Under Jack Smith.
Goodman also suggested that Trump’s legal team was guilty of wishful thinking if they believed that Smith’s appointment after a period spent abroad meant he was less likely to be influenced by the politicized aftermath of the January 6 attack and that a fresh mind would lean against indictments.
Preet Bharara, a former US attorney for the Southern District of New York, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday that Smith’s appointment and his assembling of a high-powered team of experienced prosecutors represented bad news for Trump.
“I don’t think they would’ve left their former positions, both in government and private practice, unless there was a serious possibility that the Justice Department was on a path to charge. He said it would happen in a month.
Attorney General Garland has made it clear that no one is above the law and that investigations will be based on the evidence. It would take considerable time to prepare and conduct a trial because of the legal process. It would be best for any prosecution of a former president and current presidential candidate to take place as soon as possible before the White House race ends.
The CNN legal analyst said on Monday that the case was facing a challenge of finishing before the election.
I think they will bring a case on the documents side as soon as possible, but it is likely to take more time because of the January 6 date.
While Smith is following legal procedures, the political context makes it even more incumbent on the DOJ to demonstrate to Americans that it had no choice, for instance, to mount an unprecedented search at an ex-president’s home.
It is unlikely that prosecutors at the DOJ will be influenced by the opinion of the select committee, albeit one that is backed up by a mountain of evidence, that the former president should be indicted. One reason why prosecutors have been trying to get hold of the panel’s testimony and other materials for months is because it could be useful in the DOJ’s investigation.
The turn of the year and early months of 2023 are beginning to look like a time of redemption for those who are investigating Trump and his associates.
Report on the House Ethics Committee Investigation of the January 6 U.S. Capitol Insurrection and a Recommendation to the ASHRAE Ethics Committee
While the panel was already eyeing a day later next week to release its final report and hold a hearing simultaneously, it could now hold that presentation earlier than expected.
“We looked at the schedule, and it appears we can complete our work a little bit before that. So why not get it to the public as quick as we can?” The Chairman of the Committee told reporters that he was from the Capitol steps.
Aside from criminal referrals, Thompson said there could be other categories of recommendations the committee makes, such as ethics referrals to the House Ethics Committee, bar discipline referrals and campaign finance referrals.
The Republican lawmakers argue that the select committee didn’t address the security failures that led to the US Capitol breach. Kevin McCarthy, House Minority Leader, was subpoenaed by the committee, but did not cooperate with the investigation. The panel took the unprecedented step of referring the four returning members of Congress to the House Ethics Committee.
Thompson has also said any attorney who was found to be connected to the plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election could be disciplined for their actions.
“I think anytime an officer of the court disrespects the ethics of a proceeding, that has to be reviewed” as part of the committee’s discussions, Thompson told NPR earlier this month. “But as a person who would consider a lawyer to have the highest possible ethical standards, I would have real issue with them not respecting those standards.”
Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, has told CNN the panel is expecting to release “hundreds” of transcripts, but there are some witnesses with sensitive material that the panel has agreed to protect.
The congressional committee was investigating the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol that claimed eight lives and referred former President Donald Trump for four criminal charges related to the insurrection he inspired.
Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Trump, criticized the committee in a statement as a “Kangaroo court” that held “show trials by Never Trump partisans who are a stain on this country’s history.”
The panel has been very careful in crafting these recommendations and tethering them to the facts that they uncovered, according to a member of the committee.
A lot of time was spent on what the code sections are and the bottom line recommendation, but the facts, which are really important when we discuss anything we will do, that people understand.
Sensitivity to Subpoenas by the Speaker of the House Select Committee on Ethics Referencing a Manifold from the Capitol
The Justice Department has largely focused on criminal statutes related to the violence, for obstructing a congressional proceeding and in some limited cases for seditious conspiracy, when charging defendants in connection with the attack on the US Capitol.
The House Select Committee is considering how to hold accountable the GOP lawmakers who failed to comply with subpoenas, says Rep. Adam Schiff, who is a member of the committee.
We will be looking at the remedies for members of Congress who ignore a congressional subpoena, as well as the evidence that was so relevant to our investigation, in order to bring them in, according to the California Democrat.
The impact House referrals might have has not yet been decided because the Department of Justice special counsel investigation is already looking at President Donald Trump.
“Censure was something that we have considered. The committee will make a decision Monday on ethics referrals.
This is someone who tried to pressure the state to find votes that didn’t exist. This is someone who tried to interfere with a joint session, even inciting a mob to attack the Capitol. If that’s not criminal, then I don’t know what is,” he added.
The Justice Department is going to be referred to as the former president broke multiple criminal statutes, but he refused to comment on the charges, but said he thought Trump had committed insurrection.
I believe the president has violated several criminal laws. He said that you have to be treated like any other American who breaks the law.
What will the January 6 panel of the KEK committee tell us about what is going on, what is not, and what will it tell us?
The panel will hold its last public meeting on Monday and release its full report on Wednesday. Unlike many previous gatherings, Monday’s is a business meeting rather than a hearing as no witnesses are set to testify.
And while we won’t know everything that’s to come from the January 6 committee this week until it unfolds, here’s what you need to know about what’s expected, what’s not, and where this could all lead.
The panel is expected to announce during Monday’s meeting that they will refer 3 criminal charges to the Justice Department against Donald Trump.
Attorney General Garland said that it will be up to the facts and evidence to decide whether or not to bring charges. Garland will make the decisions about charging.
Judges have used the term “insurrection” to describe the January 6 attack on Congress’ certification of the 2020 presidential election. The Justice Department hasn’t brought the charge in hundreds of US Capitol riot cases.
“That will be something we will be considering tomorrow,” Schiff added, noting that the panel has weighed whether it is better to criminally refer members of Congress to other parts of the federal government or if Congress should “police its own.”
The January 6 committee is expected to move to formally ask the Department of Justice to prosecute Donald Trump over his role in the US Capitol insurrection.
In its highly produced hearings, the committee – with its seven Democrats and two Republicans who split with their own party to take part – painted scenes of horrific violence and intense efforts by Trump to steal Joe Biden’s presidency.
A Capitol Police officer told how she had slipped on spilled blood during the melee caused when the ex-president’s mob smashed its way into the Capitol. A mother and daughter who worked as election workers in Georgia described how they faced racist threats after Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, accused them of vote stealing. The speaker of the Arizona state House testified that he was unfamiliar with Trump’s calls to meddle with the election.
Cassidy Hutchinson was one of the Republicans who testified about Trump’s assault on the constitution, because he was with some of Trump’s advisers in the West Wing. The ex-aide to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows recalled, “It was unpatriotic. It was un-American. We were watching the Capitol building get defaced over a lie.”
The committee contended in its hearings that Trump helped to plot to subvert the election in Congress by using fake electors. When those efforts failed, after then-Vice President Mike Pence refused to wield powers he did not have, the committee argued that Trump called a mob to Washington and incited a vicious attack on the Capitol. Committee members said that his failure to protect Congress, the Constitution and the rule of law amounted to contempt for his oath of office.
Will an impression be created that Trump is being hounded by any referrals nearly two years after he left office, to help his campaign in the future?
And do Americans as a whole, at a time of national strain amid high inflation and the aftermath of a once-in-a-century pandemic, really care about events that rattled US democracy nearly two years ago?
Investigating the 2020 Presidential Election Attack: Rep. Kinzinger, Sen. Cheney, and the DOJ in the House of Representatives
GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who, like Cheney, served on the committee in defiance of his party and will not be returning to Congress, explained his actions in seeking to hold Trump to account in his retirement speech on the House floor last week.
Many of her fellow Republicans refused to acknowledge the ex-president’s conduct, suggesting that her sacrifice to the House GOP may be in vain. The Senate Watergate hearings in the 1970s resulted in the resignation of President Richard Nixon and there was little reason to think the public would not be interested in this act of accountability. Today’s polarized times and the power of conservative media to distort what really happened on January 6 may help explain this dichotomy.
Still, Americans rejected many of Trump’s midterm candidates in swing state races who had amplified his false claims of 2020 election fraud, suggesting some desire to protect American democracy.
Why does this matter? This is the conclusion of the investigation into the attack on Jan. 6. The committee is also expected to provide its assessment of some of the weaknesses in the electoral system, which members argued enabled Trump and his allies to go as far as they did in their attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. The panel will make policy recommendations aimed at better protecting democratic institutions and processes, including reforming the Electoral Count Act.
“This is a massive investigation that the committee has undertook. Huge amounts of evidence, a huge amount of witnesses being identified,” former federal prosecutor Shan Wu told CNN’s Pamela Brown on “CNN Newsroom” on Saturday.
The report that accompanies the referrals will give a road map to the DOJ. DOJ has been kind of late to this party and they are playing catch-up but that detail could be very helpful to them and will put a lot of pressure on them as well.”
Future generations will be able to judge the determination and courage of the panel members, especially the two Republicans, if nothing else.
The Senate Select Committee on Investigations of the January 6 Corrupt Prolegomena against the Excluding White House Attorney John Eastman
We now live in a world of lie, where Trump is the one telling it, according to the Republican.
“If we, America’s elected leaders, do not search within ourselves for a way out, I fear that this great experiment will fall into the ash heap of history.”
The January 6 panel can approve a referral, but it does not mean that federal prosecutors will bring such a case.
With the federal investigation now being led by special counsel Jack Smith, it appears Justice Department investigators are already looking at much of the conduct that the select committee has highlighted.
A source familiar with the matter says insurrection, obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the federal government are included.
For the latter two, the lawmakers can rely on an opinion from a federal judge in California, who wrote earlier this year that there was evidence that Trump and his allies were plotting to defraud the US government and to obstruct an official proceeding. The opinion was handed down by US District Judge David O. Carter in a dispute over whether the House could access certain emails sent to and from former Trump attorney John Eastman.
The committee sought to tell the story of what happened before and on January 6 by interviewing the former president’s closest allies, court battles to free up documents and through blockbuster hearings.
The recommendations are in line with the allegations that the House select committee made against Trump and his elections attorney John Eastman.
He said any referrals presented on Monday would include supporting evidence and that individuals will not be named to more than one category. Monday’s meeting will also include a public presentation that summarizes the panel’s work.
The Jan. 6 Report of the Kinzinger Committee on Investigating the Censorship and Corrupt Campaign to Overturn the 2020 Presidential Election
Kinzinger told CNN that it would be nice if the last thing he did was something a little less dramatic, but he stressed that the report will be one.
Committee member Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., told NPR she came away from reading the Jan. 6 report “shocked by the breadth and depth of this plan to create a big lie and pull every lever of government to corrupt an election.”
Luria said that “no masterminds of this case will be held accountable, but rather the people who did try to corrupt the government and its processes.”
“We’re not piling onto existing prosecutions,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said of upcoming criminal referrals. The crime of the most serious gravity are attended to, and that’s what we want to make sure no one falls through the cracks.
The committee has laid out evidence against people who they say pushed a strategy to derail the election.
Goldman is a member of the New York Congress and he said the panel could have criminal evidence that would never be referred to the Justice Department. Goldman suggested the panel might consider referrals for witness intimidation, obstruction of justice and false statements made under oath.
“They want to make sure the Department of Justice also evaluates all of the evidence that they’ve uncovered, to be sure that they’re including everything in evaluating whether or not a crime was committed and the charges should be brought,” Goldman said.
NPR obtained a small portion of a draft script for the Monday meeting that shows the panel intends to accuse lawyers John Eastman and Kenneth Chesebro of being tied to the conspiracy to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Eastman was a Trump ally who helped lead the effort to overturn President Biden’s win, while Chesebro has been considered a central figure in the scheme pushing for a slate of fake Trump electors in various states won by Biden.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/19/1143415487/the-jan-6-committee-is-about-to-have-its-last-hearing-heres-what-to-expect
The House Select Committee on Capitol Intifad has ruled out Subpoenas from the Capitol to the House of Representatives
“They could be subject of both criminal referrals, but also referrals to their state bar association to review whether or not they should continue to have their bar license if they are making blatant misrepresentations in court filings or otherwise,” Goldman said.
When asked at a press conference last week if he was concerned that he and his colleagues might face criminal referrals, McCarthy said, “No, not at all. We did not do anything wrong.
More than 900 people have been charged with crimes related to the attack. Law enforcement has arrested alleged rioters in nearly all 50 states, as well as the District of Columbia.
The House select committee investigating the Capitol riot is dropping several of its pursuits for Jan. 6-related phone records, according to court filings last week, as the panel winds down before it expires at the end of this year.
The committee sent out dozens of subpoenas seeking call logs, including to major phone companies, as part of its investigation into Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election result. All of the big telecom companies agreed to avoid handing over data to the House while some of them fight the committee’s authority. Few of the cases have been resolved.
“On December 12, 2022, Plaintiffs were informed by counsel for the Select Committee that the Select Committee will be withdrawing the subject subpoena issued by the Committee,” one court filing, from lawyers representing members of the Oath Keepers extremist group, wrote in one recent request to drop a lawsuit.
The 2018 CNN telecast panel on Donald Trump’s 2020 election: The case against voter fraud and the election of Joe Biden, aka Joseph Biden
CNN’s special coverage of the meeting, anchored by Jake Tapper and Erin Burnett, will begin at 12 p.m. ET. It will stream live without requiring a cable log-in via CNN.com, CNN OTT and mobile apps, or CNNgo from 12 p.m. ET to 5 p.m. ET.
The committee released an executive summary of its report on Monday, and it plans to release the full report on Wednesday, as well as transcripts of committee interviews.
“Donald Trump broke that faith. He lost the 2020 election and knew it. But he chose to try to stay in office through a multi-part scheme to overturn the results and block the transfer of power,” Thompson said. “In the end, he summoned a mob to Washington, and knowing they were armed and angry, pointed them at the Capitol and told them to ‘fight like hell.’ There’s no doubt about this.”
Specifically, the panel said Trump “oversaw” the legally dubious effort to put forward fake slates of electors in seven states he lost, arguing that the evidence shows he actively worked to “transmit false Electoral College ballots to Congress and the National Archives” despite concerns among his lawyers that doing so could be unlawful.
Members stressed that Trump knew the election was not stolen but continued to push baseless claims about widespread voter fraud in an effort to upend Joe Biden’s legitimate victory.
The video showed how Trump attacked election workers and the body- camera footage of officers who were attacked by rioters.
The 2020 White House Committee on Electoral Corruptcy: What Do They Need to Know? The Case of Rep. Cheney and Kinzinger
It’s important to remember how this all started. House Democrats were willing to give committee slots to GOPers who had voted to overturn the 2020 results, despite their differences over which Republicans should be allowed to serve. Instead, Republicans boycotted.
To be sure, Cheney and Kinzinger are outliers in their conference because they are anti-Trump. And that is the core of Trump’s critiques of the committee – that it is stacked with Trump haters. Even if they oppose Trump, they are still conservative Republicans. Kinzinger and Cheney lost primaries this summer and are not returning to Congress next year.
During Monday’s hearing, Kinzinger spoke about how his House GOP colleagues were involved in the efforts to overturn the election. He highlighted evidence that Trump wanted top Justice Department officials to “put the facade of legitimacy” on his voter fraud claims so “Republican congressmen … can distort and destroy and create doubt” about the 2020 election results.
Democrats will forever be able to tell you that the panel’s final report and criminal referrals are bipartisan, no matter what Trump and his allies say.
The full report will be released later this week, according to Thompson. This will be a historical document that will be studied for generations. Never before has a sitting president tried to steal a second term.
The panel has begun to provide transcripts of witness interviews relating to the false slates of electors and the pressure campaign on certain states to overturn the 2020 election results.
The committee has now taken the most urgent question about Trump’s rule-breaking conduct: Will he ever face accountability for it? The fact that the norm was almost overthrown by the US democracy is cause for grave concern.
The issue of accountability gets to the core of Raskin’s comment about foot soldiers – since many of those who were in the mob that trashed the Capitol have been convicted and jailed already. And since winning the White House in 2016, Trump repeatedly avoided paying political and legal prices as the ultimate example of a “ringleader” who skips past judgment. Robert Muller, the former special counsel, was able to uncover evidence of Trump’s obstruction of justice but decided not to make a finding that the president committed crimes. And Trump was the first president to be impeached twice, but both times most Republicans in the Senate found reasons not to convict him.
“That evidence has led to an overriding and straight-forward conclusion: the central cause of January 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump, who many others followed,” the committee writes in a summary of its final report released on Monday. “None of the events of January 6th would have happened without him.”
The Defense of the Insurrection Against Donald Trump in the Correspondence to the House of Representatives of the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill
The DOJ has its own investigation into the events surrounding the insurrection and will have to weigh whether the case stands up as well in a court of law as it seemed to in the Capitol Hill committee room on Monday afternoon.
“The Justice Department has to go so much further on every single one of these people who was touched and interviewed and seen by the committee in any way,” former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe said on CNN on Monday.
The nature of the committee, which featured little cross examination of witnesses and used curated video excerpts to make its most strident case, means that it is impossible to get a full picture of all of the evidence. Some witnesses might have made statements favorable to Trump that would surely be used by his lawyers in court.
CNN legal analyst Elie Honig said that Trump’s lawyers would “go through every word of this, that is their job, that is their right. They will look for any inconsistencies, and will look for a reason to attack the potential witnesses against them in court. That is what defense lawyers do.”
One particular complication for the Justice Department is that the nature of the insurrection and the involvement of a former president makes this an unprecedented case. A good defense team could try to undermine a prosecution by implying that Trump did not intend to commit fraud in the 2020 election. They could also claim that in telling supporters to “fight like hell” to save their country, he was simply exercising his constitutional rights to free speech. Special counsel Jack Smith and Garland would have to satisfy themselves before laying charges that there was a substantial likelihood of obtaining a conviction if they decided to prosecute, after considering the likely thrust of Trump’s defense.
Rod Rosenstein, who served as deputy attorney general in the Trump Justice Department, told CNN’s Erin Burnett that the most serious referral – accusing Trump of giving aid and comfort to an insurrection – would likely come up against a First Amendment defense.
The department would have to prove that the president inciting lawless action was directed at them. They would have to prove he intended a mob to engage in violent activity. That would be a hurdle to prosecuting him under that charge,” Rosenstein said.
With the DOJ facing enormous pressure to investigate Trump, it is hard to say that the events of Monday will add to the burden. But at the same time, if Garland were to disregard multiple referrals, he would be certain to infuriate Democrats who already think the department has been slow to pursue Trump.
In the event that DOJ agrees with one of the lesser charges, the political earthquake caused by a prosecution might not be much different from if Smith believed Trump had aided an insurrection. In a scenario in which the president’s successor tries to topple him, America has never heard of it. And of course, if no case is made over January 6, Trump is also facing the possibility of charges in another Justice Department investigation – into his hoarding of classified material at his Mar-a-Lago resort after he left office.
Smith would likely be helped by the committee’s depiction of Trump’s deviant behavior, at least the part that doesn’t defend him whatever he does, if the public was prepared for the possibility that a former president could go on trial. Attempted coups are, after all, more akin to fragile developing world democracies and dictatorships.
“No man who would behave that way at that moment in time can ever serve in any position of authority in our nation again. The Wyoming Republican said that he is not fit for any office.
The January 6 Committee Report on President Donald Trump and the 2020 U.S. Presidential Insurrection: Where the Debate Goes
The author of the book, “OK Boomer, Let’s Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind,” is a journalist based in New York. Follow her on Twitter @JillFilipovic. The opinions expressed in this commentary are her own. View more opinion on CNN.
Exactly two years ago, when Trump sent a late-night message to his supporters, promising that it ” will be wild”, the conclusion was necessary.
But the committee’s findings are about a shocking attack on American democracy, one with which the nation has not fully reckoned. How strong are our democratic institutions if those who attempt to level them can simply walk away without being held accountable? If attempts to topple a democracy are washed away, is it possible that it will survive?
The January 6 committee recommended that the prosecutors take on four criminal charges, including helping or aiding an insurrection, conspiring to defraud the United States, making false statements and obstructing an official proceeding of Congress. The conclusion of its report is due on Wednesday and it will provide justification for the charges, but there is not need for the Justice Department to act.
That story is damning. The January 6 protest over the 2020 election had spun out of control and witnesses testified that Trump was told multiple times to ask the rioters to leave. He didn’t do it for hours while watching the carnage on TV, according to the panel.
Evidence showed that Trump was told multiple times there was no evidence of election fraud. He raised $250 million from his fans on claims that the election was stolen, according to the committee.
The Weight of What Happened in Wyoming (January 6, 2018): Rep. Liz Cheney and the Detection of a Trump-Accused Fraud
Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming laid out the weight of what happened that day. The United States has been a great democratic experiment and the peaceful transfer of power has been important in our nation’s well-being.
Cheney said that no President has ever tried to install himself in office by challenging the results of a free and fair election.
That a former President would encourage his followers to subvert American democracy and break our national tradition of a peaceful handover is something for which there are political and legal solutions.
It seems like a foregone conclusion they will claim that the charges are politicized and trumped-up, leveled because Trump is a threat to the “swamp” and “deep state,” and that Democrats fear him so much they are willing to shut him down using any means necessary. An indictment would be hugely divisive in an already-divided nation.
It is worse than letting a former leader destroy the nations trust in elections and democratic processes. What will prevent other people from doing the same thing if there is no penalty?
There isn’t any evidence that Trump regrets what he did. He was planning to repeat his election fraud claim if he felt his preferred candidates lost in the 2020 election. He is running for President again, and if he wins, he may use his power to destroy American democracy as we know it.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/20/opinions/criminal-referrals-jan-6-committee-filipovic/index.html
The Birth and Death of a Demonstration: A Motion to Investigate indictment of the Grand Unified Charged with the Blame of President Donald Trump
In the age of Trump, parts of the Republican Party have been hollowed out for conspiracy theorists, racists, antisemites, liars, religious extremists and adherents to the cult of MAGA.
The GOP has become so intellectually bankrupt that it didn’t even bother with a platform in the last presidential election, instead essentially saying that its policy positions are whatever Trump wants. Some Republican politicians, and voters, seem to be fine with an America run by a despot, as long as it’s their guy.
But other Republicans understand just how big a monster they’ve created and don’t like where this horror story is going. The justice system in the US should be demanded to do its job.
There is no perfect playbook for how to handle such a situation. Truth and reconciliation are needed by nations that have experienced trauma. They do not paper over and forget what happened.
The January 6 committee’s findings, and its referral to the Department of Justice, are the first step. Taking the case to another vaunted American institution — our justice system, where defendants are presumed innocent and the prosecution must build a case for guilt beyond a reasonable doubt — is the necessary next one.
It’s the state of American politics, with a divided populace and millions purposely not paying attention to evidence presented by the committee, just two weeks ahead of the two-year anniversary of the riot.
Five Takes Away From The Final Jan 6 Committee Hearing About Donald Trump’s Campaigning for the 2020 White House Addressing the ‘Fake’ Campaign
Smith was appointed by the Attorney General after Trump announced he was running for president to show independence from the investigation.
Jamie Raskin said the system of justice is not one where foot soldiers go to jail and get a free pass.
All are close allies of Trump, and their resistance in the face of the rules has been emblematic of the antagonistic style of U.S. politics that was growing even before Trump came on the scene.
McCarthy is in line to be the next speaker of the congress and Republicans control the ethics committee, which is not certain whether anything will happen to them.
That’s been evident to those of us who’ve covered Trump for a while, but it was affirmed by Hope Hicks, a former communications adviser in the Trump White House, someone who was very close to Trump.
In taped testimony that was made public on Monday, President Trump’s communications advisor said that she had told him she was starting to worry that false claims of fraud were hurting his legacy.
“He said the only thing that matters is winning, and no one will care about my legacy if I lose, at least that’s what he said,” Hicks said.
“He was—he had—usually he had pretty clear eyes,” said Bill Stepien, the Trump 2020 campaign manager, according to written testimony released in a report by the committee. He was pretty realistic with the view we had of the forecast as well as the uphill climb, so he understood, you know, where the race was.
Stepien said that they would have to tell you that someone told you about the votes or that it was fraud. That would be the truth telling crew’s job and it’s even easier to tell the president about wild allegations. It’s a harder job to be telling him on the back end that, yeah, that wasn’t true.”
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/20/1144303656/5-takeaways-from-the-final-jan-6-committee-hearing
Reply to Meadows’ Report: “It’s Not All You Need To Know About Donald Trump, but It’s Always Yours to Know”
One of Trump’s campaign lawyers, Alex Cannon, in a mid-to-late November phone call with former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, said, per the report, that he found nothing “sufficient to change the results in any of the key States.”
These aren’t people who are aligned with Democrats or were “Never Trump” or “Trump Haters,” as the former president likes to say. The opposite is true in most of the testimony that’s been aired by the committee.
It’s no wonder that the nation is divided politically and more so among Republicans. So despite the primary evidence — with testimony from Republicans who were aligned with Trump — people have been watching selectively.
“Although the Committee’s hearings were viewed live by tens of millions of Americans and widely publicized in nearly every major news source, the Committee also recognizes that other news outlets and commentators have actively discouraged viewers from watching, and that millions of other Americans have not yet seen the actual evidence addressed by this Report.”
There is evidence to suggest those who watched were moved. In a NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll, almost half of the independents thought Trump was responsible for what happened that day. After several hearings, the July survey found that the percentage blaming Trump spiked to 57%.
They don’t need to act on the committee’s findings, because they are not paying much attention to the details of its findings. But don’t expect to hear much about the special counsel’s progress, as the DOJ tends to stay pretty quiet, if not wholly silent, on the details of ongoing investigations until they present them in court.
Politically, it’s going to be up to voters to choose. Trump’s base will likely support him. Republicans are the least likely to pay attention to these hearings. In a multi- candidate primary, Trump is still the front-runner.
And the members of this committee — some of whom won’t be returning to Congress because of the wrath, or potential wrath, of Trump’s base — certainly hope voters respond.
The handover comes during a key week for the committee. The panel on Monday held its final public meeting, during which committee members voted to refer former President Donald Trump to the DOJ on at least four criminal charges. The panel is slated to release its full final report on Wednesday.
On CNN, Lofgren said that the committee would make the transcripts public on Wednesday because they have given some to the Department of Justice.
The summary of the report states that the panel is aware of multiple tries by the president to contact witnesses and that the DOJ is aware of at least one of those circumstances.
Some witnesses were combative, answering hundreds of questions with a variant of the answer, while others gave highly questionable explanations or refused to tell the truth.
The public can assess the issues when they look at the committee transcripts and compare accounts of witnesses and counsel.
The committee summary said both Hutchinson and a White House employee testified to the panel about the Ornato conversation. Ornato claimed that he did not remember either of the conversations and that he did not know about the President’s anger.
Mueller’s cram session: An investigation of the money raised by Trump after the January 6 rally and the House committee’s final report
The committee says it gathered evidence showing that Trump raised around one quarter of a billion dollars after the election and through the January 6 rallies.
“For example, the Trump Campaign, along with the Republican National Committee, sent millions of emails to their supporters, with messaging claiming that the election was ‘rigged,’ that their donations could stop Democrats from ‘trying to steal the election,’ and that Vice President Biden would be an ‘illegitimate president’ if he took office,’” the summary states.
The panel has never gone as far as Congressman Lofgren claims, but they have proof that some members of the Trump family were beneficiaries of money raised by the former president because of his false election claims.
In May, the DOJ had asked the panel for all of its transcripts, but committee members felt the depositions were the committee’s property.
The former president’s aides and advisers hope that the release of the panel’s transcripts will provide them with new information about the DOJ criminal investigation.
McCarthy has vowed to hold hearings next year on the security failures that led to the Capitol breach and has called on the select committee to preserve all of its records and transcripts.
This year-end cram session is different due to the release of the House committee’s final report, the surprise visit to the White House by the Ukrainian President, and the fate of a consequential immigration rule hanging in the balance.
Biden is expected to announce an additional $1.8 billion in security assistance to Ukraine, a significant boost in aid headlined by the Patriot missile systems within the defense assistance package, a US official told CNN.
The two will hold a White House news conference before Zelensky addresses the members of Congress during a time when the attention of the nation is on Capitol Hill.
Senate leaders are aiming Wednesday to take the procedural steps necessary to pass a year-long federal spending bill by Thursday and send it to the House, where it is expected to be adopted.
The IRS and the High-Relevance Expulsion of the Biden-President Sam Bankman-Fried from the Balkans to the Bahamas
A border restriction that was instituted by the Trump administration and was due to expire on Wednesday will continue because the Supreme Court has no deadline.
The Supreme Court should reject an emergency bid by a group of GOP-led states to keep the restriction in effect while legal challenges play out, the administration told the court on Tuesday. But it also asked for the court to delay the ending of Title 42 until at least December 27, citing ongoing preparations for an influx of migrants and the upcoming holiday weekend.
The rule has allowed border officials to immediately turn away migrants who have crossed the southern border illegally, all in the name of Covid-19 prevention. There have been nearly 2.5 million expulsions – mostly under the Biden administration, which has been bracing for an influx of arrivals if the authority lifts.
The Democratic-led House Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday asserted that the IRS failed to properly audit Trump’s taxes while he was in office. It released a report that detailed six years’ worth of the former president’s tax returns, including his claims of massive annual losses that significantly reduced his tax burden.
The extradition hearing for FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried is expected to be scheduled for Wednesday at 11 a.m. ET, according to Nassau Magistrate Court administrator Alpha Grant.
Grant confirmed the timing of Wednesday’s hearing shortly after Jerone Roberts, Bankman-Fried’s Bahamian attorney, spent several hours in the courthouse Tuesday afternoon and then left amid a swarm of unanswered questions from reporters.
Bankman-Fried was arrested at his luxury residence in the Bahamas a week ago when he was going to testify before the House Financial Services Committee.
The House Committee on the Nov. 6 Capitol Insurrection and the Democratic-Leading Committee on Capitol Hill Reconciliation (Revised)
Nearly two years after the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, the Democratic-led House committee investigating the attack is set to release its full report Thursday.
Nancy Pelosi praised the committee’s work but did not give any details on the next steps for the referrals of four House members.
I respect the findings of the Committee that have reached important conclusions. Our founding fathers insisted that no one is above the law in the United States. This bedrock principle remains unequivocally true, and justice must be done,” Pelosi said.
A bill updating the Electoral Count Act has bipartisan backing and has been attached to the omnibus spending bill moving through Congress in the coming days.