Teasing new witnesses, Rep. Adam Kinzinger says of Trump and his allies: ‘They’re all scared. They should be.’
In a series of Sunday tweets, Rep. Adam Kinzinger said Donald Trump and his allies, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, are “scared” following last week’s testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson before the Jan. 6 select committee.
“This BIPARTISAN committee has been able to find out things that up until recently were denied by the Jan 6th truthers, so they are left with trying to discredit a young woman with more courage than they could muster in a lifetime. Except… that isn’t working,” Kinzinger tweeted.
“Cassidy doesn’t seek the limelight, but she is compelled with honor. She didn’t even have to swear an oath to the constitution like Kevin, Elise, Kristi Noem and others did. But she volunteered to come under oath to tell what she knows. She is a better person than them all. “
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Liz Cheney says the January 6 panel won’t ‘stand by’ and let ‘men who are claiming executive privilege’ attack Cassidy Hutchinson’s character
Rep. Liz Cheney in an interview that aired on Sunday reaffirmed her confidence in former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony and said that the House panel investigating the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol wouldn’t sit by idly and let her endure anonymous attacks.
While sitting down with ABC News chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., the Wyoming Republican expressed confidence in Hutchinson and the credibility of future hearings.
“What Cassidy Hutchinson did was an unbelievable example of bravery and of courage and patriotism in the face of real pressure,” she said.
“The Committee is not going to stand by and watch her character be assassinated by anonymous sources and by men who are claiming executive privilege. And so we look forward very much to additional testimony under oath on a whole range of issues,” she added.
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Liz Cheney says the Jan. 6 committee could potentially make multiple criminal referrals, including one against Trump
Rep. Liz Cheney in an interview broadcast on Sunday said that the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol could potentially make multiple criminal referrals, including one against former President Donald Trump.
During an interview on ABC’s “This Week,” Cheney — who serves as the vice-chair of the panel — was asked by correspondent Jonathan Karl if the work conducted by its members has shown that Trump’s conduct warrants prosecution.
“Ultimately, the Justice Department will decide that,” the Wyoming Republican said. “I think we may well as a committee have a view on that.”
She continued: “If you just think about it from the perspective of what kind of man knows that a mob is armed and sends the mob to attack the Capitol and further incites that mob when his own vice president is under threat — when the Congress is under threat? It’s just very chilling. And I think certainly we will continue to present to the American people what we’ve found.”
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DOJ wants a DC judge to reject Steve Bannon’s request to delay his contempt-of-Congress trial over January 6 hearings’ publicity, saying that he has ‘barely been mentioned’
The Department of Justice asked a DC judge on Friday to reject Trump ally Steve Bannon’s request to delay his contempt-of-Congress trial, arguing that the January 6 hearings have not revolved around him to the point of distraction.
On Wednesday, Bannon’s lawyers asked a DC judge to delay his July 18 trial, citing a “media blitz” from the public January 6 committee hearings and saying the request was “due to the unprecedented level of prejudicial pretrial publicity.”
DOJ lawyers said that Bannon is not as popular as he thinks he is.
“The Defendant’s motion gives the false impression — through general statistics about the volume of viewership of the Committee’s hearings and overall media coverage of the Committee’s hearings — that all of the Committee’s hearings and the attendant media coverage is about him,” DOJ lawyers wrote in a filing on Friday. “The truth is just the opposite — the Defendant has barely been mentioned in the Committee’s hearings or the resulting media coverage of them.”
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2 Secret Service sources told CNN that Trump angrily demanded to be taken to the Capitol on January 6, partly confirming Cassidy Hutchinson’s explosive testimony
Two Secret Service sources told CNN on Friday that they heard about former President Donald Trump lunging at the driver of his presidential SUV on January 6, 2021.
The pair of sources, who spoke under the condition of anonymity, backed up much of former Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s explosive testimony on the altercation in the motorcade vehicle known as “the Beast” after Trump found out he wouldn’t be driven to join his supporters at the Capitol.
“He had sort of lunged forward – it was unclear from the conversations I had that he actually made physical contact, but he might have. I don’t know,” one of the Secret Service sources told CNN. “Nobody said Trump assaulted him; they said he tried to lunge over the seat – for what reason, nobody had any idea.”
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Michael Cohen says Trump uses a ‘mob boss’ playbook
Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, compared the former president to a “mob boss” amid allegations that Trump allies sought to intimidate Jan. 6 witnesses.
“Donald Trump never changes his playbook,” Cohen told The Washington Post. “He behaves like a mob boss, and these messages are fashioned in that style. Giving an order without giving the order. No fingerprints attached.”
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Trump allies paid legal fees for multiple Jan. 6 witnesses, including Cassidy Hutchinson, sparking witness-influencing concerns, report says
Former President Donald Trump’s allies and supporters paid the legal fees for multiple people who had provided testimony to the January 6 committee, including the former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, The New York Times reported.
Hutchinson eventually fired the lawyer who was paid for a pro-Trump group, and went on to provide damning testimony about Trump, the report said.
Two sources familiar with the committee told The Times that they believe Hutchinson’s decision to part ways with the lawyer — who had been recommended by Trump allies and paid for by a pro-Trump PAC — likely played a role in her decision to provide new evidence.
There are no laws against a third party paying for a witness’ legal representation in a congressional inquiry, but the situation may raise some ethical concerns, according to the report.
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Former Secret Service agent said he, too, would have defied Trump’s request to be taken to the Capitol on January 6
Former Secret Service agent Jonathan Wackrow said in an op-ed that he also would not have taken then-President Donald Trump to the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
In an op-ed published by Newsweek, Wackrow said he was shocked by Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony to the January committee regarding Trump’s actions on the day of the Capitol riot. Hutchinson, a former aide in the Trump White House, claimed that Trump had gotten into a physical altercation with the head of his security detail while demanding to be brought to the Capitol.
“If I had been working on Trump’s security detail on January 6, I would have made the same decision as Secret Service Special Agent in Charge Robert Engel to not go to the Capitol based on the known escalating threats,” Wackrow wrote.
He added, however, that he believed Trump still respects the Secret Service because he probably has seen “first-hand what they’re willing to do to protect him and his family.”
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GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger says Cassidy Hutchinson is a ‘hero’ and has ‘more courage than most’ Republicans after January 6 testimony
GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois on Thursday applauded Cassidy Hutchinson for her testimony to the January 6 committee, saying the former top aide to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has “more courage” than most of his Republican colleagues.
“Cassidy Hutchinson is a hero and a real patriot (not a faux ‘patriot’ that hates America so much they would attempt a coup.),” Kinzinger, one of two Republicans on the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection, said in a tweet.
“Of course they will try to bully and intimidate her. But she isn’t intimidated. More courage than most in GOP,” Kinzinger added of Hutchinson.
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GOP Sen. Pat Toomey says Trump’s chances of winning the party’s 2024 presidential nomination are ‘much more tenuous’ following the January 6 committee’s hearings
Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania suggested Thursday that public hearings from the House select committee investigating January 6, 2021, had damaged former President Donald Trump politically, even among Republicans.
At the end of a wide-ranging interview with Bloomberg that focused on the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on the Environmental Protection Agency and the Federal Reserve’s approach to tackling inflation, the retiring lawmaker was asked whether he believed the hearings would preclude Trump from seeking a second term as president in 2024.
“I don’t know that it means that. I mean he gets to decide whether he’s going to run,” said Toomey, who was one of seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump on a charge of incitement of an insurrection after the Capitol riot.
“Look, I think he disqualified himself from serving in public office by virtue of his post-election behavior, especially leading right up to January 6,” Toomey said. “I think the revelations from this committee make his path to even the Republican nomination much more tenuous.”
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Cheney ‘absolutely confident’ that former White House aide’s explosive testimony is credible
Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, who serves as vice-chair of the House’s January 6 committee, said she is “absolutely confident” that a former White House aide’s damning testimony is accurate.
“I am absolutely confident in her credibility. I’m confident in her testimony,” Cheney told ABC News’s Jonathan Karl about the allegations made by top Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson this week.
Cheney said that Hutchinson showed “an unbelievable example of bravery and of courage” by testifying.
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Bannon wants his contempt trial to be delayed because of Jan. 6 hearings
Trump ally Steve Bannon has asked for his contempt-of-Congress trial to be delayed because the hearings on the Capitol riot are getting so much publicity.
A federal grand jury indicted Bannon in November 2021 on two counts of contempt of Congress after he refused to comply with a subpoena from the House committee investigating the Capitol riot.
In a Wednesday court filing, Bannon’s lawyers argued that the coverage of the committee’s hearings would make his trial unfair.
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January 6 panel subpoenas former White House counsel Pat Cipollone
The House’s panel investigating the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, has subpoenaed former White House counsel Pat Cipollone.
The demand for Cipollone to appear before the committee comes after explosive testimony from a former top White House aide in the Trump administration, who described Trump and his inner circle’s actions before and during the insurrection.
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Former Secret Service agent says Trump’s ‘girth’ would have made it impossible to attack driver
A former White House aide testified that former President Donald Trump grabbed the steering wheel of his SUV and lunged at a Secret Service agent on January 6, 2021, after they refused to take him to the Capitol building.
But former Secret Service agents told Insider they have doubts about the story.
“Trump’s not a little guy, right? And the space to actually be able to lunge towards the wheel is not that big,” one former agent said, speaking on background to Insider. “I don’t mean to sound disparaging to the former president, but just his girth would prevent him from actually getting to the steering wheel.”
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House Republican who led rioter on tour before insurrection could oversee Capitol police
Republican Rep. Barry Loudermilk — who led a Capitol rioter on a tour of the building the day before the insurrection — could end up overseeing Capitol police.
If Republicans regain control of the House, Loudermilk would be next in line to lead the committee that has oversight over the police force attacked by Trump supporters on January 6, 2021.
Loudermilk has faced backlash from Democrats after video showed him taking a group on a tour of the Capitol building, showing them hallways, security areas, and stairwells. The next day, members of the tour flaunted a sharpened flagpole bearing the American flag as they marched near the Capitol.
It remains unclear whether the group entered the Capitol building itself during the riot.
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Former Jan. 6 committee investigator announces run for Senate
January 6 committee investigator John Wood is launching an independent Senate campaign in Missouri in an effort to stop GOP nominee Eric Greitens.
Wood told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that he believes Greitens — the former Missouri governor — is likely to win the Republican nomination, and that voters deserved an alternative.
Wood, a Republican, said he will run as an independent.
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Trump ally says Hutchinson’s testimony was a ‘campaign commercial’ for Ron DeSantis in 2024
Explosive testimony by a former Trump White House aide could be a boost to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to replace Trump on the presidential ticket in 2024, CNN reported.
One Trump adviser said the hearings — which painted as Trump as violent and volatile — were “basically a campaign commercial” for DeSantis. Another told CNN that “no one is taking this lightly.”
DeSantis has flirted with larger political ambitions and is a rising Republican star who would be poised to fill the leadership vacuum if Trump is forced aside.
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Secret Service agents willing to dispute Hutchinson’s claims about Trump’s outburst, reports say
Secret Service agents are willing to testify before the January 6 House panel to refute former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s claim that Trump tried to grab the steering wheel when he demanded to be taken to the Capitol on the day of the insurrection, according to multiple reports.
The driver of the car and the head of Trump’s security are ready to testify under oath that the former President never lunged for the wheel or physically assaulted the driver, according to CBS News.
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Hutchinson’s testimony could lead to legal trouble for Trump: report
Former aides to Donald Trump worry the explosive testimony by a former White House aide could put Trump in legal jeopardy, according to the New York Times.
“This hearing definitely gave investigators a lot to chew on,” former Attorney General Bill Barr told the Times after testimony from top White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson detailed Trump’s behavior on the day of the Capitol riot.
Hutchinson’s testimony painted Trump as a volatile man who knew his supporters were armed on January 6, 2021. Trump also demanded to be taken to the Capitol building, but his security staff refused, Hutchinson said.
Mick Mulvaney, who was once Trump’s White House Chief of Staff, said evidence of possible witness tampering could open his orbit up to charges.
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Former Trump press secretary shares text that appears to show Melania Trump to condemn Capitol riot violence
Former Trump Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham shared a text exchange on Tuesday that purportedly showed former First Lady Melania Trump refusing to condemn the violence during the Capitol riot.
The apparent screengrab of a text exchange was between Grisham and a person named “MT.”
“Do you want to tweet that peaceful protests are the right of every American, but there is no place for lawlessness & violence?” read the message.
“No,” the person replied.
Representatives for Melania Trump at Trump’s post-presidential press office did not respond to a request for comment from Insider.
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John Eastman drops lawsuit blocking his phone records from January 6 committee
In a late Tuesday filing, John Eastman dropped a lawsuit he’d filed to prevent the Jan. 6 committee from accessing his phone records.
“Plaintiff brought this lawsuit primarily to protect the content of his communications, many of which are privileged,” the latest filing read. “The Congressional Defendants represented in their motion to dismiss that they were not seeking the content of any of Plaintiff’s communications via the subpoena they had issued to Defendant Verizon.”
The former Trump lawyer’s phone was seized by federal agents on June 22, according to a separate suit he filed on Monday, seeking the return of his property. Of interest to investigators are call logs from Eastman’s personal device, and the search warrant indicates investigators will not review any additional content from his phone without a court order.
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Trumpworld shocked by former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s explosive January 6 testimony, calling it the ‘most damning day’ and ‘insane’
It took six hearings for the January 6 select committee to finally break through to embattled former President Donald Trump’s inner circle.
Cassidy Hutchinson, a top aide to then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, testified during a surprise hearing Tuesday that Trump was determined to go to the US Capitol with his armed supporters on January 6, 2021, as Congress was certifying the election results.
Hutchinson’s additional revelations about that day came crashing down on Trumpworld during the two-hour hearing. Among them were that Meadows told Hutchinson “things might get real, real bad” on January 6, that Trump knew his supporters were armed when they flooded the Ellipse to attend his “Stop the Steal” rally, and that Trump said “Mike deserves it” when rioters chanted “hang Mike Pence.”
“Definitely most damning day of testimony,” one former White House aide told Insider.
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Fox News host says it’s not ‘wholly out of character’ that Trump ‘might throw his lunch’ after January 6 testimony on ketchup dripping down the wall
Moments after a colleague referred to Tuesday’s January 6 committee testimony as “stunning,” Fox News host Martha MacCallum downplayed new revelations about former President Donald Trump’s violent outbursts surrounding his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified that Trump threw a plate in the White House dining room after he found out former Attorney General Bill Barr publicly said there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud, leaving “ketchup dripping down the wall.”
“I mean, I’m not sure that it really shocks anybody that the president just — knowing what we’ve seen, observing him over the years — if he got angry then he might throw his lunch,” MacCallum said. “I’m not sure. It’s obviously a very dramatic detail, and the way that she describes it, um, is. But I’m not sure if this is wholly out of character with the Donald Trump and the President Trump that people came to know over the years.”
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Here are all the people who sought preemptive pardons from Donald Trump after the Capitol riot, per January 6 committee witnesses
At least nine people close to former President Donald Trump requested preemptive presidential pardons in the wake of the Capitol attack, according to testimony shared with the January 6 panel.
At least six Republican lawmakers were among those who reportedly requested the pardons and a former top White House aide on Tuesday alleged that former White House Chied of Staff Mark Meadows and former Trump counsel Rudy Giuliani also asked the president for pardons.
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Trump rattles off a dozen livid social media posts as ex-aide gives explosive testimony to Jan. 6 panel
Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday unleashed a dozen social media posts in the wake of the testimony of a former top White House aide before the January 6 committee, calling the staffer a “total phony,” “third rate social climber’ and suggesting she was a “whacko” because of her handwriting.
“There is no cross examination of this so-called witness. This is a Kangaroo Court!” Trump wrote on his social media platform.
In another post, he said that her “body language is that of a total bull…. artist. Fantasy Land!”
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A former Trump White House chief of staff says the latest January 6 hearing provided ‘stunning’ new evidence of potential criminality
Tuesday’s congressional hearing on the insurrection was a “very, very bad day” for the former president, former Trump White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said.
The hearing featured a former White House aide testifying that Donald Trump knew some protesters were armed before they marched to the US Capitol — and that his own top advisors asked for pardons after the January 6 riot.
“A stunning 2 hours,” Mulvaney, a onetime Trump loyalist, posted on Twitter following the testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Mark Meadows, who succeeded Mulvaney as Trump’s White House chief of staff.
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A Capitol Police officer injured on January 6 said ‘our own president set us up’
A US Capitol Police officer injured during the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol told HuffPost’s Igor Bobic “our own president set us up” during the sixth public hearing of the House committee investigating the Capitol riot.
Sgt. Aquilino Gonell, an Army veteran who was in the room during Tuesday’s hearing, testified before Congress last year about the injuries he suffered while defending the Capitol. Gonell underwent surgery and was moved to desk duty as a result of the injuries he sustained to his foot and shoulder while being physically attacked by rioters during the Capitol siege.
“I just feel betrayed,” Gonell told Bobic on Tuesday. “The president should be doing everything possible to help us and he didn’t do it. He wanted to lead the mob and wanted to lead the crowd himself … he wanted to be a tyrant.”
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Congressman says Trump sent police to the Capitol to be ‘potentially slaughtered’
Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego said US Capitol cops were ‘sent to be potentially slaughtered’ on January 6 after a former White House staffer gave stunning testimony that former President Donald Trump knew that protesters were armed and heading to the Capitol.
“If it wasn’t because of this brave 25-year-old woman, we wouldn’t even know what was happening,” the Arizona lawmaker told reporters at the hearing on Thursday, referring to Cassidy Hutchinson. “This is a very sad moment in our country right now.”
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Former top White House aide says Trump’s attacks on Pence ‘disgusted’ her
Former top Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson said ex-President Donald Trump’s attacks on then-Vice President Mike Pence during the Capitol riot “disgusted” her.
“I remember feeling frustrated, disappointed, and really, it felt personal, I was really sad,” she testified when asked for her reaction to Trump’s praise of the rioters on January 6, 2021. “As an American, I was disgusted. It was unpatriotic, it was un-American. We were watching the Capitol building get defaced over a lie.”
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Liz Cheney shares evidence of witness tampering at Jan. 6 hearing
January 6 panel vice chair and GOP Rep. Liz Cheney shared two messages purportedly received by witnesses before their testimony that she said are signs of witness tampering.
Cheney shared two messages that she said witnesses had received ahead of their depositions. The witnesses, who Cheney didn’t name, subsequently shared the messages with the committee.
In one, a witness received a phone call: “[A person] let me know you have your deposition tomorrow. He wants me to let you know that he’s thinking about you. He knows you’re loyal, and you’re going to do the right thing when you go in for your deposition,” the caller allegedly said.
Witness tampering is a federal crime.
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Ex-White House aide said she wanted Mark Meadows to ‘snap out of it’ during Capitol riot
Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows’ former top aide testified that she wanted him to “snap out it” and pay attention to the chaos unfolding at the Capitol building on January 6, 2021.
During her testimony before the January 6 committee, Cassidy Hutchinson said she saw Meadows on his couch on his phone as rioters stormed the Capitol building and fought with police.
Hutchinson said she asked Meadows: “The rioters are getting really close. Have you talked with the president?”
Meadows allegedly replied: “No, he wants to be alone right now.”
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Rudy Giuliani and Mark Meadows both sought pardons from Trump
Donald Trump’s lawyer and ex-mayor Rudy Giuliani as well as the president’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows both sought pardons after the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.
That’s according to explosive testimony from Meadows’ aide during a House hearing investigating the insurrection.
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Trump threw dishes and flipped tablecloths ‘several times’ while at the White House: former aide
Former President Donald Trump’s temper flared “several times” in the White House, a former top aide says, recounting how he threw dishes and flipped tablecloths in the White House dining room.
“There were several times throughout my tenure with the chief of staff that I was aware of him [Trump] either throwing dishes or flipping the tablecloth to let all the contents of the table go onto the floor and likely break or go everywhere,” said former aide Cassidy Hutchinson.
After one outburst, Hutchinson said she had to wipe ketchup off the wall.
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Fox News host: Trump throwing his lunch isn’t ‘wholly out of character’
Fox News host Martha MacCallum downplayed new revelations about former President Donald Trump’s violent outbursts while he attempted to overturn the 2020 election.
Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified that Trump threw a plate in the White House dining room after he found out former Attorney General Bill Barr publicly said there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud, leaving “ketchup dripping down the wall.”
MacCallum said the alleged outburst didn’t sound “wholly out of character,” even as a Fox News colleague called the revelations “stunning.”
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Donald Trump says he ‘hardly’ knows the former top aide who gave damning testimony against him
Former President Donald Trump called the ex-White House aide who gave damning testimony about his actions on January 6 “bad news” and said he “hardly” knew her.
“I hardly know who this person, Cassidy Hutchinson, is, other than I heard very negative things about her (a total phony and “leaker”) …,” Trump wrote in part on his social media platform, Truth.
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Mike Flynn pleaded the 5th when asked whether the violence on January 6 was justified
Mike Flynn, a former 3-star general and Trump’s national security advisor, waited over a minute before pleading the Fifth Amendment when asked if violence during the Capitol riot was justified.
During a House panel on the insurrection, committee vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming aired a clip of Flynn appearing to struggle with the question.
Flynn also refused to say whether he supported the peaceful transition of power.
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Trump threw his lunch at the wall after Barr said there wasn’t widespread voter fraud: ex-aide
A former top White House aide testified that ex-President Donald Trump threw his lunch at a wall after then-Attorney General Bill Barr told him there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud.
“There was ketchup dripping down the wall and there was a shattered porcelain plate on the floor,” Cassidy Hutchinson testified on Tuesday before a House panel investigating the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.
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Trump said Mike Pence ‘deserves it’ as Capitol rioters chanted that he should be hung: ex-aide
Former President Donald Trump defended Capitol rioters who were chanting to hang Vice President Mike Pence during the Capitol riot, a top White House aide testified.
“Mike deserves it,” Trump allegedly said, according to testimony from ex-aide Cassidy Hutchinson.
Donald Trump also said that the rioters storming the Capitol building “weren’t doing anything wrong.”
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Ex-aide says top GOP Rep. Kevin McCarthy warned White House officials that Trump shouldn’t go to the Capitol on January 6
Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified that top House Republican Kevin McCarthy called White House advisors on January 6, 2021, warning that then-president Donald Trump should not come to the US Capitol.
Hutchinson told a House panel that she got a call from McCarthy after Trump’s speech on the Ellipse that day. McCarthy wasn’t convinced that Trump wasn’t planning to make his way to the Capitol building.
“Well, he just said it on stage, Cassidy. Figure it out. Don’t come up here,” she testified he said in the call.
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Trump lunged at his driver and demanded to be taken to the Capitol on January 6.
Former President Donald Trump lunged at his driver and tried to grab the steering wheel on January 6, 2021, as he demanded to be taken to the Capitol building as his supporters were marching away from his speech that morning, a former aide testified.
Cassidy Hutchinson, a former top aide to the then-White House chief of staff, told a House panel investigating the Capitol riot that a Secret Service agent relayed the story of what happened to her.
Hutchinson said that Trump “said something to the effect of ‘I’m the effing president, take me up to the Capitol now.’ “
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Trump knew the January 6 crowd was armed, but said ‘they’re not here to hurt me,’ aide testifies
A former White House aide said Donald Trump knew that his supporters were armed on January 6 hours before they stormed the Capitol building.
“I don’t fucking care that they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me,” Trump said the morning of the insurrection at the US Capitol, according to former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson.
Hutchinson said Trump was incensed that there were gaps in the crowd of his speech on January 6.
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Trump was ‘fucking furious’ armed supporters couldn’t get to his speech: former aide
An ex-White House aide testified that President Donald Trump was “fucking furious” that people in the MAGA crowd weren’t able to get to his speech on January 6, 2021 because they were carrying weapons.
Trump was insistent that security remove the metal detectors outside the White House so more people with weapons could get into the grounds, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson told the House panel investigating the insurrection.
She also quoted the president as saying: “Take the fucking mags away. Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here.”
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Feds seized John Eastman’s phone
Another big development emerged Monday in the widening federal criminal probe into Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
This one involves federal agents who seized the phone of John Eastman, a conservative lawyer who advised Trump during his failed bid to stop the inauguration of Joe Biden. Eastman made the feds’ move public in a filing with a New Mexico federal court, seeking the return of property from the government.
According to his filing, FBI agents acting on behalf of DOJ’s internal watchdog stopped Eastman as he was leaving a restaurant in New Mexico on June 22, taking his phone.
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Cassidy Hutchinson in the spotlight
Cassidy Hutchinson is the surprise lead witness for Tuesday’s sixth hearing of the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection.
The former top aide under then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is a direct witness to many of the events and discussions of interest to the panel.
She’s given the committee several important pieces of information, including the six GOP House members who sought pardons from Trump and that the president told Meadows he agreed with rioters demands to “hang” Vice President Mike Pence.
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Select committee announces surprise hearing.
The Jan. 6 select committee announced it would hold a sixth hearing to start Tuesday at 1 p.m. ET during the congressional recess and despite previous statements that it would hold its next hearings in July.
A committee advisory said it would present “recently obtained evidence” and feature witnesses, whom it did not name.
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Kamala Harris said she commended her vice presidential predecessor Mike Pence for ‘courage’ in certifying Biden as president despite Trump’s pressure
Vice President Kamala Harris said Monday that she commended former Vice President Mike Pence for certifying Joe Biden as president on January 6 despite him facing tremendous pressure by former President Donald Trump to overturn the election.
“I think that he did his job that day,” Harris said in a CNN interview after reporter Dana Bash asked her whether her opinion of Pence had changed. “And I commend him for that because clearly it was under extraordinary circumstances that he should have not had to face. And I commend him for having the courage to do his job.”
This month the House Select Committee probing the January 6 Capitol attack has detailed how Trump tried to push Pence not to recognize Biden’s victory in the days leading up to January 6, 2021. Trump wanted Pence to “send back” slates of electors for Biden back to their states in order to overturn his election loss.
But Pence put out an open letter saying he didn’t have the authority to take such actions, and his role in the certification process was largely ceremonial.
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Kevin McCarthy says it’s ‘all good’ between him and Trump as the former president fumes about the lack of Republicans on the Jan. 6 committee: ‘The right decision was the decision I made’
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said on Monday that everything is good between him and Donald Trump as the former president publicly questions whether it was wise to keep more Republicans off of the House January 6 committee.
“The right decision was the decision I made,” McCarthy told Fox News’ Dana Perino. “If other people change their opinion, read the rules and I think they’ll come back to the same conclusion.”
The former president and McCarthy have talked recently, according to the top House Republican. When Perino asked if things were “all good?” McCarthy responded, “Oh, all good. Yes.”
McCarthy repeated his long-held defense of the decision, arguing that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would have only selected Republicans that would have fit her views. The California Republican then named three of the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Trump as examples of people Pelosi would have supported.
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How to watch the House January 6 committee hearings on the Capitol attack
The House Select Committee Investigating the January 6 Insurrection at the US Capitol is bringing to light its findings from a year’s worth of work with a series of public hearings this summer.
The select committee, formed in May 2021, has nine members, seven Democrats, including Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson, and two Republicans, Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.
Its members and staff have spent the past year conducting hundreds of closed-door interviews, poring over hundreds of thousands of documents, and parsing phone and email records to reconstruct how President Donald Trump and his allies sought to overturn his 2020 election loss before a mob of pro-Trump rioters breached the US Capitol in an effort to stop the final certification of the 2020 election.
Five public hearings, including one in primetime, have already taken place, and one more hearing is scheduled for Tuesday, June 28.
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January 6 hearing takeaways: Pardon pleas, more Bill Barr, and a riveting account of how Trump turned to the Justice Department and a loyal lawyer to ‘help legitimize his lies’
Spanning more than two hours in the late afternoon, the House January 6 committee’s fifth public hearing captured the drama that unfolded inside the Justice Department and White House as Trump looked to some of the country’s most senior and important law enforcement officials to help him remain in power.
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Matt Gaetz ‘personally’ pushed for a pardon from Trump ‘from the beginning of time up until today, for any and all things,’ Trump officials testify
The January 6 committee aired a series of video testimonies from former Trump administration officials detailing which Republican members of Congress sought pardons from former President Donald Trump at the end of his term as he and his allies exhausted different avenues to stay in power.
Most prominently featured: Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida.
According to various officials who spoke with the committee, Gaetz began pushing for a pardon well before other Republicans who were involved in the attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
“Mr. Gaetz was personally pushing for a pardon, and he was doing so since early December,” said Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, in testimony aired by the committee on Thursday.
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Fox News cut away from the Jan. 6 hearing minutes before testimony by Trump aides about GOP lawmakers who sought pardons
Just as former Department of Justice Officials were detailing how they threatened to resign en masse if former President Donald Trump went ahead with his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, Fox News cut away to air its previously scheduled talk show, “The Five.”
CNN and MSNBC aired the hearings in full, which ended with Rep. Adam Kinzinger listing six GOP lawmakers whom Trump aides testified sought pardons in the administration’s final weeks.
Other than the first of the five hearings so far, Fox News has carried the proceedings without commercial breaks, save for recesses during the proceedings.
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DOJ officials threatened to resign if Jeffrey Clark was appointed Attorney General
Top officials at the US Department of Justice threatened to resign if former President Donald Trump succeeded in making loyalist Jeff Clark the acting Attorney General, per testimony before the January 6 committee on Thursday.
Richard Donoghue, former acting deputy attorney general, said that the pledge to resign was made on a phone call in the wake of reports that Trump was considering installing Clark, who at the time was promoting unfounded conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.
“They would resign en masse if the president made that change,” Donoghue told the committee. “All without hesitation said they would resign.”
At least six GOP members of Congress sought pardons after January 6, 2021, per testimony from a former White House aide
Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, testified Wednesday before the January 6 House panel that at least six House members asked the White House for a pardon following the Capitol siege.
According to Hutchinson, Republican Reps. Matt Gaetz of Florida, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Mo Brooks of Alabama, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Louie Gohmert of Texas, and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania requested pardons.
The former White House aide added that GOP Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio asked for an “update on whether the White House is going to pardon members of Congress” but did not personally ask for one.
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Trump suggested sending letter to states alleging 2020 election fraud, a former acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen testified
Former acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen said on Thursday that then-President Donald Trump suggested that the Justice Department send letters to state legislatures in Georgia and other states alleging that there was voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election despite knowing there was no such evidence.
Rosen told lawmakers on the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection that during Trump’s final days in office, the former president and his campaign suggested several strategies for the Justice Department to overturn the presidential election results. These tactics included filing a lawsuit with the Supreme Court, making public statements, and holding a press conference.
“The Justice Department declined all of those requests that I was just referencing because we did not think they were appropriate based on the facts and the law, as we understood,” Rosen said.
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A former Trump DOJ official testified that former President Donald Trump urged him and other officials to ‘just say the election was corrupt’
The January 6 committee on Thursday displayed scans of notes taken by Richard Donoghue, then the acting deputy attorney general serving out the final days of the Trump administration.
One note, displayed as Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois led the committee’s questioning, included an apparent plea from then-President Donald Trump to “just say the election was corrupt” and “leave the rest to me and the [Republican] congressmen.”
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Bill Barr says he’s ‘not sure we would have had a transition at all’ to Biden if DOJ hadn’t investigated Trump’s baseless voter fraud claims
Former Attorney General William Barr said he was “not sure we would have had a transition at all” if the Justice Department had not investigated Donald Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud and found them baseless.
In a closed-door deposition, Barr suggested to the House committee investigating the January 6 attack that Trump might not have left office voluntarily if DOJ had not proactively examined the election fraud claims ahead of Joe Biden’s inauguration.
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‘You would be committing a felony’
Former White House attorney Eric Herschmann told the committee that he brutally mocked a plan from a Trump loyalist to hijack control of the Justice Department in a last-ditch effort to overturn the 2020 election.
“And when he finished discussing what he planned on doing, I said, ‘good, fucking, excuse me, f-ing, a-hole, congratulations you just admitted that your first step or act you would take as attorney general would be committing a felony and violating rule 6c,” Herschmann told the panel, per an excerpt of his previously private deposition that was released on Thursday.
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Fast times in the Capitol
Sean Penn is in the House.
The actor and well known Hollywood activist made an unexpected appearance at the fifth hearing of the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection.
“I’m just here to observe — just another citizen,” Penn told a CNN reporter. “I think we all saw what happened on January 6 and now we’re looking to see if justice comes on the other side of it.”
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Liz Cheney is mailing instructions to Democrats on how to change parties and vote for her in Wyoming’s GOP primary
As Rep. Liz Cheney faces a tough reelection battle in Wyoming, she’s turning to Democrats in her home state to help her chances in the August 16 Republican primary.
Cheney’s campaign has mailed instructions to Wyoming Democrats on how to change their party affiliation to vote for the incumbent congresswoman, The New York Times reported on Thursday. Under Wyoming law, voters must be registered as a Democrat or a Republican in order to vote in that party’s primary election.
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Feds search home of former top Trump DOJ official
We’ve got a major development that surfaced Thursday into what appears to be a widening federal investigation into Donald Trump’s bid to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Federal investigators on Wednesday searched the Northern Virginia home of Jeff Clark, a former top Justice Department official who became the go-to Trump ally trying to push DOJ into backing the then-president’s baseless claims about voter fraud.
ABC News first reported this, and a DOJ spokesperson has since confirmed to Insider’s Ryan Barber that law enforcement activity did indeed happen in the Washington DC suburb where Clark lives. The spokesperson wouldn’t comment on the nature of the activity or about any specific individuals.
Expect to hear Clark’s name a couple times or more during Thursday’s House select committee hearing as the panel examines Trump’s efforts to use DOJ in his bid to stop Joe Biden from being sworn in as the country’s 46th president.
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#unprecedented
Here’s something that doesn’t show up on the internet very often: a 30-second trailer for a new three-part documentary taking people behind the scenes of Donald Trump’s presidency and the January 6 insurrection.
But that’s exactly what landed online late Wednesday via Discovery+, which shows footage of the new series titled “Unprecedented.” The clip features Trump and his adult children Ivanka, Donald Trump Jr., and Eric Trump and closes with the ex-president himself agreeing to discuss the riot at the US Capitol.
—discovery+ (@discoveryplus) June 23, 2022
House January 6 investigators have the documentary footage too, courtesy of a subpoena that Politico reported about. And Trump allies were apparently in the dark about the filming, with one texting Rolling Stone: “what the fuck is this?”
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Hearings to resume at 3 p.m. ET Thursday with testimony expected from former DOJ officials
The January 6 commission’s fifth hearing is expected to start at 3 p.m. Thursday, with testimony expected from former Trump-administration Justice Department officials. They are:
- Jeffrey Rosen, former acting attorney general
- Richard Donoghue, former acting deputy attorney general
- Steven Engel, former assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel
Rosen served as acting attorney general in the final weeks of Trump’s presidency. He previously told the committee how he came under persistent pressure from Trump to have the DOJ back Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, as Insider’s C. Ryan Barber reported.
Toward the end of his presidency, Trump considered ousting Rosen and installing Jeffrey Clark, a supporter of the bogus voter-fraud claims, in his place, but ultimately decided not to after officials threatened to resign if he went through.
Trump is hate-watching every Jan. 6 hearing and almost screams at the TV because he feels nobody is defending him, report says
Former President Donald Trump is hate-watching the January 6 committee hearings, incensed because he believes nobody is defending him, according to The Washington Post.
Trump is at “the point of about to scream at the TV” as he tunes in to each hearing, one unnamed close advisor told the paper.
Another in his circle, also unnamed, told the paper that Trump continually complains that “there’s no one to defend me” at the hearings, which have attracted huge amounts of media coverage.
Per The Post, Trump’s anger centers on House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who boycotted the committee at its formation, passing up the chance to put pro-Trump figures on the panel.
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DOJ issued subpoenas to alleged fake Trump electors and a Trump campaign official, reports say
The Justice Department expanded its investigation into the Capitol riot after issuing subpoenas to a would-be Trump elector in Georgia and a Trump campaign official who worked in Arizona and New Mexico, The Washington Post and The New York Times reported Wednesday.
Arizona, Georgia, and New Mexico are among the seven battleground states where a failed effort to overturn the election took place by appointing pro-Trump electors.
The news comes after Rep. Adam Schiff said the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection obtained evidence that former President Donald Trump was involved in the aforementioned scheme.
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Ivanka Trump claimed to believe Trump’s false voter-fraud theories but later told Jan. 6 panel she didn’t, report says
Ivanka Trump claimed to believe former President Donald Trump’s false voter-fraud theories in a December 2020 interview, directly contradicting her testimony to congressional investigators earlier this year, a new report says.
In April 2022, Trump had told the House committee investigating the Capitol riot that she had “accepted” former Attorney General Bill Barr’s assessment that Donald Trump’s claims of election fraud were wrong.
But according to The New York Times, Ivanka Trump told the documentary filmmaker Alex Holder on December 10, 2020 — nine days after Barr made the assessment that supposedly swayed her — that she supported her father’s efforts to challenge the 2020 election results.
She said Trump should “continue to fight” the 2020 election results because Americans were questioning the “sanctity of our elections.”
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Election worker testifies that conspiracy theorists tried to citizen’s arrest her grandmother after lies from Trump, Giuliani
A Georgia election worker testified that her grandmother faced a citizen’s arrest by a group of election deniers who tried pushing their way into her house due to election lies told by former President Donald Trump and former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, an election worker in Fulton County, Georgia, told lawmakers during a January 6 select committee hearing that she and her mother Ruby Freeman, who worked as a short-term election worker in 2020, were among the workers counting ballots at State Farm Arena in Atlanta.
When Giuliani and Trump accused those workers of orchestrating election fraud, Moss said her family faced death threats and were pushed out of town, living in Airbnbs for two months around January 6 at the FBI’s recommendation.
Moss said she endured racist harassment as well, adding that a group of people influenced by the election conspiracies showed up to her grandmother’s house and tried to perform a citizen’s arrest.
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Where’s Pat Cipollone?
Paging Pat Cipollone.
The former White House counsel under then-President Donald Trump is now front and center as a top witness the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection still wants to hear from.
That’s according to Rep. Liz Cheney, who publicly called Tuesday for Cipollone to testify about evidence the committee has collected showing that he “tried to do what was right” as Trump pushed to overturn the 2020 election.
Cheney also noted that the House panel is also “certain” Trump doesn’t want Cipollone to testify. His previous job as Trump’s top White House attorney could complicate the matter, though as Insider’s Ryan Barber points out in his story, Bill Barr did participate in its investigation.
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Sexualized texts, a break-in and doxxings
Tuesday’s House select committee featured jaw-dropping testimony from election officials who detailed the threats they faced after refusing to go along with then President Donald Trump’s bid to overturn the 2020 election results.
One big dose of it came from Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who explained how he received texts from all over the US and eventually his wife became a target of harassment too.
“My wife started getting the texts and hers typically came in as sexualized texts, which were disgusting,” Raffensperger said during his testimony before the January 6 committee. “You have to understand that Trish and I met in high school and we have been married over 40 years now. They started going after her I think to probably put pressure on me: ‘Why don’t you just quit and walk away?'”
Raffensperger also testified about Trump supporters who broke into the home of his daughter-in-law, a widow with two children. And he said his phone and email were doxxed, meaning that someone had posted the number and email publicly so that people would message him.
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Death threats
A Black former Georgia election worker delivered stark testimony on Tuesday about the racist and deadly threats that came when President Donald Trump publicly attacked her and her mother amid his drive to overturn the 2020 election results.
Insider’s Bryan Metzger has more on the remarks from Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss, a veteran election official in Fulton County who ended up on the receiving end of myriad threats after Rudy Giuliani specifically named her and her mom when speaking to the Georgia state Senate.
“They included threats, a lot of threats wishing death upon me,” Moss said. “Telling me that, you know, I’ll be in jail with my mother, and saying things like, ‘Be glad it’s 2020 and not 1920.'”
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‘We were just kind of useful idiots’
“We were just kind of useful idiots, or rubes at that point.”
That’s a quote from former Donald Trump 2020 campaign staffer Robert Sinner describing to the House January 6 investigators his displeasure with a scheme to overturn now-President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in Georgia.
Sinner’s remarks were broadcast in a video recording shown during Tuesday’s select committee hearing, Insider’s John Dorman reports.
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Suspicious package found outside House hearing room
The House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection kept on going Tuesday despite a suspicious package being found right outside the hearing room where the panel was meeting.
Insider’s Lauren Frias reported that the US Capitol Police officials did issue an all-clear about an hour after first sending out its alert. The police advised staff and visitors on the premises to stay away from the area during the incident.
A Fox News producer tweeted that the package appeared to be an unattended backpack on top of a walker outside of the House building.
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‘Do not give that to him’
GOP Sen. Ron Johnson sought to deliver a slate of “alternate” electors to then-Vice President Mike Pence ahead of the counting of votes during a Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021.
That’s according to a series of eye-catching text messages first displayed by the January 6 committee on Tuesday, Insider’s Bryan Metzger reported.
“Johnson needs to hand something to VPOTUS please advise,” Sean Riley, Johnson’s chief of staff, wrote of the materials that were related to “alternate” electors from two contested Midwestern states that Democratic nominee Joe Biden had narrowly carried: Michigan and Wisconsin.
“What is it?” replied Chris Hodgson, a legislative aide to Pence.
“Alternate slate of elector for MI and WI because archivist didn’t receive them,” Riley replied.
“Do not give that to him,” Hodgson replied.
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Rudy admitted to not having election fraud evidence
Rudy Giuliani admitted to not having any evidence of election fraud after the 2020 presidential election despite repeatedly claiming he did, according to the Republican speaker of the Arizona state House.
“My recollection, he said, ‘We’ve got lots of theories, we just don’t have the evidence,'” Russell “Rusty” Bowers, the Arizona official, said in describing a conversation with then-President Donald Trump’s personal attorney.
Bowers, a Trump supporter, was testifying on Tuesday before the House January 6 select committee to recount his interactions with Giuliani and the Trump legal team surrounding the events of the last presidential election.
He called the Trump team “a tragic parody” and compared them to the 1971 comedy “The Gang Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight.”
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A very real threat to the 2022 midterms
The House select committee’s January 6 hearings have spotlighted the very real threat to future US elections, including the midterms coming up this November.
That’s the big takeaway from a story by Insider’s Grace Panetta published Tuesday that looks at how a court had to intercede after New Mexico county commission initially refused to certify results from the state’s June 7 primary.
“The election denial movement pushed by Trump and his allies that spurred so many to attack the Capitol on January 6 has now fanned out to county commissions, town halls, and polling places around the country, presenting wholly novel burdens on election officials and new threats to the health of American democracy,” Grace wrote.
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Trump is ready to abandon attorney John Eastman after he was criticized in committee hearings, report says
Former President Donald Trump sees no reason to defend the conservative attorney John Eastman, Rolling Stone reported.
The decision the outlet relayed came in light of the heavy scrutiny of Eastman in the Congressional Jan. 6 committee hearings, which detailed his role helping Trump try to overturn the 2020 election.
Eastman wrote a memo detailing a last-ditch plan for Vice President Mike Pence to block Joe Biden’s certification as president on January 6, 2021, at the Congressional proceeding which was interrupted by the Capitol riot.
Citing two sources close to Trump, the outlet reported that the committee’s focus on Eastman in its public hearings had bothered Trump, and that Trump has started distancing himself from the attorney.
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Jan. 6 committee subpoenas filmmaker who interviewed Trump before and after the riot
The January 6 committee sent a subpoena to Alex Holder, a documentary filmmaker who interviewed Trump before and after the Capitol riot, Politico’s Playbook newsletter reported Tuesday.
The existence of this footage had never been reported before, and Holder is expected to fully cooperate with the panel, Playbook reported.
Holder also spent several months interviewing members of Trump’s family, including his children Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, and Eric Trump, and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, Playbook reported.
The subpoena asked Holder to provide any raw footage he might have from the Capitol riot and interviews with Trump, his family, and former Vice President Mike Pence, as well as any footage he has of discussions about voter fraud in the 2020 election.
Trump boasts he’s been impeached twice and screams ‘nothing matters!’ amid ongoing January 6 hearings
Former President Donald Trump on Friday bragged that he was impeached twice, while recycling his false claims about the 2020 election and attacking former Vice President Mike Pence and former Attorney General William Barr.
Delivering a speech to the Faith and Freedom Coalition in Nashville, the former president said Pence didn’t have the courage to embrace his effort to overturn the election and mocked Barr for being “afraid” of getting impeached.
“What’s wrong with being impeached? I got impeached twice and my poll numbers went up,” Trump said.
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Ginni Thomas says she ‘can’t wait’ to talk to Jan. 6 committee after it asks for interview over her efforts to overturn 2020 election
Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, said she “can’t wait’ to talk to the House January 6 commission after it asked to interview her over her efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
“I can’t wait to clear up misconceptions. I look forward to talking to them,” Thomas told the right-wing news site The Daily Caller. She did not say what those misconceptions might be.
Her comments come after the House Select Committee investigating the Capitol riot announced that it had requested an interview with her. Rep. Bennie Thompson, the committee’s chairman, said the panel wanted to talk to her “soon,” Axios reported.
Thomas faces scrutiny over her connections to former President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
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Even on the day of the Capitol riot, Rudy Giuliani was still doubtful if Mike Pence had the power to overturn the election, says ex-Trump lawyer
Eric Herschmann, a former Trump White House lawyer, revealed on Thursday that even on the morning of the Capitol riot, Rudy Giuliani was still debating whether then-Vice President Mike Pence had the power to overturn the votes in the 2020 election.
Herschmann’s testimony was aired on Thursday during the third of six public hearings organized by the January 6 committee investigating the Capitol riot. Thursday’s session centered on the pressure exerted by the Trump camp in a bid to get Pence to overturn the vote.
Herschmann said he received a call “out of the blue” from Giuliani on the morning of January 6, 2021, concerning what Pence’s role would be that day.
“And, you know, he was asking me my view and analysis and then the practical implications of it,” Herschmann said, who described the call as an “intellectual discussion.” “And when we finished, he said, like, ‘I believe that, you know, you’re probably right.'”
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Mike Pence’s former lawyer said he warned Trump’s camp that overturning votes would lead to the 2020 election being ‘decided in the streets’
A lawyer for former Vice President Mike Pence said that he strongly disagreed with conservative lawyer John Eastman about the Trump camp’s plan to overturn the 2020 election result and warned Eastman that it might lead to violence in the streets.
Testifying on Thursday before the January 6 panel investigating the Capitol riot, Greg Jacob said he had spoken to Eastman on January 5, 2021. During their conversation, Jacob said he expressed his “vociferous disagreement” with the plan for Pence to overturn the electoral vote on behalf of former President Donald Trump and send the votes back to their respective states.
“Among other things, if the courts did not step in to resolve this, there was nobody else to resolve it,” Jacob testified.
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Democracy on the brink
American democracy was on the brink like no time ever before.
That’s the lede paragraph from Insider’s Grace Panetta in her story that sums up the biggest takeaways from Thursday’s historic and marathon third public hearing of the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol.
Grace writes that the two lead witnesses, Greg Jacob and Michael Luttig, were steeped in legal expertise and constitutional scholarship as they explained at a granular and methodical level why neither the Electoral Count Act nor the 12th Amendment permitted then-Vice President Mike Pence to unilaterally reject Electoral College votes for President-elect Joe Biden.
Then-President Donald Trump and one of his personal legal advisors, John Eastman, were pushing the vice president to do exactly that in a break with all of US history.
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MAGA world a “clear and present danger to American democracy”
Former President Donald Trump and his supporters remain a “clear and present danger to American democracy.”
Those were the startling words of Michael Luttig, a retired federal judge who has long been championed by Republicans. He made them near the end of Thursday’s marathon House select committee hearing into the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol.
Luttig, who advised then-Vice President Mike Pence about his ceremonial role on January 6, also went on to say Trump world is being more than blunt about its plans to manipulate the results of the next election for the White House.
“The former president and his allies are executing that blueprint for 2024 in open and plain view of the American public,” Luttig testified, per Insider’s Warren Rojas.
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‘1 more relatively minor violation’ of election law…please?
It’s perhaps one of the biggest bombshells to come out of Thursday’s House select committee hearing on the Capitol insurrection: a Trump lawyer putting in writing a request to break the law.
The no-no came from John Eastman, who sent an email at 11:44 p.m. on the night of January 6, 2021, repeated his demand that Vice President Mike Pence halt the proceedings to certify the 2020 election and send it back to the states for a period of 10 days.
“So now that the precedent has been set that the Electoral Count Act is not quite so sacrosanct as was previously claimed, I implore you to consider one more relatively minor violation and adjourn for 10 days to allow the legislatures to finish their investigations, as well as to allow a full forensic audit of the massive amount of illegal activity that has occurred here,” Eastman wrote to Pence lawyer Greg Jacob.
Insider’s Jake Lahut writes that the Eastman email was sent after Jacob and the then-vice president’s staff and family, had been sheltering in place in a secure location during the riot.
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Eastman asked Giuliani to be added to Trump’s pardon list
The House panel investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol made some news on Thursday by disclosing evidence that conservative lawyer John Eastman wanted to get added to lame-duck President Donald Trump’s pardon list.
Eastman was pushing to overturn the 2020 election, and as Insider’s Oma Seddiq reports, his efforts prompted an email to personal Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
“I’ve decided I should be on the pardon list, if that is still in the works,” Eastman wrote to Giuliani, according to Rep. Pete Aguilar, a lawmaker on the January 6 panel who read the email during Thursday’s hearing.
Eastman ultimately did not receive a pardon.
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Aides say Trump called Pence ‘P-word’ and ‘wimp’ on Jan. 6 call
The language got pretty profane in the White House on the morning of January 6, 2021, Insider’s Bryan Metzger reports.
That’s according to former aides who testified to the House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection about a call then-President Donald Trump made to Mike Pence, his vice president.
“I remember hearing the word ‘wimp’. Either he called him a wimp — I don’t remember if he said, ‘you are a wimp, you’ll be a wimp’ — wimp is the word I remember,” said Nicholas Luna, a former assistant to Trump.
Julie Radford, who served as Ivanka Trump’s chief of staff, told the committee that Ivanka told her that the president “just had an upsetting conversation with the Vice President” in which he called Pence “the P-word.”
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‘Secret’ MAGA back channel Jan. 6 investigators are teasing is also Oath Keepers’ legal defense
The House January 6 investigators keep on teasing how there’ll soon be upcoming testimony that reveals secret coordination between Trumpworld and extremist groups.
But as Insider’s Laura Italiano points out in a new story, the Oath Keepers have long boasted of such a back channel.
In fact, leader and founder Elmer Stewart Rhodes and other members of the pro-Trump militia are staking their seditious-conspiracy defense case on these yet-described communications with rally organizers.
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DOJ: House’s ‘failure’ to share transcripts hurting Jan. 6 investigations
More public tension is emerging between the Justice Department and the House panel investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol.
Insider’s Ryan Barber has the details on a new letter sent Wednesday from the top US attorney in Washington DC to the House panel. There, the DOJ official says that the House panel has complicated criminal cases with its ‘failure’ to turn over interview transcripts to prosecutions.
DOJ is looking for access to more than 1,000 interviews the congressional panel has conducted during its months-long examination of the Capitol attack and former President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election.
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Judge Luttig: If Pence tossed valid electoral votes it would have been ‘a revolution’
Some really powerful testimony to start Thursday’s January 6 select committee hearing from former federal judge J. Michael Luttig.
In his opening remarks, he told the panel investigating the insurrection at the US Capitol that Vice President Mike Pence overturning the 2020 election would’ve pushed the country into ‘the first constitutional crisis since the founding of the republic.’
“That declaration of Donald Trump as the next president would have launched America into what I believe would have been tantamount to a revolution within a constitutional crisis in America which in my view would have been the first constitutional crisis since the founding of the Republic,” Luttig told lawmakers during a hearing Thursday.
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Former Pence counsel says ‘the law is not a plaything’ for presidents
Mike Pence’s former counsel Greg Jacob is a lead witness in Thursday’s third public hearing for the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol.
In his written statement submitted before the hearing, Jacob called serving the vice president “the honor of a lifetime,” while also warning that the rule of law is “not a plaything” for political leaders to bend per their whim.
“The law is not a plaything for presidents or judges to use to remake the world in their preferred image,” he wrote. “Our Constitution and our laws form the strong edifice within which our heartfelt policy disagreements are to be debated and decided.”
Insider’s Grace Panetta has more on Jacob’s testimony and spells out why he was a key figure in rebuffing the intense pressure campaign and efforts to compel Pence to obstruct or meddle with the count.
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January 6 committee says it will ‘soon’ seek interview with Ginni Thomas
Conservative activist Ginni Thomas, the wife of conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, should be expecting an interview request soon from the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol.
“We think it’s time that we, at some point, invite her to come talk to the committee,” Rep. Bennie Thompson, the Democratic chair of the panel, told Axios’ Andrew Solender. He added that the invitation would come “soon.”
Thomas has recently come under scrutiny for her role in seeking to overturn the 2020 election, including emailing Trump lawyer John Eastman and pressuring 29 state legislators in Arizona to overturn the state’s 2020 election results.
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Meet the former Trump attorney starring in the January 6 hearing
Anyone remember Eric Herschmann? The White House attorney burst into the national spotlight defending President Donald Trump during his first Senate impeachment trial way back in the early pre-pandemic days of 2020.
Now he’s back, but for a very different reason.
That’s the story that Oma Seddiq just delivered for Insider readers ahead of Thursday’s House January 6 hearing profiling Herschmann. He’s been in the news as video clips make the rounds of his testimony where he talks about warning Trump and his allies after the presidential election that there was no proof the race was rigged and stolen, and their efforts may be illegal.
In addition to his colorful language, Herschmann has drawn notice because he gave his deposition in a room with a baseball bat hanging on the wall and the word “JUSTICE” inscribed on it in bold, white letters. Observers also have noted a large painting behind him of a panda, by the artist Rob Pruitt, is similar to one that appeared in the 2015 erotic drama “50 Shades of Grey.”
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Nick Quested explains how it felt to testify before the January 6 committee
As a rap music video creator-turned-documentary filmmaker, Nick Quested is used to being behind the cameras, not in front of them.
But among the hundreds of journalists, filmmakers, and people with cameras at the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol riot, the US House’s January 6 select committee thrust Quested alone into the prime-time spotlight as one of its first public hearing witnesses.
Check out this great interview Insider’s Madison Hall did with Quested, where he described an intense lead-up to his testimony last week including sitting for 7 hours of interviews with members of House select committee and their investigative counsel.
“Imagine it’s like going to a seven-hour oral exam, except you’re the chosen subject so you’ve got lots to talk about,” Quested said. “And if you make a mistake, you go to jail.”
He also joked Wednesday that he was chosen for the public hearing because “everyone trusts a British accent.”
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Trump attorney: SCOTUS would take election case if it feared ‘wild’ Jan 6
A Trump campaign lawyer wrote in emails in late 2020 that the possibility of “wild chaos” on January 6, 2021, could pressure the Supreme Court to take up a case that could overturn the presidential election, The New York Times reported Thursday.
The December 24, 2020 email exchange between the Trump attorney, Kenneth Chesebro, and conservative lawyer John Eastman, included a discussion of the possibility that the Trump campaign could get a last-minute lawsuit challenging the election results in Wisconsin before the Supreme Court.
Eastman also claimed to have inside knowledge of “a heated fight underway” between the justices over election cases.
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The next January 6 committee hearing is due on Thursday, with Pence advisors set to testify
The next hearing by the January 6 committee is due to take place on Thursday at 1 p.m. ET.
Two advisors to Mike Pence, who was former President Donald Trump’s vice president, are due to testify.
The aides are Greg Jacob, Pence’s former counsel, and J. Michael Luttig, a retired judge for the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit who served as an informal advisor to Pence.
Two people familiar with Luttig’s testimony told CBS News that he is expected to say tht America’s democracy was “almost stolen” and that conservatives should recognize the seriousness of what Trump did on January 6.
He will also say that he urged Pence to ignore Trump’s pressure on the vice president to block Joe Biden’s certification as president, CBS News reported.
Trump had piled pressure on Pence not to recognize Biden’s victory in the days running up to January 6, 2021, and some of the rioters at the Capitol had chanted “hang Mike Pence.” Pence’s role in the certification process was largely ceremonial.
All the times GOP Rep. Loudermilk shifted his story about the Capitol tour he led a day before Jan. 6 attack
The explanation given by Republican Rep. Barry Loudermilk about a tour that he led a day before the January 6 Capitol riot has changed several times.
The committee investigating the attack said Wednesday at least one person on the tour later attended Trump’s January 6 rally and march toward the Capitol. Other tour members appear to have taken photos of stairwells and a security station in the Capitol complex.
There is currently no evidence that suggests any of the tour participants rioted inside the Capitol. There is also no evidence that suggests that Loudermilk knew any of the people on the tour wanted to commit violence or deface the Capitol.
The January 6 committee released footage of the tour on Wednesday, saying it included areas that tourists don’t typically pay much attention to, like stairwells and hallways.
Capitol police said there was nothing “suspicious” about the tour, but Loudermilk’s explanation of it has evolved.Read Full Story
Ginni Thomas emailed Trump lawyer John Eastman ahead of January 6, report says
Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, exchanged emails with John Eastman, a Trump lawyer who drafted a memo detailing a plan for overturning the 2020 election, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.
Sources close to the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection told the Post that the correspondence, which was obtained by the committee, showed Ginni Thomas went to greater lengths than previously known to overturn the election.
A spokesman for Rep. Bennie Thompson, co-chair of the committee, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Other reports have emerged of efforts by Ginni Thomas, a right-wing activist, to overturn the election. The Post previously reported she had emailed 29 GOP lawmakers in Arizona urging them to ignore Biden’s win in the state and choose pro-Trump electors.Read Full Story