Mo Brooks, a Republican House representative who has said Donald Trump asked him to try to stop Joe Biden from taking office, announced that he will cooperate with the January 6 committee, under certain conditions.
These including being questioned in public by congressmen on the committee and keeping the subject matter to the attack on the Capitol:
Today, I sent a letter to members of the January 6th Committee explaining my requirements in order to voluntarily submit to a Committee deposition. Read my requirements in the full letter below. pic.twitter.com/vL0qgOuarz
— Mo Brooks (@RepMoBrooks) June 23, 2022
Brooks is leaving Congress after voters rejected his attempt to win the Republican nomination for a Senate seat representing Alabama. He had a complicated relationship with Trump, who at first endorsed him, then un-endorsed him, after which Brooks publicly revealed the president’s request to help him overturn the 2020 election.
January 6 committee concludes hearings for the month
The January 6 committee has concluded its hearing for the day, with the next sessions expected later in July, when House lawmakers return to Washington from a recess.
In his closing remarks, committee’s chair Bennie Thompson outlined what the committee had found thus far and what it expected to show in the future.
Up to this point, we’ve shown the inner workings of what was essentially a political coup and attempt to use the powers of the government, from the local level all the way up, to overturn the results of the election. Send fake electors, just say the election was corrupt. Along the way, we saw threats of violence, we saw what some people were willing to do. In a service of the nation, the constitution? No. In service of Donald Trump.
When the Select Committee continues this series of hearings, we’re going to show how Donald Trump tapped into the threat of violence, how he summoned the mob to Washington, and how after corruption and political pressure failed to keep Donald Trump in office, violence became the last option.
The testimony of the justice department officials who gave the bulk of the day’s evidence has concluded, but before they did, Jeffrey Rosen, the acting attorney general, told a tale familiar to those who have watched the committee’s hearings closely: he never heard from Trump on the day of the attack.
“I spoke to a number of senior White House officials, but not the president,” Rosen said.
What Trump was doing during the attack and who he was talking to are both expected to be focuses of later hearings of the committee.
The committee has just unveiled evidence of more Republican congressmen requesting pardons from Trump in his final days in office.
NEW on PARDONS: Republican congressman Mo Brooks sent an email on 11 January 2021 seeking pardons for “Every Congressman and Senator who voted to reject the electoral college vote submissions of Arizona and Pennsylvania.”
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) June 23, 2022
Trump WH aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified that Brooks and Gaetz pushed for pardons for every Republican lawmaker who participated in Jan. 6 planning meeting — and Reps. Perry, Biggs, Gohmert asked for pardons. Jordan asked whether White House would pardon members.
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) June 23, 2022
The testimony adds to the list of pardon requests that have emerged as the January 6 committee aired its evidence.
Jeffrey Clark came very close to be the acting attorney general, a position in which he could have used his authority to disrupt the certification of Biden’s election win in several states, according to evidence the committee is airing.
On January 3, three days before the attack on the Capitol, the White House had already begun referring to Clark as acting attorney general, according to Adam Kinzinger, the Illinois Republican leading the committee’s questioning today.
The committee then turned to exploring a meeting between Trump and the leaders of the justice department that day in the Oval Office, in which Trump repeated specific claims of fraud that had been debunked and expressed his will to see Clark take over the department.
Richard Donoghue said he warned of mass resignations to follow if Clark took over the department. “You’re gonna lose your entire department leadership. Every single (assistant attorney general) will walk out. Your entire department of leadership will walk out within hours. And I don’t know what happens after that. I don’t know what the United States attorneys are going to do,” Donoghue said. “My guess would be that many of them would have resigned.”
Jeffrey Rosen, the acting attorney general in the final weeks of the Trump administration, is now recounting Trump’s attempt to replace him with Jeffrey Clark, who was playing a major roles in his efforts to have states that voted for Biden overturn their results.
In a meeting on a Sunday, Rosen said Clark “told me that he would be replacing me,” and had made the atypical request to ask to meet him alone, “because he thought it would be appropriate in light of what was happening to at least offer me, that I couldn’t stay on his his deputy.”
“I thought that was preposterous. I told him that was nonsensical,” Rosen said. “There’s no universe where I was going to do that, to stay on and support someone else doing things that were not consistent with what I thought should be done.”
However, Clark also said he would turn down Trump’s offer to replace Rosen if the acting attorney general signed the letter disputing the validity of Georgia’s electors for Biden.
Richard Donoghue recounted that Rosen made the decisions to begin informing other department officials about the quandary, and almost all the assistant attorney generals said they would resign if Trump replaced Rosen with Clark.
Barr 'not sure' transition to Biden would have happened without DoJ fraud probe
As this hearing has unfolded, the justice department officials testifying have said they investigated many of the claims of fraud in the 2020 election brought forward by Trump and his allies. The decision to look into these claims in the weeks after polls closed may be more significant than it appears at first glance.
In video testimony aired earlier in the hearing, William Barr, Trump’s attorney general during the election, said be believes that the department’s ability to debunk the false claims of fraud as Trump was making them were essential to allowing Joe Biden to assume office.
“I felt the responsible thing to do was to be... in a position to have a view as to whether or not there was fraud,” Barr told investigators.
“I sort of shudder to think what the situation would have been if the position of the department was, we’re not even looking at this until after Biden’s in office. I’m not sure we would have had a transition at all.”
Updated
The committee has returned, and is now asking Jeffrey Rosen, the acting attorney general, about a request from Trump to seize voting machines.
“We had seen nothing improper with regard to the voting machines,” Rosen said he replied, noting that investigators had looked into allegations the machines gave fraudulent results and found nothing wrong. “And so that was not something that was appropriate to do … I don’t think there was legal authority either.”
Richard Donoghue, the former acting deputy attorney general, is recounting a meeting with Trump, in which he pushed him unsuccessfully to seize voting machines. By the end, “The president again was getting very agitated. And he said, ‘People tell me I should just get rid of both of you. I should just remove you and make a change in the leadership with Jeff Clark, and maybe something will finally get done,’” Donoghue said.
Donoghue said he responded: “Mr President, you should have the leadership that you want. But understand the United States justice department functions on facts and evidence, and then those are not going to change. So you can have whatever leadership you want, but the department’s position is not going to change.”
Updated
The committee is now in recess, but before they finished, Richard Donoghue described his reaction when he first learned of Jeffrey Clark’s proposed letter to the Georgia legislature asking them to convene to declare alternate electoral college voters.
“I had to read both the email and the attached letter twice to make sure I really understood what he was proposing because it was so extreme to me I had a hard time getting my head around it initially,” Donoghue said.
He responded in writing to Clark’s letter, saying that its allegations were “not based on facts,” and, in his view, “for the department to insert itself into the political process this way, I think, would have had grave consequences for the country. It may very well have spiraled us into a constitutional crisis. And I wanted to make sure that he understood the gravity of the situation because he didn’t seem to really appreciate it.”
Clark himself made a brief appearance in video testimony the committee played before it took its break, responding to questions by asserting his fifth amendment rights and executive privilege.
The committee will reconvene in a few minutes.
One name that’s coming up a lot in this hearing is Scott Perry, the Pennsylvania Republican congressman who the committee said took part in Trump’s plan to pressure the justice department, and in particular install Jeff Clark at its helm.
The committee just showed text messages between Perry and Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, which showed the lawmaker encouraging Meadows to work on promoting Clark. Richard Donoghue also detailed a phone call from Perry where the congressman claimed fraud in the results in Pennsylvania from the 2020 election – which the justice department determined unfounded.
The committee had sought documents and requested an interview with Perry last year, but the Republican refused to comply. Last month, Perry was among a group of congressmen subpoenaed by the committee.
Updated
Richard Donoghue, the former acting deputy attorney general, is outlining his efforts to convince the president that the justice department could not interfere with a state’s election.
“States run their elections. We are not quality control for the states,” he recalled explaining to Trump. “The bottom line was, if a state ran their election in such a way that it was defective, that is to the state or Congress to correct, it is not for the justice department to step in.”
But Trump wanted something simpler, Donoghue said.
“That’s not what I’m asking you to do,” Donoghue told the committee Trump said after he explained the department’s position. “Just say it was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen,” the president said.
Today’s hearing is focusing on the inner workings of the justice department, but as in previous sessions, the committee has tried to make sure the insurrection isn’t far from viewers’ minds.
Case in point: lawmakers just aired video from the day of the attack showing marchers chanting “Do your job!” outside the justice department — evidence that Trump’s most ardent supporters were well aware of the president’s attempts to push government lawyers to interfere with Joe Biden’s victory.
But as justice department officials tell it, they never believed in Trump’s fraud claims. Richard Donoghue, the former acting deputy attorney general, said Trump lawyer Pat Cipollone described the letter Clark wanted to send for Trump as a “murder-suicide pact. It’s going to damage everyone who touches it.”
The committee’s top Republican Liz Cheney is offering more details about the actions of justice department official Jeffrey Clark, who had his house raided today by federal investigators.
According to Cheney, Clark and another justice department lawyer drafted a letter addressed to the Georgia state legislature, which would have said the department had “identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple states, including the state of Georgia”, and that the legislature should convene and consider approving a new slate of electors. Joe Biden had won Georgia, but Trump made baseless allegations of fraud in the polls, and the new electors would have presumably given him the state’s electoral votes.
“In fact, Donald Trump knew this was a lie,” Cheney said. “The Department of Justice had already informed the president of the United States repeatedly that its investigations had found no fraud sufficient to overturn the results of the 2020 election.”
Cheney said Clark had met with Trump privately and agreed to help him sway these states’ legislatures without telling his bosses at the justice department. But Cheney said Clark’s superiors – who are the witnesses testifying today – refused to sign it. That was when Trump began considering installing Clark at the helm at the justice department – which he never ended up doing.
Updated
January 6 committee begins fifth hearing
The House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection has started its fifth hearing, which will focus on Donald Trump’s efforts to get the justice department to go along with his plans to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory. Testifying in the chamber will be:
- Jeffrey Rosen, the acting attorney general for the final weeks of Trump’s term, including during the attack on the Capitol.
- Richard Donoghue, the former acting deputy attorney general, who appeared in a video aired at the conclusion of Tuesday’s hearing threatening to resign if Trump appointed Jeffrey Clark to head the justice department.
- Steven Engel, the former assistant attorney general for the office of legal counsel.
We’re about 10 minutes away from the start of today’s January 6 hearing, which my colleague Lauren Gambino reports will offer new evidence of how Trump pressured the justice department to take part in his plot to overturn the 2020 election:
The House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection plans to present new evidence on Thursday about Donald Trump’s brazen attempts to pressure the justice department to overturn the 2020 presidential election that he lost, aides said.
After exhausting his legal options and being rebuffed by state and local elections officials, the president turned to the justice department to declare the election corrupt despite no evidence of mass voter fraud, the nine-member panel will seek to show in their fifth and final hearing of the month.
Testifying from the Cannon Caucus Room on Capitol Hill are Jeffrey Rosen, the former acting attorney general; Richard Donoghue, the former acting deputy attorney general; and Steven Engel, the former assistant attorney general for the office of legal counsel.
One of the more recent characters in the January 6 drama is Alex Holder, a British documentary film-maker who interviewed Donald Trump, his vice-president Mike Pence and various Trump family members in the closing days of his administration.
The January 6 committee subpoenaed Holder earlier this week for his footage, which from what a teaser for his documentary entitled Unprecedented shows does indeed offer a closeup look at the Trump administration:
NEW: ALEX HOLDER DOCUMENTARY TEASER — “Unprecedented” pic.twitter.com/tzf8tZWn4c
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) June 23, 2022
Holder has released only a brief statement about his meeting with officials from the committee:
My statement about meeting with the January 6th Committee: pic.twitter.com/ZDUDc6nV39
— Alex Holder (@alexjholder) June 23, 2022
However, he strenuously denied allegations, likely from a CNN report, that Trump allies participated in Holder’s interviews because they believed they’d have editorial control over the project, and are now nervous about what they may have said on camera:
Statement from my legal counsel regarding editorial control of the Trump footage: pic.twitter.com/GZBN99g2Hz
— Alex Holder (@alexjholder) June 23, 2022
As proof, Holder just posted about a minute of footage that shows Donald Trump pondering the set-up for what would appear to be one of his interviews:
The Trumps did not have editorial control. Full stop. pic.twitter.com/gMWnGY83Dz
— Alex Holder (@alexjholder) June 23, 2022
Updated
The day so far
The fifth hearing of the House January 6 committee investigating the insurrection at the US Capitol by extremist supporters of then-president Donald Trump, and events surrounding it, is due to begin in an hour.
It has been all about guns so far today in Washington, with two branches of government moving in sharply different directions when it comes to firearms access.
The US Supreme Court has thrown out a New York law regulating concealed weapon possession, giving most Americans the right to carry a concealed gun in public. Meanwhile, the Senate is closer to passing a bipartisan gun control bill that’s intended to respond to the recent mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York.
Let’s look at the day’s events thus far:
- Kamala Harris said the supreme court ruling was “deeply troubling” and there was an urgent need to legislation, while “lives are at stake”.
- The US Senate further advanced a bill tightening gun access, its most significant legislation controlling firearms in decades.
- Joe Biden expressed his disappointment over the supreme court ruling, and backed efforts by states to find new ways to regulate guns in response.
- New York governor Kathy Hochul condemned the decision, calling today a “dark day” and vowing a response from the state.
- The US Supreme Court issued a major ruling that has invalidated a New York law that regulated who is allowed to carry a concealed weapon in public, vastly expanding gun rights for Americans.
- The House January 6 committee’s fifth hearing will take place, in which lawmakers are to explore former president Donald Trump’s efforts to get the justice department to comply with his scheme to overturn the 2020 election.
Vice-president finds supreme court gun ruling 'deeply troubling'
More high-level reaction to this morning’s US supreme court decision vastly expanding Americans’ gun rights.
US vice-president Kamala Harris has packed a lot into one tweet.
Today's Supreme Court ruling on guns is deeply troubling as it defies commonsense and the Constitution. Lives are at stake. Congress should pass the bipartisan gun safety proposal immediately and continue to do more to protect our communities.
— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) June 23, 2022
Harris has to be mindful of not being seen to try to upstage her “deeply disappointed” boss, of course. Neither politician expressed outrage, as such.
Meanwhile, the House Speaker and fellow California Democrat Nancy Pelosi has issued a statement, also slamming a conservative-leaning supermajority on a politicized bench and calling it radical.
It is unfathomable that, while families in Uvalde, Buffalo and countless other communities mourn their loved ones stolen by gun violence, a supermajority of the Supreme Court has chosen to endanger more American lives.
Today’s decision by a radical, Republican-controlled Court extends what was intended to be a limited right to self-defense at home to a new right to bring guns into our public spaces.
“Disturbingly, the twisted logic of this ruling could hinder the ability of local, state and federal governments to keep families safe from gun violence – at a time when urgent steps are deeply needed.
By making it more difficult to enact measures that reduce gun violence, the GOP Supermajority Court is condoning the horrific mass shootings and ongoing tragedy of daily gun deaths plaguing our nation.
“Despite this ill-considered ruling, Democrats will never relent in our fight to end the scourge of gun violence. While more is needed, the bipartisan gun violence prevention legislation advancing in the Senate includes a number of important steps that will save lives and must become law.
At the same time, our House Democratic Majority is carrying on our fight to protect our children by raising the age to buy assault weapons, banning high-capacity magazines, ensuring safe storage requirements, continuing our fight for background checks for purchases of guns and even high-capacity magazines, and more. As we always promise the courageous survivors of gun violence, we will keep fighting until the job is done.”
Updated
Federal investigators searched the home of former Trump administration justice department official Jeffrey Clark yesterday morning as part of the department’s criminal investigation into efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, according to a source familiar with the matter.
It was not immediately clear what investigators were looking for or which agencies were involved, though Clark was a key figure in former president Donald Trump’s unsuccessful plans to coerce the justice department into endorsing his election fraud claims as he attempted to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden.
Federal investigators descended on Clark’s home in Virginia, the source confirmed, a day before the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack planned to highlight his involvement in Trump’s plans, at its fifth public hearing this afternoon.
In a statement on the search, Trump’s former director for the office of management and budget, Russ Vought said: “more than a dozen DoJ law enforcement officials searched Jeff Clark’s house in a pre-dawn raid” and “took his electronic devices.”
Vought is now the head of the Center for Renewing America, where Clark also works.
Clark and a spokesman for the justice department could not be reached for comment.
Today’s hearing is expected to show how Trump improperly pressured top justice department officials to falsely declare that the 2020 election was corrupt, and how Trump only decided against firing them for refusing to go ahead with his plans when threatened with mass resignations.
And it will bring attention to a memorably turbulent stretch at the department as Trump in his final days in office sought to bend to his will a law enforcement agency that has long cherished its independence from the White House, the Associated Press adds.
The testimony is aimed at showing how Trump not only relied on outside advisers to press his false claims of election fraud but also tried to leverage the powers of federal executive branch agencies.
The witnesses will include Jeffrey Rosen, who was acting attorney general during the January 6, 2021, assault on the US Capitol.
Three days earlier, Rosen was part of a tense Oval Office showdown in which Trump contemplated replacing him with the lower-level official Jeffrey Clark, who wanted to champion Trump’s bogus election fraud claims.
Updated
US DoJ 'respectfully disagrees' with Scotus ruling on guns
The Department of Justice has released a statement from spokeswoman Dena Iverson, following the conservative-leaning US Supreme Court’s decision in the gun rights case, namely New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc, et al versus Bruen, Superintendent of New York State Police, et al.
We respectfully disagree with the Court’s conclusion that the Second Amendment forbids New York’s reasonable requirement that individuals seeking to carry a concealed handgun must show that they need to do so for self-defense.
The Department of Justice remains committed to saving innocent lives by enforcing and defending federal firearms laws, partnering with state, local and tribal authorities and using all legally available tools to tackle the epidemic of gun violence plaguing our communities,” the statement reads.
This far-reaching decision by the supreme court is the most important ruling on gun laws by the highest US court in more than 10 years.
The District of Columbia v Heller decision in 2008 that reversed a firearms ban for the general public in Washington, DC, in a key ruling issued by the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia that interpreted the second amendment to the US constitution as supporting an individual’s right to have guns for private uses, including self-defense.
And in 2010 there was the ruling in McDonald v Chicago, in which the court decided that “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms”, applies to state and local governments as well as the federal government.
Updated
Senate progresses on gun control measure
The US Senate has further advanced a bill tightening gun access, its most significant legislation controlling firearms in decades and a response to the shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and the racist massacre at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York.
Gun safety bill advances over filibuster, 65-34
— Burgess Everett (@burgessev) June 23, 2022
Final passage later today or tomorrow
The legislation that would invest in mental health services and red-flag laws as well as cut off gun access for domestic abusers is the result of days of negotiations between Democrats and Republicans to find a compromise on the issue, one of the most contentious in Congress.
It won the votes of every Democrat in the evenly divided chamber, as well as 15 Republicans, more than enough to overcome filibusters from their colleagues and take the bill to the next step.
Final passage of the $13 billion measure was expected by week’s end with a House vote to follow, though timing was uncertain, the Associated Press noted.
This post has been modified to clarify that the legislation is still moving through the Senate and has not yet been passed in that chamber.
Updated
The National Rifle Association has unsurprisingly hailed the supreme court’s decision as a victory.
“Today’s ruling is a watershed win for good men and women all across America and is the result of a decades-long fight the NRA has led,” the group’s executive vice-president Wayne LaPierre said in a statement. “The right to self-defense and to defend your family and loved ones should not end at your home. This ruling brings life-saving justice to law-abiding Americans who have lived under unconstitutional regimes all across our country, particularly in cities and states with revolving door criminal justice systems, no cash bail and increased harassment of law-enforcement. ”
The powerful gun lobbying group highlighted its lengthy efforts to overturn state restrictions on carrying concealed weapons.
“This is more than just a great day for New York because this ruling opens the door to rightly change the law in the seven remaining jurisdictions that still don’t recognize the right to carry a firearm for personal protection. The NRA has been at the forefront of this movement for over 30 years and was proud to bring this successful challenge to New York’s unconstitutional law,” Jason Ouimet, the head of the NRA’s lobbying arm the Institute for Legislative Action.
While the NRA is a powerful group in Washington, it’s also embroiled in a corruption scandal that’s ensnared LaPierre and other members of its leadership.
Updated
Biden 'deeply disappointed' in supreme court gun decision
Saying he was “deeply disappointed”, President Joe Biden has issued a statement condemning the supreme court’s ruling that greatly expands the right to carry concealed weapons across the United States.
“Since 1911, the State of New York has required individuals who would like to carry a concealed weapon in public to show a need to do so for the purpose of self-defense and to acquire a license. More than a century later, the United States supreme court has chosen to strike down New York’s long-established authority to protect its citizens. This ruling contradicts both common sense and the constitution, and should deeply trouble us all,” Biden said.
He backed efforts by states to respond to the court’s ruling with new regulations.
“As the late Justice Scalia recognized, the Second Amendment is not absolute. For centuries, states have regulated who may purchase or possess weapons, the types of weapons they may use, and the places they may carry those weapons. And the courts have upheld these regulations,” the president wrote, referring to the conservative justice who died in 2016.
Concluding with an appeal for action, Biden said, “I call on Americans across the country to make their voices heard on gun safety. Lives are on the line.”
Updated
Gun control groups have vowed to continue fighting despite the supreme court’s expansion of concealed carry rights, including by finding legal avenues for states to limit gun possession.
In a statement, John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, said, “Today’s ruling is out of step with the bipartisan majority in Congress that is on the verge of passing significant gun safety legislation, and out of touch with the overwhelming majority of Americans who support gun safety measures. Let’s be clear: the supreme court got this decision wrong, choosing to put our communities in even greater danger with gun violence on the rise across the country.”
“The supreme court misapplied fundamental constitutional principles in ruling against New York,” chief litigation counsel at Everytown Law Eric Tirschwell said. “Even so, states can still pass and enforce a wide array of laws to keep public spaces safe from gun violence, and we’re ready to go to court to defend these laws.”
Updated
The supreme court finished issuing opinions for the day with its blockbuster ruling on gun access, but across the street at the Capitol, the Senate is in the midst of considering a gun control bill that would be the most significant in decades.
Senator majority leader Chuck Schumer said in a speech on the chamber’s floor that passing the measure, which cleared a crucial procedural vote on Tuesday, is his top priority.
“It’s been a long time, but this breakthrough is welcome. So, I urge my Republican colleagues, let’s get this bill passed, and pass it today,” Schumer said. “Americans have waited long enough. Let’s finish our job today.”
The bill represents Congress’s response to the massacres in Uvalde and Buffalo, and appears to have enough support from both parties to pass the evenly divided Senate, as well as the House of Representatives. However its lacks many of the more stringent measures Democrats hoped would be enacted following those mass shootings, including raising the age to buy an assault weapon to 21 from 18. It also would have no impact on the supreme court ruling that opens the door for almost all Americans to carry concealed weapons.
Updated
Gun rights have been in the news for weeks following two shocking mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York — a fact that has not escaped the supreme court.
In his concurrence with the majority opinion, conservative justice Samuel Alito connects the latter shooting with the concealed weapons regulation that the court struck down. “Will a person bent on carrying out a mass shooting be stopped if he knows that it is illegal to carry a handgun outside the home? And how does the dissent account for the fact that one of the mass shootings near the top of its list took place in Buffalo? The New York law at issue in this case obviously did not stop that perpetrator,” wrote Alito, who was also the author of the draft opinion overturning abortion rights that leaked in May.
You can read the full decision here.
Updated
New York governor calls ruling 'dark day', vows response
Calling the supreme court’s ruling overturning its regulations on concealed weapons “absolutely shocking” and hypocritical, New York governor Kathy Hochul said the state will look at ways to craft legislation that can shield the public from gun violence.
“They have taken away our right to have reasonable restrictions. We can have restrictions on speech — you can’t yell fire in a crowded theater — but somehow, there’s no restrictions allowed on the second amendment,” Hochul said in a speech minutes after the court’s decision was released.
Hochul said that her government had a “whole lot of ideas” for dealing with the ruling. “Our new laws are going to be looking at restrictions on sensitive locations, changing the permitting process... we’re gonna have training requirements, we’re going to make sure that people (who) have concealed weapons have specified training.”
“This is New York. We don’t back down. We fight back,” she said. “I’m sorry this dark day has come.”
Updated
The supreme court’s just-announced decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v Bruen is a major win for advocates of gun rights, and will allow most everyone across the United States to carry a concealed weapon. The Guardian’s Ed Pilkington takes a closer look at its implications:
The US supreme court has opened the door for almost all law-abiding Americans to carry concealed and loaded handguns in public places after the conservative majority struck down a New York law that placed strict restrictions on firearms outside the home.
The majority decision renders the New York law an unconstitutional violation of the second amendment right to bear arms. The law had required anyone wanting to carry a handgun in public to prove that they had a “proper cause” to do so.
The ruling has profound implications for the safety and conduct of up to 83 million people who live in New York and seven other states plus Washington DC, which have similar “proper cause” laws. They include some of the most heavily populated states in the country such as California and New Jersey, which between them account for roughly three out of every four Americans.
Supreme court strikes down New York concealed weapon law
In a major decision affecting gun rights nationwide, the supreme court has invalidated a New York law that regulated who is allowed to carry a concealed weapon in public:
The Supreme Court STRIKES DOWN a New York gun-control law that required people to show "proper cause" to get a license to carry a concealed handgun outside the home. The vote is 6-3. https://t.co/jA2Gl7lTiG
— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) June 23, 2022
The decision split along the court’s ideological lines, with the three liberal justices dissenting from the ruling upheld by the court’s six-justice conservative majority.
The supreme court has issued two more opinions, one dealing with the rights of prisoners on death row, and the other regarding lawsuits over Miranda warnings, which police typically read to people when they’re arrested.
The Supreme Court sides with a man on Georgia's death row in a case about what procedural mechanism prisoners must use to challenge the constitutionality of a state's execution method. SCOTUS says prisoners are not limited to the federal habeas laws to bring such challenges.
— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) June 23, 2022
If a police officer fails to give a suspect his Miranda warnings, and the gov't uses the suspect's un-Mirandized statements against him in court, can the suspect sue the officer for violating his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination? In a 6-3 ruling, SCOTUS says no.
— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) June 23, 2022
The court is continuing to announce opinions, with the next set for 10.30am Eastern time.
Updated
The supreme court has begun issuing its latest batch of opinions, and the first decision deals with a lawsuit over North Carolina’s voter ID law, as SCOTUSblog details:
The Supreme Court rules 8-1 that GOP lawmakers in North Carolina can intervene in litigation to defend a state voter-ID law. The NAACP is challenging the law, and the NC attorney general (a Democrat) is defending it. GOP legislators want to intervene anyway. SCOTUS says they can.
— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) June 23, 2022
The court has more opinions to release, and you can follow along here.
Outside of Congress, people who participated in the January 6 insurrection are facing the music. Nina Lakhani reports on the latest sentencing connected to the attack:
A West Virginia lawmaker who participated in the January 6 attack on the Capitol while live-streaming the deadly insurrection has been sentenced to three months in prison.
Derrick Evans, 37, was arrested and charged shortly after the attack, in part thanks to self-incriminating video footage he shot of himself leading and egging on rioters who overwhelmed police at the Capitol.
He resigned, then pleaded guilty to the felony of committing civil disorder in March, but was given bail and appeared virtually from his home for sentencing on Wednesday.
Evans, who had been sworn into the Republican-led legislature less than a month before the attack, is among 21 lawmakers known to have joined the rioters trying to overturn the 2020 election. He is the only one to be prosecuted so far.
While the FBI works behind the scenes, the January 6 committee will today hold its fifth public hearing, this time focusing on what was going on at the justice department around the time of the 2020 election. Hugo Lowell takes a look at what to expect:
Donald Trump pressured top justice department officials to falsely declare that the 2020 election was corrupt and launch investigations into discredited claims of fraud as part of an effort to return him to office, the House January 6 select committee will say on Thursday.
The panel investigating the Capitol attack is expected at its fifth hearing to focus on how Trump abused the power of the presidency to twist the justice department into endorsing false election claims – and potentially how the Republican congressman Scott Perry sought a pardon for his involvement.
The finer details of the hearing were outlined to the Guardian by two sources close to the inquiry who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to reveal details ahead of the hearing. They cautioned that the details might still change.
The FBI had a busy Wednesday. As the January 6 committee has publicly aired more and more evidence of Donald Trump’s plot to overturn the 2020 election result by creating slates of “alternate electors” and trying to get Vice-President Mike Pence to use them to block the certification of Joe Biden’s victory, agents have been executing search warrants and serving subpoenas to Republican officials allegedly involved in the plot.
These include the top Republican party official in Nevada, Michael McDonald. Agents seized his phone when they executed a search warrant on Wednesday that 8 News Now said was in connection with his involvement in creating a list of fake electors. The FBI was also looking for the state party’s secretary James DeGraffenreid, the Las Vegas outlet reported. Biden won Nevada, but the state Republican party nonetheless had its electoral college voters create fake, non-legally binding certificates saying Trump won the state, according to 8 News Now.
Agents also visited the home of Brad Carver, a lawyer in Georgia who signed a document saying he was a Trump elector, and Thomas Lane, who worked for the former president in Arizona and New Mexico, The Washington Post reported. The Georgia GOP chair, David Shafer, also received a subpoena, as did a group people who claimed to be Trump electors in Michigan, the newspaper reported.
Separately, a top justice department official during Trump’s final weeks in office has said that there was no fraud in the 2020 election. “Some argued to the former president and public that the election was corrupt and stolen,” Jeffrey Rosen, the acting attorney general during the attack on the Capitol, said in opening remarks to the January 6 committee obtained by the Associated Press.
“That view was wrong then and it is wrong today, and I hope our presence here today helps reaffirm that fact.”
Rosen will be a witness during today’s hearing.
Updated
January 6 committee to meet as FBI expands investigation into fake electors plot
Good morning, US politics blog readers. Washington will once again start its day on tenterhooks ahead of the supreme court’s release of decisions at 10am eastern time, in which the justices could announce major changes to abortion rights as well as gun and environmental regulations. Then at 3pm eastern will come the January 6 committee’s fifth hearing, in which lawmakers are to explore former president Donald Trump’s efforts to get the justice department to comply with his scheme to overturn the 2020 election.
Here’s what else is happening today:
- Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell testifies before the House financial services committee at 10am eastern time about the central bank’s efforts to fight inflation.
- Deborah Birx, the White House’s pandemic coordinator under the Trump administration, will make her first appearance before Congress since leaving the position at 10am Eastern, during which she will discuss the former president’s response to Covid-19.
- The Senate will continue negotiations over a bipartisan gun control compromise, which the chamber’s top Democrat hopes to pass by the end of the week.
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White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre briefs reporters at 3.10pm Eastern, after President Joe Biden yesterday called for a three-month suspension of the federal gas tax to lower pump prices, which has received a dim reception in Congress.
