Closing summary
The January 6 committee’s second public hearing was today’s main story, as it aired testimony from several of Donald Trump’s top advisors, all of whom said they told the former president there was no fraud in the 2020 election that would change the result of his loss to Joe Biden.
Nonetheless, Trump pressed on with making the claims, which the committee said fueled the violence at the Capitol.
Here’s what else happened today:
- Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said the chamber will vote on a bipartisan gun control bill as soon as it’s written. The compromise measure doesn’t go as far as Democrats would like, but represents the best chance to pass legislation at the federal level in response to the mass shootings in Buffalo, New York and Uvalde, Texas.
- The supreme court released five opinions that dealt with a number of aspects of federal law, though none of the verdicts were in any of the major cases touching on abortion, gun rights or other hot-button issues.
- Attorney General Merrick Garland said he is watching the hearings of the January 6 committee, as the justice department comes under pressure to bring charges against Trump.
- Separately, Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman, who was hailed for leading rioters away from the senate chamber, testified in the criminal trial of two men facing charges in the attack.
The blog is wrapping up for the day and will return on Tuesday morning around 9am ET. For updates on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, please tune into our global live blog on the war, here.
At the White House daily media briefing, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has reiterated in response to a question that Joe Biden is going to leave the topic of whether Donald Trump will be prosecuted over the January 6 hearing “up to the Department of Justice”.
The White House wants “Americans to watch” the January 6 hearings, the second of which occurred this morning, “and remember the horrors of one of the darkest days in our history” but the US president will stay away from commenting on related prosecutions.
He chose US attorney general Merrick Garland “because of his loyalty to the law”, Jean-Pierre said, and also “to restore the independence and integrity of the Department of Justice.”
That’s a dig at how the DoJ was regarded by Democrats as an extension of Donald Trump’s White House and under his sway instead of staying independent.
Meanwhile in New York, an ongoing sell off on Wall Street has pushed the S&P 500 into a bear market, meaning a loss of 20 percent from its most recent high.
The stock market’s health and wider economy’s health are generally regarded as two different things, but the S&P 500’s nearly four percent loss in today’s trading is fueled in part by concerns that the United State’s decades-high inflation rate will cause a recession. It’s also more bad news for Joe Biden and his economic policies, overshadowing more positive developments such as the drop in unemployment on his watch.
From the Associated Press:
The S&P 500 dropped 3.8% in the first chance for investors to trade after getting the weekend to reflect on the stunning news that inflation is getting worse, not better. The Dow Jones was down 879 points, or 2.8%, at 30,513, as of 11.08am ET, and the Nasdaq composite was 4.5% lower.
The center of Wall Street’s focus was again on the Federal Reserve, which is scrambling to get inflation under control. Its main method is to raise interest rates in order to slow the economy, a blunt tool that risks a recession if used too aggressively.
Some traders are even speculating the Fed on Wednesday may raise its key short-term interest rate by three-quarters of a percentage point. That’s triple the usual amount and something the Fed hasn’t done since 1994. Traders now see a 34% probability of such a mega-hike, up from just 3% a week ago, according to CME Group.
No one thinks the Fed will stop there, with markets bracing for a continued series of bigger-than-usual hikes. Those would come on top of some already discouraging signals about the economy and corporate profits, including a record-low preliminary reading on consumer sentiment that was soured by high gasoline prices.
Schumer vows gun violence bill vote 'as soon as possible'
Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said he’ll bring a recent bipartisan gun control bill to a vote on the chamber’s floor as soon as it’s written.
“I will put this bill on the floor as soon as possible, once the text of the final agreement is finalized so the Senate can act quickly to make gun safety reform a reality,” Schumer said in a speech in the Senate.
“Yesterday’s agreement does not have everything Democrats wanted but it nevertheless represents the most significant reform to gun safety laws that we have seen in decades.”
Democratic and and Republican lawmakers have been trying to find a common ground on the highly controversial topic of gun control following a recent spate of mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas and Buffalo, New York.
Attorney General Garland says he's watching January 6 hearings
Attorney General Merrick Garland said he and his prosecutors are watching the hearings of the January 6 committee as the justice department faces pressure to bring charges against former president Donald Trump.
NEW: AG Merrick Garland says he’s watching the Jan. 6 committee hearings, adding “I can assure you the January 6 prosecutors are watching the hearings as well”
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) June 13, 2022
Some of the lawmakers on the committee have called for Garland to levy criminal charges against Trump. The former president is at the center of an array of investigations, including an inquiry into his business practices in New York. He will testify under oath in that probe on 15 July, along with his daughter Ivanka Trump and son Donald Trump Jr.
Garland answered reporters questions during a DoJ press conference about gun trafficking.
Updated
Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor who was one of Trump’s top attorneys near the end of his term, has denied he was drunk on election night in 2020.
Giuliani's attorney says Giuliani was not drunk on election night. “Giuliani denies all falsehoods by the angry and misguided Ms Cheney," Robert Costello tells CNN. https://t.co/lsOdoaOgvv
— Kara Scannell (@KaraScannell) June 13, 2022
While the latest report of Giuliani being drunk in public came from today’s hearing of the January 6 committee, such claims are not new.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre will soon start her daily briefing to reporters, and there’s a chance she’ll be asked about this story from The New York Times.
The piece asks a provocative question: given his low approval ratings, among other issues, should Biden not run in 2024? The president says he will stand again, but the article features a trickle of Democratic voices questioning the wisdom of that idea, or even outright telling him not to.
As the Times reported:
As the challenges facing the nation mount and fatigued base voters show low enthusiasm, Democrats in union meetings, the back rooms of Capitol Hill and party gatherings from coast to coast are quietly worrying about Mr. Biden’s leadership, his age and his capability to take the fight to former President Donald J. Trump a second time.
Interviews with nearly 50 Democratic officials, from county leaders to members of Congress, as well as with disappointed voters who backed Mr. Biden in 2020, reveal a party alarmed about Republicans’ rising strength and extraordinarily pessimistic about an immediate path forward.
“To say our country was on the right track would flagrantly depart from reality,” said Steve Simeonidis, a Democratic National Committee member from Miami. Mr. Biden, he said, “should announce his intent not to seek re-election in ’24 right after the midterms.”
Democratic stalwart Howard Dean has perhaps the sharpest criticism in the piece, though it’s not aimed at Biden alone:
Howard Dean, the 73-year-old former Vermont governor and Democratic National Committee chairman who ran for president in 2004, has long called for a younger generation of leaders in their 30s and 40s to rise in the party. He said he had voted for Pete Buttigieg, 40, in the 2020 primary after trying to talk Senator Chris Murphy, 48, of Connecticut into running.
“The generation after me is just a complete trash heap,” Mr. Dean said.
The United States is indeed led by elderly people these days, as Axios reports in a closer look at the subject that’s fittingly titled “American gerontocracy”:
Diversity and technology are making the workplace, home life and culture unrecognizable for many older leaders. That can leave geriatric leadership of government out of step with everyday life in America — and disconnected from the voters who give them power.
Washington is run by Biden, 79 … House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, 82 … Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a comparatively youthful 71 … and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, age 80.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, running the U.S. pandemic response, is 81.
Separate from the January 6 committee hearing, Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman was in a federal courtroom describing how one of two defendants facing charges over the attacked jabbed him with a Confederate battle flag.
Goodman is one of the most prominent defenders of the Capitol that day, credited with diverting the mob away from the Senate chamber and appearing in a well-known photo.
He was testifying at the trial of Kevin Seefried and his adult son Hunter Seefried, whom the Associated Press reported face charges including a felony count of obstruction of an official proceeding.
Goodman recalled seeing Kevin Seefried standing alone in an archway and telling him to leave. Instead, Seefried cursed at him and jabbed at the officer with the base end of the flagpole three or four times, Goodman said.
“He was very angry. Screaming. Talking loudly,” Goodman said. “Complete opposite of pleasant.”
U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden is hearing testimony without a jury for the Seefrieds’ bench trial, which started Monday. The Seefrieds waived their right to a jury trial, which means McFadden will decide their cases.
Updated
Midday summary
Today has been dominated by the latest revelations from the January 6 Committee, which aired testimony from a number of former officials in Donald Trump’s campaign and White House, all of whom told the president the same thing: the 2020 election was not stolen. Nonetheless, Trump pressed on with making the claims, which the committee said fueled the violence at the Capitol.
Here’s what else happened today:
- The supreme court released five opinions that dealt with a number of aspects of federal law, though none of the verdicts were in any of the major cases touching on abortion, gun rights or other hot-button issues.
- The senate reached a compromise on gun rights legislation that can hopefully win enough support from both Democrats and Republicans to pass the evenly divided chamber. Further negotiations on the bill are expected in the days to come.
- Lawmakers on the January 6 committee continued their calls for the justice department to bring criminal charges against Trump, saying the evidence they uncovered justifies the move.
- Separately, Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman, who was hailed for leading rioters away from the senate chamber, testified in the criminal trial of two men facing charges in the attack.
The US Supreme Court has ruled against immigrants who are seeking their release from long periods of detention while they fight deportation orders, the Associated Press writes.
In two cases decided on Monday morning, the court said that the immigrants, who fear persecution if sent back to their native countries, have no right under a federal law to a bond hearing at which they could argue for their freedom no matter how long they are held.
The nine justices also ruled 6-3 to limit the immigrants ability to band together in court, an outcome that Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote:
Will leave many vulnerable non-citizens unable to protect their rights.”
In recent years, the high court has taken an increasingly limited view of immigrants’ access to the federal court system under immigration measures enacted in the 1990s and 2000s.
For a while, it seemed like the court was going to push back a bit. In extreme cases, it would interpret a statute to allow for as much judicial review as possible. Clearly now, the court is no longer willing to do that,”said Nicole Hallet, director of the immigrants rights clinic at the University of Chicago law school.
The immigrants who sued for a bond hearing are facing being detained for many months, even years, before their cases are resolved.
The court ruled in the cases of people from Mexico and El Salvador who persuaded Homeland Security officials that their fears are credible, entitling them to further review.
Their lawyers argued that they should have a hearing before an immigration judge to determine if they should be released. The main factors are whether people would pose a danger or are likely to flee if set free.
Sotomayor wrote the court’s opinion in one case involving Antonio Arteaga-Martinez, who had previously been deported to Mexico. He was taken into custody four years ago, and won release while his case wound through the federal courts. His hearing on whether he can remain in the United States is scheduled for 2023.
But Sotomayor wrote that the provision of immigration law that applies to people like Arteaga-Martinez simply doesn’t require the government to hold a bond hearing.
The court, however, left open the issue of the immigrants’ ability to argue that the Constitution does not permit such indefinite detention without a hearing.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote the court’s opinion holding that federal judges can only rule in the case of the immigrants before them, not a class of similarly situated people.
Sotomayor dissented from that decision, joined by Justices Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan.
She wrote that the ability to join together in a class was especially important for people who have no right to a lawyer and “are disproportionately unlikely to be familiar with the U.S. legal system or fluent in the English language.”
The cases are Johnson v Arteaga-Martinez, 19-896, and Garland v Aleman Gonzalez, 20-322.
The US Supreme Court issued five opinions this morning, just around the time the January 6 hearing was getting underway. None of them was one of the four big cases being mostly closely watched, on abortion, gun rights, rules on emissions affecting climate change and an immigration issue affecting undocumented people crossing the US-Mexico border in order to claim asylum in the United States, known as Remain in Mexico.
In one of the most significant opinions of the day, the nine-judge court ruled that Native Americans prosecuted in certain tribal courts can also be prosecuted based on the same incident in federal court, which can result in longer sentences, the Associated Press writes.
The 6-3 ruling is in keeping with an earlier ruling from the 1970s that said the same about a more widely used type of tribal court.
The case before the justices involved a Navajo Nation member, Merle Denezpi, accused of rape. He served nearly five months in jail after being charged with assault and battery in what is called a Court of Indian Offenses, a court that deals exclusively with alleged Native American offenders.
Under federal law Courts of Indian Offenses can only impose sentences of generally up to a year. Denezpi was later prosecuted in federal court and sentenced to 30 years in prison. He said the Constitution’s “Double Jeopardy” clause should have barred the second prosecution.
But the justices disagreed.
Denezpi’s single act led to separate prosecutions for violations of a tribal ordinance and a federal statute. Because the Tribe and the Federal Government are distinct sovereigns, those offenses are not the same. Denezpi’s second prosecution therefore did not offend the Double Jeopardy Clause,” the court decided.
Amy Coney Barrett, the ultra conservative leaning associated justice confirmed in the dying days of the Trump administration, wrote the opinion for the majority.
The Biden administration had argued for that result as had several states, which said barring federal prosecutions in similar cases could allow defendants to escape harsh sentences.
In a dissent, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that the case involved the same “defendant, same crime, same prosecuting authority” and said the majority’s reasoning was “at odds with the text and original meaning of the Constitution.” The conservative Gorsuch was joined in dissent by two of the court’s three liberal justices, Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Elena Kagan.
The case before the justices involves a tribal court system that has become increasingly rare over the last century.
Courts of Indian Offenses were created in the late 1800s during a period when the federal government’s policy toward Native Americans was to encourage assimilation. Judges and generally prosecutors are appointed by federal officials.
Updated
Committee ends for day after Trump official reveals post-January 6 thoughts: 'Are you out of your effing mind?'
The January 6 committee has ended the day’s testimony by taking viewers back to the scene of the attack and showing how the people who broke in to the Capitol were believers in a conspiracy that many of Trump’s top officials told him was bogus.
“I know exactly what’s going on right now. Fake election!” a rioter said in video aired by the committee.
The hearing closed with the jarring words of Eric Herschmann, a White House lawyer, who recalled a phone call with John Eastman, another of the president’s lawyers whom a judge has said conspired with Trump to overturn the election.
“I said to him, Are you out of your effing mind?” Herschmann recalled. “I said I... only want to hear two words coming out of your mouth for now on: orderly transition.”
Before the hearing ended, the committee’s senior investigative counsel Amanda Wick outlined one possible motivation for why Trump stuck with the fraud claims: they were a money-making opportunity.
“As the select committee has demonstrated, the Trump campaign knew these claims of voter fraud were false, yet they continue to barrage small dollar donors with emails encouraging them to donate to something called Official Election Defense Fund. The select committee discovered no such fund existed,” she said.
Wick goes on to say much of the $250 million raised for the supposed effort was funneled into a political action committee that made donations to pro-Trump organizations, as well as confidantes like his chief of staff Mark Meadows. The barrage of fundraising emails to supporters “continued through January 6, even as President Trump spoke on the ellipse. Thirty minutes after the last fundraising email was sent, the Capitol was breached,” Wick said.
The committee said to expect more testimony from Herschmann in the future. It reconvenes on Wednesday at 10 am.
Updated
The second panel of witnesses for the day has been dismissed, after Lofgren went through the many court rulings against Trump’s claims of fraud.
“The rejection of {resident Trump’s litigation efforts was overwhelming. Twenty two federal judges appointed by Republican presidents, including 10 appointed by President Trump himself and at least 24 elected or appointed Republican state judges dismissed the president’s claims,” Lofgren said, noting that 11 lawyers have been referred for disciplinary proceedings due to “due to bad faith and baseless efforts” to undermine the election.
Prior to their dismissal, the committee heard from Benjamin Ginsberg, whom Lofgren called, “the most preeminent Republican election lawyer in recent history.”
“In no instance did a court find that the charges of fraud were real,” Ginsberg said. He also rejected arguments pushed by the Trump campaign that they didn’t get a fair hearing, noting that of 62 lawsuits filed by the campaign, 61 were dismissed, and the one upheld didn’t affect the outcome.
Updated
Former Philadelphia official Al Schmidt is talking about what happened after Trump began calling him out by name as involved in alleged election fraud in the city.
Philadelphia is a Democratic bastion in the swing state of Pennsylvania, and turnout there and in its suburbs was crucial to Biden winning the state. As the Democrat’s victory became clear, Trump began questioning the election’s integrity, and Schmidt personally.
Here’s what the president wrote, back when he was allowed on Twitter:
Lofgren just read out this tweet to Al Schmidt, who's talking now about how threats to him being "more specific" and "more graphic" and started to include his family too pic.twitter.com/JUmSeR4z2z
— Nicholas Wu (@nicholaswu12) June 13, 2022
“It feels almost silly to talk about a tweet, but we can really see the impact they have because prior to that, the threats were pretty general in nature,” Schmidt said.
“After the president tweeted at me by name, calling me out the way that he did, the threats became much more specific, much more graphic and included not just me by name but included members of my family, my name, their ages, our address, pictures of our home, just every bit of detail that you can imagine. That was what changed with that tweet,” he continued.
Pak is focusing on his debunking of a specific claim of election fraud pushed by Trump supporters following the election, which centered on a suitcase allegedly full of ballots used to sway the vote in Georgia for Biden, which was captured by a security camera in an Atlanta vote counting center.
“We found that the suitcase full of ballots, the alleged black suitcase that was being seen pulled from under the table, was actually an official lockbox where ballots were kept safe,” Pak told the lawmakers, adding that William Barr requested the inquiry since he expected the White House would ask him about it.
Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani however played the video before a Georgia Senate committee, which Pak addressed in his testimony.
“The FBI interviewed the individuals that are depicted in the videos. There’s... double, triple counting of the ballots (which) determined that nothing irregular happened in the county and the allegations made by Mr. Giuliani were false,” Pak said.
Updated
The committee has resumed its hearing, with Zoe Lofgren questioning three witnesses.
Appearing before the committee is election attorney Benjamin Ginsberg, BJay Pak, a former US Attorney for the northern district of Georgia, and former Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt.
The committee is now taking a break after showing the testimonies of several top officials in the Trump administration and his campaign, all of whom said they didn’t find his fraud claims credible.
Just before taking its recess the committee showed a portion of recorded testimony from Richard Donoghue, a former acting deputy attorney general, who will testify live at a future hearing. He recalled his conversations with Trump.
“I tried to again put this into perspective and further put it in clear terms to the president, and I said something to the effect of, sir, we’ve done dozens of investigations, hundreds of interviews. The major allegations are not supported by evidence,” Donoghue said.
But the president was undeterred, he said. “There were so many of these allegations that when you gave him a very direct answer on one of them, he wouldn’t fight us on it but he would move on to another allegation,” Donoghue recalled.
He said the justice department looked into claims a truck driver transported ballots from New York to Pennsylvania, which turned out to be false. The president claimed there was a suitcase of ballots used to sway the outcome in Georgia, but Donoghue found no evidence of that. Trump then went on to claim people were getting paid to vote on Native American reservations.
“Much of the information he’s getting is false and/or just not supported by the evidence,” Donoghue said.
William Barr is now offering his thoughts on 2000 Mules, a movie produced by far-right film-maker and provocateur Dinesh D’Souza that promotes Trump’s election fraud claims.
For those who missed it, The Guardian’s David Smith went and saw the film last month, and described its core contention this way:
It purports to show that Democratic-aligned ballot “mules“ were paid to illegally collect and drop off ballots in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, tipping swing states in favour of Joe Biden against Trump.
The “documentary” has been resoundingly debunked by factcheckers who point out that its supposed smoking gun – $2m worth of anonymised mobile phone geolocation data that allegedly tracks the “mules” visiting drop boxes – is based on false assumptions about the accuracy of such technology.
Count Barr among the film’s detractors.
“I think the photographic evidence of it was lacking,” Barr said of the movie. “There was a little bit of it but it was lacking and it didn’t establish widespread illegal ballot harvesting.”
The committee is now trying to establish that even Trump’s closest advisors didn’t believe in his fraud claims.
Attorney general William Barr has reappeared on video, outlining a conversation in the White House days after the election with chief of staff Mark Meadows. According to Barr, Meadows said that when it comes to the fraud claims, “I think that (Trump is) becoming more realistic and knows that there’s a limit to how far he can take this.”
As for Barr, he underscored that he viewed investigating fraud as not a problem for the justice department, telling Trump his agency “doesn’t take sides in elections and the department is not an extension of of your legal team.”
“And our role is to investigate fraud and look at something if it’s if it’s specific, credible and could have affected the outcome of the election and... we’re doing that and it’s just not,” Barr recalls saying.
In the words of Zoe Lofgren, the California Democrat currently leading the hearing, “Even after his attorney general told him his claims of election fraud were false. President Trump continued to promote these claims.”
Lofgren seems to be building the case that the professionals in the Trump campaign never believed there was fraud, and were instead very worried about his prospects following election night.
“As the week wore on, as we paid attention to those numbers every single day, multiple times a day... I was feeling less confident for sure,” campaign manager Bill Stepien said, describing the state of the race as “very, very, very bleak” for Trump.
Stepien goes on to refute some of the arguments swirling over why Trump was losing Arizona. “Someone had thrown out... the claim that there were 1000s of illegal citizens who are not eligible to vote and cast their ballots Arizona,” Stepien said. He looked into it and discovered “overseas voters voting in the election. I saw obviously, people who are eligible to vote.”
Stepien eventually came to believe that what was happening with the campaign was not “necessarily honest or professional,” and opted to leave.
The former manager was supposed to testify in person today, but had a family emergency. The committee is instead showing excerpts from his video interviews.
Stirewalt is now discussing Fox News’s decision to call key state Arizona for Biden early on election night – which enraged the Trump administration.
He begins by talking up the strength of Fox’s decision desk, which he described as “the best in the business.”
“We knew it would be a consequential call because it was one of five states that really mattered,” along with Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia,” he said.
“By the time we found out how much everybody was freaking out and losing their minds over this call, we were already trying to call the next state, we had already moved on,” Stirewalt said.
Lofgren asks him what chance he thought Trump had of winning the election, based on what he saw on election night. “None,” Stirewalt replied.
Updated
Trump claimed that there was “major fraud” on election night, his former attorney general William Barr told the January 6 committee, according to video the committee aired.
“Right out of the box on election night, the president claimed that there was major fraud underway,” Barr said.
The commission is discussing the “red mirage” that often occurs on presidential election nights, when Republicans who vote on election day have their votes counted first but Democrats, who often vote early or by mail, sometimes have their votes counted later, creating the impression that Republicans are leading early in the night only to have their share eroded as more Democrats have their votes counted.
Barr testifies that though this dynamic was familiar and Trump had been warned about it, the president seized on it to allege fraud.
“That seemed to be the basis for this broad claim that there was major fraud. And I didn’t think much of that because people had been talking for weeks and everyone understood for weeks that that was going to be what happened on election night,” Barr said.
The committee’s first witness of the day is Chris Stirewalt, a former politics editor for Fox News, has been sworn in, and the hearing is now showing a montage of clips from interviews with Trump’s lawyers and other officials.
These include Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor who became one of Trump’s most notable attorneys. Jason Miller, another former Trump attorney, described Giuliani as being “intoxicated” on election night.
Trump’s campaign manager Bill Stepien testified by video that he did not think the president should declare victory on election night, but said the president disagreed with him.
Updated
It looks like William Barr, Trump’s final attorney general during the time of the 2020 election, will be playing a major role in the today’s hearing.
The committee last Thursday aired video in which he said he thought Trump’s claims of election fraud were “bullshit,” and committee members say he will reappear today to elaborate on his views.
“You’ll hear detailed testimony from attorney general Barr describing the various election fraud claims the department of justice investigated. He’ll tell you how he told Mr. Trump repeatedly that there was no merit to those claims. Mr. Barr will tell us that Mr. Trump’s election night claims of fraud were made without regard to the truth, and before it was even possible to look for evidence of fraud,” Democratic representative Zoe Lofgren said as the hearing began.
Updated
Liz Cheney, the committee’s vice chair, is showing videos from lawyers who worked for Trump’s campaign that are testifying they never saw evidence that the 2020 election was stolen.
“The Trump campaign legal team knew there was no legitimate argument, fraud, irregularities or anything to overturn the election. And yet, President Trump went ahead with his plans for January 6 anyway,” Cheney said.
The Wyoming representative accused Trump of using this evidence to deceive his supporters into attacking the Capitol. “As one conservative editorial board put it recently, ‘Mr. Trump betrayed his supporters by conning them on January 6, and he is still doing it,’” she said.
January 6 committee begins second hearing
The January 6 committee is beginning its second hearing into “the conspiracy overseen and directed by Donald Trump to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and block the transfer of power, a scheme unprecedented in American history,” as committee chair Bennie Thompson put it in his opening statement.
The Mississippi Democrat is making clear today’s hearing will deal specifically with the former president’s actions.
“This morning, we will tell the story of how Donald Trump lost an election and knew he lost an election and as a result of his loss, decided to wage an attack on our democracy and attack on American people, trying to rob you of your voice in our democracy, and in doing so lit the fuse that led to the horrific violence of January 6,” Thompson said.
Updated
Meanwhile in the Capitol, we may have more developments today on the gun control compromise reached over the weekend, which could attract enough Republican support to pass. Richard Luscombe has this look at what exactly the measure would do.
Joe Biden has urged US lawmakers to get a deal on gun reforms to his desk quickly as a group of senators announced a limited bipartisan framework on Sunday responding to last month’s mass shootings.
The proposed deal is a modest breakthrough offering measured gun curbs while bolstering efforts to improve school safety and mental health programs.
It falls far short of tougher steps long sought by Biden, many Democrats, gun reform advocates and America citizens. For example, there is no proposal to ban assault weapons, as activists had wanted, or to increase from 18 to 21 the age required to buy them.
Even so, if the accord leads to the enactment of legislation, it would signal a turn from years of gun massacres that have yielded little but stalemate in Congress.
Could Trump face criminal charges over January 6? As my colleague Richard Luscombe reports, some members of the committee investigating the assault believe the evidence is there.
Members of the House committee investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat called on Sunday for the US justice department to consider a criminal indictment for the former president and warned that “the danger is still out there”.
Their comments on the eve of the second of the panel’s televised hearings into the January 6 2021 insurrection and deadly Capitol attack will add further pressure on the attorney general, Merrick Garland, who has angered some Democrats by so far taking no action despite growing evidence of Trump’s culpability.
“There are certain actions, parts of these different lines of effort to overturn the election, that I don’t see evidence the justice department is investigating,” committee member Adam Schiff, Democratic congressman for California, told ABC’s This Week.
The January 6 committee will soon continue building its case against former president Donald Trump, with today’s hearing looking at the motivations behind the attack on the Capitol.
However, a wrench has already been thrown into their plans: the ex-president’s former campaign manager has a family emergency, and won’t be able to testify as planned, and the hearing has been pushed back to 10:30 am eastern time.
The second hearing of the committee will have some important differences from the first, held last Thursday. First of all, it’s taking place during work hours, not during the primetime TV hour, as in the case of last week’s hearing. Committee member Zoe Lofgren is also set to question witnesses, rather than the body’s counsel.
As for the goal of these hearings, my colleague Joan E Greve describes it in the words of committee chair Bennie Thompson:
If the committee is successful in building its case against Trump, the hearings could deliver a devastating blow to the former president’s hopes of making a political comeback in the 2024 presidential election. But if Americans are unmoved by the committee’s findings, the country faces the specter of another attempted coup, Thompson warned.
“Our democracy remains in danger. The conspiracy to thwart the will of the people is not over,” Thompson said on Thursday. “January 6 and the lies that led to insurrection have put two and a half centuries of constitutional democracy at risk. The world is watching what we do here.”
Updated
Protesters are gathering outside the supreme court, with the justices less than a half hour away from releasing rulings in which the conservative majority could make major changes to abortion access, gun rights and environmental regulation.
Opposing protestors face to face right now. pic.twitter.com/epObAVwJnp
— Whitney Wild (@WhitneyWReports) June 13, 2022
Scene outside the Supreme Court this morning. Two small groups of protesters have gathered with a group of police on bicycles separating the two groups. T-minutes 40 minutes until opinions. I’m standing by with @fox5dc. Join us live on @SCOTUSblog TikTok. pic.twitter.com/PNPQifGuD2
— Katie Barlow (@katieleebarlow) June 13, 2022
Last month, the court was rocked by the unprecedented leak of a draft opinion showing conservatives were poised to strike down Roe v Wade and end abortion rights nationwide. Those same justices may also opt to expand the ability to carry concealed weapons and curb the government’s regulatory powers.
Former Trump campaign manager to miss January 6 hearing
Bill Stepien, the former campaign manager for Donald Trump who was to be a main witness in today’s hearing of the January 6 committee, will not attend due to an emergency.
The hearing is now delayed by 30 minutes to 10.30am, the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports:
Just in: Former Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien is no longer appearing at the second Jan. 6 committee hearing this morning due to a family emergency — and hearing has been delayed to around 10:30a ET
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) June 13, 2022
The development throws a wrench into the plans for the committee’s second hearing, which was to look deeper into the conspiracy theories that fueled the attack on the Capitol.
Updated
Lies are going to be the subject of this morning’s January 6 committee hearing, specifically those that motivated Donald Trump’s supporters to attack the Capitol, the Guardian’s Joan E Greve reports:
The House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection in 2021 will reconvene Monday to scrutinize the conspiracy theories that led a group of Donald Trump’s supporters to attack the US Capitol.
The Democratic chair of the committee, Mississippi congressman Bennie Thompson, has said the second hearing will focus on “the lies that convinced those men and others to storm the Capitol to try to stop the transfer of power”.
“We’re going to take a close look at the first part of Trump’s attack on the rule of law, when he lit the fuse that ultimately resulted in the violence of January 6,” Thompson said on Thursday.
Updated
Senate mulls bipartisan gun control proposal as January 6 committee meets again
Good morning, everybody. Today could be a very big day in Washington, with the inquiry into the January 6 insurrection continuing, the supreme court releasing opinions and the Senate considering a proposal to restrict gun access following a spate of mass shootings.
Here’s a rundown of what to expect:
- Senators have reached a deal on a framework for gun control legislation meant to respond to recent mass shootings in Buffalo, New York and Uvalde, Texas, which looks like it could get the support of enough Republicans and Democrats to pass the chamber.
- The supreme court will release another batch of decisions at 10 am eastern time. There’s no telling what the court will opt to release, but major rulings on abortion rights, gun control and environmental regulation are expected before the term is out.
- At the same time, the January 6 committee will begin its second hearing following last Thursday’s blockbuster look into what happened at the Capitol that day. Today’s hearing will look deeper at the conspiracy theories that motivated the attack.
- Democratic senator Bernie Sanders and Republican senator Lindsey Graham will take part in a one-hour debate organized by The Senate Project, intended to build bridges between the two parties while also allowing the lawmakers to air their (very different) perspectives on politics. The event begins at 12 pm eastern time, and will be streamed on Fox Nation.
