Former president Donald Trump claims he can declassify top secret documents just ‘by thinking about it’
The House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol fuelled by Donald Trump’s baseless election fraud narrative is “aware” of allegations that the White House connected a call to a rioter while the assault was underway.
US Rep Jamie Raskin said on Sunday that the new revelations are “one of thousands of details” that the committee is examining as it prepares for a possible final public hearing on Wendesday.
Committee co-chair Liz Cheney, who recently lost a Republican primary to a Trump-backed opponent, said that she will drop out of the party if the former president is the GOP’s presidential nominee in 2024.
“I’m going to do everything I can to make sure he is not the nominee,” Ms Cheney said on Saturday. “And if he is the nominee, I won’t be a Republican.”
Meanwhile, committee member Adam Schiff has rebuked Trump’s claim that he could declassify documents at the centre of a separate probe led by the US Department of Justice into his Mar-a-Lago estate, claims that “don’t demonstrate much intelligence of any kind,” according to the congressman.
Jan 6 committee ‘aware’ of new detail that White House connected switchboard to Capitol rioter during attack
A former congressman alleges in a forthcoming CBS 60 Minutes interview the White House switchboard connected a phone call to a Capitol rioter while the attack was under way.
US Rep Jamie Raskin told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday that the allegations are “one of thousands of details” that the committee is “aware” of.
“Our job is to put everything into a comprehensive portrait and narrative timeline of what took place,” he said. “To me, it’s interesting, but less interesting that [Trump] told the crowd in public that you got to fight like hell ... We’re interseted in telling the big story, which this was an organised, premediated, deliberate hit against the vice president and the Congress to overthrow the 2020 election.”
More on that alleged phone call from the White House:
January 6 committee to release report later this year
Republicans are ‘going through contortions’ to defend Trump after Mar-a-Lago raid
US Rep Liz Cheney said members of her party are “going through contortions” to defend the former president after taking sensitive and top secret documents from the White House to his home at Mar-a-Lago.
The GOP’s response is “the latest example of how fundamentally destructive Donald Trump has been,” she said at a Texas Tribune event on Saturday.
Cheney will do ‘everything’ she can to prevent Trump’s GOP nomination if he runs in 2024. Or she wont be a Republican
US Rep Liz Cheney, who recently lost her seat in the House after losing Republican primary in Wyoming to a Trump-backed candidate, told a Texas Tribune event on Saturday that she will drop out of the party if the former president is the GOP’s presidential nominee in 2024.
“I’m going to make sure Donald Trump – I’m going to do everything I can to make sure he is not the nominee,” Ms Cheney said. “And if he is the nominee, I won’t be a Republican.”
She also said she will campaign for Democrats to ensure candidates like Kari Lake – the GOP nominee for the Arizona governor’s race – are not elected in 2022.
“I think it’s really important though, as voters are going to vote, that they recognize and understand what the Republican Conference consists of in the House of Representatives today,” she added.
Cheney: ‘Any interaction that Donald Trump has with the committee will be under oath and subject to penalties of perjury'
Good morning from the US.
The January 6 committee will resume public hearings on Wednesday, what could be the final public review of findings from House lawmakers investigating the events leading up to and surrounding the attack on the US Capitol fuelled by Trump’s election lies.
In conversation at a Texas Tribune event on Saturday, committee co-chair Liz Cheney was asked whether she wants Trump himself to testify.
Her answer: “Any interaction that Donald Trump has with the committee will be under oath and subject to penalties of perjury.”
Breyer says leak of Supreme Court draft to overturn Roe v Wade was ‘very damaging’ as leaker remains unknown
Now-retired US Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, among three justices who opposed the conservative majority’s decision to strike down the constitutional right to abortion, said a leaked draft of the opinion in the landmark case was a “very damaging” breach of the high court’s protocol.
“Was I happy about it? Not for an instant,” he told CNN of the 24 June decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization. “Did I do everything I could to persuade people? Of course, of course. But there we are and now we go on. We try to work together.”
Now retired, former justice said he did ‘everything I could’ to persuade court against revoking constitutional right to abortion
ICYMI: Security tells Trump fans to stop making QAnon salute at his latest rally
Like at his rally in Youngstown, Ohio last week, supporters in North Carolina on Friday night began to raise up their index fingers – which some have speculated might be a QAnon salute reflecting the slogan “Where we go one we go all” – as a song that sounds a lot like a QAnon anthem played on the loudspeakers.
Lisa Pyle, who wore a hat with the Q symbol, told The Independent that she appreciated his use of Q symbolism.
“I think it’s wonderful,” she said, but added she likely would not vote in 2022. “Would you vote in a broken election if you knew? If you knew the truth?”
Ex-president has been posting flurry of QAnon memes on Truth Social
ICYMI: QAnon supporters are thriving on Truth Social
As The Independent previously reported following the platform’s formal launch, hashtags related to the QAnon slogan “where we go one we go all” were easily found among hundreds of recent posts on Trump’s Truth Social platform, and profiles dedicated to “the great awakening” – the ascendance of a far-right renaissance with Trump at the helm, jailing or killing his political enemies – and other QAnon-referencing accounts were easily searchable through the platform’s account search function.
In the months since its launch, at least 88 accounts embedded within the QAnon delusion with more than 10,000 followers are promoting Q-related slogans, graphics and messages widely across the platform. More than one third of those accounts were previously banned on Twitter.
ICYMI: Breyer refuses to condemn Ginni Thomas’s efforts to overturn election
Former US Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has refused to weigh in on the controversy surrounding Ginni Thomas’s involvement in efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
The now-retired Breyer told CNN that the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas can make her own decisions about her political activity and whether it could impact the nation’s highest court – as he insisted that he “likes” both her and his conservative counterpart.
“I don’t go through that in that I strongly believe that women who are wives, including wives of Supreme Court justices, have to make the decisions about how to lead their lives, careers, what kind of career, etc., for themselves,” he said.
Wife of Justice Clarence Thomas agreed this week to sit down for a voluntary interview with the January 6 committee
Trump opens rally with crude insults about ‘raging maniac’ New York attorney general after she sues him
Trump was not 10 minutes into his remarks at a North Carolina rally to boost Republican candidates in the state when he turned his attention to a candidate who will appear on a ballot 437 miles away in the state he once called home.
Two days after New York Attorney General Letitia James accused Trump of engaging in a years-long scheme to inflate his net work, the former president derided her efforts as “gross prosecutorial misconduct” that is he claims is a Democratic-led plot to destroy him and his extremist political movement.
Trump calls New York attorney general ‘disgusting person’ and ‘leftist nutjob’ in screed after $250m lawsuit against him
Five takeaways from the lawsuit against Trump and what it means for 2024
A sweeping lawsuit against the Trump empire comes as the former president weighs another run for president in 2024 after he lost to President Joe Biden in 2020.
After the FBI executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago last month, one poll showed that he bolted even further ahead of other potential Republican challengers in a primary. Similarly, the former president’s supporters have shown little sign of abandoning him, and it’s unlikely the latest lawsuit will push his followers away.
The lawsuit details how the Trump Organization falsified financial statements and the value of his property, the role of his children and his own bizarre attempt to buy the Buffalo Bills.
