From 48m ago
The January 6 committee’s hearing this evening is likely to bring more headline-generating revelations about what Trump was doing as a mob of his supporters perpetrated one of the worst attacks on the US government in history.
And while it may be the “season finale” for the hearings, which are being orchestrated by a team that includes an ABC news executive, chances are it won’t be the last. The committee’s investigation is continuing, including into text messages from the Secret Service that were deleted following the attack, and it wouldn’t be a surprise if the lawmakers announce more sessions in the future.
But is their evidence changing Americans’ views of Trump? A Reuters/Ipsos poll released just this afternoon indicates it might be. Forty percent of Republicans say Trump was at least partly to blame for the attack, an increase of about seven percentage points from before the hearings. The proportion of Republicans who think Trump shouldn’t stand for office again also increased, to 32 percent from 26 percent in early June.
In Georgia, a special grand jury investigation is proceeding into Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the state – a subject that the January 6 committee has also looked into.
The Associated Press reports today that several Georgia Republican lawmakers who signed a fake document claiming that Trump, rather than Joe Biden, won the state have lost their bid to quash subpoenas compelling their appearance before the special panel. The body based in Fulton county, home to Atlanta, will issue a report that the local prosecutor could then use to seek indictments based on its information. Today’s rulings indicates the special grand jury will continue to remain one potential avenue for allies of the former president, or perhaps Trump himself, to face criminal charges over his meddling in the 2020 election.
Among the other former Trump officials subpoenaed by the jurors: Rudy Giuliani.
The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell has a preview of what to expect from today’s hearing of the January 6 committee:
The January 6 House select committee is expected to make the case at its hearing on Thursday that Donald Trump potentially violated the law when he refused entreaties to take action to stop the 2021 attack on the US Capitol by a mass of his supporters, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
The panel will demonstrate that the former Republican president was “derelict in his duty” to protect the US Congress and might have also broken the federal law that prohibits obstructing an official proceeding before Congress, which had gathered to certify Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.
Trump could have called on national guard troops to restore order when he saw on TV the melee unfolding at the Capitol, the panel is expected to argue, or he could have called off the rioters via a live broadcast from the White House press briefing room, but he did not. Or he could have sent a tweet trying to stop the violence far earlier than he actually did, during the 187-minute duration of the Capitol attack.
The January 6 committee’s hearing this evening is likely to bring more headline-generating revelations about what Trump was doing as a mob of his supporters perpetrated one of the worst attacks on the US government in history.
And while it may be the “season finale” for the hearings, which are being orchestrated by a team that includes an ABC news executive, chances are it won’t be the last. The committee’s investigation is continuing, including into text messages from the Secret Service that were deleted following the attack, and it wouldn’t be a surprise if the lawmakers announce more sessions in the future.
But is their evidence changing Americans’ views of Trump? A Reuters/Ipsos poll released just this afternoon indicates it might be. Forty percent of Republicans say Trump was at least partly to blame for the attack, an increase of about seven percentage points from before the hearings. The proportion of Republicans who think Trump shouldn’t stand for office again also increased, to 32 percent from 26 percent in early June.
Good afternoon, US politics blog readers. In a few hours, the January 6 committee will hold its final scheduled hearing, in which House lawmakers will make the case that former president Donald Trump may have violated the law by not stopping the assault on the Capitol. As if that wasn’t a packed news agenda by itself, president Joe Biden announced earlier today he had tested positive for Covid-19 – joining his vice president Kamala Harris, much of Congress’s Democratic leadership and yes, Trump, in contracting the virus.
Here’s what else has happened today:
The House of Representatives passed a bill to guarantee access to contraception after supreme court justice Clarence Thomas mulled revisiting a decades-old ruling concerning the right. All Democrats voted for it, along with eight Republicans.
Much of America is facing extreme heat. Some Democrats have called on Biden to declare a climate emergency, but he has yet to do so.
Biden’s Covid-19 diagnosis has delayed the announcement of a plan to fight crime.
Democratic senators have introduced a bill to legalize cannabis nationwide.
English
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
French
German
Italian
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish