The run-up in gas prices has many factors, but it was intensified by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and subsequent Western sanctions on the Kremlin, which disrupted supply from what had been the world’s third-largest oil producer. Russian output has fallen by more than 1 million barrels per day due to export sanctions that complicate sales and import sanctions that hurt production, according to Rory Johnston, an analyst at Commodity Context. Refineries necessary to turn oil into gas and other products are stretched to their limits, with Russian refineries knocked offline and U.S. refining capacity down roughly 5 percent, according to the Energy Information Administration.
“We are not going to stop what we are doing to share the information that we’ve gotten so far with the Department of Justice,” he said. “We have to do our work.”
Mr. Thompson added that the committee would “cooperate with them, but the committee has its own timetable.” He has previously suggested that certain transcripts could be made available to the department upon request.
Democrats on the committee were stunned by the confrontational tone of the letter from the Justice Department and believed that the negotiations had been proceeding amicably after some initial public sniping, according to a person familiar with the discussions.
Lawmakers on the committee and the staff members responsible for conducting hundreds of interviews have said that they are currently consumed with the task of making the clearest possible public case that Mr. Trump and his allies incited an insurrection — and plan to pivot to the department’s request as they begin winding down their series of public hearings later this month.
Other, more substantive issues remain. Committee aides are still interviewing witnesses and hope the high-profile hearings will prompt more to come forward, and they are concerned that some people might be reluctant to testify if they know their statements will be quickly shared with prosecutors.
And the logistical challenges are daunting: The committee has conducted more than 1,000 interviews, hundreds of which were transcribed, and accommodating the Justice Department’s request would require a diversion of labor on a staff that is already exhausted and overstretched. Because of the volume of interviews — which often number in the dozens per week — it has at times taken the committee months to prepare a witness’s transcript and invite his or her lawyer to review it in person.
Only 39% of Americans approve of the job Biden is doing as president. A stunning 47% “strongly” disapprove; just 16% “strongly” approve. Academic studies have shown that presidential approval is one of the most reliable predictors of what happens in midterm elections, and a rating this low would traditionally signal significant losses for the president’s party.
More than 7 in 10, 71%, say the United States is “on the wrong track;” 16% say it’s headed in the right direction. Even most Democrats say the country is on the wrong track, 46%-34%. Three of 4 independents and nearly every Republican agree.
Americans split 40%-40% when asked whether they would vote for a Republican or a Democrat for Congress if the election was held today. Independent analysts and strategists in both parties say Republicans are likely to pick up the handful of seats they need to take control of the House. Democrats now hold 220 House seats; 218 are needed for control.
In brief remarks to reporters as he left for a weekend on the beach in Delaware, Biden said repeatedly Americans should not travel to Ukraine at this time.
“We don’t know where they are, but I want to reiterate: Americans should not be going to Ukraine now,” Biden said in response to a question from CNN’s MJ Lee at the White House.
On Wednesday CNN reported that Alexander John-Robert Drueke, 39, from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and Andy Tai Ngoc Huynh, 27, from Hartselle, Alabama, had been missing for nearly a week and there were fears that they may have been captured by Russian forces, according to their families and a fellow fighter. Drueke and Huynh had been fighting alongside Ukrainian forces north of Kharkiv.
CNN on Thursday reported a third American whom the State Department had identified as missing in action in Ukraine was US Marine veteran Grady Kurpasi. He served in the US Marine Corps for 20 years, retiring in November 2021. A family friend of Kurpasi’s told CNN Kurpasi chose to volunteer alongside the Ukrainian forces but initially did not envision himself fighting on the front lines of the war.
State Department spokesperson Ned Price said the department is in contact with the families of the missing Americans as well as Ukrainian authorities and the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The US State Department on Thursday told the family of one of the Americans missing in Ukraine that there is potential evidence Drueke was captured, but could not verify the photo at the time, Bunny Drueke, Alexander’s mother, told CNN.
Drueke told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “The Lead” that her son went to Ukraine to train soldiers there to fight against Russia because “he felt that if Putin wasn’t stopped now, he would just become bolder with every success, and that eventually he might end up on American shores.”
A photo emerged on Thursday of Drueke and Huynh in the back of a Russian military truck, apparently confirming they had been captured by Russian forces north of Kharkiv last week. CNN could not independently verify when the photo was taken. The undated photo was posted on Telegram on Thursday by a Russian blogger.
Price said Thursday the US is not in contact with Russia about the reportedly captured American citizens because they do not yet have “credible reason” to believe the Russians have captured them and also because Russia has not claimed to have captured them.
CNN’s Ellie Kaufman, Michael Conte, Jennifer Hansler and Mick Krever contributed to this report.
The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot on Thursday put the spotlight on former Vice President Mike Pence’s refusal to aid then-President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.
The committee’s third public hearing examined the intense pressure Trump and his allies heaped on Pence to reject key electoral votes when he presided over a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, to confirm President Joe Biden’s victory. The hearing also focused heavily on John Eastman, a lawyer advising Trump who pushed the dubious legal theory that Pence held virtually unilateral power to overturn the election.
Here are the main takeaways from the hearing:
Pence’s life was in danger
Pence came within about 40 feet of some of the pro-Trump rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol building, said Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., who led much of Thursday’s hearing.
“Make no mistake about the fact that the vice president’s life was in danger,” Aguilar said.
He noted that a confidential informant from the Proud Boys told the FBI that members of the far-right group “would have killed Mike Pence if given a chance,” according to a recent court filing by the Department of Justice.
Pence did not leave the Capitol on Jan. 6, but was transferred to a secure location during the riot.
Pence showed “courage” on that day by defying Trump, committee chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said at the start of the hearing.
But that resolve put the vice president in “tremendous danger” when Trump “turned the mob on him,” Thompson said.
Trump, Eastman were told Pence couldn’t overturn the election
Witnesses, both in person and in taped depositions, testified that numerous officials told Trump and Eastman that Pence could not carry out the legal scheme to overturn the 2020 contest. But Trump and Eastman nevertheless continued to pressure Pence and his team.
Pence’s former chief of staff, Marc Short, said in a taped interview with the committee that the vice president himself told Trump “many times” before Jan. 6 that he did not have the legal authority to block the certification of the election.
Former Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller said he had heard that former White House counsel Pat Cipollone “thought the idea was nutty and had at one point confronted Eastman with the same sentiment.”
Other officials also thought Eastman’s theory “was crazy” and would tell “anyone who would listen,” Miller said.
What’s more, former Pence counsel Greg Jacob told the panel that Eastman admitted one day before the Capitol riot that his legal theory would be rejected 9-0 if it went before the Supreme Court.
On the morning of Jan. 6, Trump raged at Pence in a tense phone call. He said the vice president was weak and a “wimp,” witnesses told the committee. Ivanka Trump’s former chief of staff, Julia Radford, said that Trump’s daughter told her after the call that the president had called Pence “the P word.”
In a rally outside the White House that began shortly before the mob breached the Capitol, Trump again heaped pressure on Pence to reject the election results: “All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify, and we become president.”
Eastman sought a presidential pardon after the riot
Eastman told former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani that he wanted to be added to the list of presidential pardon recipients, the committee revealed.
“I’ve decided that I should be on the pardon list, if that is still in the works,” Eastman wrote, according to a screenshot of an email displayed during the panel’s third hearing.
That email was sent days after the Capitol riot, Aguilar said. It also came after a Jan. 7 conversation with White House lawyer Eric Herschmann, who said he told Eastman, “I’m going to give you the best free legal advice you’re ever getting in your life: get a great effing criminal defense lawyer, you’re going to need it.”
Trump did not pardon Eastman. Under questioning by the Capitol riot investigators, Eastman pleaded the Fifth 100 times, Aguilar said.
Trump pardoned numerous allies during his final days in office.
The investigation, and the threat to democracy posed by the riot, are ongoing
The select committee is slated to hold four more public hearings in June. During each, lawmakers intend to lay out a different element of a coordinated conspiracy to subvert the 2020 election.
The panel has teased its plans to show in future hearings how Trump tried to get the Justice Department to challenge the election results, how he pushed officials in key states to undo Biden’s victories, and how he led a violent mob to march on the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Committee aides have stressed that the hearings represent only the initial findings from the nearly year-long probe, and that the investigation is ongoing.
That was made especially clear on Thursday, as committee leaders Thompson and Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., confirmed that they want to speak with Ginni Thomas, the conservative activist and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Ginni Thomas has come under intense scrutiny in recent months following reporting on her efforts to challenge the 2020 election results.
Retired federal Judge J. Michael Luttig, meanwhile, warned in Thursday’s hearing that Trump remains a “clear and present danger” to American democracy, which was gravely threatened on Jan. 6 and is now “on a knife’s edge.”
LYSYCHANSK, Ukraine (AP) — The European Union’s executive arm recommended putting Ukraine on a path to membership Friday, a symbolic boost for a country fending off a Russian onslaught that is taking civilian lives, flattening cities and threatening its very survival.
The possibility of membership in a union created to safeguard peace on the continent and that stands as a model for the rule of law and prosperity fulfils a wish of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the many Western-looking citizens.
In another show of solidarity, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson traveled to Kyiv to meet Zelenskyy, his second trip to the country since the war began.
The latest embrace of Ukraine by its European allies also marks another setback for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who launched his war nearly four months ago, hoping to pull his ex-Soviet neighbor away from the West and back into Russia’s sphere of influence.
At Russia’s showpiece economic forum in St. Petersburg on Friday, Putin reprised his usual defense of Russia’s war in Ukraine, falsely claiming that it was an act of self-defense. He has insisted before that his invasion was necessary to protect people in parts of eastern Ukraine controlled by Moscow-backed rebels and to ensure Russia’s own security.
The European Commission’s recommendation that Ukraine become a candidate for membership will be discussed by leaders of the 27-nation bloc during a summit next week in Brussels. The war has increased pressure on EU governments to fast-track Ukraine’s candidate status. But the process is expected to take years, and EU members remain divided over how quickly and fully to open their arms to new members.
Support for Ukraine from Western countries — both political and military — has been key to its surprising success in the face of larger and better equipped Russian forces. Zelenskyy has also clamored for more immediate support in the form of more and better weapons to turn the tide in the country’s eastern Donbas region.
Russia pressed its offensive there Friday, leaving desperate residents struggling to make sense of what the future holds for them.
“We are old people, we do not have a place to go. Where will I go?” asked Vira Miedientseva, one of the elderly residents grappling with the aftermath of an attack Thursday in Lysychansk, which lies just across the river from Sievierodonetsk, where a key battle is raging.
In other developments:
— The Ukrainian navy claimed Friday that it destroyed a Russian boat carrying air defense systems to a strategic island in the Black Sea. In a statement on social media, the navy said that the Vasily Bekh was used to transport ammunition, weapons and personnel to Snake Island, which is vital for protecting sea lanes out of the key port of Odesa.
— A group of volunteers called the “IT Army of Ukraine” took credit for a cyberattack that delayed Putin’s speech in St. Petersburg. The group was convened by Ukraine after the invasion to launch cyberattacks against Russian targets. It said that on Friday it carried out a distributed denial-of-service attack, which leverages networks of zombie computers to flood websites with junk traffic, rendering them unreachable.
— The war’s disruption to exports of grain and other crops from Ukraine that feed the world has captured global attention and sent bread prices soaring across the world. But the production of other, more niche foodstuffs has also been impacted, including for a Ukrainian snail farmer.
— The organizer of the Eurovision Song Contest said Friday that it will start talks with the BBC on possibly holding next year’s event in the U.K. after concluding that it can’t be held in Ukraine. Last month, Ukrainian band Kalush Orchestra won the 2022 contest, buoying Ukrainian spirits. The event is traditionally staged by the previous year’s winner.
After a series of setbacks early in the war, including the failure to seize Ukraine’s capital, Russian forces have switched their focus to the Donbas.
The Ukrainian military said Friday that Moscow’s troops kept up relentless attacks on both Sloviansk and Sievierodonetsk, two key cities that have been the focus on recent fighting. The military claimed that Ukrainian forces pushed Russian fighters out of the village of Bohorodychne, north of Sloviansk.
Russia and its allies say they have taken about half of Donetsk and nearly all of Luhansk — the two regions that make up the Donbas. Sievierodonetsk and surrounding villages are in the last pocket of Luhansk region still in Ukrainian hands.
“The Russians are pouring fire on the city,” said Luhansk Gov. Serhiy Haidai. “It’s getting harder and harder for us to fight in Sievierodonetsk, because the Russians outnumber us in artillery and manpower, and it’s very difficult for us to resist this barrage of fire.”
The constant shelling made it impossible for 568 people, including 38 children, sheltering in the Azot chemical plant in the city to escape, he said.
Russian forces have destroyed all three bridges leading out of the city, but Haidai said it still had not been fully blocked off.
The Moscow envoy for Russia-backed separatists who control much of the territory around Sievierodonetsk said an evacuation from the Azot plant could take place, under certain conditions.
Writing on social media on Friday, Rodion Miroshnik of the self-proclaimed Luhansk’s People’s Republic said Russian troops and separatists are “ready to consider options for opening a humanitarian corridor for the exit of civilians, but subject to strict adherence to the cease-fire.”
Earlier this week, Miroshnik accused Kyiv’s troops of trying to disrupt the evacuation of civilians from Azot, a claim vigorously denied by Ukrainian officials.
Juneteenth, or Emancipation Day, commemorates the end of slavery on June 19, 1865, in Galveston, Texas, in compliance with President Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. Here, a young woman stands near a piece of art created during the Louisville Juneteenth Festival at the Big Four Lawn on June 19, 2021, in Louisville, Ky.
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Juneteenth, or Emancipation Day, commemorates the end of slavery on June 19, 1865, in Galveston, Texas, in compliance with President Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. Here, a young woman stands near a piece of art created during the Louisville Juneteenth Festival at the Big Four Lawn on June 19, 2021, in Louisville, Ky.
Following its negative reaction on social media, Walmart pulled its special edition flavor of ice cream commemorating Juneteenth from shelves, with many critics calling out the retailer for capitalizing on the holiday for profit.
“There were several missteps with this. When you collectively look at all these missteps — the branding, the marketing, the visual rhetoric — you understand that there weren’t Black creatives in the room that had a voice at the table,” Christina Ferraz, founder and head consultant of marketing agency Thirty6five, told NPR.
“Juneteenth holiday marks a celebration of freedom and independence. However, we received feedback that a few items caused concern for some of our customers and we sincerely apologize,” the company said in its statement to NPR.
The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis apologized and removed its Juneteenth-themed watermelon salad from its food court menu ahead of its Juneteenth Jamboree celebration.
“As a museum, we apologize and acknowledge the negative impact that stereotypes have on Black communities. The salad has been removed from the menu,” the museum said in its statement. “We are currently reviewing how we may best convey these stories and traditions during this year’s Juneteenth celebration as well as making changes around how future food selections are made by our food service provider.”
But while companies are working continuously to remove their Juneteenth items off shelves, experts argue that companies that are selling and promoting Juneteenth-branded products are tone-deaf — claiming they are only profiting off Black suffering.
“When a corporation comes in, uses that further marketing march and then capitalizes off it and sells it, what we’re seeing is modern-day colonialism,” said Ferraz.
Experts say the true meaning of the commemoration can easily be lost through consumerism and widespread consumption.
The importance of Juneteenth and what it represents
Whether you call it Freedom Day, Emancipation Day or just simply Juneteenth, the annual commemoration is significant in U.S. history — marking our country’s second independence day.
“Juneteenth is a significant cultural resonance to the African American community, but also, of course, throughout much of the rest of the country,” said Ravi Perry, political science professor at Howard University.
On June 19, 1865, Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger — who had fought for the Union — arrived at Galveston, Texas, with nearly 2,000 troops to announce that the more than 250,000 enslaved Black people in the state were finally free.
Granger’s announcement came about two months after the ending of the Civil War and nearly three years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
During his visit, Granger issued General Order No. 3, informing the people of Texas that those who were enslaved were now free, according to the National Archives. Juneteenth gets its name by combining both “June” and “nineteenth,” the day that Granger arrived in Galveston with his announcement.
“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor,” the order reads, in part.
Major brands are still working to become more diverse
Over the course of the last two years, large brands and companies have become noticeably more inclusive. A number of major brands have featured more Black and other minorities in their ads and marketing materials as a way to take a stand against racism.
Last year, McDonald’s partnered with multi-platinum rapper Saweetie as the fast-food chain featured her “Saweetie Meal.”
Major brands and corporations are continuing to partner with Black and brown celebrities in an effort to maintain and expand their consumers of color.
“With the uprising and the advocacy and the demands after the murder of George Floyd, really there’s been a spotlight shining on the importance of highlighting and making space for Black people, specifically Black women,” Alfredo Del Cid, head of learning and development at consulting firm Collective, told NPR in 2021.
NPR’s Sharon Pruitt-Young contributed to this report.
President Joe Biden said Thursday Americans were “very, very down.” He’s right about that.
A new USA TODAY/Suffolk Poll shows the country in a funk, and one that sets a problematic political landscape for Democrats in the November elections that are approaching fast.
Only 39% of Americans approve of the job Biden is doing as president. A stunning 47% “strongly” disapprove; just 16% “strongly” approve. Academic studies have shown that presidential approval is one of the most reliable predictors of what happens in midterm elections, and a rating this low would traditionally signal significant losses for the president’s party.
More than seven in 10, 71%, say the United States is “on the wrong track;” 16% say it’s headed in the right direction. Even most Democrats say the country is on the wrong track, 46%-34%. Three of four independents and nearly every Republican agree.
Americans split 40%-40% when asked whether they would vote for a Republican or a Democrat for Congress if the election was held today. Independent analysts and strategists in both parties say Republicans are likely to pick up the handful of seats they need to take control of the House. Democrats now hold 220 House seats; 218 are needed for control.
The run-up in gas prices has many factors, but it was intensified by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and subsequent Western sanctions on the Kremlin, which disrupted supply from what had been the world’s third-largest oil producer. Russian output has fallen by more than 1 million barrels per day due to export sanctions that complicate sales and import sanctions that hurt production, according to Rory Johnston, an analyst at Commodity Context. Refineries necessary to turn oil into gas and other products are stretched to their limits, with Russian refineries knocked offline and U.S. refining capacity down roughly 5 percent, according to the Energy Information Administration.
Days after the 2020 presidential election, before all votes were counted and Joseph R. Biden was declared the winner, cyber experts and analysts piled into suites at the Trump Hotel in Washington and other hotel rooms in the area.
The plan was urgent: Crowdsource evidence of electoral fraud to secure a Trump victory with the assistance of his legal team and White House staff.
Weeks later, former Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn urged leaders of the effort to move to a more remote location, an isolated South Carolina plantation owned by conservative attorney L. Lin Wood. There, they planned weeks of lawsuits, attempts to access voting machines and ways to persuade lawmakers to reject key state election results, driven by a frantic mission whose goal was to keep then-President Trump in office after an election he lost.
Since the violent attempt on Jan. 6, 2021, to stop certification of the 2020 election results, much of the scrutiny has been trained on what Trump knew, as well as the involvement of those closest to him, including his chief of staff, Mark Meadows. But it was dozens of true believers gathered in hotels in Washington and at the South Carolina plantation who collected the information upon which the Trump campaign based its unsubstantiated claims that the election was stolen, information also used to enlist state and federal lawmakers to assist in a bid to overturn the election results.
The House Jan. 6 select committee is making its case in hearings this month of a coordinated, multistep effort with Trump at the center to subvert the will of voters and keep himself in power — even though he had been repeatedly told there was no credible evidence of fraud that could overturn the election. Much of the proof offered in crafting the “Big Lie” came from a motley crew of both big players and people unfamiliar to the public, who left their daily lives, families and jobs for weeks to travel to Washington or submit affidavits to support the Trump campaign’s widely debunked claims of fraud.
Using public records, months of interviews with people behind the scenes and hundreds of never-before-seen documents, The Times assembled accounts of how the group came together and what it did in the frenetic weeks between election day in 2020 and Jan. 6, 2021, to help Trump and his circle push the false theory that the election was stolen.
Several of those involved told The Times they spoke to the committee at length as part of its 10-month investigation, or turned over troves of documents and communications. Others said they haven’t been contacted by the committee.
Some of the key players in the group were already working together in New York City before the election to crack the laptop of Hunter Biden, son of the Democratic nominee, said former Overstock.com Chief Executive Patrick Byrne, who was a major funder of the effort. Byrne has increasingly spoken publicly about political conspiracy theories in recent years, particularly after leaving Overstock.com in 2019 over the disclosure that he was in an intimate relationship with Russian agent Maria Butina, who was convicted in the U.S. in connection with Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
Also a part of the effort were Trump’s former attorney Sidney Powell and personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, along with his client, Michael Trimarco, a New York businessman who has previously worked with finance and technology companies and got involved with the group when Giuliani asked him to look at documents on the laptop.
The group set up shop in hotels around Washington to be ready for the election results, staffing multiple bases with a small army of cybersecurity experts, quantitative analysts, lawyers and former members of law enforcement, convinced that fraud took place and determined to prove it. Some said they believed Trump’s months of claims that he could only lose if the election was stolen, others cared less about politics and were already convinced that fraud tainted all American elections.
“Among the people who believe there were a lot of irregularities and saw the pattern in the irregularities, they were all there,” Byrne told The Times of the effort. “Everyone was there trying to do the same thing, to crack it [and] to find the evidence that could be exposed.”
The Bad News Bears
Byrne said he rented a block of rooms at the Trump International Hotel in Washington for a team he called the “Bad News Bears,” where they worked to collect affidavits, look for anomalies in election results and process findings for Powell and Giuliani’s lawsuits. The initial members of Byrne’s team were Conan Hayes, a former surfer and a co-founder of Costa Mesa-based clothing brand RVCA; former Army Capt. Seth Keshel and cybersecurity consultant Todd Sanders, Byrne said. Retired Army Col. Phil Waldron also came with them, but he quickly moved to work closely with the president’s lawyers, Byrne said. Waldron became Giuliani’s main presenter to state and federal lawmakers.
“I brought them up thinking that they were going to become key in helping unscramble [fraud], which they were,” Byrne said.
In an interview with The Times, Trimarco said the group he led — which included attorneys, people who had previously worked in elections and others with ties to former White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon — got rooms across the river at the Westin Arlington Gateway hotel.
“There was a ton of information coming in from all over literally the world that needed to be vetted through very quickly and then, you know, interpreted to see if it was real or not, and then gotten up through the chain of command, which was to Rudy [Giuliani] so that if [it], I guess, passed muster there, then it would go to the president,” Trimarco said.
Byrne’s cyber team made its case to Powell and Giuliani on Nov. 9 in the Trump campaign offices as staff members were packing up their desks, theorizing that if bad actors had committed fraud in just six counties in swing states, it would have been enough to tip the 2020 election. They met for 45 minutes with Powell, who was so excited that she rushed Byrne and his team in to meet with Giuliani for 30 minutes, Byrne wrote in his book, “The Deep Rig.” Giuliani was less convinced, and asked for a memo outlining their theory, Byrne wrote.
Powell and Giuliani did not respond to interview requests from The Times.
A few days later, Powell and others staying at the Westin Arlington Gateway gathered to hear Russell Ramsland, the head of Dallas-based Allied Security Operations Group, and Waldron detail their own theories on how the system was hacked and what they would need to address it, Trimarco said.
Ramsland declined to speak to The Times and Waldron, who previously worked for Ramsland’s security firm, did not respond to requests for comment.
Ramsland and Waldron laid out the same theory as Byrne’s team but in more depth, Trimarco said, asserting that finding fraud in election machines in six key counties could turn an election.
“They propose a plan that would essentially involve the private contractors — I guess namely themselves — going to get access to these voting machines to go find these security breaches or flaws and be able to audit the results,” Trimarco said.
Since 2018, Ramsland, who ran an unsuccessful congressional bid in 2016 to unseat fellow Republican Pete Sessions in Dallas, had promoted a theory of foreign interference in voting machines to a succession of powerful Republicans, including several members of Congress. His conjecture was presented to but not substantiated by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in the months before the 2020 election, the Washington Post reported.
Byrne said he first met Waldron and some other cyber experts who would later join them in Washington in the summer of 2020.
Trimarco said when he brought Giuliani the plan by Ramsland and Waldron the day after meeting with them to get permission from the president to allow private contractors to seize voting machines and data, the president’s lawyer dismissed it outright. Giuliani told Trimarco that their focus would instead be on convincing state legislators that the wording of the Constitution gives them power to overturn, alter or “decertify” a state’s presidential election results — even if it changes whom voters selected. That reading of the Constitution is widely dismissed by constitutional experts, who say that elected state officials cannot change electoral college electors once they’ve been chosen by voters.
Though Giuliani rejected the idea, the concept of seizing voting machines would reemerge in mid-December when Trump was asked to sign an executive order authorizing the federal government to take control of state election systems.
Code names and pseudonyms
Emails and documents from those involved in the effort that were reviewed by The Times show several people used encrypted ProtonMail accounts or other email addresses connected to a private server. Some used code names in emails and identified themselves only by pseudonyms or initials.
“I’m loading a larger version of the Enola Gay,” Powell wrote in a Nov. 12 email to Wood — who brought an election lawsuit in Georgia arguing proper procedures weren’t followed in the election — in a nod to the American aircraft that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in World War II. It is unclear what Powell was referring to in her email.
Giuliani convinced Trump in a Nov. 12 Oval Office meeting to promote the theory that ballot counting machines owned by Dominion Voting Systems changed the results of the election and to allow Giuliani to guide efforts to contest it, the New York Times reported.
That same day, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued a statement with other federal election agencies confirming that there was “no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised,” and that the 2020 presidential election was the most secure in American history.
Some members of the Trump campaign had already decided many of the fraud claims were baseless or didn’t show enough fraud to change the result. The following day, Trump 2020 reelection campaign advisor Jason Miller emailed Meadows an internal memo prepared by the Trump campaign rebutting various allegations against Dominion Voting Systems.
“Will defer to you on whether or not to share full report with POTUS. POTUS is clearly hyped up on them,” Miller said in a follow-up text obtained by CNN. It’s unclear whether Meadows shared the report with Trump.
Giuliani knew the courts weren’t going to wade into deciding an election, Trimarco said. Instead, he said, Giuliani believed the path to success was convincing lawmakers to reject state results. If they were going to persuade state lawmakers and members of Congress, they needed evidence “indicative of fraud,” even if it wasn’t conclusive, Trimarco said.
A group of people prepared to find that evidence was already in place. Prominent far-right conservatives put out social media pleas for voters to send them evidence of fraud. And a deluge of personal anecdotes about the election process poured in.
Byrne told The Times that Flynn was pleased with the operation he and Trimarco created to collect information, but said there needed to be better coordination with Powell and Giuliani. Flynn suggested moving the operation’s headquarters “to a location far away from D.C., far away from any city, in fact,” Byrne wrote in his book.
Flynn did not respond to interview requests from The Times.
Soon after, Powell and some of her attorneys staying at the Westin left, along with some of the cybersecurity experts.
“They left the Westin in the middle of the night,” Trimarco told far-right commentator Ann Vandersteel recently in an online interview. “They pulled all of our stuff out of there because they thought that the Westin was compromised.”
The plantation
Powell, Flynn and a few lawyers and cyber experts made a new headquarters at Tomotley, Wood’s 1,000-acre plantation located just over an hour from Savannah, Ga., and Charleston, S.C.
Wood said in an interview with The Times that he and Flynn met through Twitter direct messages, but that he barely knew Powell when she asked if her team could come work at the plantation.
Powell and two attorneys arrived either Nov. 12 or Nov. 13, Wood said, and announced that Flynn would be joining them. Soon cybersecurity expert Doug Logan and former senior official for the National Security Agency Jim Penrose followed, along with Hayes and Keshel from Byrne’s Bad News Bears team.
When Flynn arrived with Byrne the evening of Nov. 15, the group had a planning meeting.
“That was really where they planned what locations they were going to go to, who’s going to offer up info,” Joshua Merritt, a former employee of Ramsland’s security firm, told The Times. “The Tomotley meeting was sort of that operational order where everyone sat down and planned it and figured out how they were going to go through everything.”
Merritt said his research into foreign interference is the source of some of the claims that Powell, in particular, pushed in public, though he said the campaign mischaracterized it. An affidavit from Merritt explaining why he thought foreign interference in the election was possible was cited in the four lawsuits Powell filed challenging election results and alleging fraud in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin.
Byrne said Logan, Penrose and the other cyber experts who stayed at the South Carolina plantation set up in a space above a garage on the property while Powell’s lawyers worked from the main house about 50 yards away.
“That’s so all this information could flow in from around the country and there would be people sort of just walking across the lawn and presenting it to these lawyers,” Byrne said.
Flynn ran the Tomotley operation, multiple people told The Times, staying through Thanksgiving. Pictures posted on social media show him carving a turkey at Tomotley the day after being pardoned by Trump.
Though Ramsland and Waldron didn’t receive the authority to seize election machines they asked Giuliani to obtain from Trump, the push to persuade elections and county officials across the country to grant private contractors permission to review ballot information and machines began. In a Nov. 17 email to the Tomotley team, Waldron listed the election equipment lawyers needed to ask for access to when they sought injunctions. The email does not say what the injunctions were for.
By the time Powell and Giuliani held their Nov. 19 news conference at the Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington alleging they had overwhelming proof of fraud, including interference from foreign countries, the Trump campaign had handed over information-gathering for its legal challenges to outside parties, Miller told the Jan. 6 committee, according to a deposition transcript.
“Keep in mind, my team — when I say ‘my team,’ meaning the remnants of the campaign team that were still around — were relying on evidence that had been pulled by outside people. So it’s not as though the inside campaign team was out doing the original research. They were just verifying the results,” Miller said.
Internal emails reviewed by The Times that were sent between members of the various teams attempting to gather evidence show tips flowed in from across the county, as did requests for help checking machines for fraud. Others offered to produce affidavits, and Byrne said he paid for their travel and hotel stays.
Trimarco said his team filtered through the onslaught of information, vetting it and forwarding it to Giuliani, and eventually to White House trade advisor Peter Navarro. A 26-year-old White House staffer named Garrett Ziegler acted as a conduit.
At the time, Navarro was compiling a three-volume report on election fraud for state and federal lawmakers, Trimarco said. The Justice Department has charged Navarro with contempt of Congress for refusing to speak to the Jan. 6 committee. He claimed Trump had asserted executive privilege.
At Tomotley, Logan and Penrose also worked to triage the flood of tips coming in and tried to get access to voting machines in Georgia, according to emails reviewed by The Times and interviews with several people involved.
Byrne’s team also processed fraud tips in Washington, where Byrne said he was occasionally asked to speak by phone with county officials or prosecutors to explain his theory about voting machine fraud. When Giuliani, Powell or their lawyers determined a county official was willing to let them examine election machines, Byrne’s team would fly there in an attempt to access the machines or data.
“We were getting calls and information from Rudy and Rudy’s people and Sidney that there were different government officials calling in and saying that they had smelled skunk and they thought something was up — and they would be willing to cooperate in an investigation, in a limited investigation,” Byrne told The Times.
Several times, Byrne said, his team showed up to access machines in Georgia and no one seemed to know they were coming, or the permission to access machines in other states promised by the lawyers working for Powell or Giuliani never came through.
‘It looked like a really easy win’
Since the 2020 election, news has emerged of local and county officials offering or providing third parties access to voting machines in Colorado, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Most states have strict laws dictating who can access voting machines and election data and why, in order to ensure the machines are not tampered with. State and federal officials in at least four states are investigating whether local officials violated those laws and provided unauthorized access.
Trump’s attorneys keyed in on rural Antrim County, Mich., in its cross-country search.
On election night, the reliably red county had gone for Biden by about 3,200 votes. But the county clerk soon discovered she hadn’t properly updated the machines before the election, causing an error that had cast some Trump votes for Biden. When the update was made, Trump won with 62% of the vote. County officials verified the total and certified the results. But Trump supporters still claimed the situation was evidence of fraud.
“It looked like a really easy win,” said Merritt, the former employee of Ramsland’s security firm. “You see a 6,000-vote shift that didn’t make sense, so everyone’s thought is, it’s an easy win.”
On Nov. 27, Byrne’s Bad News Bears, along with Katherine Friess, a lawyer working with Giuliani, hopped on a private plane hired by Byrne and headed to Michigan. They did so at the request of a local businessman who was challenging the results of an ordinance to allow a pot shop to open in an Antrim County town, which passed by a single vote. Friess did not return requests for comment.
The team wasn’t initially able to persuade county officials to give them access to the machines, but found a sympathetic woman at a precinct office, Byrne said.
“They went on their own to a different place and just talked to a precinct captain. And then that precinct captain gave them access to what she had,” Byrne said.
Byrne said the woman, whom he didn’t identify, let them photograph the paper records of data from election machines, which the cyber experts claimed showed evidence of fraud. A judge viewed the images as justification to issue a court order to have forensic images taken of Antrim County’s election equipment on Dec. 6.
The team then took those electronic images and data to Washington and “cracked it” in a Trump hotel suite, Byrne said.
Trimarco said his team at the Westin wrapped up its work on Dec. 7 or Dec. 8. COVID-19 had swept through what was left of the staff at Trump campaign headquarters, and that office also closed, Trimarco said.
“By that point in time, at least from my perspective being on the Rudy team, the wheels were in motion to do the process on Jan. 6,” he said, referencing the plan to have politicians challenge state results.
The resulting Antrim forensic report signed by Ramsland alleged a broad conspiracy to rig the election and claimed that Dominion Voting Systems’ machines were “intentionally and purposefully designed” to mark ballots as faulty so election administrators could change the results.
A person who discussed a draft of the report by phone with Friess and those who worked on it told The Times that the Dec. 13 report that was made public included politicized language that made broad statements blaming Dominion for fraud that was not in that earlier draft.
Former Atty. Gen. William Barr told the Jan. 6 committee that Trump gave him a copy of the “very amateurish” report in the Oval Office on Dec. 14, with the president calling it “absolute proof” that “means that I’m going to have a second term.”
Giuliani, Powell and Flynn shared the Antrim report widely on social media. A Senate report on the pressure Trump put on the Justice Department during that time shows Trump’s assistant Molly Michael emailed a copy to Deputy Atty. Gen. Jeffrey Rosen with the subject line: “From POTUS.”
The report was cited in the executive order that Flynn, Powell and Byrne asked Trump to sign Dec. 18, which would have allowed the Department of Homeland Security to seize state election machines and voting data.
And it again appeared in the first volume of Navarro’s report, titled “Immaculate Deception,” which relied on information the teams in Washington had gathered. The report claimed that elections in six states that were won by Biden were touched by fraud.
Reporters quickly pointed out that many of the claims in Navarro’s report had been dismissed by judges or fact-checked and rejected by experts. But Trimarco said the point wasn’t to convince judges: It was to persuade state and federal lawmakers that enough questions existed to warrant examining election results.
“If these election irregularities are not fully investigated prior to Inauguration Day and thereby effectively allowed to stand, this nation runs the very real risk of never being able to have a fair presidential election again,” the report stated.
Trimarco said his team was looking for information that indicated an audit of particular state or county results was necessary, evidence that “would lead you to believe that, while not conclusive, [is] indicative that there may be some underlying problems in the election votes, the tally of the votes, the computers — anything that would mean that there should be a bottom-up audit on the vote starting from the registrations all the way through the casting of the vote, and then the counting of the votes and the tabulation.”
In the final days before members of Congress met to certify the election results on Jan. 6, 2021, Ramsland’s Antrim report and Navarro’s reports were presented to state lawmakers as reasons to doubt or challenge election results.
The reports were also presented to Republican members of Congress and Vice President Mike Pence as justification for rejecting electoral college votes from several states Biden won.
Dozens of representatives and some senators who saw the information the ragtag team had collected were planning to challenge the electors in those states when Congress met to certify the election.
Two people were killed and another person was injured Thursday in a shooting at a small group church meeting in a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama, police said.
A suspect, who was not identified publicly, is in custody, said Capt. Shane Ware with the Vestavia Hills Police Department. The surviving victim is being treated at a hospital for undisclosed injuries, he said.
The shooting at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Vestavia Hills was reported around 6:22 p.m. local time, according to Ware.
According to the church calendar, an event called the “Boomers Potluck” was scheduled at the same time the shooting happened, but it wasn’t clear from the media briefing whether the violence occurred there. It’s also unclear how many people were at the event when the shots were fired.
Agents with the FBI, US Marshals Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco and Explosives (ATF) were dispatched to the scene, Ware noted. He didn’t take questions at any of the three media briefings on the shooting and urged anyone with additional information to contact the Vestavia Hills Police Department.
Rev. Kelley Hudlow, missioner for clergy formation for the Diocese of Alabama, told CNN affiliate WVTM the community needs to be lifted up in healing through prayer and unity.
“Currently we are praying for healing and safety for all those who have been impacted and affected, and also knowing this is a traumatic thing that has happened to our community, not just our church, but this community here,” Hudlow said. “What we need is for this community to do what it’s really good at, which is coming together to take of each other.”
Church members held hands in a circle and prayed in a nearby parking lot, with several people appearing distressed by what happened, CNN affiliate WBRC reported.
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey sent her condolences.
“I am glad to hear the shooter is in custody,” Ivey said. “This should never happen – in a church, in a store, in the city, or anywhere. We continue to closely monitor the situation.”
The shooting is the latest in a house of worship amid a national reckoning on firearms and their availability. Last month, six people were shot, one fatally, at a Taiwanese church service in Southern California.
Mass shootings at an an elementary school in South Texas that claimed the lives of 19 children and two teachers and at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket in a racist attack on the Black community that killed 10 people have brought increased political attention in the last several weeks toward gun violence.
In the wake of such vicious attacks, a bipartisan group of senators announced an agreement on principle for gun safety legislation that aims to address mental health resources, school safety and access to firearms.
Mr. Parks, whose business has survived the vagaries of Yellowstone conditions since 1953 when his father opened the shop, said he thought some places might not survive the road closure.
The West is replete with boom-bust tales, from the Gold Rush in California to cattle ranching in Wyoming. Business operators here have experienced their own mini cycle in recent years. When Covid-19 forced shutdowns in March 2020, many struggled to survive.
“Then July rolled around and people realized they could be outside and boom, things took off,” said Sami Gortmaker, manager of Flying Pig Adventures, a whitewater rafting company in Gardiner. “So you never know. We have learned to take each month like its own season.”
On Wednesday, the streets of Gardiner were deserted, and Stacey Orsted was locking the door of the Wonderland Cafe and Lodge before climbing into an RV. The county shut down her business because the town lacked drinking water after flooding closed the water plant.
President Joe Biden speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in the Oval Office of the White House on Thursday, June 16, 2022.
Evan Vucci/AP
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President Joe Biden speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in the Oval Office of the White House on Thursday, June 16, 2022.
Evan Vucci/AP
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden told The Associated Press on Thursday that the American people are “really, really down” after a tumultuous two years with the coronavirus pandemic, volatility in the economy and now surging gasoline prices that are slamming family budgets.
He said a recession is not inevitable and bristled at claims by Republican lawmakers that last year’s COVID-19 aid plan was fully to blame for inflation reaching a 40-year high, calling that argument “bizarre.”
As for the overall American mindset, Biden said, “People are really, really down.”
“They’re really down,” he said. “The need for mental health in America, it has skyrocketed, because people have seen everything upset. Everything they’ve counted on upset. But most of it’s the consequence of what’s happened, what happened as a consequence of the COVID crisis.”
Speaking to the AP in a 30-minute Oval Office interview, Biden addressed the warnings by economists that the United States could be headed for a recession.
“First of all, it’s not inevitable,” he said. “Secondly, we’re in a stronger position than any nation in the world to overcome this inflation.”
As for the causes of inflation, Biden flashed some defensiveness on that count. “If it’s my fault, why is it the case in every other major industrial country in the world that inflation is higher? You ask yourself that? I’m not being a wise guy,” he said.
The president said he saw reason for optimism with the 3.6% unemployment rate and America’s relative strength in the world.
“Be confident, because I am confident we’re better positioned than any country in the world to own the second quarter of the 21st century,” Biden said. “That’s not hyperbole, that’s a fact.”
Biden’s bleak assessment of the national psyche comes as voters have soured on his job performance and the direction of the country. Only 39% of U.S. adults approve of Biden’s performance as president, according to a May poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Research, dipping from already negative ratings a month earlier.
Overall, only about 2 in 10 adults said the U.S. is heading in the right direction or that the economy is good, both down from about 3 in 10 in April. Those drops were concentrated among Democrats, with just 33% within the president’s party saying the country is headed in the right direction, down from 49% in April.
The president outlined some of the hard choices he has faced, saying the U.S. needed to stand up to Russian President Vladimir Putin for invading Ukraine in February even though tough sanctions imposed as a result of that war have caused gas prices to surge, creating a political risk for Biden in an election year. He called on oil companies to think of the world’s short-term needs and increase production.
Asked why he ordered the financial penalties against Moscow that have disrupted food and energy markets globally, Biden said he made his calculation as commander in chief rather than as a politician thinking about the election.
“I’m the president of the United States,” he said. “It’s what’s best in the country. No kidding. No kidding. So what happens? What happens if the strongest power in NATO, the organizational structure we put together, walked away from Russian aggression?”
Biden spun out the possibility of chaos in Europe if an unimpeded Russia kept moving deeper into the continent, China was emboldened to take over Taiwan and North Korea grew even more aggressive with its nuclear weapon ambitions.
Biden renewed his contention that major oil companies have benefited from higher prices without increasing production as much as they should. He said the companies needed to think of the world in the short term, not just their investors.
“Don’t just reward yourselves,” he said.
Consumer prices have jumped 8.6% over the past year, the steepest rise in more than 40 years. Republican lawmakers have said that Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package from last year kick-started a spiral of price increases.
The president said there was “zero evidence” for that claim, noting that other countries have endured higher prices as economies reopened and people became vaccinated. Still, Biden acknowledged Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s contention that the spending had a limited inflationary effect.
“You could argue whether it had on the margin a minor impact on inflation,” he said. “I don’t think it did. And most economists do not. But the idea that it caused inflation is bizarre.”
Still, high inflation has created a conundrum for Biden. He prioritized bringing back millions of jobs and has seen the unemployment rate return to close to pre-pandemic levels. The Federal Reserve on Wednesday increased its benchmark interest rate, in hopes of slowing the economy and pulling inflation down to its target rate of 2%.
The tightening of Fed policy has caused financial markets to slump and led many economists to warn of a potential recession next year. The president encouraged Americans to stay patient.
“They shouldn’t believe a warning,” he said. “They should just say, ‘Let’s say let’s see which is correct.'”
“It has a discretionary docket, yet in its first complete term as a new court it agreed to rule on abortion, carrying guns in public, climate change, and state support of religion,” Cole said. “At least thus far, caution has not been the court’s watchword. It has instead chosen to flex its newfound conservative muscle — and very possibly to make good on Trump’s promise to overturn Roe v. Wade. That can only contribute to the appearance and reality of a politicized court.”
A California doctor who is a leading figure in the anti-vaccine movement was sentenced on Thursday to two months in prison for storming the U.S. Capitol, where she delivered speeches to rioters during the mob’s attack.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper in Washington, D.C., also sentenced Dr. Simone Gold to 12 months of supervised release after her 60-day prison term and ordered her to pay a $9,500 fine. She can report to prison at a date to be determined.
Gold, a former emergency room physician, said she deeply regrets entering the Capitol during the riot on Jan. 6, 2021, and didn’t intend to get involved in an event that was “so destructive to our nation.”
“It’s the opposite of who I am,” she told Cooper.
Gold founded America’s Frontline Doctors. a group known for purveying COVID-19 misinformation. The Beverly Hills-based doctor, a Stanford Law School graduate, has over 480,000 followers on Twitter. She has condemned COVID-19 lockdowns and promoted the use of unproven and potentially dangerous drugs as coronavirus treatments.
The judge told Gold that her anti-vaccine activism wasn’t a factor in her sentencing. Cooper said Gold wasn’t a “casual bystander” on Jan. 6.
The judge also said Gold’s organization has misled supporters into believing her prosecution was politically motivated and trampled on her free speech rights. Cooper called it “unseemly” that America’s Frontline Doctors has invoked the Capitol riot in raising money, including for her salary.
“I think that is a real disservice to the true victims of that day,” he said.
Gold pleaded guilty in March to entering and remaining in a restricted building, a misdemeanor that carries a maximum sentence of one year in prison.
More than 800 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the riot at the Capitol. Over 300 of them have pleaded guilty, mostly to misdemeanors, and nearly 200 have been sentenced.
After the riot, Gold told The Washington Post that she followed a crowd into the Capitol, didn’t witness any violence and didn’t think she was breaking any laws.
“I can certainly speak to the place that I was, and it most emphatically was not a riot,” she said. “Where I was, was incredibly peaceful.”
But prosecutors say she entered the Capitol immediately after a law enforcement officer was assaulted and dragged to the ground in front of her. Gold also joined a mob that was trying to break into the House chamber and later ignored police commands to leave Statuary Hall so she could finish giving a speech, according to prosecutors.
Prosecutors had recommended 90 days of imprisonment, one year of supervised release and 60 hours of community service for Gold.
Gold spent two days in jail after her January 2021 arrest. Her lawyers had requested a sentence of time served and 60 hours of community service. Gold agreed to pay $500 in restitution.
Prosecutors said Gold hasn’t shown remorse or accepted responsibility for her actions. They accused her of trying to profit from her crime, saying America’s Frontline Doctors has raised more than $430,000 through its website for her legal expenses.
“It beggars belief that Gold could have incurred anywhere near $430,000 in costs for her criminal defense: after all, she pleaded guilty — in the face of indisputable, readily identifiable evidence — without filing a single motion,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing.
Defense attorney Dickson Young said Gold has paid her lawyers “out of her own pocket.” Young said America’s Frontline Doctors has kept the donated money for itself.
Gold told the Post that she had traveled to Washington to speak at a “Rally for Health Freedom” on the East side of the Capitol on the afternoon of Jan. 6.
Gold was charged with John Strand, the communications director for America’s Frontline Doctors. Prosecutors also described him as Gold’s boyfriend.
Strand has pleaded not guilty to the charges again him and has a trial scheduled to start on July 18. Prosecutors say Strand rejected their offer for a plea agreement.
Strand was filming as Gold gave a speech in Statuary Hall about her opposition to coronavirus vaccine mandates and government-imposed lockdowns. After police escorted her out of Statuary Hall, Gold delivered another speech in the Rotunda using a bullhorn while standing on a statue of former President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Gold and Strand spent nearly an hour inside the Capitol before leaving.
The Medical Board of California’s database shows Gold remains licensed to practice medicine in the state. However, Gold’s lawyers say the board sent her a letter threatening to revoke her medical license for “an instance of misinformation.”
“My reputation has been utterly shredded,” Gold said Thursday.
Gold moved from California to Naples, Florida, after her arrest. Defense attorney Kira West said Gold has received threats and travels with a bodyguard.
WASHINGTON, June 16 (Reuters) – Former President Donald Trump pressured his vice president, Mike Pence, to overturn his 2020 election defeat despite being told repeatedly it was illegal to do so, aides to Pence told the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol on Thursday.
Members of the Democratic-led House of Representatives select committee said Trump continued his pressure campaign even though he knew a violent mob of his supporters was threatening the Capitol as Pence and lawmakers met to formally certify President Joe Biden’s victory in the November 2020 election.
The nine-member committee has used the first three of at least six public hearings this month to build a case that Trump’s efforts to overturn his defeat amounted to illegal conduct, far beyond normal politics.
Trump has repeatedly denied wrongdoing, while repeating his false accusations that he lost the election only because of widespread fraud that benefited Democrat Biden. Trump and his supporters – including many Republican members of Congress – dismiss the Jan. 6 panel as a political witchhunt.
The certification vote on Jan. 6 had become a focus for Trump, who saw it as a last-ditch chance to retain the presidency despite his loss at the polls.
Marc Short, who was Pence’s chief of staff, said in videotaped testimony that Pence told Trump “many times” that he did not have the authority to stop the vote certification in Congress as the Republican president sought.
Gregory Jacob, an attorney for Pence, said the main proponent of that theory, attorney John Eastman, admitted in front of the president two days before the attack that his plan to have Pence halt the procedure would violate the law.
Eastman had argued that Pence could reject results from certain states if he thought they were illegitimate, giving Republicans in those states an opportunity to declare Trump the victor despite the actual vote count.
Advisers to Pence told the committee that idea had no basis in law.
“It is breathtaking that these arguments even were conceived, let alone entertained by the president of the United States,” former U.S. Appeals Court Judge J. Michael Luttig, an informal Pence adviser, said.
Trump is widely expected to run for president again in 2024, and committee members and witnesses warned that he would not accept defeat no matter the actual outcome.
1/9
Michael Luttig, advisor to former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and a former U.S. federal judge, testifies during the third of eight planned public hearings of the U.S. House Select Committee to investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol, on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S. June 16, 2022. REUTERS/Sarah Silbiger
“Today almost two years after that fateful day in January 2021, that still, Donald Trump and his allies and supporters are a clear and present danger to American democracy,” Luttig said.
The committee showed an email Eastman sent to Trump’s attorney, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, asking for a presidential pardon. Eastman never received one.
‘HANG MIKE PENCE’
The hearing featured several chilling clips of some of the thousands of Trump supporters who descended on the Capitol after a rally in which Trump repeatedly criticized Pence, chanting for Pence to be pulled out of the building or hanged.
Trump tweeted at 2:24 p.m., while the attack was going on, that Pence did not have the “courage” to stop the count.
“It felt like he was pouring gasoline on the fire by tweeting that,” Sarah Matthews, a Trump White House staffer, said in video testimony.
Representative Pete Aguilar said a witness had told the Federal Bureau of Investigation that the Proud Boys, one of the right-wing groups participating in the Capitol attack, said the group would have killed Pence if they been able to get to him.
Committee members said Trump’s comments against Pence incited the crowd.
The committee displayed photos of Pence sheltering in place during the riot. Jacob, who was with Pence during the attack, said he refused to leave and that he did not want to give the demonstrators the satisfaction of forcing him from the building. “The vice president did not want to take any chance that the world would see the vice president of the United States fleeing the U.S. Capitol,” he said.
The attack on the Capitol delayed certification of the election for hours, injured more than 140 police officers and led to several deaths.
Even after police had suppressed the attack and reclaimed the Capitol, Eastman continued to press Pence’s team to overturn the vote.
“I implore you one last time, can the Vice President, please do what we’ve been asking him to do these last two days – suspend the Joint Session, send it back to the States,” Eastman wrote to Jacob at 11:44 p.m. in an email released by the committee.
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