Donald Trump is supposedly writing a book on how presidency was stolen from him
As the 6 January select committee prepares for a summer of what promise to be shocking and disturbing hearings about the Capitol riot, a new court filing from notorious lawyer John Eastman has revealed that the former president handwrote notes about strategies to overturn the 2020 election.
Mr Eastman is trying to shield hundreds of documents from the panel’s investigation, claiming they fall under attorney-client privilege. Among those he is withholding are emailed copies of handwritten notes from the then-president “about information that he thought might be useful for the anticipated litigation” over the result.
On another front, the panel is reportedly in talks with Donald Trump’s former attorney general, Bill Barr, who is said to be considering co-operating with the investigation. The select committee has also written to a Republican member of Congress seeking answers about a Capitol tour he allegedly gave the day before the attack.
The congressman in question, Georgia Republican Barry Loudermilk, has previously denied that he or any other members gave so-called “reconnaissance tours” before the riot, but in their letter to him, panel leaders Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney wrote that their “review of evidence directly contradicts that denial”.
Facebook accused of failing to detect ‘rampant election fraud’ campaign ad bought by Trump-backed Republican
In the aftermath of Mr Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden, several social media sites, including Twitter and Facebook, embarked on efforts to address false information spread that the election had been rigged.
Mr Trump, who was one of the biggest spreaders of falsehoods about the election, was banished from both platforms, and social media companies said they were working to address disinformation in the months ahead of November’s midterm election. Yet, a report in the Washington Post said the company’s systems had failed to detect an advert bought and posted in May by Joe Kent, a Trump-endorsed former special forces solider, competing in the race for Washington’s third congressional district.
Andrew Buncombe has more.
Josh Marcus21 May 2022 00:23
Trump-appointed judge says US must continue to expel migrants under public health law
A Louisiana federal judge has issued a ruling prohibiting the Biden Administration from reversing a Trump-era policy which allowed border patrol agents to turn away asylum seekers along the US-Mexico border without considering their claims as required under US treaty obligations.
Judge Robert Summerhays on Friday granted a request by 24 Republican-led states to block the Centers for Disease Control from ending the use of a public health authority, known as Title 42 for its section of the US Code, enacted under former president Donald Trump at the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Under Title 42, the CDC can block the entry of migrants into the US on public health grounds. The Biden Administration was set to let the CDC’s use of Title 42 expire on Monday, but Judge Summerhays’ ruling forces immigration officials to continue to act under the Trump-era order.
Mr Trump’s March 2020 order to use Title 42 to largely close the US-Mexico border to asylum seekers was framed at the time as a way to keep Covid-19 from entering the United States, though many public health experts say the policy had little effect on the spread of the coronavirus in the US.
Andrew Feinberg has the details.
Josh Marcus21 May 2022 00:15
Tucker Carlson asked Hunter Biden for help with son’s university application, says report
The emails, verified by The Washington Post, reveal that the Fox News host and his wife Susie Carlson reached out to President Joe Biden’s son in 2014 asking him to send a recommendation letter to get Buckley Carlson into the prestigious Washington DC college.
The right-wing TV host told Mr Biden that his son was good at squash and fly fishing and “loves Washington for all the right reasons”.
“He loves Washington for all the right reasons, I think and really wants to go to school here,” he wrote.
Josh Marcus20 May 2022 23:13
Is Trump to blame for the baby formula shortage?
As Joe Biden and the Democratic Party’s majorities in the House and Senate continue to face heat over rising consumer prices and a sudden shortage of baby formula triggered by plant shutdown and recall centered in Michigan, some liberals are focusing their fire on another target: Donald Trump.
Infant formula in the US is dominated by domestic manufacturers; foreign manufacturers make up only a few percentage points of the total US market share for baby formula, largely due to strict Food and Drug Administration standards for both content and labeling that restricts many European companies from the market.
The former president is facing criticism from some left-leaning figures on Twitter due to a trade agreement, the 2020 United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA), which established new trading rules for business and trade across North America and placed heavy restrictions on Canada’s dairy sector, long a target of criticism on the US conservative right due to its government-imposed price and import controls.
John Bowden gets to the bottom of it.
Josh Marcus20 May 2022 22:30
Far-right UCLA student who sat in Pence’s chair on Jan 6 pleads guilty
A far-right Republican leader at UCLA with white supremacist ties has pleaded guilty, after admitting to sitting in Vice President Mike Pence’s chair in the Senate during the 6 Jan Capitol breach.
Christian Secor, a member of America First Bruins, admitted to obstructing an official proceeding – namely Congress’s certification of the election of Joe Biden – in a plea deal with US prosecutors.
The charge carries a maximum of up to 20 years in prison, but prosecutors and Secor’s defence attorney agreed that he likely faces either 21 to 27 months or 53 to 61 months in prison under advisory federal guidelines, depending on whether he is deemed to have caused property damage or injury.
Josh Marcus20 May 2022 21:30
Trump pays $110,000 fine after being held in contempt by New York judge
The former president was held in contempt on 25 April after failing to comply with a subpoena that he hand over papers to investigators carrying out a civil financial investigation for the office of New York’s attorney general Letitia James.
The documents are related to Mr Trump’s personal finances and the financing of several of his namesake company’s properties.
Judge Arthur Engoron fined Mr Trump $10,000 a day until 6 May, and agreed several days later to lift the contempt order if the fine was paid and additional affidavits in the case were filed by Friday.
Graeme Massie has the details for The Independent.
Josh Marcus20 May 2022 20:30
Ginni Thomas asked Arizona lawmakers to help Trump overturn 2020 election defeat, says report
It was already known that Ms Thomas, 65, a long-time conservative activist and the wife of justice Clarence Thomas, 73, had sent text messages in the days after Mr Trump’s loss one of his senior aides, chief-of-staff Mark Meadows, urging him to “Help This Great President stand firm”.
It has now been reported that her efforts to stop Mr Biden becoming president went even further, and that she sent emails to two state legislators in Arizona, asking for their assistance in blocking Democrats from taking the White House. Emails sent by Ms Thomas to the pair on November Nov 9, 2020, argued they needed to intervene because the vote had been marred by fraud, according to the Washington Post. Andrew Buncombe has the story.
Josh Marcus20 May 2022 19:57
Ex-Trump lawyer John Eastman wants to keep January 6 panel from seeing former president’s handwritten notes
The ex-law professor a California federal judge said “more likely than not” violated US law while assisting former president Donald Trump’s push to install himself in the White House for a second term against the wishes of American voters wants to prevent the House January 6 select committee from obtaining documents that include handwritten notes in the former president’s own hand.
In a 50-page brief filed on Thursday, John Eastman claims to have communicated with Mr Trump through “six conduits to or agents of the former president,” and argued that his communications with those individuals should also be shielded because their involvement was “necessary” to facilitate his contact with the then-chief executive.
“While Dr Eastman could (and did) communicate directly with former President Trump at times … many of his communications with the President were necessarily through these agent,” he wrote. “Given that Dr Eastman’s client was the President of the United States, the use of these intermediaries easily qualifies as ‘reasonably necessary to facilitate the client’s communication with a lawyer’.”
Andrew Feinberg has the full story.
Josh Marcus20 May 2022 19:33
ICYMI: Report shows scale of GOP’s election subversion efforts
As Republican candidates for statewide office across the country continue to endorse the lie that the 2020 election was stolen, a new report has outlined the scale of state-level efforts to alter the US’s election architecture.
According to the updated report on the state of antidemocratic efforts from States United Democracy Center, Protect Democracy and Law Forward, state legislators in 33 states have introduced 229 such bills this year alone.
Since the organisations started tracking so-called “election subversion” bills in the aftermath of the 2020 election and the attack on the Capitol fuelled by the “stolen election” narrative, 50 have been enacted or adopted.
Andrew Naughtie20 May 2022 17:07
Jan 6 committee said to have photos from inside White House on day of Capitol attack
It has been reported that the 6 January committee has obtained official White House photos from the day of the Capitol riot that could help piece together what Donald Trump was doing during the three-hour attack on Congress.
Many of the photos count as presidential records because they were taken by official White House photographer Shealah Craighead, a federal employee. Asked whether his team has spoken to Ms Craighead, committee chair Bennie Thompson replied: “Not yet”.
Andrew Feinberg has the story.
Andrew Naughtie20 May 2022 16:36