Dick Cheney, known as a Vice President who yielded enormous power under George W. Bush’s presidency as a Republican, branded Trump as the greatest “threat to our Republic” in a new campaign ad for his daughter Liz Cheney, who is running for re-election in Wyoming, reports Ashe O
Former US Vice President Dick Cheney has attacked ex-President Donald Trump, calling him a “coward who lost big” and who poses the “greatest threat to our Republic” in what appears to be a vociferous defence for his daughter Liz Cheney, Vice Chair of the January 6 Capitol Hill insurrection panel, a target of Trump and Republicans’ ire for her statements in the panel against Trump for “dereliction of duty”.
Dick Cheney, known as a Vice President who yielded enormous power under George W. Bush’s presidency as a Republican, branded Trump as the greatest “threat to our Republic” in a new campaign ad for his daughter Liz Cheney, who is running for re-election in Wyoming.
Poll pundits rate her re-election chances as fairly low with Republicans campaigning for her opposite GOP candidate Hariet Hageman, who has endorsed Trump’s claims of a 2020 stolen election.
“In our nation’s 236-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our Republic than Donald Trump,” said Dick Cheney, who served as Vice President for two terms under George W. Bush.
“He (Trump) tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He is a coward. A real man wouldn’t lie to his supporters. He lost his election, and he lost big. I know it, he knows it, and deep down I think most Republicans know it,” Dick Cheney was quoted by The Guardian in the campaign ad for his daughter Liz Cheney seeking re-election from Wyoming in the midterms for the House of Representatives. .
Dick Cheney also said how proud he was of his daughter “for standing up to the truth, doing what’s right, honouring her oath to the Constitution when so many in our party are too scared to do so”.
Former US Vice President Dick Cheney (far right) with then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and President George Bush.
The one-minute ad featured the elder Cheney’s sharpest public attacks against Trump to date. Best known as the most powerful Vice President in American history, and a major figure in leading the US to war in Iraq, he has taken to defending his daughter in her fight against Trump.
“There’s nothing more important she will ever do than lead the effort to make sure Donald Trump is never near the Oval Office. And she will succeed,” he said in the ad.
The younger Cheney has been widely praised by liberals as vice-chairwoman of the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on Capitol Hill.
Liz Cheney has been one of Trump’s most pointed critics, accusing him of violating the Constitution for his role in the insurrection. In return, she has been largely ostracised from her party. Cheney faces an uphill re-election battle against the Trump-backed candidate Harriet Hageman, who maintains that the 2020 election was stolen.
“Liz Cheney has long forgotten she works for Wyoming (or perhaps she never knew), not the Radical Democrats. Wyoming deserves a Congresswoman who will represent us and our conservative values. It’s time to retire the elitist Liz Cheney,” Hageman tweeted on Thursday.
Though Liz Cheney has at least a million dollars more in donations to her campaign against Hageman, she was 22 points behind Hageman in a July poll conducted by the Casper Star-Tribune.
In an interview with CNN on Thursday, Liz Cheney said she does not expect to lose on August 16.
“I really believe that the people of Wyoming fundamentally understand how important fidelity to the constitution is � understand how important it is that we fight for those fundamental principles on which everything else is based,” she said.
The Republicans have warned Trump any attempt to make an announcement earlier than fall or before the mid-terms could be disastrous for the party, reports Ashe Oneil
Former US President Donald Trump and the Republican committees seem engaged in a battle of wits with the Republican National Committee (RNC) saying it will cease funding his legal bills if he chose to announce his candidacy for 2024 too early. Thats before the mid-terms on November 8 this year.
Trump will lose RNC funding for legal bills if he announces 2024 candidacy, says Fox News in a report claiming that top-level Republicans have encouraged the former leader not to announce his 2024 candidacy until after the mid-terms of the House of Representatives’ elections.
Trump tried to preempt the January 6 Capitol riot panel reports expected September by announcing his candidacy before so as to leverage his strength in the GOP to get his nomination for the presidential run.
The Republicans have warned Trump any attempt to make an announcement earlier than fall or before the mid-terms could be disastrous for the party as it would water down the campaign on the economy turning bad due to the inept administration of Joe Biden’s presidency that the party has been building up to edge out the democrats and retake the 435-member House.
Trump seems to think announcing early his candidacy gives him much greater leverage as he was able to get all his candidates in GOP primaries nominated even as the Congressional committee on the Capitol riot was tearing him to pieces with video evidence of his involvement in the attack and doing nothing about it to stop it.
Trump dubbed the hearings as a “witch hunt” by a political party against a former president in the theatre of politics orchestrated by the democratic party for a televised audience.
The RNC is currently bankrolling several legal cases for Trump, including personal lawsuits and government investigations into him. That flow of cash would end once he announces his candidacy for president in 2024, according to ABC News. Some see the move as an incentive for Trump to delay announcing his candidacy at least until after the 2022 midterm elections, which Republicans already seemed poised to win.
(Credit Twitter@A1Policy)
RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel had previously stated that the Republican Party cannot be biased in favor of any one candidate in the party’s presidential primary. “The party has to stay neutral,” McDaniel said as early as in January this year. “I’m not telling anybody to run or not to run in 2024.”
Top-level members of the Republican Party have tried to influence Trump to delay announcing his candidacy until after the mid-terms. Many read that Republicans fear that a Trump announcement would upset the status quo of voters focused on inflation, gas prices and President Joe Biden’s low approval rating. “My point to him has always been, ‘Let’s go win ’22’,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said on Tuesday of his conversations with Trump, adding that he encouraged Trump to hold off on an announcement.
Trump stated earlier this month that he has already made up his mind on whether to run, and that the main decision is now whether he will announce before or after the midterms.
According to a Washington Examiner finding, the RNC has paid almost $2 million in legal fees for the former president as he faces different investigations into his financial dealings and conduct during the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. A committee official told ABC News those payments will end soon after Trump announces a reelection bid because of the RNC’s policies on maintaining neutrality in elections, meaning if the former president announces a bid too soon, the RNC could stop contributing to his legal costs.
Trump has repeatedly teased a third bid for the White House, boosting those rumors even further during a speech in Washington, D.C., this week.
“I won the second time. I did much better the second time,” Trump said at the America First Agenda Summit. “We may just have to do it again.”
The RNC has paid much of Trump’s legal costs, giving at least $1.73 million to three law firms representing the former president between October 2021 and June, as well as a $50,000 payment last month, according to the report. The committee has used payments for the former president’s legal challenges as leverage before. The RNC once reportedly threatened to stop paying for several of his post-election court challenges during a dispute after the 2020 election, according to a book from ABC News chief Washington co
The RNC has been helping Trump pay his legal bills but will pull the plug once he kicks off his 2024 campaign.
(Credit Twitter@A1Policy)
In 2021, the RNC committed to paying nearly $2 million in Trump’s legal bills. Some Republicans worry Trump announcing his 2024 bid may torpedo the GOP’s midterm chances.
Former GOP official Kurt Bardella dubbed Trump as being impulsive and lacking control thereby speculating that he could announce his run early given the mounting criticism he’s facing. A Trump announcement could also be a means for the former president to rescue himself from the damning testimonies from witnesses during the January 6 committee’s public hearings.
Trump has teased a presidential run numerous times. In January, a video run showed Trump calling himself the “45th and 47th president”. Trump however dismissed them as fake news.
As Trump lives in the self-belief that he has successfully trumpified the republican party getting all but most of his candidates nominated to the Nov 08 mid-terms this year despite the Capitol riot hearings. In 2021, Trump had gone on the offensive when he issued letters to three republican committees to cease and desist from using his name for fund raising. he believes no mudslinging on his larger than life image can stick, and that he is the only viable alternative to beat Biden at his game, the examiner said.
Reports of media coverage on Trump soon after his defeat in the 2020 polls showed that Trump had been angry that some groups in the Republican party could use his name to support Republicans who voted to impeach him a second time. Ten Republican members of Congress voted to impeach Trump in the House, and seven Republican senators voted with Democrats to find the former president guilty of inciting riot.
Despite dissent within the Republican Party, Trump continues to assert himself as its leader.
To recall, Trump had said his “America First” movement was just getting started, and speaker after speaker affirmed him as the future of the party. A demand that the GOP’s largest fundraising groups not raise money off Trump’s name could complicate Republicans’ efforts to take back the White House, Senate and House, as Trump has promised they will.
Donald Trump takes the stage on the last day of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, the United States, July 21, 2016. (Xinhua/Yin Bogu/IANS)
Trump is no stranger to the cease-and-desist letters that threaten litigation in his business, campaign and presidency. As early as in 2015, Trump’s campaign accused the conservative Club for Growth of running a defamatory ad against him and threatened a lawsuit if they didn’t stop airing it.
In 2018, Trump’s lawyers sent a cease-and-desist letter to his former chief strategist Steve Bannon after Bannon was quoted in a Michael Wolff book describing a Trump Tower meeting as “treasonous” and “unpatriotic”. Legal action was “imminent,” his lawyers said then. Trump’s attorneys also sent a cease-and-desist letter to Wolff and his publisher, Steve Rubin, demanding that they halt publication and release of Wolff’s book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House”. (The effort was unsuccessful.
The same Steve Bannon, a Trump strategist and allegedly involved in the Jan 06 uprising has been convicted for contempt of court not to heed to the subpoenas issued against him by the panel that said “he (Bannon) thought he was above the law”.
Coming months, we can see interesting developments unfold as the panel releases its report indicting Trump for the insurrection and how voters react in the midterms.
Jail terms and fines will be determined during sentencing, which is scheduled for October 21. reports Yashwant Raj
A federal jury on Friday found Steve Bannon, an advisor to former US President Donald Trump, guilty of two counts of criminal contempt of Congress.
Jail terms and fines will be determined during sentencing, which is scheduled for October 21. Bannon faces between 30 days to one year behind bars and a fine of $100 to $100,000 for each count.
The trial lasted less than a week; it started on Monday, the US attorney and defence up their arguments on Thursday and the jurors returned the guilty verdict on Friday.
“This case is not complicated, but it is important,” Assistant US Attorney Molly Gaston told jurors during closing arguments on Friday. She argued, that “he did not want to recognise Congress’ authority” or play by the government’s rules.
Bannon was on trial for defying a subpoena from a congressional select committee investigating the January 6 riots at the US Capitol by hordes of Trump supporters who wanted to prevent Congress from certifying the election of Joe Biden as President in the November 2020 elections.
The select committee, which held its eighth public hearing on Thursday, had ordered Bannon to, one, depose before it and, two, submit documents it had sought.
Bannon did neither.
Despite having left the Trump administration in 2017 as senior advisor to President Trump, he had claimed the cover of Trump’s executive privilege to defy the subpoena. The committee rejected his plea and referred the case to the department of justice to determine if he needed to be prosecuted. He was indicted in February on two counts of criminal contempt of Congress.
Just ahead of the start of the trial, though, Bannon dropped his defiance and offered to testify. Trump also gave him a letter granting him exemption from executive privilege. But the select committee rejected his offer and the court refused to stop or delay the trial.
The select committee’s interest in Bannon stemmed from a perception that he may have played a role in the planning and executing of the January 6 insurrection.
Bannon had infamously predicted the January 6 riots. “All hell is going to break loose tomorrow,” Bannon had said on a right-wing radio talk show on January 5, the day before. A clip from that show was played by the select committee of the House of Representatives at a hearing in July. “It’s all converging, and now we’re on, as they say, the point of attack,” he had added.
The select committee has said that Bannon made the “all hell is going to break loose” after a phone conversation with Trump on January 5. The former advisor had also attended a “war-room” meeting with other Trump aides such as personal attorney Rudy Giuliani the same day about the rally the next day.
Another Trump aide, former trade advisor Peter Navarro, is also facing contempt of congress proceedings; he was indicted in June. The department of justice has declined, however, to prosecute two other Trump aides – former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and former Social Media Director Dan Scavino – referred to it by the committee for contempt.
Meadows first cooperated with the committee and turned over thousands of documents containing text messages, emails, and other communications, but pulled out of personal testimony.
The select committee is expected to hold its last public hearing on Thursday. It has no power to prosecute anyone, but the department of justice has been following the proceedings closely and had already raided two Trump-era aides who participated in his efforts to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election.
US Senate failed to get the support of 17 Republicans to have the 2/3rd majority required to convict former US President Donald Trump, a report by Ashok Nilakantan
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has announced her plans to establish a 9/11 style independent commission outside the Congress to probe the January 6, 2021 Capitol Hills insurrection, even as bipartisan Senators voted 57-43 to impeach the former president, but failed to get the support of 17 Republicans to have the 2/3rd majority required to convict Trump.
Trump was free to go on impeachment in the second vote of the senate.
Even as Trump got this reprieve with his ‘Trumpification’ of the Republican party, Pelosi announced plans for Congress to establish an outside and independent commission to investigate “the facts and causes” related to the attack on the US Capitol last year.
In a letter to her Democratic colleagues on Monday, the California Democrat said the commission will be modelled on the commission established after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
President Joe Biden responded to the Senate’s acquittal of Trump by reminding Americans that truth must be defended, saying the impeachment of the former President was a stark illustration of the danger posed to democracy by lies, misinformation and extremism.
And Biden said that although Trump was acquitted, his actions in the lead-up to the Jan 6 riots were not “in dispute”.
“This sad chapter in our history has reminded us that democracy is fragile. That it must always be defended. That we must be ever vigilant. That violence and extremism has no place in America. And that each of us has a duty and responsibility as Americans, and especially as leaders, to defend the truth and to defeat the lies,” Biden said in a statement.
Biden’s statement was preceded by Pelosi noting the recent work of retired Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, who has “been assessing our security needs by reviewing what happened on January 6 and how we must ensure that it does not happen again”.
“As we prepare for the Commission, it is also clear from General Honore’s interim reporting that we must put forth a supplemental appropriation to provide for the safety of Members and the security of the Capitol,” Pelosi wrote.
US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Photo_Instagram via IANS)
Such a move will require legislation and will likely tee up partisan difficulties, NPR WNYC quoted her as saying.
Her letter to colleagues came several hours after four House Republicans sent a letter to Pelosi suggesting she may be responsible for the delay in the deployment of National Guard troops ahead of and during the insurrection.
The letter did not mention Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who on January 6 was still the Senate majority leader and would have also had a say in the Capitol’s security posture.
“Many important questions about your responsibility for the security of the Capitol remain unanswered,” the letter read.
Drew Hammill, Pelosi’s deputy chief of staff, called the Republicans’ letter a “transparently partisan attempt to lay blame on the Speaker”.
“The Speaker has and will continue to take action to ensure accountability and enhance the security of the Capitol,” he said in a statement.
“Following the insurrection, the House Sergeant at Arms, the Senate Sergeant at Arms and the Chief of the Capitol Police were removed from their positions. It is the job of the Capitol Police Board, on which these three individuals sat, to properly plan and prepare for security threats facing the US Capitol.”
Senator Chris Coons, a close ally of President Biden, told ABC’s ‘This Week’ that he supports a September 11-style commission to probe further into the events leading up to the attack.
“There’s still more evidence that the American people need and deserve to hear,” the Delaware Democrat said.
“The 9/11-style commission is the way to make sure that we secure the Capitol going forward, and that we lay bare the record of just how responsible and abjectly and violating of his constitutional oath President Trump really was.”
Following the January 6 attack, heightened security measures were deployed around the complex, including the requirement of members to walk through metal detectors and various forms of fencing secured around the Capitol’s perimeter.
Trump, facing conviction and impeachment in the Senate committee probing the Capitol insurrection, escaped impeachment as the Senate voted 57-43 to acquit former him during his second impeachment trial.
Even though the yearlong hearings by the Senate committee gathered mounting evidence to convict Trump, it had no legal powers to do so as it’s only a fact-finding commission that can recommend a trial.
That’s why Pelosi has quickly moved to appoint a 9/11 style commission that’s independent of Congress and from the outside to find the causes of the riots. Trump is up against the wall again.
Seven GOP Senators voted with Democrats — the most bipartisan impeachment vote in US history — but fell short of the 17 needed to convict the former Ppresident, according to CNBC news. .
Of those seven Republicans, two are retiring and only one — Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski — faces her state’s voters in the next election cycle in 2022.
Following Trump’s second acquittal in an impeachment trial, House Democratic managers are defending their decision not to forge ahead with seeking witnesses to help make their case.
Members on both sides of the aisle were anticipating a surprise Senate vote to allow witnesses threatened to upend the speedy trial. But after a two-hour break, the House managers relented, and they and Trump’s defence team reached a deal that would prevent them from going down the prolonged path of seeking to add witnesses to the trial.
Instead, they allowed a statement released by Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, in which she relayed a conversation she said the House GOP leader had with Trump, to be entered into the trial record.
The House impeachment managers defended that choice, arguing that continuing the trial with witnesses wouldn’t have been strategically advantageous.
“We have no regrets,” lead House impeachment manager Jamie Raskin, told NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’.
“We left it totally out there on the floor of the Senate, and every Senator knew exactly what happened. We could have had a thousand witnesses but that could not have overcome the kinds of silly arguments that people like McConnell and Capito were hanging their hats on,” he added.
Senator Stacey Plaskett was vitriolic in saying the Trump trial needed “More Senators with spines, not more witnesses”.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell West Virginia GOP Senator Shelley Moore Capito both cited constitutional concerns in their decision to vote to acquit Trump.
The Senate vote raises further questions about Trump’s role in the Republican Party going forward. In a statement after the verdict, Trump said: “Our historic, patriotic and beautiful movement to ‘Make America Great Again’ has only just begun.”
Senator Lindsey Graham, an ally of the former President, told Fox News that he had spoken with Trump, and that he’s eager to help the GOP win the House and Senate back in 2022.
But Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy, who was one of the seven Republicans who broke ranks with their party in voting to convict the trump, told ABC’s ‘This Week’ that Trump’s “force wanes” in the GOP.
Cassidy is facing backlash in Louisiana over his vote, including the state GOP voting to unanimously censure him. But he said people want to hold their leaders accountable and that’s what his vote to convict was based on.
File photo shows US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi confronting then President Donald Trump at a reportedly explosive White House meeting. In the image, leading Democrat Pelosi is standing up at a large table, surrounded by male Congressional leaders and top military officials, pointing her finger towards the President, who is seated opposite her and appears stunned.
“I have the privilege of having the facts before me, and being able to spend several days deeply going into those facts. As these facts become more and more out there, if you will, and folks have a chance to look for themselves, more folks will move to where I was,” he explained.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell excoriated Trump for his actions on the day of the attack on the US Capitol, calling them a “disgraceful dereliction of duty”.
But he said ultimately he did not vote to convict the former President because of constitutional concerns. “There’s no question, none, that President Trump was practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day,” McConnell said shortly after the 57-43 Senate vote that ended in the former President’s acquittal.
This was the bombshell revelation from the 7th hearing of the House January 6 Committee, which detailed how Trump wanted the mob descending on the Capitol to look spontaneous…writes Ashok Nilakantan
The US Congressional committee probing the January 6 Capitol Hill “Insurrection” virtually dropped a bombshell on former president Donald Trump claiming evidence that he planned to lead a march of his supporters to the US Capitol as Congress was voting to certify the 2020 election, but did not want anybody outside of a few in his inner circle to know.
This was the bombshell revelation from the 7th hearing of the House January 6 Committee, which detailed how Trump wanted the mob descending on the Capitol to look spontaneous. The hearing also saw star witness white counsel Pat Cipollone recording testifying that he did his best to dissuade Trump from his “unconstitutional acts” besides corroborating all evidence before the committee on Trump’s action including the explosive statement of top White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson and not denying at all any of the testimonies of the witnesses earlier on.
The committee disclosed an email from Katrina Pierson, a rally organizer, who informed fellow organizers after a January 2 phone call with White House chief of staff Mark Meadows that Trump was planning to “call on everyone to march to the Capitol”, news reports from major US media outlets revealed.
Another rally organizer, Kylie Jane Kremer, wrote in a January 4 text message that it was important to keep the plan secret to avoid alerting the National Park Service. “This stays only between us, we are having a second stage at the Supreme Court again after the ellipse,” Kremer wrote.
“POTUS is going to have us march there/the Capitol. It cannot get out about the second stage because people will try and set up another and sabotage it. It can also not get out about the march because I will be in trouble with the national park service and all the agencies but POTUS is going to just call for it ‘unexpectedly’.”
Not only would keeping the planned mob march on the Capitol a secret prevent a counter-demonstration, the secrecy would also, critically, keep the US Capitol Police in the dark as to what to expect in terms of its planning for security needs.
Former Trump advisor Steve Bannon was privy to what was going on. Bannon predicted on a January 5, 2021 podcast that “all hell will break loose” the next day, and it was revealed by the committee Tuesday that Bannon had talked twice that day with Trump.
“It’s all converging,” Bannon said on the podcast, “and now we’re on, as they say, the point of attack, right, the point of attack tomorrow. I’ll tell you this, it’s not going to happen like you think it’s going to happen. It’s going to be quite extraordinarily different. And all I can say is, strap in.”
Bannon, who is facing contempt charges for refusing to testify before the January 6 committee, agreed over the weekend to finally appear before the committee. He stands trial on July 18 but the senate committee made it clear that his testimony does not absolve him of any charges that will be pressed against him during the trial as he was not part of the January 6 people in white house or entitled to any executive privilege one enjoys in relationship with the president.
The judge in his pending trial ruled on Monday that the trial will go on as scheduled next week nonetheless.
Cipollone, a sought-after witness for the panel, was reported to have expressed concerns about then-President Donald Trump’s actions around January 6 and resisted schemes to overturn the 2020 election….writes Ashok Nilakanthan
Star witness White House counsel to former US President Donald Trump has testified that Trump should have conceded the 2020 election verdict to the winner democrat Joe Biden and he has mostly corroborated and did not deny previous testimonies of witnesses including Cassidy Hutchinson on what happened on the January 6 Capitol Hill’s insurrection.
Cipollone testified in closed doors on Friday before the committee and the video was made public on Tuesday at the crucial hearings of the senate committee which has now lined up another star witness Stephen Bannon, former white house strategist to Trump, media executive and banker, who stands trial for criminal charges on July 18 and he had prior knowledge of January 6 events as he had said in a message on January 5 “all hell is going to break loose tomorrow”.
Former White House counsel Pat Cipollone testified before the January 6 committee on Friday. Rep. Zoe Lofgren said that he “did not contradict” previous witnesses, and the committee had “learned a few things.” The panel subpoenaed Cipollone last week following Cassidy Hutchinson’s bombshell testimony.
Former White House counsel Pat Cipollone “did not contradict” testimony of previous witnesses when he appeared on Friday before the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack, Rep. Zoe Lofgren said.
Lofgren, a Democratic congresswoman and member of the panel, told CNN that the committee had also “learned a few things” after interviewing Cipollone for nearly eight hours. The Congresswoman said details of Cipollone’s testimony would be rolled out in upcoming hearings. She noted that Cipollone appeared voluntarily and said that he answered various questions in a candid, careful, and honest way.
However, she said that just because he did not contradict previous testimony, it did not mean he confirmed all of it, particularly Cassidy Hutchinson’s bombshell testimony. Lofgren said that there were situations in which Cipollone was not present or “couldn’t recall with precision”.
Cipollone, a sought-after witness for the panel, was reported to have expressed concerns about then-President Donald Trump’s actions around January 6 and resisted schemes to overturn the 2020 election.
Cipollone was subpoenaed by the panel last week following Hutchinson’s testimony, after having already spoken with the committee during an informal interview in April.
Hutchinson said in her testimony that Cipollone warned that Trump would be charged with “every crime imaginable” if he went to the Capitol on January 6, 2021, along with thousands of protesters.
It was reported earlier this month that Cipollone was in talks to testify about the riot publicly. He indicated that his testimony revolved around Jeffrey Clark, a former top Justice Department official, who used his position to aid Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, it is alleged, according to the Business Insider that tracked today’s hearings.
Legal experts previously told Insider’s Camila DeChalus that Cipollone’s first-hand account of whether Trump was aware that he was potentially engaging in criminal activity could strengthen a case against him by the Justice Department. Trump has criticized Cipollone testifying in front of the panel, arguing that it could discourage future presidents from having “candid” conversations with a White House counsel.
“Why would a future President of the US want to have candid and important conversations with his White House Counsel if he thought there was even a small chance that this person, essentially acting as a ‘lawyer’ for the Country, may someday be brought before a partisan and openly hostile Committee in Congress,” Trump wrote on his social-media platform, Truth Social, on Wednesday.
‘Testimony meets expectations’
Congressional Committee Vice Chair and Republican Rep. Liz Cheney has said that Donald Trump’s White House counsel Pat Cipollone’s testimony that the former President should have conceded elections, and that there was no widespread election fraud as claimed by Trump has more or less met the expectations.
The Wyoming Republican, at the center of the party’s ire and fighting for her lone seat from the state to Trump-backed Ms Hagemann, said the recent testimony former White House Counsel Cipollone gave to the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection “met” their expectations. “If you’ve watched these hearings, you’ve heard us call Mr. Cipollone to come forward to testify. He did, and Mr. Cipollone’s testimony met our expectations,” she said during the house select committee’s seventh public hearing.
On queue, the House panel then aired several clips of Cipollone’s sworn testimony at the start of their seventh hearing as part of a push to further show that then-President Donald Trump’s aides disagreed with his push to try to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Cipollone told the January 6 committee that he agreed Trump should concede the 2020 election and that he lost to Democratic nominee Joe Biden fair and square. He also cited Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s floor remarks where he congratulated Biden and said that the process was “done”.
“That would be in line with my thinking on these things,” Cipollone testified.
The committee later played a clip where Cipollone was asked if Trump would need to heed the court rulings that had come down since he lost the 2020 election; Cipollone replied, “Of course, Everybody is obliged to abide by the rules.”
When Cheney was asked whether the former President had “a particular obligation” to ensure US laws are “faithfully executed”, the former White House counsel responded, “That is one of the President’s obligations, correct.”
Legal experts have previously told Business Insider that Cipollone’s testimony could potentially heighten Trump’s legal exposure in several investigations into the former President. His testimony could provide more insight into Trump’s state of mind during the January 6 insurrection and whether he intended to commit a crime.
“The most important and compelling witnesses in a real trial, where the rules of evidence apply, could be people who spoke directly to the former President and can tell a jury what he said and thus what he intended. That could be someone like Pat Cipollone. It could be any number of people. We just don’t yet know,” Chuck Rosenberg, a former federal prosecutor, previously said.
Cipollone’s first-hand account of what Trump did and said on January 6 has become an important part of the January 6 committee’s investigation. It came after former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified that Cipollone expressed concerns about the criminal charges they could face if Trump planned to go to the US Capitol building with his supporters on January 6. During an earlier January 6 committee hearing, Hutchinson recalled Cipollone saying at the time, “We’re going to get charges of every crime imaginable if we make that move”.
Earlier, Trump called Musk “another bull s*** artist” and reiterated that he voted for him….reports Asian Lite News
Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Monday said that it is time for former US President Donald Trump to “hang up his hat and sail into the sunset”.
Musk’s jibe comes after Trump called the Tesla CEO “another bull s*** artist”. The spat began with Trump claiming that Musk voted for him. However, Musk has denied the claim, saying it is “not true”.
Earlier, Trump called Musk “another bull s*** artist” and reiterated that he voted for him.
“You know what he (Elon Musk) said the other day that he never voted for Republicans. You know he told me he voted for me. So he is another bull s*** artist,” he said at a Save America rally in Anchorage, Alaska.
The former US President also commented on the ongoing legal battle between Twitter and Musk. “Elon is not going to buy Twitter. Where did you hear that before? From me…He has got himself in a mess,” Trump said.
Trump’s comment comes in the wake of an American billionaire’s decision to back off from the Twitter deal which has led to a lawsuit from the social media giant. Last week, Musk said he is terminating his USD 44 billion deal to buy Twitter citing multiple breaches of the purchase agreement, according to a letter sent by the billionaire Tesla chief’s team to Twitter.
Responding to a report on Trump’s remarks on Twitter, where Musk has more than 100 million followers, the Tesla CEO wrote, “Not true”.
In another tweet, he said, “I don’t hate the man, but it’s time for Trump to hang up his hat & sail into the sunset. Dems should also call off the attack – don’t make it so that Trump’s only way to survive is to regain the Presidency.”
Twitter’s board chair Bret Taylor said on Saturday the company will file a lawsuit against American billionaire and entrepreneur Elon Musk to force him to buy the social media company on the agreed terms.
In April, Musk reached an acquisition agreement with Twitter at USD 54.20 per share in a transaction valued at approximately USD 44 billion. However, Musk put the deal on hold in May to allow his team to review the veracity of Twitter’s claim that less than 5 per cent of accounts on the platform are bots or spam.
Twitter Inc, shares witnessed a sharp decline after Tesla CEO Elon Musk terminated USD 44 billion takeover deal, setting the stage for a legal battle.
Shares currently stand at USD 33.31 each, significantly lower than Musk’s offer of USD 54.20 per share, according to FactSet data published by The Wall Street Journal on Monday, The Hill reported.
New revelations emerging from the public hearings of the committee have been potentially dangerous for former US President Donald Trump, reports Yashwant Raj
Former US President Donald Trump is understood to be preparing to make an unusually early announcement of his third consecutive run for the White House.
The New York Times has reported that Trump told some aides recently that he could announce his 2024 run on social media, without even telling his own team. Aides are rushing, therefore, to put together a basic campaign infrastructure expecting the announcement as early as this month, the report added.
Trump first ran for the White House and won in 2016, beating Democrat Hillary Clinton. He had earlier swept aside a large and wide field of Republicans in the primaries, that included Jeb Bush of the clan of Bushes. He sought re-election in 2020 but lost comprehensively to Democrat Joe Biden. The 2024 run will be his third, if he does get into it.
Trump remains extremely popular in the Republican party with his poll numbers in the 80s. But he views the White House as a way to blunt possible fallouts for him from the ongoing congressional investigation of the January 6 insurrection, in which supporters, egged on by him, had attacked the US Congress to prevent a joint session of lawmakers from certifying Joe Biden as the victor of the November 2020 presidential election.
New revelations emerging from the public hearings of the committee have been potentially dangerous for the former President. It appears the insurrection was not a spontaneous action by his supporters and that it was a well-organised affairs with several of his top aides in the midst of it. He himself is understood to have been aware that the march on the US Capitol would be anything but peaceful, as he knew many of his supporters were armed.
Also, many candidates endorsed by Trump for the Republican primaries for the upcoming midterm election in November were defeated, showing his hold on the party may be weakening.
There are then Republicans who are mulling their own run for the White House, chiefly Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, former Vice President Mike Pence and Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. DeSantis has been doing well in polls and Pence is been more visible and vocal than in a long time.
The New York Times also reported that Trump’s close circle of advisers remains divided on the issues. Some of them don’t want him to run because they are sure of his political potency or what would be his message. Others want him to not do such a thing. Don Trump Jr, the former President’s eldest son, has told others that he would like his father to first put together an expansive campaign team.
Trump has yet to concede defeat in the 2020 election and continues to push his false claims of a stolen election and raised millions of dollars from his supporters to fight it. His claims have been thoroughly debunked by multiple election audits and courts. But he has not given up yet.
Some experts believe this inability to accept his defeat as a reason why he may not run at all despite his public posturing. A second loss would be fatal for his political clout. He could instead continue to wield considerable power in the party if he did not run and switch to the role of kingmaker.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters in Washington D.C (Photo by Ting Shen/Xinhua/IANS)
Trump also rejected calls for tightened gun controls, saying decent Americans should be allowed firearms to defend themselves against “evil”, reports Asian Lite News
Former US President Donald Trump said that the Washington government should prioritise funding for school security in the country rather than sending aid to the war-torn Ukraine.
Trump made the remarks on Friday at the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) ongoing three-day annual convention in Houston, which comes just three days after the deadly shooting at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, which claimed the lives of 19 children and two teachers.
Addressing thousands of supporters, the former President said: “We spent trillions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and got nothing for it. Before we nation-build the rest of the world, we should be building safe schools for our own children in our own nation.”
Trump also rejected calls for tightened gun controls, saying decent Americans should be allowed firearms to defend themselves against “evil”, the BBC reported.
He instead proposed a “top-to-bottom overhaul” of school safety, with fortified single points of entry including metal detectors and at least one armed police officer on every campus, and also accused Democrats of stonewalling such security measures.
The former President also read out the names of the Uvalde shooting victims, with each marked by a bell toll.
In his speech, Trump also called to “drastically change our approach to mental health”.
The annual convention of the NRA, the country’s most powerful gun lobby group, is taking place after a two-year Covid-induced hiatus.
In the wake of the Uvalde massacre, Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, both Republicans, have cancelled their in-person appearance at the convention, reports Xinhua news agency.
People mourn for victims of a school mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, the United States, May 26, 2022. At least 19 children and two adults were killed in a shooting at Robb Elementary School in the town of Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday. (Xinhua/Wu Xiaoling/IANS)
The Governor is expected to address the convention “through pre-recorded video”.
“While a strong supporter of the Second Amendment and an NRA member, I would not want my appearance today to bring any additional pain or grief to the families and all those suffering in Uvalde,” Patrick said on Friday.
Meanwhile, protests have been planned against the event. Friday witnessed hundreds of protesters outside the convention venue holding signs saying “NRA kill kids”, “protect children not guns” and held crosses and photos of shooting victims.
In a statement, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner urged participants to “remain peaceful out of respect to the families of the 19 children and two teachers killed in their classroom at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde”.
The City of Houston is aware that several organisations have planned demonstrations near the convention centre, and the Houston Police Department and the Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management have a public safety plan, Turner was quoted as saying in the statement.
Texas school shooting (Xinhua/IANS)
The NRA convention is expected to draw 55,000 attendees, who are prohibited from bringing “firearms, firearm accessories, knives, and other items”, including backpacks and selfie sticks.
The gun lobby group, currently has over 5 million members.
The US has witnessed at least 212 mass shootings so far this year, according to the nonprofit research group Gun Violence Archive.
As of Tuesday when the Uvalde school shooting occurred, over 31,300 people have died or been injured due to gun-related incidents in the US this year.
Besides Clinton, other named defendants include the Democratic National Committee, John Podesta, who served as chairman of Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, and former FBI director James Comey….reports Asian Lite News
Former US president Donald Trump filed a lawsuit on Thursday against Hillary Clinton, Democratic Party leaders and others alleging they falsely accused him of colluding with Russia ahead of the 2016 election.
“In the run-up to the 2016 Presidential Election, Hillary Clinton and her cohorts orchestrated an unthinkable plot — one that shocks the conscience and is an affront to this nation’s democracy,” the complaint filed in a federal court in Florida said.
“Acting in concert, the Defendants maliciously conspired to weave a false narrative that their Republican opponent, Donald J. Trump, was colluding with a hostile foreign sovereignty,” it said. “They worked together with a single, self-serving purpose: to vilify Donald J. Trump.”
“The actions taken in furtherance of their scheme — falsifying evidence, deceiving law enforcement, and exploiting access to highly-sensitive data sources — are so outrageous, subversive and incendiary that even the events of Watergate pale in comparison,” the complaint added.
Besides Clinton, other named defendants include the Democratic National Committee, John Podesta, who served as chairman of Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, and former FBI director James Comey.
Also named as a defendant was Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer who produced a dossier ahead of the election containing allegedly compromising information about Trump.
Trump repeatedly denounced the Steele dossier as “fake” and The New York Times determined there was no corroborating evidence to support many of its claims.
A Russian analyst who contributed to the dossier has been indicted in the United States for lying to FBI agents investigating some of its findings.
Also named as defendants were the Perkins Coie law firm, which was working for the Clinton campaign, and Fusion GPS, a private firm which Perkins Coie hired to do opposition research.
Trump is seeking a jury trial and at least $72 million in damages.
Former special counsel Robert Mueller investigated Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign and revealed multiple meetings between Trump advisers and Russians.
But Mueller stopped short of saying that the Trump campaign had engaged in a criminal conspiracy with Russia, leading Trump to proclaim that there was “no collusion.”
A report released by a Republican-led Senate panel also revealed multiple contacts between members of the Trump campaign and Russian officials but it did not affirm there was a conspiracy either.
The Senate report found that one of Trump’s former campaign managers, Paul Manafort, had a long-standing relationship with Konstantin Kilimnik, an alleged Russian intelligence officer, and had passed on internal campaign information to him.
