Trump news: Rattled Trump lashes out as Jan 6 panel finishes investigation and tax return release looms

Republican representatives Lauren Boebert and Matt Gaetz refused to stand or applaud Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky during his address to the Congress on Wednesday.

The war-time president received a standing ovation from the members of Congress after concluding his speech on the crisis in Ukraine.

The two Republican members, however, seemed unimpressed as they remained seated and kept looking down at their phones while the rest of the chamber applauded Mr Zelensky.

Alisha Rahaman Sarkar reports.

The House January 6 select committee has reportedly been “extensively cooperating” with the Department of Justice probe into Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including through providing documents and data pertaining to Mr Trump’s former White House chief of staff and the conservative law professor who pushed for the plan.

According to Punchbowl News, the panel began transmitting documents to the office of special counsel Jack Smith, the prosecutor appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to oversee investigations into Mr Trump’s conduct.

Andrew Feinberg reports from Washington, DC.

While January 6 committee witnesses in general chose not to go along with the panel’s questioning, the published transcripts reveal the sheer amount of evidence that was collected and some new aspects of how the investigators went about their work.

Gustaf Kilander examined their testimony for The Independent.

Julie Fancelli, the Publix supermarket chain heiress who funded bus transport for hundreds of Trump supporters who attacked the Capitol on 6 January 2021, attempted to avoid answering questions before the House January 6 select committee by citing a litany of – occasionally irrelevant – amendments to the US constitution, as well as her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Andrew Feinberg took a look at her evasive testimony.

A federal judge in Florida has smacked down former president Donald Trump’s request to keep New York State Attorney General Letitia James and her staff from viewing documents related to a trust that holds most of his assets as part of an ongoing fraud lawsuit against him, his family and his eponymous company.

Andrew Feinberg reports.

Former President Donald Trump has released a video via his Truth Social platform urging all Republicans to vote against the Democratic Party’s “massive leftwing” spending bill.

Watch below:

The January 6 committee has released the transcripts of Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony which resulted in her bombshell appearance before the panel at a live hearing earlier this year.

Ms Hutchinson’s testimony reveals the pressure she was under while trying to find legal representation and the efforts made to influence what she would tell the committee.

“The less the committee thinks you know, the better.”

The night before her second interview with the panel she testified she received a call from Ben Williamson, deputy assistant to President Donald Trump and senior adviser to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, encouraging her to protect “the boss”.

She also recalled a phone call with a Republican member of Congress not on the January 6 committee who encouraged her to be more forthcoming to the investigation.

Cassidy Hutchinson testified to the January 6 committee about a conversation with John Ratcliffe, former director of national intelligence, that Donald Trump acknowledged he lost the election it appears on several occasions, but then would backpedal.

In addition, she spoke with Kevin McCarthy in the days before 6 January 2021 and recalls him saying that Mark Meadows was not serving the president well by making him think he had won the election.

Around Christmas 2020 Donald Trump said to Mark Meadows: “I don’t want people to know we lost.”

Cassidy Hutchinson’s original Trumpworld lawyer Stefan Passantino was relaying her testimony to Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago according to the released transcript of her interview with the January 6 committee.