Jan 6 hearings: Trump-linked lawyer compares FBI to Stasi, as ex-president’s call to Putin revealed

Federal agents issued new subpoenas regarding the January 6 riot at the US Capitol and raided the homes of two people involved in the plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election, The Washington Post reported.

The FBI confirmed to The Post that it conducted authorised law enforcement activity at the home of Brad Carver, who allegedly signed a document to be a Trump elector, as well as Thomas Lane, who worked on Trump’s effort to overturn the election in Arizona and New Mexico.

Other would-be participants in former president Donald Trump’s scheme to send an alternate slate of electors to overturn the 2020 presidential election received subpoenas.

The subpoenas and activity at the homes comes a day after Arizona state Speaker of the House Russell “Rusty” Bowers, as well as Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and his deputy Gabriel Sterling, described efforts by Mr Trump and his associates to overturn the election results.

Eric Garcia and Andrew Feinberg have more on the next steps for the high-profile committee.

Donald Trump is watching every January 6 Committee hearing in a rage, furious that no one is there to defend him, according to a report.

A close advisor told The Washington Post that Mr Trump is at “the point of about to scream at the TV” as he watches the hearings.

Another source in Mr Trump’s inner circle told the paper that the former president often complains that “there’s no one to defend me” at the hearings.

But one person familiar with the situation rejected that notion to Insider, saying: “This is not true. He has barely watched any of the hearings at all.”

Gustaf Kilander has more.

As Trump weighs whether to stage a third run for president in 2024, DeSantis is clearly making a play for the Republican nomination for president. He also got an unexpected gift when a federal grand jury indicted his 2018 opponent Andrew Gillum, meaning he can now boast that having already beat a corrupt Democrat, he is well-placed to vanquish whomever the party nominates to challenge him.

Read Eric Garcia’s take on the 2024 presidential contest.

Federal authorities raided the home of former Department of Justice official Jefferey Clark in connection with his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, The New York Times reported.

Sources for The Times said they were unfamiliar with why authorities searched Mr Clark’s home but noted thjat Mr Clark played a key role in former president Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.

Mr Trump had considered making Mr Clark acting Attorney General and Mr Clark proposed sending a letter to state election officials in Georgia saying that the department had evidence that would cause Georgia to rescind its certification of President Joe Biden’s victory in the state.

Former President Donald Trump had little more than compliments for the rioters who stormed the US Capitol in new documentary footage from March 2021 that was obtained by the January 6 committee this week.

In the footage, published by CNN on Thursday, Mr Trump claims (falsely) that a “small” number of people stormed the Capitol and calls them “smart” for believing his claims about widespread election fraud, which his own attorney admitted in separate audio released this week that the Trump campaign had no evidence to prove.

“They were angry from the standpoint of what happened in the election. Because they’re smart, and they see and they saw what happened, and I believe that that was a big part of what happened on January 6,” says the former president in the clip.

The documentary footage is part of an unreleased project set to be published on the new “Discovery +” platform. It was apparently shot without the vetting of Donald Trump’s legal team, according to media reports, and even caught some of Mr Trump’s closest aides by surprise. It’s not clear who authorised the footage, which does include a formal sit-down interview with the ex-president.

John Bowden has the details.

Many staunch supporters of former President Donald Trump, such as the ones who came out to hear him speak in Mississippi as part of his American Freedom Tour last weekend, are not closely following the January 6 committee’s hearings on the Capitol riot.

On Thursday evening, The Daily Show released a nearly seven-and-a-half minute video of correspondent Jordan Klepper quizzing rally attendees about the committee’s work. One of the clips Mr Klepper showed was of the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump testifying that she accepted Attorney General William Barr’s assertion that there was no widespread fraud in the 2020 election.

But the Trump supporters Mr Klepper interviewed appeared unwilling to believe either Mr Barr or Ms Trump.

“It don’t even look like her. It might be one of those — what do they got, clones out there these days?” one supporter said of Ms Trump’s testimony.

Documentary film footage from British filmmaker Alex Holder shows former vice president Mike Pence’s reaction as the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi demanded from the chamber that he invoke the 25th Amendment and remove Donald Trump as president during the final days of his term.

Mr Pence, who ultimately did not invoke the 25th Amendment, appears nonplussed in the footage.

“I join the Senate Democratic leader in calling on the Vice President to remove this President by immediately invoking the 25th Amdendment,” Ms Pelosi is heard saying in the documentary clip. “If the Vice President and cabinet do not act, the Congress may be prepared to move forward with impeachment.”

Read more from Abe Asher’s full report.

Top officials at the Justice Department testified on Thursday that then-President Donald Trump put enormous pressure on them in near-daily phone calls and statements demanding that they declare the results of the 2020 election fraudulent with zero evidence.

Former acting deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue told the committee that Mr Trump instructed him personally to say that the election was “corrupt”, and that he would use that as the impetus for Congress to act and refuse to certify the results.

“Just say it was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen,” Donald Trump said, in words read aloud by Jan 6 committee member Adam Kinzinger, who then asked: “That’s a direct quote from President Trump, correct?”

“That’s an exact quote from the president, yes,” Mr Donoghue responded.

John Bowden has more.

Alabama Congressman and 6 January rally speaker Mo Brooks, whom Donald Trump abandoned in his losing Senate primary campaign, has agreed to speak to the select committee, but only in public and with various conditions attached.

While that testimony is negotiated, here’s the email he sent Molly Michael, Donald Trump’s executive assistant, on 11 Jaunary 2021.

In it, he requests pardons for himself, Matt Gaetz, and other Republicans whom he worried might face legal reprisals from “deep-pocketed and vitriolic Socialist Democrats (with perhaps some liberal Republican help)” for their role in the failed attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s victory.

Donald Trump had a mysterious phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin just nine days before the 2020 election, a documentary filmmaker with unprecedented access during the final months of the Trump administration has revealed.

During a trip on Air Force One on Sunday 25 October 2020, filmmaker Alex Holder, a January 6 committee witness, was told by Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that a previously scheduled interview with the then-president wouldn’t be able to go ahead.

“My memory is that the chief of staff sort of came over and said that the interview couldn’t happen today because the president was on the phone. And I believe, if I remember correctly, that he said that he was on the phone to the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, which is why the interview had to be postponed,” Mr Holder told Politico.

Gustaf Kilander has more.