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

Donald Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows requested that the US Department of Justice call the Italian government to consider a conspiracy theory that migrated from QAnon-linked corners of the internet to the White House, according to a House select committee investigation into the baseless voter fraud narrative that fuelled violence at the US Capitol on 6 January.

Mr Meadows – according to documents first obtained by members of Congress and reviewed by news outlets last year – reportedly told then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen in the wake of Mr Trump’s 2020 presidential election loss to investigate spurious fraud claims in states that he lost.

He allegedly pressed Mr Rosen to investigate several debunked allegations, including a “theory” that Italian officials in coordination with Barack Obama and the CIA used satellites and military technology to manipulate US voting machines, a claim that circulated among QAnon-affiliated groups and far-right media outlets before coming to the attention of Republican congressman Scott Perry, who sent a YouTube link to Mr Meadows.

“Why can’t we just work with the Italian government?” Mr Perry wrote to Mr Meadows on 31 December, 2020, according to texts obtained by the committee. The video was posted on YouTube on 18 December.

Alex Woodward has more in this report.

Representatives Mo Brooks, Matt Gaetz, Andy Biggs, Louie Gohmert and Scott Perry were among the Republican members of Congress who asked then-president Donald Trump to insulate them from future prosecutions by granting them presidential pardons in the days immediately following the attack on the US Capitol on January 6 last year.

Their names were revealed by the House January 6 select committee hearing on Thursday that focused on Mr Trump’s efforts to pressure the Department of Justice to assist in his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden.

Andrew Feinberg has the details.

The revelation of which Republican members of Congress asked for pardons after 6 January has variously embarrassed and enraged the individuals concerned – but just in case anyone thought they might face some kind of official sanction for trying to get themselves off the hook, Eric Garcia is here to explain why the Democrats are too impotent to take action:

Read the full dispatch below.

Sean Penn sat with Capitol Police officers injured in the January 6 riots during Thursday’s hearing into the insurrection.

The Academy Award-winner and celebrity activist chatted and joked with Michael Fanone, now a CNN contributor, and shook hands with other officers.

“I’m just here to observe — just another citizen,” Penn told reporters.

“I think we all saw what happened on January 6 and now we’re looking to see if justice comes on the other side of it.”

Read Bevan Hurley’s report on the unexpected apppearance.

Ivanka Trump wanted her father to continue fighting the 2020 election result well into December, new documentary footage shows, contradicting her testimony in the recent 6 January hearings that she quickly accepted Donald Trump’s election loss.

The former president’s daughter wanted Mr Trump to “continue to fight until every legal remedy is exhausted,” she told a film crew in mid-December, as part of a yet-to-be-released documentary.

“As the president has said, every single vote needs to be counted and needs to be heard, and he campaigned for the voiceless,” Ms Trump said in an interview for the forthcoming series Unprecendented, according to footage obtained by CNN.

“I think a lot of Americans feel very, very disenfranchised right now, and really, question the sanctity of our elections, and that’s not right, it’s not acceptable,” she added, according to unseen excerpts of the interview reported by The New York Times.

Donald Trump celebrated the news out of the Supreme Court on Friday that officialised their decision to strike down Roe v Wade, ending 50 years of federal protections for abortion access which will now be left up to states to determine whether to ban the procedure.

“This is following the Constitution, and giving rights back when they should have been given long ago,” the former US president told Fox News in an exclusive interview on Friday, shortly after the landmark decision was overturned.

Johanna Chisholm has the story.

Adam Kinzinger, who led yesterday’s hearing on Donald Trump’s efforts to manipulate the executive branch’s judicial apparatus to keep himself in power, had these closing words for the hearing:

The January 6 hearings laid out some of the most damning evidence yet about Donald Trump’s plan to overturn the election, despite persistent warnings from advisors and allies that his election claims were false.

One of the most stinging rebukes came from Mr Trump’s daughter Ivanka, who told the committee in pre-taped testimony that she “accepted” Attorney General Bill Barr’s conclusion the 2020 election was legit.

“It affected my perspective,” Ms Trump told the committee. “I respected Attorney General Barr, and accepted what he was saying.”

This isn’t sitting well with some Trump supporters. The break seemed so incongruous that one Trump fan told The Daily Show’s Jordan Klepper he believed that the testimony was done by a clone of Ivanka Trump.

“It don’t even look like her,” the man tells the comedian, outside a Trump event. “It might be one of those, what do they got, clones these days? It might be a clone.”

The MAGA fan isn’t the only one questioning Ms Trump’s testimony, however.

Ivanka Trump may have actually wanted her father to continue fighting the 2020 election result well into December, new documentary footage shows, contradicting her testimony.

The former president’s daughter wanted Mr Trump to “continue to fight until every legal remedy is exhausted,” she told a film crew in mid-December, as part of a yet-to-be-released documentary.

“As the president has said, every single vote needs to be counted and needs to be heard, and he campaigned for the voiceless,” Ms Trump said in an interview for the forthcoming series Unprecendented, according to footage obtained by CNN.

Donald Trump Jr says his father deserves the credit for today’s historic reversal of Roe v Wade at the Supreme Court.

“Proud of my father for what he has accomplished today,” the former president’s son wrote on Twitter on Friday. “He gave our movement 3 strong pro-life Supreme Court Justices and despite the Dems and the leftwing media doing everything they could to stop their confirmations, especially with Kavanaugh, he never wavered!!!”

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised to put “pro-life” judges on the Supreme Court, a move he said would “automatically” mean the end to a federal right to abortion.

There’s a reason Donald Trump is sometimes called Teflon Don. Seemingly nothing thrown his way sticks. He managed to be impeached twice and still hold onto power. So will the January 6 hearings really change anything?

According to a new analysis of polls from Brookings fellow William Galston, it doesn’t seem so.

Less than half of Americans say January 6 impacted their outlook, compared to two-thirds of Americans who feel 9/11 changed things for them, and nearly as many who felt similarly about the pandemic.

Sixty per cent of Americans may see the hearings as “fair and impartial,” and the same proportion say they are following the news from the investigation, but audience data suggests that it’s mainly Democrats tuning into the hearings each day. Their feelings about Donald Trump presumably were determined long before the hearings ever began.

Here’s the kicker. According to a Economist/YouGov survey, 79 per cent of Americans admit Donald Trump was involved in a wide-ranging effort to overturn the election, including half of Republicans.

However, less than half of Americans, according to a Quinnipiac poll, believe Mr Trump committed a crime, a share that hasn’t budget since this spring.

In other words, plenty of people think Mr Trump was up to something, but not so many think he should be prosecuted for it.

“At the end of the day, the former president may stand convicted in the court of public opinion if not in a court of law,” as Mr Galston writes. “The hearings could intensify the nascent sentiment within the Republican Party to find a replacement for Trump who shares his views but not his defects.”