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

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.

While former Attorney General William Barr, and the Justice Department (DOJ), were publicly silent for weeks after the 2020 election, the Jan 6 committee report has claimed that the official was trying to contain former president Donald Trump’s “conspiracy-mongering”.

The report states that Mr Barr and DOJ were “forced to knock down one lie after another” and that the Justice Department was “trying to contain the president’s conspiracy-mongering”, reported NBC.

Eric Garcia writes:

Senator Raphael Warnock’s victory in Georgia officially bookended perhaps the most topsy-turvy midterm election cycle of my lifetime.

The day afterward, I did a little obligatory gloating, tweeting about how I predicted the final results of his race against Herschel Walker to an accuracy of less than a point. After initially screwing up the math, I thought that Walker would keep it much tighter than expected, given that national and state Republicans were campaigning for him. But I failed to see how that could overcome Warnock’s significant advantage with early voting.

I was pretty proud of that one. But the truth is that for every outcome I correctly predicted, I whiffed far more races.

Read on:

The Jan 6 committee report has revealed that prominent members of the Proud Boys were in touch with Info Wars host Alex Jones during the 6 January attack and in the days following it, reported NBC.

Citing records from Proud Boys member Enrique Tarrio’s phone, the report stated that he texted with Jones three times and Jones’ Info Wars co-host Owen Shroyer five times during the riot.

Another Proud Boys member, Ethan Nordean, exchanged 23 texts with Mr Shroyer between 4-5 January.

The two also spoke by phone on each of those days.

Gustaf Kilander writes:

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

Cassidy Hutchinson was placed under pressure from her Trumpworld-financed lawyer to downplay her role at the White House and leave out details of what she saw and heard relating to January 6. Here’s a selection of the examples she gave to the House select committee.

The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riot released its bombshell 845-page report late on Thursday night, where it detailed how Donald Trump and his allies engaged in at least 200 acts attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election and called for him never to be allowed to enter office again.

The damning report marks the culmination of a 17-months-long investigation into the events leading up to and including January 6 2021, when a mob of Mr Trump’s supporters stormed the US Capitol to try to overturn the election.

It places the blame for the Capitol riot – a violent insurrection that left five people dead and dozens of law enforcement officers injured – squarely on the shoulders of “one man”: former president Mr Trump.

It finds that he acted illegally by taking part in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the election results – a conspiracy that culminated in the events of that day.

The Independent’s Rachel Sharp has the full story:

The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riot released its bombshell 845-page report late on Thursday night, where it detailed how Donald Trump and his allies engaged in at least 200 acts attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election and called for him never to be allowed to enter office again.

Mr Trump reacted furiously to the report, taking to his platform Truth Social almost as soon as it was released to once again label the investigation a “witch hunt”.

“The highly partisan Unselect Committee Report purposely fails to mention the failure of Pelosi to heed my recommendation for troops to be used in D.C., show the “Peacefully and Patrioticly” words I used, or study the reason for the protest, Election Fraud. WITCH HUNT!” he wrote.

The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riot released its bombshell report late on Thursday night.

As well as the actions of Donald Trump and his inner circle in the lead-up to January 6, the report also provides new details about the day itself – and the former president’s refusal to try to stop the insurrection.

When his supporters broke into the Capitol, Mr Trump watched it on TV and “did not contact a single top national security official during the day”.

“Not at the Pentagon, nor at the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, the F.B.I., the Capitol Police Department, or the D.C. Mayor’s office,” the report states, adding that he didn’t even try to contact Mr Pence to see if he was safe.

With no action coming from the head of state, the report revealed that the commander of the DC National Guard “strongly” considered going ahead and sending troops to the US Capitol without waiting for approval.

Major General William Walker was aware that doing so would mean he may have to resign from his role but, after waiting for hours with no order from officials, he considered doing it anyway, the report finds.

“Major General Walker himself understood he had to wait for approval from Secretary (Ryan) McCarthy to deploy his forces. But as he waited on that video call for hours, he did strongly consider sending them anyway,” the report states.

“He turned to his lawyer and said, ‘Hey, you know what? You know, we’re going to go, and I’m just going to shoulder the responsibility.’”

Donald Trump has reacted furiously to the release of the full report from the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riot, which found that he engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the 2020 presidential election and called for him to never be allowed to take office again.

Here’s what he had to say on Truth Social:

Rachel Sharp filed this full report: