Trump news: Kevin McCarthy says ex-president accepted responsibility for Jan 6 in new audio

Donald Trump Jr, who is likely to meet the Jan 6 committee in the coming days, took the opportunity to hit out at Democrats using former president Barack Obama’s keynote speech on the perils of disinformation.

On Thursday, Mr Obama said there is a need to rein in big tech companies in a bid to address “weakening of democratic institutions around the world”.

“You mean do exactly what the Democrat controlled Main Stream Media has been doing for decades!?! Yea. I’m actually with you on this one,” Trump Jr said in a tweet.

In his speech, Mr Obama said: “It’s not necessary for people to believe disinformation in order to weaken democratic institutions. You just have to flood a country’s public square with enough raw sewage, you just have to raise enough questions[...] that citizens no longer know what to believe.”

At least $124m has been amassed by Donald Trump’s network of political advocacy groups by the end of March, a significant stockpile for the former president for the midterm elections.

The collection has surpassed the funds of the Republican National Committee itself, which reported nearly $45m as cash on hand at the end of March, according to the latest filings with the Federal Election Commission.

One of the biggest Trump groups, Save America PAC, amassed more than $5m in the same period. It accounts for over $112m of the Trump network’s combined cash on hand.

Donald Trump Jr will meet with lawmakers on the January 6 committee who are seeking his voluntary testimony, sources on the committee told ABC News on Thursday.

The eldest son of the former president was a top figure in Mr Trump’s reelection campaign, unlike his sister Ivanka and her husband who served inside the administration.

ABC News reported on Thursday that Donald Trump Jr is set to meet with members of the House January 6 select committee within the next few days for a voluntary interview.

According to sources familiar with the matter who spoke to ABC, Mr Trump has not been served with a subpoena and agreed to give evidence before the panel after he was asked to do so.

MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow said she expects calls for GOP leader Kevin McCarthy to resign after she released an explosive audio recording confirming a New York Times report.

“I don’t mean to be pollyanna about this at all, or naïve,” Ms Maddow said. “But it seems to me that I expect a sort of level — from politicians, in particular — of saying one thing in public and saying it another way in private. Certainly speaking more harshly, less diplomatic terms in private.”

Yet she said she does not expect public officials and politicians “to flat out lie” when it is on the record.

“I think this creates a real problem for Mr McCarthy, I think he must at least apologise, I would not be surprised if there are calls for his resignation, for him lying and denying that he did this when in fact he did it,” she said.

Reacting to the latest audio released of Kevin McCarthy, conservative expert AB Stoddard said it was a “breathtaking failure” on the part of the Republican politician.

“It’s an amazing, breathtaking failure on the part of Kevin McCarthy, simply because he has tried to ascend to the speakership for so long,” Ms Stoddard said on MSNBC.

She called it an “epic embarrassment for Republicans”.

House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy told fellow GOP lawmakers shortly after the 6 January, 2021, Capitol insurrection that he would urge then-President Donald Trump to resign, according to audio posted by The New York Times and aired on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show.

In the recording of a 10 January House Republican Leadership call posted by the Times on Thursday night, McCarthy is heard discussing the Democratic effort to remove Trump from office and saying he would tell Trump, “I think it will pass and it would be my recommendation he should resign.”

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Adam Kinzinger, who sits with Liz Cheney on the 6 January select committee, has laid into Kevin McCarthy over the audio that shows him saying exactly what he denied saying just an hour before the recording was released.

Before the audio of his post-insurrection call with Liz Cheney was released, Kevin McCarthy issued a strident written denial that the reported version was accurate. And even after the recording was played on MSNBC, the statement is still live on his official Twitter feed:

Almost nobody doubts that Donald Trump is seriously considering running for president in 2024, and the string of rallies he’s held in recent months have made it seem almost like the campaign is already underway. There are even reports saying he had to be talked out of announcing a second run as early as last year for fear that he could scramble the Republicans’ messaging in the midterm elections.

However, despite his towering polling advantage among the Republican base and his enormous fundraising ability, Mr Trump doesn’t have a completely clear path to the nomination or the presidency, not least because of multiple legal problems that still threaten to escalate.

Graeme Massie picks over the challenges the former president might face.

Two men have pleaded guilty in a long-running wire fraud case related to We Build The Wall, a fundraising group co-founded by Trump advisor and far-right instigator Steve Bannon.

Mr Bannon was pardoned by the former president for his part in the crowdfunding effort, whose donations were siphoned off for personal use by staff. However, Mr Trump was only able to pardon him on the federal charges he faced; he is still under investigation for state-level offences.

Sravasti Dasgupta has the story.