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Former President Donald Trump on Saturday extended his victory lap following the Supreme Courts decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which he said was made possible by the three conservative justices he nominated.

Mr. Trump called the ruling a victory for the rule of law and, above all, a victory for life.

I promised to nominate judges and justices who would stand up for the original meaning of the Constitution and who would honestly and faithfully interpret the law as written, the former president said at a campaign-style rally in Illinois. We got almost 300 federal judges and three great Supreme Court justices confirmed to do exactly that.

Mr. Trump nominated three of the six justices Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett who joined the majority in Fridays 6-3 ruling.

His remarks Saturday follow a similar sentiment conveyed in a statement by Mr. Trump through his political action committee soon after the ruling.

I did not cave to the Radical Left Democrats, their partners in the Fake News Media, or the RINOs who are likewise the true, but silent, enemy of the people, he said.

Democrats have turned the decision into a campaign rallying cry, urging voters to flood the polls and give Congress the needed votes to restore the protections from the Roe ruling.

Voters need to make their voices heard. This fall we must elect more senators and representatives who can codify the womans right to choose into federal law, President Biden said from the White House on Friday. Congress must act. With your vote, you can have the final word.

Mr. Biden lamented the ruling that overturned the 1973 Roe decision as an ideological remnant of his predecessor.

It was three justices, named by one president, Donald Trump, who was at the core of todays decision to upend the scales of justice and eliminate the fundamental rights of women in this country, he said.

Make no mistake, this decision is the culmination of a deliberate effort over decades to upset the balance of our law, he said. Its a realization of extreme ideology and a tragic error by the Supreme Court.

Mr. Trump on Saturday was unmoved by the threats of an energized Democratic base.

As for the Republican Party, we are today the party of life and we are the party of everyone, he said. Were the party of everyone.

Read more:
Donald Trump extends victory lap over Roe - Washington Times

After the committee investigating the January 6, 2021 Capitol riots has held five hearings, there is still a question as to just how much damage the hearings will actually do to former President Donald Trump.

The House Select Committee, which has spent a year investigating the events which led up to the Capitol riot, had been building up to proceedings in the weeks and months before the first live televised presentation, promising to deliver evidence that some hoped would force the Department of Justice to act and charge the former president.

However, there is no guarantee that Attorney General Merrick Garland will take the unprecedented step and charge the former president with a crime over his alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election results or incitement of his supporters to storm the Capitol as a last-ditch attempt to hold onto power.

Even if no charges are brought against Trump or any of his allies, there is still hope from the panel that their findings could at least prevent Trump from running for office again for allegedly inciting an insurrection, or ruin the former president's reputation entirely by reminding the American people of his actions and rhetoric before the attack on January 6.

However, this is not the first time that Trump has faced a potential legacy-destroying hearing over the past six years.

Trump is the only president in U.S. history to be impeached twice, with the Senate voting to acquit Trump both times, and the former president also survived Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian collusion during the 2016 election.

This is on top of the seemingly endless run of scandal and controversies which dogged Trump over the years, from the Access Hollywood "grab them by p****y" recordings to his emboldening of far-right groups and handling of the coronavirus outbreak.

Speaking to Newsweek, Thomas Gift, founding director of University College London's Center on U.S. Politics, described Trump as the "Teflon president" while in office, and that there is nothing to suggest that his "ability to avoid scandals from sticking to him" has lessened since January 6 or the subsequent live hearings.

"Trump's grip over the GOP may have loosened somewhat, but he's stillby far the most dominant figure within the party. So despite the enormity of the evidence proving Trump's malfeasance, the odds that the MAGAverse will abandon him in response to the January 6 hearings are essentially zero," Gift said.

Gift added that it appears Republican voters may only be viewing the hearings as a "replay of impeachment 2.0" where Trump was accused of inciting the attack, or as "yet another witch-hunt and political smokescreen" designed to take down Joe Biden's most likely opponent in 2024.

"Democrats may be glued to the TV enraptured by every new detail unfolding in the hearings, but their minds were set against Trump anyway. For all those reasons, it's hard to see the January 6 hearings budging public opinion toward Trump even a little," Gift said.

In order to build pressure against Trump, the panel already knew that they must present new findings that are not already public knowledge such as how often Trump falsely declared he was the winner of the last election.

The committee was also aware that they needed to maintain the public's interest in the congressional hearings.

In order to do so, they brought in former ABC News television executive and documentary filmmaker James Goldston to help turn the proceedings into a captivating presentation suitable for primetime television.

The move appears to have paid off. The first live primetime hearing on June 9 attracted 20 million viewers across the news networks, according to the Nielsen ratings.

However, those numbers have started to fall, albeit with the subsequent hearings not being played in primetime slots.

The first daytime hearing on June 13 was watched by 13 million, with the third on June 16 falling further still to around nine million.

The ratings appear to be backed by some polls, which suggest the public is not as interested in the hearings as they go on.

An Ipsos poll conducted after the third hearing found that just two-thirds of Americans (66 percent) are not following the hearing closely/closely at all, compared to 33 percent who said they are keeping top of proceedings very or somewhat closely.

However, a Quinnipiac University National Poll released Wednesday gave an opposing view. The survey found that a majority of Americans say they are following the January 6 hearings either "very closely" (26 percent) or "somewhat closely" (32 percent).

Where the hearings appear to be having a detrimental effect on Trump is the view on whether he should be charged with a criminal offense over the January 6 attack.

According to the recent Ipsos/ABC News poll, nearly six in 10 (58 percent) of Americans think Trump should be charged with a crime for his role in the riot.

Another survey conducted by Navigator Research also found that 54 percent of respondents support the idea of the Department of Justice indicting the former president in connection with the Capitol riot.

David Niven, a political science professor at the University of Cincinnati, said that the fact that the January 6 hearings are able to focus entirely on Trump's efforts to overturn the election results could be what damages Trump.

"Ironically, one of Trump's great political strengths is that there are so many things wrong with him that it is hard to hold people's focus on just one thing for any length of time," Niven told Newsweek. "Each session is a reminder that Trump lied, Trump connived, and ultimately, Trump unleashed a torrent of violence against innocent people trying to lawfully do their jobs."

However, Christa Ramey, co-founder of Los Angeles-based civil litigation firm Ramey Law PC, does not believe that the January 6 hearings are hurting the former president at all, especially within the GOP.

"His group of followers are within their own echo chamber, calling the hearings a 'witch hunt' and not bothering to watch them, so it's very unlikely to move the needle with them," Ramey told Newsweek.

"Republicans who aren't necessarily Trump supporters are much more likely to be swayed by the evidence presented in the hearings. But there's definitely a ceiling on how many Republicans will be swayed," she continued. "The fact that viewership of the hearings has been modest also provides an indication that there's a ceiling on how much of the public even cares at this point."

Clark D. Cunningham, a professor of law at Georgia State University, said the issue is not whether Trump's reputation is damaged by the proceedings, but whether authorities believe he committed a crime.

"The question is going to be will people be open-minded about the evidence that's been presented in these hearings," Clark said. "The battleground is not so much did Trump win or not, was there fraud or not. Now the battleground is what did Trump do," he said. "He didn't just talk about his belief that there had been fraud. He put into motion a scheme which a judge in California has described as a criminal act."

Ultimately, it doesn't matter if the live televised hearings ratings fall and people begin to tune out of the proceedings, or if opinion polls on Trump slightly differ in the wake of the January 6 hearings.

What matters is if the committee persuades the Department of Justice that Trump committed a number of crimes during his attempts to overturn the election results in the run-up to the January 6 attack.

In his opening remarks on June 9, Committee chair Rep. Bennie Thompson described January 6 as the "culmination of an attempted coup" which was Trump's "most desperate chance" to prevent Biden from becoming president.

"The committee has shown that Trump knew, or that he should have known, that the 2020 election was free and fair," Ramey said.

"It has shown the pressure Trump put on Vice President Mike Pence and on state officials to violate their oaths and it has shown the deadly consequences of the whirlwind of hate that Trump set into motion," she said. "The evidence presented in these hearings meets the burden of proof necessary to result in charges."

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Have the Jan.6 Hearings Hurt Donald Trump?: Analysis

A US federal grand jury has issued subpoenas to the board members of the company merging with Donald Trumps social media company, Truth Social.

The disclosure, made on Monday by the blank cheque company Digital World Acquisition Corporation, is the latest blow to Trumps plans to take Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), the creator of Truth Social, public.

TMTG agreed to merge with Digital World last October and was expecting the deal to close by the second half of this year. Both the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, are investigating the merger.

The news is likely to further delay the merger, which would provide Truth Social with $1.3bn in capital, in addition to a stock market listing.

Shares of Digital World fell 9% in morning trading after the company said in a regulatory filing that it had become aware that a federal grand jury in the southern district of New York had issued subpoenas to its directors.

Digital World is a special purpose acquisition company (Spac), a blank cheque company set up to go public and then find a company to merge with. Spacs are not supposed to have a deal lined up before they go public.

The SEC is investigating whether or not Digital World and Trump Media held serious discussions before the Spac went public last September and, if so, why those talks were not disclosed in regulatory filings.

Digital World also said Bruce Garelick, chief strategy officer of Rocket One Capital, a Miami-based investment firm, was resigning from the board. Some of the information requested by the grand jury was about communications with Rocket One.

Michael Shvartsman, founder and chief executive of Rocket One Capital, did not immediately reply to a Reuters request for comment.

We will cooperate with oversight that supports the SECs important mission of protecting retail investors, TMTG said.

Truth Social was launched after Trump was banned from Twitter, where he had more than 88 million followers. Trump currently has 3.37 million followers on Truth Social. The app has had a rocky rollout, plagued by delays, and is still not available to Android mobile users.

Reuters contributed to this article

Continue reading here:
Blow for Trumps Truth Social as merger company hit by grand jury subpoenas - The Guardian US

The chair of the January 6th committee, Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, was born into segregation in the Delta town of Bolton, Mississippi, population five hundred and twenty-one, a part of the country where people justify the actions of slavery, Ku Klux Klan, and lynching, as he said during the first hearing. The vice-chair, Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, is twenty years younger and the daughter of Vice-President Dick Cheney; she had spent most of the Trump years occupying the third-ranking position in the Republican House leadership, until she was forced to step down in May, 2021, having repeatedly criticized Trump and voted for his impeachment. The scene is straight out of a John Grisham thriller: the slow-speaking Southern judge with a long historical memory, the sharp female prosecutor who is turning against her former political patrons. This is what justicesimple, crowd-pleasing justiceis supposed to look like.

In its focus on the period between the Presidential election on November 3, 2020, and the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, the committee has built an account in which successive advisers to the Presidenteach of them representing a portion of his partyturn away from him in disgust, as he tries to sell the badly organized fiction of a stolen election. Those with him on November 3, 2020 were already a self-selecting group of loyalists, given how much of the Party refused to work for Trump in the first place, and how many of his early aides burned out and left. In November, most of the Trump White House lawyers and campaign staff, who saw no major fraud in the election, had consolidated around Team Normal, as the political aide Bill Stepien termed it in his testimony; the Trump camp was arranged around Team Rudy, a few lawyers allied with the former New York mayor Giuliani, who were searching for evidence of fraud that never turned out to be there. In every scene recreated in the hearing room, every heated Oval Office session recounted by a lawyer, every memo highlighted and projected on a screen above the dais, the central question is: Who was with Trump, and who was against him?

But this alignment had a political valence as well. In December, as Trump continued to pursue his election-fraud claims, his Attorney General, Bill Barr, the embodiment of the conservative legal establishments truce with the President, resigned. In Congress, the Republicans clearly with Trump were the members of the right-wing House Freedom Caucusmost prominently, Rep. Jim Jordan, of Ohio, Rep. Paul Gosar, of Arizona, Rep. Louie Gohmert, of Texas, and Rep. Scott Perry, of Pennsylvaniawhose line to the President ran through the White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, formerly the chair of the House Freedom Caucus. The Committee etched another dividing line: among the lawyers, it was Team Normal versus Team Rudy, but among the politicians it was Team Republican Party versus Team Freedom Caucus.

Thursdays hearing centered on a dramatic Oval Office meeting on January 3rd, three days before the insurrection. One attendee was a lawyer at the D.O.J. named Jeff Clark, who helped lead the departments environmental division. Clark had met Trump through Rep. Perry, of the Freedom Caucus, and made clear that he would back the Presidents claimsClark had gone so far as to draft a D.O.J. letter, at Trumps urging, asking the Georgia state legislature to adopt a fake set of electors rather than those fairly won by President Biden. Also at the meeting were acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen and acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, who had been running the D.O.J. since Barrs departure, and had refused to send Clarks letter. According to the testimony that Rosen and Donoghue gave on Thursday, the President asked why he should not replace Rosen with Clark, given that Rosen would not do what his Commander-in-Chief wanted. Donoghue told the committee that he had said that Clark was not qualified to either run the Department of Justice or investigate an election-fraud claimhe had never even tried a case. Clark protested that he had led very complicated environmental appeals. In one of the all-time Oval Office disses (assuming it really happened; we only have Donoghues word here), Donoghue said, Thats right. Youre an environmental lawyer. Go back to your office and well call you when theres an oil spill. Trump did not make Clark acting Attorney General; Donoghue advised him that if he did all of his Assistant Attorneys General would resign en masse. Trumps own Department of Justice was against him. What he still had were the Freedom Caucus andseventy-two hours latera mob.

Trumps instincts are not especially sharp these days, and he seemed to recognize very belatedly that the events of January 6th not only put him in legal jeopardy but political peril, too. For a half decade, part of his pitch has been that, however reluctant the Republican establishment seemed, however disgusted it pretended to be with him, it would always come home to him in the end. But, the same week that the January 6th committee emphasized how even the Trump diehards in the White House, in the days before the riot, were fed up with him, a poll of Republican primary voters in New Hampshire put him behind Ron DeSantis. Brit Hume of Fox News emphasized on air that, if the hearings mean Trump does not run in 2024, then the committee will have done the Republican Party a great service, because many Republicans think they cannot win with Trump at the head of the ticket. Speaking with a conservative talk-radio host last week, the former President said that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthys decision to boycott the January 6th committee was very, very foolish since that step had allowed Trumps opponents to pick the members of the committee by themselves, and to shape the story as they saw fit. McCarthy did not respond. He has long bowed to Trump, but he has also been an antagonist of the Freedom Caucus, not a member. Is he still on the former Presidents side?

At some points during the hearings, a slight suspension of narrative disbelief has been required. Among the many former Trump staffers who have been obviously disgusted by him, none has been so disgusted as the White House lawyer Eric Herschmann, who often appears by Zoom with a black baseball bat mounted on the wall behind him, emblazoned with the word JUSTICE. (Next to the baseball bat is a large painting of a panda.) Thursdays committee hearing featured Herschmanns description of a conversation with Jeff Clark, the environmental lawyer with dreams of fake electors from Georgia. Herschmann said, When he finished discussing what he planned on doing, I said, Good, fuckingexcuse meeffing A-hole, congratulations. You just admitted that your first step or act youd take as Attorney General would be committing a felony and violating Rule 6C. Some suppressed inner lawyer in me rebelled: Was that a word-for-word renactment, complete with subsectional citation? Was it not just a little self-aggrandizing? But the Mississippi judge and the Washington prosecutor let it slide. They have allowed the Republicans who broke with Trump to tell the story, and have praised them as heroes. Their bravery is a high moment in the sordid story of what led to January 6, Rep. Adam Kinzinger said, on Thursday, speaking of Rosen and Donoghue. As Grisham might have recognized, justice is not the only process under way.

Toward the end of Thursdays hearing, Herschmann and several other White House aides (among them, Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to Meadows, and John McEntee, the head of the Office of Presidential Personnel) testified that several members of Congress had contacted the Presidents advisers to see whether he might premptively pardon them, to protect them from any prosecution for their role in January 6th. Rep. Mo Brooks wrote a letter to the White House not only formally requesting a pardon but asking for an all-purpose pardon for the hundred and forty-seven members of the House of Representatives who objected to the certification of the election. But, for the most part, the committee has cast ordinary Republicans as the heroes. The villains were the sixjust sixmembers of Congress who had reportedly requested pardons for themselves: Brooks (who lost a primary for Senate in Alabama); Rep. Matt Gaetz, of Florida (who is facing a federal probe for sex trafficking); Rep. Andy Biggs, of Arizona; Rep. Perry, of Pennsylvania; Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, of Georgia; and Rep. Louie Gohmert, of Texas. It was a sign of just how small the caucus of dead-enders was, and of what political line the hearings have offered to draw for Republicans: civil society on one side, and on the other, the former President, a few lawyers, a half-dozen members of Congress, the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys, the mob.

Read more from the original source:
Who Was Willing to Stand with Donald Trump? - The New Yorker

The details to emerge from the inquiry into the storming of the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 have been extraordinary.

An insurrection. An attempted coup. A president who did all he could to overturn an election he lost. A president who even encouraged the hanging of his own deputy.

But is anyone listening? Does anyone care? Or is American society so divided and so siloed that nothing will shift opinion?

We went to rural Pennsylvania to find out. But first, a little background.

Read more:Surprise last-minute hearing on US capitol riots announced to present new evidence

The purpose of the Capitol Hill committee has been to investigate what happened that day in January last year and in the months leading up to it. Crucially, the committee is examining the role Donald Trump played in it all.

From the start, the committee was dismissed by Mr Trump and his allies as a partisan witch-hunt.

The panel consists of seven Democrats and just two Republicans, which feels pretty partisan.

But for those of us who have tuned in to the prime-time hearings, it has become plainly clear: it is not a Democratic Party witch-hunt.

One after the other, the witnesses there to expose Donald Trump as a corrupt, dangerous cheat have been Republicans, conservative ones at that; many of them one-time allies of the former president.

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'The whole thing's a witch-hunt'

That brings us to Kempton, Pennsylvania.

The intended audience for the hearings is people like farmers Harry and Mark, who I meet at the town's annual summer fair.

"I think it was all orchestrated," Harry tells me over a hot dog. He's seen only snippets from the hearings. "It was a Hollywood presentation of something that's not real."

"I think the whole thing's a witch-hunt" fellow farmer Mark says.

Neither of them will give their surname. They are deeply suspicious of the "fake-news media" and only agreed to talk to me after they realised I wasn't American - such is the state of things here.

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These two men, in their 60s, are a key focus for those who wish to try to prove that Donald Trump remains a persistent threat to the democratic structures in America.

Mark and Harry are not life-long Republicans, but were swayed by Donald Trump's vision for America in 2016 and remain loyal to him today.

I put it to them that the witnesses spilling the beans at the hearings are Republicans; White House insiders who saw Mr Trump's attempts to steal the election.

"Donald Trump has had people that call themselves his friends, stab him in the back over and over again," Harry says.

"Do you think that he is honest and transparent, given what you've now heard?" I asked them.

Mark replies: "I do think that he has the interests of the country at heart."

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'People that voted Biden - they're turning'

The first stall to greet visitors to this small summer fair is chock-a-block full of "Trump 2024" merchandise.

The former president has left hanging whether he will run again in the 2024 presidential election. But here they would be delighted if he did.

"I truly believe he won the last election in all my heart and soul," the woman who runs the Trump stall tells me.

A banner with "Trump won: you know it, I know it" adorns the wall behind her. This central claim, entirely unproven, that Trump won the 2020 election has penetrated deep in communities across America.

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Consistent polling reveals that 70% of Republicans believe Donald Trump was the rightful winner in 2020 and that mass voter fraud delivered Joe Biden the White House.

Investigations have found no evidence to back this up.

"I hope he runs again," another local, Sandy, tells me.

"He's got your vote?" I ask.

"And everybody else I know," Sandy says.

"And they will all vote for him again?" I ask.

"Oh, my God! Yeah. And people that voted for Biden that I've heard, they're changing. They're turning," she says.

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The persistent lure of Donald Trump and his tangible populist politics, combined with a bumpy 24 months in the White House for Joe Biden, suggests the midterm elections later this year will be dramatic to say the least.

The enduring power of Trumpism in communities across this nation is palpable. And with it, Mr Trump's apparent disregard for the rule of law and truth seem to have penetrated deep.

More than a hundred of the Republican candidates for key political positions in upcoming local nationwide state elections back the rigged election claims.

If they win, they will be in powerful positions to interfere with the outcome of future elections or to block election certification, including the 2024 presidential race.

The search for 'truth'

Judging the sheep shearing competition is Kelly. My conversation with her cuts to the heart of this nation's problems.

It's clear immediately that she is deeply sceptical of me as a journalist, but my foreign accent breaks the ice.

"As an American how do you find out the truth?" I ask.

"I find out the truth because I do a lot of digging myself. I am on different applications with social media," she says.

But that might not be the truth, I suggest.

"I think they need to have conversations with friends. I try to talk to my friends about what I think is going on versus what we're being told by mainstream media," she says.

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Like the farmers, Kelly is unwilling to give me her surname.

"Do I have to? Go with 'Kelly'," she says. "I am a little worried about the CIA and FBI"

She suggests the FBI are working with the Democrats. It's mad stuff, but not unusual.

Kelly is among millions, in an echo chamber where conspiracy theories stew.

It is a place where Donald Trump continues to convince people that they've been robbed and that they can't trust their own elections.

That puts this country in a dangerous place.

Continued here:
Donald Trump supporters' reaction to 'Hollywood-style' Capitol riots inquiry shows America is in a dangerous place - Sky News