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Jan. 6 committee: What we know about the panel targeting Trump aides

House investigators are subpoenaing aides that were part of former President Donald Trump's inner circle. Here's what we know.

Just the FAQs, USA TODAY

Jonathan Karl's new book "Betrayal," released Tuesday, documents the historic presidential election, unprecedented claims of fraud, the January insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and the stirrings of the novel COVID-19 virusthat marked the final days of former President Donald Trump's presidency.

Karl, chief Washington correspondentfor ABC News, is also the author of New York Times bestseller "Front Row at the Trump Show," published in 2020. The veteran journalist has indeed had a front row seat throughout the Trump administration. Choice accounts have made their way into "Betrayal."

Opening withexcerpts from a conversation with Trump, Karl chronicles Trump's feelings about his supporters targeting former Vice President Mike Pence during the Jan. 6 insurrection.

"Well, the people were very angry," Trump said.

The response, Karl says, derives from a sense of betrayal by those within Trump's inner circle. His next moves in the public sphere will be designed to make "his erstwhile friends and allies pay a price for their betrayal," a plan that made Trump "gleeful," according to Karl.

Trump looks back on Jan. 6 "fondly," Karl wrote, "and believes that if events just had played out a little differently, hed still be president."

Here's a glimpse of some of the book's revelations.

During the Jan. 6 insurrection, as a mob of Trump supporters descended on the Capitol, a disbelieving Gen. John Kelly who once served as Trump's chief of staff told Karl the Trump Cabinet should have stepped in, declared the president mentally unfit and hadhim removed from office.

"If I was still there, I would call the Cabinet and start talking about the Twenty-Fifth Amendment," Kelly said of the amendment that effectively forces a sitting president out of the job.

Other members of Trump's Cabinet began to voice the same sentiment that fateful January evening, according to Karl. Some resigned, while others made a pact to keep Trump from further damaging the country.

A source familiar with the discussion said Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin spoke with other Cabinet members about using the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office after the riot.

Karl reported on a call between Mnuchin and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo where they discussed the 25th Amendment. Mnuchin did not respond to Karls questions about the call, but Pompeo denied they had discussed the 25th Amendment through an unnamed spokesman.

Loyalty was Trump's first priority, according to the book. When the World Health Organization raised the alarm about the rapid spread of COVID-19 in February 2020, Trump was focused on repositioning his White House staff to promote those closest to him.

Among those promotedwas the president's former baggage carrier,Johnny McEntee, who was placed in charge of the Presidential Personnel Office.

McEntee would soonbecome known as the "deputy president," according to a senior Trump official, for heavily vetting personnel for loyalty to Trump and for assisting him in efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Anxious to improve his reelection chances despite COVID-19, nationwide unrest and falling poll numbers, Trump ordered campaign manager Brad Parscale to organize an in-person rally. Tulsa, Oklahoma, was chosen to host, in part because the campaign would not be breaking the law by holding a large indoor rally in the state.

The event, held on June 20, 2020, was considered a failure, Karl wrote. Attendance was dismal, and members of the campaign staff who did not practice COVID-19 safety measures, tested positive for the virus.

One staffer with a preexisting conditionbecame seriously ill and was hospitalized in Tulsa for a week, Karl revealed. The other infected staffers were instructed to rent cars anddrive 1,200 miles from Tulsa back to Washington, D.C.

According to Karl, a senior adviser said, "There was a car of three staffers who had tested positive that drove all the way from Tulsa, Oklahoma, to Washington, DC.We called it a COVID-mobile."

Former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, who later died of complications related the the virus, contracted COVID-19 at the Tulsa event.

In a last ditch effort to overturn the election, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit to invalidate electoral votes in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Without those electoral votes, Biden wouldnt become president.

Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., led an effort in the House of Representatives to get support for the lawsuit from his fellow Republicans, asking them to sign a friend of the court brief.

Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., told Karl that Republican House leader Kevin McCarthy initially told her he wasnt going to sign the brief, saying it gave too much power over elections to the federal government. And McCarthy wasnt among the initial signatories. But when more signatures were added, McCarthy was included. The California Republican denied having told Cheney that he wouldnt sign the document, though he acknowledged an aide might have said otherwise.

The Supreme Court unanimously rejected that lawsuit.

The last time Trump spoke to then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was right after a Dec. 15 news conference where McConnell had congratulated Biden and Harris on their election victory.

When he returned to his office, Trump called almost immediately, according to Karl.

Trump yelled at McConnell, but the Kentucky Republican told the president the Electoral College is the final word.

Trump hung up on McConnell in the final conversation the two would have.

Before the now-infamous call between Trump and Georgia officials, when the president pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find" votes,the White House used a phone number reserved for media calls to try to get ahold of the states top election official.

When a deputy secretary returned the call to Trumps chief of staff Mark Meadows, he told the deputy that the White House had tried 18 times to connect with Raffensperger.

Those attempts apparently came from a private Gmail account Meadows was using to send text messages to Raffensperger, according to Karls reporting, and were mixed among threatening messages he had received after the election.

He had been getting all kinds of threatening messages and certainly didnt think the White House chief of staff would be sending him text messages from a Gmail account, Karl wrote. They all had assumed the messages were fake.

As Trump searched for ways to overturn the election, Karl wrote that the president considered elevating an obscure environmental lawyer at the Justice Department to attorney general, who would then overturn the election.

Two sources told Karl that attorney, Jeffrey Clark, believed wireless thermostats might have been used to manipulate voting machines in Georgia.

When Trump brought in acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen for his potential firing, the president reversed course when he learned senior leaders at the Justice Department would resign rather than work for Clark.

The Justice Department coup edition of The Apprentice ended with Rosen keeping his job, Karl wrote.

In a newly revealed memo, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows detailed how to overturn the election to Vice President Mike Pences office. The memo was written by Trump campaign attorney Jenna Ellis.

Ellis wrote Pence should reject results in six states and set a 7 p.m. deadline on Jan. 15 for those states to send a new set of votes. If the states missed that deadline, their votes would not be counted. That would have left both Trump and Biden short of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. Ellis wrote in the memo that it would be left to Congress, voting by delegation, to choose the president.

With Republicans in control of 26 state delegations, Trump would have been reelected.

The memo was part of a full-court press by Trump and his allies to enlist Pence to overturn the election.

While other leaders were taken to Fort McNair, Vice President Mike Pence refused to leave the Capitol. Unpublished photos Karl reviewed show Pence in a windowless garage with no furniture, where he remained for five hours.

For hours, Pence refused to get inside the vice presidential motorcade for fear that it would take him from the Capitol.

In one photo, Pences chief of staff Marc Short uses his phone to show him Trumps tweet saying the vice president had no courage.

Trump had to record a message calling off his supporters from their riot at the Capitol several times, according to Karl.

In the now-infamous video, Trump tells supporters to go home and ends with, We love you. You are very special. In earlier versions, though, a White House aide told Karl that Trump never told supporters to leave the building.

He complained about the election. He empathized with their anger, but he didnt call on them to go home, Karl wrote.

Trumps last tweet before his account was permanently suspended noted that he would not be attending Bidens inauguration on Jan. 20. But Karl reveals in his book that Trump had learned he would not be invited.

McConnell tried to orchestrate a letter from the four congressional leaders disinviting Trump, but McCarthy opposed the idea. McConnell sent a top aide to inform the White House that the president would not be welcome at the inauguration, and McCarthy also told administration officials about the plan.

But Trump sent his final tweet before any formal letter could be drafted, Karl wrote.

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Trump looks back on Jan. 6 'fondly' and wants to settle scores over false election claims, new book says - USA TODAY

Experts have once again stated that there is no legal or constitutional basis for Donald Trump to simply be "reinstated" as president after a recent survey suggests more than a quarter of Republicans believe it could happen this year.

According to an Economist/YouGov poll conducted between November 6 and 9, at least 28 percent of people who identify as Republican believe that it is "somewhat likely" or "very likely" that Trump will be reinstated as president before the end of 2021.

The percentage of Republicans who believe that the man who lost the 2020 election will soon return to the White House is also increasing, with a previous Economist/YouGov survey in October revealing 22 percent of Republicans consider it "somewhat" or "very likely" to happen.

The poll results appear to be based on the belief of the so-called Big Liewhich has been pushed by Trump, his supporters, and QAnon conspiracy theoriststhat Joe Biden only won the last election because of widespread voter fraud and Trump will return to his rightful place in the White House when this is proven.

Speaking to Newsweek, Barbara McQuade, a University of Michigan law professor and former U.S. attorney in Detroit, explained that even if there is proof of voter fraud, something which hasn't materialized more than one year since the 2020 election took place, there is "absolutely no mechanism" in the law where Trump could become president.

"As former Attorney General William Barr noted, there was no widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. Even if some new revelation somehow proved that Trump had lost the 2020 election because of fraud, the result would not be to reinstate Trump," McQuade said.

"The only way President Joe Biden could be removed from office under that scenario would be impeachment and conviction. Even then, he would be succeeded by President Kamala Harris. If somehow she were also impeached and convicted, then we would follow the normal line of succession, resulting in a President Nancy Pelosi."

Eugene Volokh, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, added that the Constitution is "quite specific" about how someone can be removed from office and have someone else replace them.

The obvious way is a new election, with Trump eligible to throw his hat in the ring again in 2024. Another way is that the vice president can succeed if the current president is impeached, dies, or otherwise becomes unable to carry out his role.

"But that would mean Vice President Harris, not Trump, would become president," Volokh told Newsweek.

"There's no constitutionally provided mechanism for any entity, whether the courts, Congress, or anyone else simply reconsider the certified election results once a president is inaugurated."

Volokh did suggest one outlandish and highly improbable way in which Trump could return as president.

"In theory, one can imagine Vice President Harris being impeached or resigning, President Biden nominating Trump to replace her, Trump being confirmed by both Houses under section 2 of the 25th Amendment, and then President Biden resigning or being impeached and new Vice President Trump becoming president.

"But for obvious reasons, I doubt that President Biden will go along with that," Volokh said.

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell is one of the main orchestrators of the false belief that Trump will be reinstated as president, setting out deadlines over the past year for it to happenwhich have obviously failed to come to fruition.

Lindell previously claimed Trump would return as president in August because the Supreme Court would be so impressed with his apparent proof of voter fraud in states such as Arizona and Pennsylvania that they would vote 9-0 in favor of Trump being declared the true winner of the last election.

Lindell's prediction had no basis in constitutional law and his August deadline fell during a three-month recess for the Supreme Court.

On November 2, a large crowd of QAnon supporterswho not only believe Trump won the 2020 election but had been battling a cabal of satanic pedophiles during his time in the officegathered in Dallas, Texas, in the hope John F. Kennedy Jr. would return from the dead and somehow announce Trump as the true president.

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No, Donald Trump Will Not Be Reinstated as President - Newsweek

All across America, Republican leaders are anticipating the 2022 midterm elections with tremendous optimism. Buoyed by positive poll numbers, the Republican triumph in the recent gubernatorial race in Virginia, the better-than-expected results in New Jerseyand the historically destructive leadership of Joe BidenRepublicans believe victory next year (and in 2024) is inevitable.

But it isnt.

Im no political guru, but the prevailing belief that regaining the House and Senate, and then the White House, is inevitable feels like a giant trap. A magnificent ploy designed to create a false sense of security and confidence, and more importantly, to distract people from what happened in 2020 and what will happen in 2022.

And many Republicans in name only (rinos) are scampering right into the trap. What happened this week was historic, said Republican Sen. Rick Scott in a November 7 Fox News interview. Were going to take the Senate and were going to do unbelievably in 2022.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz agrees. The elections this week were enormously consequential, he said. The elections in Virginia and New Jersey are foreshadowing whats coming next year in 2022.

Confident that victory is in the bag, Republican elites say the party must now forget about the 2020 election and focus solely on 2022.

Rupert Murdoch, the boss of Fox News, delivered this message to shareholders just yesterday. The current American political debate is profound, whether about education or welfare or economic opportunity. It is crucial that conservatives play an active, forceful role in that debate, but that will not happen if President Trump stays focused on the past. The past is the past, and the country is now in a contest to define the future (emphasis added throughout).

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell agrees. Its my hope that 2022 election will be a referendum on the performance of the current administration, not a rehash about suggestions of what may have happened in 2020, McConnell stated in a press conference earlier this month. We need to be talking about the future, not the past.

Speaking on nbcs Meet the Press, Asa Hutchinson, the Republican governor of Arkansas, warned that relitigating 2020 is a recipe for disaster in 2022. We need to focus on the future, he said, the election is past. Its been certified. The states made decisions on the integrity of each of their elections .

The magnitude of the ignorance and cowardice on display here is absolutely staggering.

These men ignore a simple yet pivotal question: After what happened in 2020, how can America have honest, lawful elections ever again?

The notion that the 2020 election was stolen is mocked as a conspiracy by the media and radical Democrats. But what these people dont tell you is that this is the minority view. The majority of Americans, including a huge number of Democrats, now believe the 2020 election was fraudulent.

A Rasmussen Reports survey from October showed that a majority of voters believe cheating affected the outcome of last years election. When asked, How likely is it that cheating affected the outcome of the 2020 presidential election?, 56 percent of respondents said it was very or somewhat likely. A remarkable 41 percent believe cheating was very likely.

Its not just Republicans, 84 percent of whom believe cheating was at least somewhat likely to have affected the outcome. Thirty-two percent of Democrat voters32 percent!and 54 percent of unaffiliated voters believe cheating was at least somewhat likely to have affected the election outcome.

On this issue, the majority is right. Over the past 12 months, evidence has surfaced all across the nation proving there was widespread cheating and corruption. Evidence gained via audits, witness testimony and video surveillance in multiple states, including Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin and Pennsylvaniaall states that Donald Trump lost by only a few thousand voteshave revealed incidents of ballot stuffing, ballot harvesting, ballot destruction, voting machine manipulation, mail-in vote manipulation and numerous other crimes and corruptions. In some instances, the fraudulent behavior impacted thousands, even multiple thousands, of votesenough to have made a difference to the final election result.

All of this added up to a targeted campaign to undermine election integrity in the 2020 elections, wrote Bruce Oliver Newsome at American Greatness last month. Across several states, with the help of numerous friendly institutions, the Democratic Party was able to change the way America votes, and manipulate how those votes were counted.

Its the giant boil on Americas face, the issue everyone sees and is aware of, but no one wants to discuss: The 2020 election was stolen!

Yet the Republican establishment somehow believes next years elections will be free and fair, that the pervasive cheating cannot and will not happen again. Wheres the evidence that it wont happen again in 2022? There is none.

The only way the 2022 midterm elections can be free and fair is if the corruption is purged. The cheating and lies must be confronted, the elaborate networks of lies and deceit dismantled. The boil must be lanced if its going to heal.

And the only way this can happen is if the 2020 election steal is exposed! You have to properly diagnose a problem before you can treat it.

On Tuesday, the issue of the 2020 election came up in an interview between Mike Lindell and Donald Trump. Trump relayed how even some of his own people tell him to forget about 2020 [because] youre going to win [2024], youre way up in the polls.

When he hears this, Trumps response is always, Were not going to have a country in three years . [Look what Joe Biden] did in nine months. He destroyed our country.

This man gets it. This is why Donald Trump is one of the few who wont move on from the 2020 election. He knows that if America is going to have future elections, then it must confront what happened in the 2020 election!

And this is exactly what rinos say we must never do.

Perhaps more than anything else, this reveals just how wretchedly amoral, clueless and cowardly these people are. They all claim to love America and to believe in America. They all claim to love the Constitution and rule of law, to love democracy and the republic. But when Americas vital organsincluding its election system and Constitutionare openly and violently attacked, they go silent. Even worse, they encourage the American people to forget about it, to move on, to focus on the future.

Remember, the majority of Americans believe cheating affected the outcome of the 2020 election. This suggests many Americans would support a deeper, more serious, more widespread and more coordinated investigation into the 2020 election. Standing up for America and seriously investigating the 2020 election probably wouldnt have the support of the majority, but its safe to say that it would not be incredibly unpopular.

Its probably safe to assume too, that in time, as the reality of Bidens America sets in and the corruption and deceit of the radical left continues to be exposedas were currently witnessing with the Steele dossierthe number of Americans willing to accept that the election was stolen will grow. Will this be enough to inspire rinos to revisit the 2020 election? Probably not.

What does all this teach us about America? It tells us that this nation is in deep crisis. The Trumpet has much to say about the destructive agenda of Barack Obama, Joe Biden and the radical left. But Americas problems go way beyond these men and the radical left. The entire leadership of this nation is terminally ill!

In Isaiah 1, the prophet describes America (and Britain) in the end time and writes: Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward. Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will revolt more and more: the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint (verses 4-5).

Isaiah is describing our leaders. The head refers to the leaders of modern Israel, Gerald Furry writes in Great Again. God says the whole head is sick! The minds of our leaders are sick with deceitful human reasoning that is anti-God! Their decisions are perverse and leading to greater and greater calamities!

The rinos admonition to Americans to just forget the 2020 election is absolutely perverse! And unless something happens to prevent it, it will lead to calamity in the 2022 midterm elections. Shrinking in the face of abject evil only allows it to grow stronger. When God says the whole heart is faint, He is talking about spineless people and leaders who put personal gain before the country and doing what is right.

Strong, brave leaders confront evil, especially when it thrusts their nation into an existential crisis!

This is one reason we should expect to see a lot more of Donald Trump, and perhaps soon. The nation is fast growing weary with Joe Biden and the radical left. But its also fast growing weary with the lily-livered rino leaders and all their media sycophants. There are still many Americans who want to see the evil confronted, who want to see the 2020 election steal exposed, who want to see America saved! We should expect this number to grow too!

Mr. Trump has many imperfections, which Mr. Flurry has also explained in detail. But there is still much to admire about his leadership, including his courage, his love of America, and his readiness to confront the extraordinary evil responsible for Americas disastrous 2020 election.

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RINOs, Donald Trump and Confronting Evil - theTrumpet.com

In his new book, erstwhile member of Trump's inner circle and New Jersey governor Chris Christie reveals he had a "ringside seat" to the night Obama roasted Trump at the 2011 White House Correspondents' Dinner. Christie writes: "I was right there when it happened. I had a clear view of the faces of the two combatants. I witnessed every brutal knife twist and every painful grimace" (via People).

Christie says Obama had sought to take potshots at Trump's claim that he wasn't an American by "comparing it to the most discredited conspiracy theories and pinning it on its loudest voice. The whole room, 2,600 journalists and Washington power brokers, Republicans and Democrats alike, howled in laughter."

The former New Jersey governor describes Trump in his book as "staring straight ahead. He was rocking back and forth in his chair. He still didn't break a smile" before adding: "I can say this much: I spoke to Donald after the dinner. He was pissed off like I'd never seen him before. Just beside himself with fury."

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Could This Be Why Donald Trump Is So Mad At Barack Obama? - The List

Mary Trump knows her uncle, Donald Trump, better than she wants tobut that means she has some insight into why he is the way he is.

I grew up in a family where kindness was considered weakness and cruelty was considered a legitimate strategy to get what you wanted Mary recalls in this episode of The New Abnormal, where she talks with Molly Jong-Fast about why theres still hope for Biden despite his plummeting poll numbers, and about what her uncle is brewing.

Subscribe to The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or Overcast. To listen to our weekly members-only bonus episodes, join Beast Inside here. Already a member? You can listen here and sign up for new episode email alerts here.

What gets completely left out of the narrative, says Mary, is the absolutely horrific hand Biden was dealt. Look what he came into office having to deal with.

And things could get worse, says Molly, since, If Democrats lose the House, were going to have a Joe Biden impeachment. And, she says to Mary, You could get brought up there for, like, being disloyal to your uncle. I mean, its really scary what could happen.

And, speaking of scary, Mary thinks another Trump run could be in the cards now: I thought it was impossible because he got defeated so badly [in 2020]. It was such a humiliating loss that I believed he would never put himself at the risk of suffering that kind of narcissistic injury again, she says, but things have turned in his favor since thenand could get even more favorable if Republicans retake statehouses and the House.

If Donald gets to the point where he believes that if he ran, he couldnt lose, why wouldnt he run? Hes in so much trouble, legally, criminally and civilly

Then, David Pell, author of the NextDraft newsletter and the book Please Scream Inside Your Heart, gives an unpopular opinion about regulating Facebook and shares a chilling prediction his dad, a Holocaust survivor, told him about Trump. And Hamilton Nolan, labor reporter for In These Times, explains why the Democratic partys fate depends on the future of organized labor.

Listen to The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and Stitcher.

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Mary Trump: If Donald Runs Again, This Will Be the Reason - Daily Beast