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By Richard Cowan and Katanga Johnson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Congressional investigators into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol expect this week to draw connections between militant groups that took part and government officials, possibly including then-President Donald Trump, a member of the committee conducting the investigation said on Sunday.

"We are going to be connecting the dots during these hearings between these groups and those who were trying in government circles to overturn the election," Democratic Representative Zoe Lofgren said on CNN's "State of the Union."

Asked if Trump was aware members of these groups attended a rally he led outside the White House when he urged them to march on the Capitol, Lofgren said: "You have to reach your own conclusions but based on the events leading up to the day, I think that would be a logical conclusion."

Trump, a Republican, has falsely claimed Democrat Joe Biden defeated him in the 2020 presidential election through massive fraud - assertions rejected in U.S. courts, by Trump's own Justice Department and even Republican-led audits.

After Trump spoke outside the White House on Jan. 6, his supporters marched to the Capitol in a failed bid to prevent Congress from certifying Biden's victory in a session where then-Vice President Mike Pence was presiding.

Two groups, the self-described Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, will be under the spotlight in the two hearings this week, expected on Tuesday and Thursday.

NBC News reported that Jason Van Tatenhove, a former spokesperson for the Oath Keepers, would testify on Tuesday. A committee spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

Federal prosecutors have alleged that Jeremy Brown, a member of the Oath Keepers, brought explosives to the Washington area on Jan. 6. Brown, in a statement, called the charges a "disgusting lie."

During a September 2020 debate between Trump and Biden before the November election, Trump was asked whether he would condemn white supremacist and militia groups for violent activities during his presidency.

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Trump responded, "Proud Boys, stand back and stand by." He added, "Somebody's got to do something about antifa and the left. ... this is a left-wing problem."

On Friday, former White House counsel Pat Cipollone testified to committee investigators behind closed doors.

Videotaped excerpts of that testimony will be presented at Tuesday's hearing, said Lofgren, who is one of nine members on a bipartisan House of Representatives Select Committee that began its current series of public hearings last month.

"He was able to provide information on basically all of the critical issues we are looking at, including the president's what-I-would-call dereliction of duty on the day of Jan. 6," Lofgren said.

The committee has yet to say whether this Thursday's hearing, expected in evening prime time when U.S. television audiences are at their peak, will be the final one before a panel report is issued, possibly in September.

Representative Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republicans on the panel, is expected to lead witness questioning that night, along with Democratic Representative Elaine Luria.

"We're going to really focus on what was the president doing from in essence the moment the insurrection started until he finally, hours later, put out a tweet that said, 'We shouldn't do anything like this,'" Kinzinger told ABC's "This Week."

He added, "Keep in mind in the middle of that was the tweet that said in essence this is what happens when you steal an election; that Vice President Pence deserved this."

In earlier committee testimony, witnesses said Trump signaled support for rioters calling for Pence to be hanged.

Lofgren also said the committee had received a letter from Trump adviser Steve Bannon saying he would be willing to testify. Bannon was charged last year with two counts of contempt of Congress for defying a committee subpoena.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan and Katanga Johnson; Additional reporting by Tyler Clifford and Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Mary Milliken, Howard Goller and Edwina Gibbs)

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Links between Trump associates, militants in focus at Jan 6 hearings this week - Yahoo News

Why isn't Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland prosecuting Trump? Indicting a former president for trying to subvert an election is harder than it looks. (Patrick Semansky / Associated Press)

The House committee on the Jan. 6, 2021, insurgency, whose hearings resume this week, has produced impressive evidence that could allow prosecutors to argue that former President Trump committed crimes as he tried to overturn the 2020 election.

Thanks to the hearings, we now know more clearly that Trump tried to bully Vice President Mike Pence into blocking Congress count of electoral votes, tried to bully Justice Department officials into declaring the election fraudulent even though they knew it wasnt and stood by with seeming approval while his armed supporters sacked the Capitol.

All of which has led many ordinary citizens and not just Trump-haters to wonder: Why isnt Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland prosecuting this man?

The answer is both complicated and simple. Indicting a former president for trying to subvert a presidential election is harder than it looks.

Its definitely not a slam-dunk, Paul Rosenzweig, a former federal prosecutor (and anti-Trump Republican), told me last week. It will require tough decisions.

The problem isnt lack of evidence. The former Trump aides who have testified before the House committee and been interviewed by the FBI have taken care of that.

The problem, Rosenzweig and other former prosecutors said, is that convincing a jury that Trump is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt will still be difficult especially when the former president, armed with good lawyers, can challenge that evidence.

We know from the polls that about 30% of the American people think Trump did nothing wrong on Jan. 6, Rosenzweig said. Thirty percent of a jury is three or four people. I think getting a unanimous conviction will be nearly impossible, even in the liberal District of Columbia.

And a trial that ends in Trumps acquittal, he warned, would backfire.

It would not only have the effect of giving Trump impunity, he said, "it would give him impunity and an aura of invincibility.

Others disagree. Donald B. Ayer, another Republican former prosecutor, thinks a conviction would be possible. Trump was ready to have Mike Pence be killed, Ayer said. You tell that story to a jury, and I think you win.

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But Ayer notes that Justice Department regulations require that prosecutors believe they have a high probability of winning a conviction before they can indict. By that standard, what Garland is doing is both correct and by the book. Hes investigating aggressively but prosecuting cautiously.

Justice Department lawyers have served subpoenas on Rudolph W. Giuliani and John Eastman, lawyers who advised Trump on his schemes, and on pro-Trump activists who organized bogus slates of alternative electors in swing states like Arizona and Georgia.

Last month, FBI agents searched the Virginia home of Jeffrey Clark, a former top Justice Department official who pushed colleagues to endorse Trumps claims of voter fraud.

And prosecutors have indicted leaders of the right-wing Proud Boys and Oath Keepers militias on charges of seditious conspiracy in connection with Jan. 6.

All of which suggests that the Justice Department is pursuing a traditional organized-crime model in its investigation: prosecuting small fish to build cases against the higher-ups.

Even so, Trump will be able to argue in his defense that he lacked criminal intent, by claiming either that he genuinely believed the election had been stolen or did not know that interfering with Congress could be against the law.

The most likely charges against Trump are conspiracy to defraud the United States, a broad statute that covers almost any illegitimate interference with government operations, and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding.

There is also a broader policy question surrounding a decision to indict a former president, an action no prosecutor has taken before: Would it be in the national interest?

Indicting a past and possible future political adversary of the current president would be a cataclysmic event, Jack Goldsmith, a former Justice Department official in the George W. Bush administration, warned last month. It would be seen by many as politicized retribution. The prosecution would take many years to conclude [and would] deeply affect the next election.

Others lawyers, both Republicans and Democrats, disagree vigorously.

Its essential that Trump be prosecuted, if only to deter him and future presidential candidates from trying to do this again, Norman Eisen, a former Obama administration official, argued. It would do terrible damage to allow a former president to walk free after committing acts for which anyone else would be indicted.

Those debates dont amount to a conclusive argument against prosecuting Trump. But they do add up to a list of reasons why Garland should avoid a rush to judgment while his investigators do their work and that, to all appearances, is precisely what hes doing.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

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Prosecute Trump? Merrick Garland is investigating aggressively but prosecuting cautiously - Yahoo News

WASHINGTON The day before Cassidy Hutchinson was deposed for a fourth time by the Jan. 6 committee, the former Trump White House aide received a phone message that would dramatically change the plans of the panel and write a new chapter in American politics.

On that day in June, the caller told Ms. Hutchinson, as Liz Cheney, the committees vice chairwoman, later disclosed: A person let me know you have your deposition tomorrow. He wants me to let you know hes thinking about you. He knows youre loyal. And youre going to do the right thing when you go in for your deposition.

At Ms. Hutchinsons deposition the next day, committee members investigating the attack on the Capitol were so alarmed by what they considered a clear case of witness tampering not to mention Ms. Hutchinsons shocking account of President Donald J. Trumps behavior on Jan. 6, 2021 that they decided in a meeting on June 24, a Friday, to hold an emergency public hearing with Ms. Hutchinson as the surprise witness the following Tuesday.

The speed, people close to the committee said, was for two crucial reasons: Ms. Hutchinson was under intense pressure from Trump World, and panel members believed that getting her story out in public would make her less vulnerable, attract powerful allies and be its own kind of protection. The committee also had to move fast, the people said, to avoid leaks of some of the most explosive testimony ever heard on Capitol Hill.

In the two weeks since, Ms. Hutchinsons account of an unhinged president who urged his armed supporters to march to the Capitol, lashed out at his Secret Service detail and hurled his lunch against a wall has turned her into a figure of both admiration and scorn lauded by Trump critics as a 21st-century John Dean and attacked by Mr. Trump as a total phony.

Ms. Hutchinsons testimony also pushed the committee to redouble its efforts to interview Pat A. Cipollone, Mr. Trumps White House counsel, who appeared in private before the panel on Friday. His videotaped testimony is expected to be shown at the committees next public hearing on Tuesday.

Now unemployed and sequestered with family and a security detail, Ms. Hutchinson, 26, has developed an unlikely bond with Ms. Cheney, a Wyoming Republican and onetime aide to former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell during the George W. Bush administration a crisis environment of another era when she learned to work among competing male egos. More recently, as someone ostracized by her party and stripped of her leadership post for her denunciations of Mr. Trump, Ms. Cheney admires the younger womans willingness to risk her alliances and professional standing by recounting what she saw in the final days of the Trump White House, friends say.

I have been incredibly moved by young women that I have met and that have come forward to testify in the Jan. 6 committee, Ms. Cheney said in concluding a recent speech at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, Calif.

When she mentioned Ms. Hutchinsons name, the audience erupted in applause.

The path that led a young Trump loyalist to become a star witness against the former president was not exactly prefigured by Ms. Hutchinsons biography.

She grew up in Pennington, N.J., a one-square-mile village dating back to the 1600s whose most famous previous resident was Peter Benchley, the author of Jaws. Her father owned a tree-trimming service.

No one in her family had gone to college, but in 2015 Ms. Hutchinson left home for Christopher Newport University, an under-the-radar liberal arts institution in Newport News, Va., with a strict dress code.

Ms. Hutchinson selected political science as her major. She took two classes taught by the department chair at the time, Michelle Barnello.

We have a fairly conservative student body, and while I think of Cassidy as someone who was committed to Republican principles, she didnt stand out as a hard-liner, Dr. Barnello said.

She remembered Ms. Hutchinson as convivial but also determined, and that she often sat in the front row of the classroom with her lacrosse-playing boyfriend.

In 2017, a year after spending a summer interning for Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, Ms. Hutchinson and her boyfriend each became summer interns for Republican House members in her case, for Representative Steve Scalise, then the majority whip, who in June of that year was shot while playing softball with Republican colleagues. The following spring, Ms. Hutchinson was accepted for a White House internship, a celebrated achievement at Christopher Newport. The campus website and the political science departments Facebook page posted stories about their high-achieving junior.

By luck of the draw, Ms. Hutchinsons internship was in the White House Office of Legislative Affairs where, unlike the coffee-fetching and tour-guiding requirements of a Capitol Hill internship, enrollees are expected to take notes at high-level meetings and to interact with senior staff members and House members. Former Trump White House officials said Ms. Hutchinson distinguished herself from the other interns as a hard worker with a good attitude. On graduation she landed a permanent job as the junior-most staff assistant on the House side of the Trump presidencys legislative affairs operation, at a salary of $43,600.

She kind of came in and took the place by storm, said a former White House official, who like others who spoke highly of Ms. Hutchinson and asked for anonymity to avoid the public wrath of Mr. Trump and his allies. Just an incredibly smart and driven person. She was the sort of person who worked so hard, I often had to tell her to slow down so that she wouldnt burn out.

During the first impeachment of Mr. Trump in 2019, Ms. Hutchinson was among the handful of legislative affairs staff members tasked with shoring up support among disgruntled House Republicans for the embattled president. In the end, not one of them defected, a triumph that reflected well on every White House staff member involved, including Ms. Hutchinson.

Some colleagues found it presumptuous that the young assistant so quickly came to refer to House members by their first names. But others could see that it worked: Ms. Hutchinson, they said, developed exceptionally strong contacts with representatives during her first year on the job.

Trust me, nobody ever sat down and said, Hey, Cassidy, youre being too chummy with the members, recalled another colleague who asked for anonymity out of fear of inciting Mr. Trump. You can be one of those assistants whos rarely on the Hill. Or you could be like Cassidy, who took every advantage to help her get a better job in the future.

Which quickly occurred. Ms. Hutchinsons backstage work during the impeachment hearings put her in frequent contact with the influential chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, Representative Mark Meadows. When he became Mr. Trumps chief of staff in March 2020, he promptly poached Ms. Hutchinson from the legislative affairs office as his special assistant.

Her influence was soon apparent. Republican aides on Capitol Hill learned that Ms. Hutchinson was the way to get to Mr. Meadows, and that if they texted him she might be the one responding. She was in frequent contact on Mr. Meadowss behalf with leading House Republicans like Representatives Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan and Elise Stefanik. One former colleague recalled that there were times when Mr. Meadows got staff members taken off Air Force One to make room for Ms. Hutchinson.

Some staff members begrudged her rise. I think she became a victim of her own access and success, said Ms. Hutchinsons friend, Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former Trump White House communications director. Im sure that more senior people resented her for it.

Early this year, a federal marshal knocked on Ms. Hutchinsons door and served her with a subpoena to appear before the Jan. 6 committee. Unemployed and unable to pay for legal fees, she hired as her lawyer Stefan Passantino, a former Trump White House ethics lawyer. Mr. Trumps Save America PAC paid for Mr. Passantinos representation of Ms. Hutchinson, as it did for some other witnesses called before the panel.

Mr. Passantino had extensive financial ties to Mr. Trumps orbit. Federal Election Commission reports show that his legal compliance firm received more than $1 million from Trump-related political action committees in the 2021-22 election cycle, and that in the previous cycle Marjorie Taylor Greene, a staunch Trump loyalist and a House candidate at the time, paid him more than $93,000 for his services.

Ms. Hutchinsons first deposition to the committee was on Feb. 23, when it was not yet apparent to her that Mr. Passantinos interests as a Trump affiliate might diverge from hers, two people close to the situation said. What was clear were her disclosures that morning and in two subsequent depositions to committee members, who found them startling as well as clear evidence of her proximity to power.

According to portions of her first three depositions made public, Ms. Hutchinson said she had heard Anthony M. Ornato, the deputy White House chief of staff, warn Mr. Meadows that intelligence reports were forecasting violence several days before Jan. 6. She also testified that by late November 2020, House Republicans were already pushing a plan for Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election results.

But Ms. Hutchinson took pains to avoid speculating about the president. I cant speak to if Mr. Trump yeah, Ill leave it there, she said at one point.

Over the next months, Ms. Hutchinson warmed to the idea of helping the committees investigation, according to a friend, but she did not detect the same willingness in Mr. Passantino.

She realized she couldnt call her attorney to say, Hey, Ive got more information, said the friend, who requested anonymity. He was there to insulate the big guy.

Mr. Passantino declined to comment.

At that point Ms. Hutchinson got in touch with Ms. Griffin, who had been cooperating with the committee herself. Ms. Griffin passed on Ms. Hutchinsons concerns to Barbara Comstock, a former Republican congresswoman and outspoken critic of Mr. Trump. In an interview, Ms. Comstock said that she could have predicted Ms. Hutchinsons predicament, recalling how she had once talked a young man out of joining the Trump administration. I said, Youre going to end up paying legal bills, Ms. Comstock recalled.

Ms. Comstock offered to start a legal-defense fund so that Ms. Hutchinson would not have to rely on a lawyer paid for by Trump affiliates. But this proved unnecessary. Jody Hunt, the former head of the Justice Departments civil division under Jeff Sessions Mr. Trumps former attorney general and another pariah in Mr. Trumps world offered to represent her pro bono. Mr. Hunt accompanied Ms. Hutchinson to her fourth deposition in late June, when she felt more comfortable talking about Mr. Trumps actions on Jan. 6. Everyone agreed it was time to speed up her public testimony.

Two realities have now taken hold for Ms. Hutchinson. One is that she will continue to offer information to the Jan. 6 committee, with Mr. Hunt as her counsel and Ms. Cheney as the committees designated interlocutor to her.

The other is that an uncertain future awaits her.

A former colleague in the White House legislative affairs office who remains on friendly terms with Ms. Hutchinson said that from the moment she got her subpoena, her goal in cooperating with the committee was to find the quickest way to put the entire ordeal behind her.

But, the friend said, this is only the beginning for her.

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Cassidy Hutchinson: Why the Jan. 6 Committee Rushed Her Testimony - The New York Times

Its too late for the Supreme Court and Mitch McConnell who kept changing the rules that allowed Donald Trump to appoint three Supreme Court Justices instead of just one. We now have a rogue court taking away 50+ years of women and girls reproductive freedom and ignoring the majority of public opinion on nearly everything else.

Vote the Republicans out of office that believe the big lie that Donald Trump won the presidency in 2020. You need to vote to make sure your voice is heard. Ignorance of current events is no excuse.

Vote the Republicans out of office that still insist that our last election was fraudulent and have passed laws to suppress the vote and to actually change the outcome if they dont like it. Your vote will ensure that all eligible voters will continue to be allowed to vote.

Vote the Republicans out of office that were involved in trying to overthrow the government on January 6, 2021. After the insurrection was put down, many still voted against certifying the presidential election and the peaceful transfer of power. Vice President Pence will go down in history as faithfully fulfilling his duty and upholding the constitution of the United States.

Mitch McConnell is now threatening Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema with what he will do if they dont continue to vote with the Republicans. We need more Republicans like Liz Cheney and Mike Pence who put the constitution ahead of party.

Our representatives are supposed to be working together to solve our problems not just trying to denigrate the other party and stay in office.

Throw the bums out! If you dont bother to study the issues from a reliable source and vote, dont blame President Biden. Blame yourself for our country looking more and more like a banana republic.

Carol Lazear Mitchell

Marietta

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Throw the bums out vote in the next election! - Marietta Times

Of the many disturbing allegations made by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, the most unnerving of them may be the claim it made in its first hearing, on June 9. In those tumultuous hours, the committee alleged, our constitutional order broke down.

Pence ordered the deployments that quelled the riots. He had no choice.

Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., informed the nation that the rumors suggesting then-Vice President Mike Pence had played a key role in coordinating with the Pentagon on the day of the attack actually minimized his efforts. She said Pence, who was himself under siege in the basement of the Capitol, ordered the deployments that quelled the riots. He had no choice. Former President Donald Trump had done nothing even though Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill and other allies begged him to intervene, she said.

Trump, Cheney said, didnt call his defense secretary, attorney general or the Department of Homeland Security on Jan. 6. He gave no order to deploy the National Guard that day and made no effort to work with the Department of Justice to coordinate and deploy law enforcement assets, she said.

The power of the presidency to issue such orders does not, however, devolve to the vice president. No constitutional mechanism allows for Pences usurpation of that presidential authority. But on Tuesday, we learned why the former vice president apparently felt he had no choice but to take the reins of the military into his own hands. Cassidy Hutchinson, a witness with firsthand knowledge of events in the White House and on the Ellipse that day, testified that Trump didnt just fail to act; he refused to act.

Hutchinson, then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows executive assistant, was as close as anyone to the principal figures under investigation for their conduct that day. According to her recollection, Trump didnt contact the military or federal law enforcement and didnt issue orders to protect the seat of American government because he didnt want to.

Referring to the U.S. Capitol where a joint session of Congress had gathered to certify the results of the 2020 election, Hutchinson recalled telling Meadows that he needed to "check in with" Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio. She said she told Meadows, The rioters are getting close. They might get in. And he looked at me and said, something to the effect of, Alright, Ill give him a call.

No more than a minute, minute and a half later, Hutchinson continued, I see Pat Cipollone barreling down the hallway towards our office. Cipollone served as White House counsel. I remember Pat saying to him something to the effect of, The rioters have gotten to the Capitol, Mark. We need to go down and see the president now. And Mark looked up at him and said, He doesnt want to do anything, Pat.

Weve long known what Trump did not do when the Capitol was under siege. We have not had any confirmation of what the president did do. Until now.

As Hutchinson recalled, Cipollone wasnt as nonchalant as Meadows was about the presidents abdication of his sworn duty to protect the Constitution from its enemies and told Meadows something like, Mark, something needs to be done or people are going to die and the blood is going to be on your f'ing hands.

When the presidents staff got word that the mob invading the Capitol was chanting Hang Mike Pence, who had told Trump that he was obligated to certify Joe Bidens election as president, Hutchison said she heard Cipollone tell Meadows, Mark, we need to do something more. Theyre literally calling for the vice president to be f'ing hung. She recalled an exasperated Meadows replying, You heard him, Pat. He thinks Mike deserves it. He doesn't think they're doing anything wrong.

We now have a credible allegation that Trump affirmatively supported the rioters aims.

Previously, the most charitable assumption that could be made about Trumps conduct that day was that he was apathetic toward the days events. We now have a credible allegation provided voluntarily, under oath and from an individual in close, contemporaneous proximity to the president and his advisers alleging that Trump affirmatively supported the rioters aims.

This testimony about the presidents state of mind from those best positioned to know it must be evaluated within the context of Hutchinsons claims about what the president knew and when he knew it. Hutchinson claimed that Trump and his senior staff were informed by security officials that rally attendees were likely armed with weapons and could be wearing body armor. The president allegedly disregarded this threat and demanded the removal of metal-detecting magnetometers, according to her testimony. She recalled the president saying something to the effect of, you know, I dont f'ing care that they have weapons. Theyre not here to hurt me. Take the f'ing mags away. Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here.

In the weeks that passed after the riot, Trump attempted to make a distinction between the peaceful attendees of his rally in the Ellipse and the rioters certainly a distinction, though not a mutually exclusive one. But as Hutchinsons testimony contended, Trump apparently was not so eager to see justice meted out to those who ransacked the Capitol, either. Referring to a speech Trump gave on Jan. 7, 2021, Cheney asked Hutchinson, Did you hear that Mr. Trump at one point wanted to add language about pardoning those who took part in the Jan. 6 riot? Hutchinson replied, I did hear that, and I understand that Mr. Meadows was encouraging that language as well.

With that, we have credible testimony that corroborates what was previously only an implication: The former president did not act to save Congress and the Constitution from violence because he liked what he saw. We have testimony that Trump knew his rally attendees were capable of violence and likely armed, that he knew they may have committed prosecutable offenses in his name.

And he didnt care.

Hutchinson provided the committee with several other bombshell allegations, some of which have come under intense scrutiny and have been rebutted by those she named. Those claims should be thoroughly examined by this committee. That said, Hutchinson has provided detailed allegations about what the president was doing in those pivotal 187 minutes.

This isnt hearsay; its sworn testimony from a witness who was in a physical position to hear what she testified to.

There will be attempts to discredit her and her testimony wholesale, but that would be a transparent effort to avoid contending with these specific allegations. This isnt hearsay; its sworn testimony from a witness who was in a physical position to hear what she testified to. This isnt old news; much of this was not previously known. Some Republicans are arguing that Hutchinsons testimony isnt as urgently relevant to voters as the rising cost of consumer goods, but so what? If nothing else, establishing for posterity an account of that days events is valuable, if only so that it is never allowed to happen again.

The charges against the president are credible, possibly criminal, and, if true, they certainly constitute a violation of his oath of office.

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Mike Pence correctly took over on Jan. 6 despite that not being allowed - MSNBC