Trump news today: Jared Kushner appears before Jan 6 committee

Jared Kushner is today expected to meet virtually with the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riot.

Committee chairman Bennie Thompson told ABC News Mr Kushner is of interest “because he was an integral part of the administration. It’s, I think, important for us to find out if he knew anything about the planning before January 6, and to get it from him.”

The committee has no evidence that he was involved in the planning for the events of 6 January 2021 and has not sought to obtain his email or phone records, Mr Thompson further told reporters.

Donald Trump once again launched an attack on an all-too-familiar target for the former president: Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, the husband and wife duo who co-host MSNBC’s popular Morning Joe programme alongside Willy Geist — this time about their reporting about his request to Vladimir Putin.

Johanna Chisholm reports on the former president’s latest angry statement.

Bombshell reporting from CBS News and The Washington Post published this week revealed that a mysterious gap exists in the Trump White House call logs from the day of the Captiol riot on 6 January 2021.

While rioters attempted to sack the US Capitol, chanted “hang Mike Pence”, and delayed the certification of Joe Biden’s victory, Donald Trump was holed up in the White House with his staff. We now know that several top officials, including chief of staff Mark Meadows, were fielding calls and texts from desperate lawmakers on Capitol Hill who were insistent that the president needed to call off his supporters before the violence got worse.

There is no mention of that in the White House call logs, however, which contain a more than seven-hour gap during the riot where no calls were recorded. The logs are not a complete picture of the communications that White House officials, including the president, had during the riot, given their use of personal cell phones, but the logs are still a point of interest for the House select committee investigating the Capitol riot.

Attorneys for former president Donald Trump used the term “burner phones” — a slang term used to describe an untraceable mobile phone which he has denied knowing — in a September 2021 civil lawsuit, according to court documents.

A federal judge struck down portions of a Florida election law passed last year, saying in a ruling Thursday that the Republican-led government was using subtle tactics to suppress Black voters.

The law tightened rules on mailed ballots, drop boxes and other popular election methods — changes that made it more difficult for Black voters who, overall, have more socioeconomic disadvantages than white voters, U.S. District Judge Mark Walker wrote in his ruling.

A lot is known about the few hours that shook American democracy to the core. The defeated president’s incendiary speech, the march by an angry crowd to the U.S. Capitol, the breaking in, the beating of cops, the “hang Mike Pence” threats, the lawmakers running for their lives, the shooting death of rioter Ashli Babbitt. All of that chaos unfolded over about eight hours on one day: Jan 6, 2021.

But for all that is known about the day, piecing together the words and actions of Donald Trump over that time has proved no easy task, even though a president’s movements and communications are closely monitored.

There’s a gap in the official White House phone notations given to the House committee investigating Jan 6 — from about 11am to about 7pm, according to two people familiar with the congressional investigation into the riot. But over the past four-plus months a lot has surfaced about what Trump did do and say on Jan 6 — in texts, tweets, videos, calls and other conversations.

Former Texas Republican Congressman Will Hurd has written that some of his GOP colleagues were fearful of visiting the US border and some towns in Mexico as they expected an environment similar to a warzone.

In his new book, American Reboot: An Idealist’s Guide to Getting Things Done, Mr Hurd writes that “to correct misconceptions about the border, I brought congressional colleagues and administration officials down for tours of the border. Some were nervous when I took them into Mexico. Many were expecting the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993, with shootouts in the streets like Black Hawk Down”.

Donald Trump’s son-in-law and former White House adviser Jared Kushner has testified virtually before the House select committee investigating the events of January 6 2021 leading up to and during the violent assault on the US Capitol.

Representative Elaine Luria said in an appearance on MSNBC this afternoon said: “He was able to voluntarily provide information to us to verify, substantiate, provide his own take on this different reporting, so it was really valuable.”

Former president Donald Trump’s recent claim that his administration “built up” US strategic petroleum reserves that were “virtually empty” for a half-century is a complete falsehood, according to US Department of Energy records.

Andrew Feinberg explains.