Trump news – latest: Jan 6 committee releases texts from Hope Hicks in massive new trove of records

Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republicans on a House select committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol, blamed GOP leader Kevin McCarthy for giving Donald Trump a political lifeline after the insurrection, opening the door for “crazy elements” in the soon-to-be Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

“He is the reason Donald Trump is still a factor,” Mr Kinzinger told CNN on 1 January.

Watch his interview below:

Nine House Republicans sent a letter criticising House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s bid to become House speaker despite his overtures to Trump loyalists in the party.

The letter came two days before the new Congress begins. Republicans won the majority in the House of Representatives in November, but only by a narrow margin. Republicans will only have 222 seats, which is only four more than the required 218 votes Mr McCarthy has needed.

Their continued rebellion could mean that Mr McCarthy becomes the first speaker candidate to lose on the first ballot in 100 years.

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Kevin McCarthy is facing the political fight of his career, with a cadre of Trump-backed House members seeking to block him from becoming speaker this week.

The election of the House speaker takes place before the chamber has settled on the rules for the next Congress, the 118th. This means that the vote will occur without regular procedures in place.

Read more about the process and this year’s political battle in The Independent:

Emails from Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner obtained by the House select committee investigating January 6 reveal that the former president wanted to trademark “rigged election” days after the 2020 presidential election.

It’s a phrase that Mr Trump used nearly 100 times in 2020 and 2021. Apparently, the former president saw his 2020 defeat as not just a personal outrage, but a branding opportunity as well.

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A pair of Trump White House aides asked if the Secret Service could construct a bulletproof glass box for then-president Donald Trump to stand in after accompanying supporters to the Capitol on January 6, transcripts of an interview with his ex-deputy chief of staff have shown.

The transcript of the House January 6 select committee’s deposition with ex-White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations Tony Ornato revealed that the White House advance staffers, Bobby Peede and Max Miller, asked if the Secret Service could accompany the riotous mob he had called to Washington as they protested Congress’s certification of his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden outside the US Capitol.

The Independent’s Andrew Feinberg has more:

Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, personally ordered the Biden administration to be excluded from Covid-19 planning in the wake of the 2020 election, a Jan 6 committee witness has claimed.

His role was revealed in new transcripts from the House select committee investigating January 6, released as part of the panel’s final report.

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Donald Trump donated nothing to the Department of Health and Human Services during the height of the pandemic, despite claiming publicly to have done so, his tax returns revealed on Friday.

The release of his returns came as the result of the end of a years-long legal battle between the now-former president and the House Ways and Means Committee, which released its final report this week after recently obtaining the returns when the Supreme Court declined to intervene in the case.

The picture painted by the documents is crystal clear: Donald Trump claimed zero charitable donations throughout 2020, meaning that his tax burden was not reduced at all (at least in that regard). He would still go on to pay $0 in income tax for the year in total.

Read more in The Independent:

Tweets by model Karlie Kloss about the January 6 Capitol riot enraged an aide to Ivanka Trump as well as Counselor to President Trump Hope Hicks, newly released texts have revealed.

Ms Kloss is married to Jared Kushner’s brother, Josh Kushner.

Texts released by the House Select Committee investigating the insurrection also show that Ivanka Trump’s Chief of Staff Julie Radford and Ms Hicks were concerned about the impact of the riot on their reputations.

Read more in The Independent:

The leaders of the House of Representatives’ probe into the January 6 attack on the Capitol say the panel’s work was a “first step” towards accountability that will have to be followed up by the American criminal justice system.

In a statement marking the end of the House January 6 select committee’s 18-month probe into the attack on the Capitol, select committee chair Bennie Thompson and vice-chair Liz Cheney thanked the countless people who assisted the panel in their efforts, including “dozens” of staff who passed up other opportunities to serve “honourably” as the committee investigated the circumstances of the pro-Trump mob attack.

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The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff reassurred Nancy Pelosi following the attack on the Capitol that the military wouldn’t do anything “illegal or crazy” at Donald Trump’s behest.

The extraordinary text message exchange was revealed on Monday as the final batch of documents was released by the January 6 committee.