Trump news – live: Trump rages at his enemies in New Year’s message after damning Jan 6 report and tax returns

Get real time updates directly on you device, subscribe now.

What we know about Donald Trump’s tax returns

Donald Trump’s aides raged to each other about their future prospects while Rudy Giuliani and other Trump allies persisted in their efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the immediate hours after the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

Those were the revelations we learned as the committee released its final report this weekend, including a massive new trove of documents and transcripts of witness testimony gathered over the course of its investigation.

Among the released documents include text messages from Mr Trump’s White House staffers as well as members of Congress.

Separately, the House Ways and Means committee last week published Mr Trump’s tax returns from 2016-2020 following a years-long legal battle.

1672713903

Donald Trump wanted to trademark ‘rigged election’ days after losing 2020 race, Jan 6 documents reveal

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.

Read more:

John Bowden3 January 2023 02:45
1672710303

Trump aides argued for him to appear in glass box at Jan 6 riot site

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:

John Bowden3 January 2023 01:45
1672706703

ICYMI: Jared Kushner ordered for Biden to be excluded from Covid planning after election, Jan 6 witness claims

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.

Read more:

John Bowden3 January 2023 00:45
1672703103

Trump tax returns dispute White House claim that he donated salary during Covid

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:

John Bowden2 January 2023 23:45
1672699553

Karlie Kloss’ tweets about Jan 6 drew ire of Ivanka Trump aide and Hope Hicks, newly released texts reveal

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:

John Bowden2 January 2023 22:45
1672697428

Jan 6 committee report: Thompson and Cheney say US justice system ‘responsible for what comes next’

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.

Read more:

John Bowden2 January 2023 22:10
1672692340

Milley had to reassure Pelosi that military wouldn’t do anything crazy

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.

John Bowden2 January 2023 20:45
1672690540

January 6 panel leaders fear GOP will leak names of national security personnel who testified

The leaders of the House January 6 select committee investigation have asked the White House to help shield the identities of key witnesses who gave evidence regarding White House officials’ fears that President Trump’s desire to walk to the Capitol with a riotous mob of his supporters indicated his intention to mount a coup against the government he led at the time.

In a letter to Richard Sauber, a White House attorney who serves as special counsel to President Joe Biden, Representatives Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney — the panel’s chair and vice-chair — noted that the committee had reached agreement with the White House Counsel’s Office to obtain testimony from certain White House personnel on the condition that the identities of any such witnesses would remain secret.

Read more:

John Bowden2 January 2023 20:15
1672688404

ICYMI: Trump had foreign bank accounts in China, UK and Ireland as president and one year paid more foreign tax than US

The release of Trump’s tax records show that the former president had foreign bank accounts in China, the UK, Ireland and St Maarten during his presidency, and in his first year in the White House paid more foreign tax than US.

John Bowden2 January 2023 19:40
1672683340

How did Trump get away with paying so little in taxes?

The sheer complexity of the former property mogul’s business empire means it will take time to pore over the nearly 6,000 pages of figures in detail but what is immediately clear is that he actively pursued legal but creative accounting strategies to ensure his federal tax contributions were kept as low as possible.

While Mr Trump paid $641,931 in federal income tax in 2015, he paid just $750 in 2016 and 2017 and none whatsoever in 2020.

He did pay almost $1m in 2018 and $133,445 in 2019 but, as a proportion of his earnings, those are small amounts.

The Independent’s Joe Sommerlad explains how he did it.

John Bowden2 January 2023 18:15

Source: independent.co.uk