Trump news – live: Trump campaign officials face fresh Jan 6 subpoenas as he fumes over Biden documents

To hear Republicans react to reports that attorneys working for President Joe Biden had discovered — and promptly reported — the presence of documents bearing classification markings at a Washington DC think tank where he kept an office before launching his 2020 presidential campaign, one might think Christmas came early in the new year.

But there remains a key difference between the two cases:

Two days before the attack on the US Capitol, the now-former chairman of the far-right nationalist gang the Proud Boys was arrested in Washington DC moments after stepping off a plane from Miami.

Enrique Tarrio was wanted by police after he admitted to tearing down and burning a Black Lives Matter flag outside a historically Black church in the nation’s capital during December riots connected to a protest supporting Donald Trump’s bogus claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.

On 6 January, 2021, Tarrio watched the insurrection unfold from a hotel in Baltimore. Two years later, he is among five members of the self-described “Western chauvinist” gang charged with seditious conspiracy in connection with the mob’s assault.

After jurors found two members of the far-right militia group the Oath Keepersguilty of seditious conspiracy against the government in November, federal prosecutors are now hoping to convict another high-profile group of rioters connected to the January 6 assault.

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It can be difficult keeping up with the list of fictions that George Santos has been accused of telling, admitted telling, or merely been caught spinning red-handed following a contradictory statement.

But, do not fret: The Independent is here, and we’re keeping track of the whole list of lies even as it continues to grow — both in number and in the sheer scale of the humiliation that it presents for not just Mr Santos, who remains adamant that he will serve two years in office as representative for New York’s third district, but for the Republican House caucus as a whole.

Home state Republicans and Democrats alike are calling for his resignation from Congress while major conservative groups are vowing not to work with him. Still, he has found a niche for himself among the GOP’s far-right Maga caucus, among fellows like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz.

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Joe Biden arrived in Mexico this week for a summit with president Andres Manuel López Obrador aimed at addressing the record amounts of illicit fentanyl being smuggled across the border into the US.

The fentanyl crisis has wreaked havoc in the United States, turning an already catastrophic opioid epidemic even deadlier. Of the estimated 107,622 fatal drug overdoses in the US in 2021 — the highest number ever recorded — fentanyl was responsible for two thirds of deaths.

Republicans have sought to cast the fentanyl deaths as a border security problem, and blamed Mr Biden for not stopping shipments from coming into the country. That claim became a key theme of November’s midterm attacks on Democrats.

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A comparison of the dozen Obama-era documents at a Washington DC think once used by Joe Biden lawyers with the massive cache of classified material retrieved during an FBI search of former president Donald Trump’s home has left the twice-impeached ex-president more than a bit irate.

Mr Trump took to his Truth Social platform to lash out at Karl Rove, the former George W Bush White House official and GOP strategist, after Mr Rove unfavourably compared the matter of the ongoing probe into Mr Trump’s alleged unlawful retention of national defence information with the review of what Mr Biden’s lawyers reported to the National Archives in November.

Speaking on Fox News late Tuesday, Mr Rove said the “differences” between the two cases are significant.

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House Republicans on Wednesday opened their long-promised investigation into President Joe Biden and his family, wielding the power of their majority to demand information from the Treasury Department and former Twitter executives as they lay the groundwork for public hearings.

“Now that Democrats no longer have one-party rule in Washington, oversight and accountability are coming,” Rep. James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said in a statement.

The Republican-led committee sent a series of letters requesting financial information from the Treasury Department about financial transactions by members of the Biden family that were flagged as suspicious activity. Those reports are routine, with larger financial transactions automatically flagged to the government, and are not evidence on their own of misconduct.

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Representative George Santos is refusing to heed calls for his resignation from top figures in the Nassau County Republican Party who have demanded he step down from Congress just days after he was sworn in to represent New York’s third Congressional District.

Asked whether he would resign in light of the numerous scandals surrounding him, he told ABC News on Wednesday: “I will not”.

In a tweet posted later that day, he doubled down on his recalcitrance, writing that he “was elected to serve the people of [the third Congressional District] not the party [and] politicians”.

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House Republicans are moving toward early action on abortion with their new majority, voting on two measures Wednesday that make clear they want further restraints after the Supreme Court overruled the federal right to an abortion last year.

The new GOP-led House is voting on one resolution to condemn attacks on anti-abortion facilities, including pregnancy crisis centers, and on legislation that would impose penalties if a doctor refused to care for an infant born alive after an abortion attempt.

Neither is expected to pass the Democratic-led Senate, but Republicans say they are making good on promises to address the issue along with other legislative priorities in the first days in power.

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Georgia state lawmakers are pushing back on a state court ruling that forced some of them to testify during an investigation into whether former President Donald Trump and others illegally tried to influence the 2020 election in the state.

The state House and Senate adopted rules Wednesday that say legislative privilege — a legal concept rooted in the U.S. and Georgia constitutions that says lawmakers shouldn’t face questioning for activities relating to making laws — should shield communications with people outside the legislature. Most majority Republicans voted in favor and most Democrats voted against.

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Republicans have chosen a ubiquitous kitchen appliance as their freshest source of fury in the culture war – the humble gas stove.

“I’ll NEVER give up my gas stove. If the maniacs in the White House come for my stove, they can pry it from my cold dead hands. COME AND TAKE IT!!” a possibly joking Ronny Jackson, the former presidential physician, now a GOP congressman from Texas, thundered on Twitter on Tuesday.

Read more on the latest front of the right’s culture war: