News
June 13, 2022 – 9:45 am (ET)
CNN, – June 10, 2022
A day after the House January 6 committee revealed previously unseen video of former President Donald Trump’s daughter and senior adviser, Ivanka Trump, saying she accepted then-Attorney General Bill Barr’s statement that the Justice Department found no fraud sufficient to overturn the election, the former President is responding, saying she had “long since checked out.”
“Ivanka Trump was not involved in looking at, or studying, Election results. She had long since checked out and was, in my opinion, only trying to be respectful to Bill Barr and his position as Attorney General (he sucked!),” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social.
While Trump seeks to downplay his daughter’s role in his administration at the time of the January 6, 2021, riots, Ivanka Trump did still accompany her father to rally at the White House Ellipse that preceded the US Capitol attack.
In the clip from her deposition aired Thursday night, Ivanka Trump was asked about her reaction when Barr said there was no widespread election fraud.
PBS NewsHour – June 10, 2022 (04:37)
As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine grinds into its fourth month, officials in Kyiv have expressed fears that the specter of “war fatigue” could erode the West’s resolve to help the country push back Moscow’s aggression.
The U.S. and its allies have given billions of dollars in weaponry to Ukraine. Europe has taken in millions of people displaced by the war. And there has been unprecedented unity in post-World War II Europe in imposing sanctions on President Vladimir Putin and his country.
But as the shock of the Feb. 24 invasion subsides, analysts say the Kremlin could exploit a dragged-out, entrenched conflict and possible waning interest among Western powers that might lead to pressuring Ukraine into a settlement.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy already has chafed at Western suggestions he should accept some sort of compromise. Ukraine, he said, would decide its own terms for peace.
I’ve been wondering who the House select committee investigating the January 6 riot sees as its primary audience. On Thursday night, it was pretty clear: Attorney General Merrick Garland. I am sure the committee members would love to change public opinion (which hardened fairly quickly in the weeks after the attack on the Capitol) and to convince Republicans that former President Donald Trump cannot be trusted again with the presidency.
But Thursday’s hearing felt like a desperate plea to the Department of Justice to indict Trump and his co-conspirators for what was repeatedly called an “illegal” attempt to circumvent the results of the 2020 election. Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who co-chaired the committee, delivered a long presentation that felt like the opening arguments of a criminal trial. The phrase “you will hear…” was used multiple times, just the way a prosecutor would lay out an opening argument to a jury before proceeding with evidence and witness testimony.
The initial construction of the hearing may have hampered its effectiveness. Committee chairman Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson’s long speech (complete with his own personal narrative and historical anecdotes) had virtually nothing to do with the matter at hand and risked losing people who might have tuned in for something other than the usual boring congressional pablum. Thompson’s comments about the “peaceful transfer of power” rang a little hollow given that he personally voted in favor of objecting to the results in Ohio during the counting of former President George W. Bush’s electoral college votes in 2005.Thompson was always a strange choice to lead this committee, given his history of trying to interrupt a previous president’s electoral college certification.
June 10, 2022 – 6:00 pm to 7:00 pm (ET)
