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The U.S. House of Representatives is set to vote on Tuesday on whether to seek criminal contempt of Congress charges against Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s chief of staff, for refusing to cooperate with a congressional probe of the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol attack.
The seven Democrats and two Republicans on the Select Committee investigating the attack voted unanimously on Monday evening to recommend that the full House approve its report making the case for a contempt of Congress charge against Meadows, who served in the House before joining the Republican president’s administration.
Republican Representative Liz Cheney, the panel’s vice chair, read out panicked texts from Republicans and others pleading with Meadows on Jan. 6 to urge Trump to appear publicly and call off his followers. The texts surfaced during the Select Committee’s investigation.
“He’s got to condemn this shit ASAP. We need an Oval Office address,” Trump’s son Donald Jr. said in one text. In other texts, conservative media hosts made similar private pleas to Meadows – before playing down the violence of the attack on the air.
“The American people deserve to know all of the steps that Donald Trump and those around him and that his campaign were taking in an effort to change the results of the election,” Cheney said.
Trump, at a rally on Jan. 6, repeated his false claim that his loss to Democratic President Joe Biden in the November 2020 election was the result of widespread fraud, and urged his supporters to march on the Capitol as Congress gathered to certify Biden’s victory. Biden took office on Jan. 20.
Four people died on the day of the riot, and one Capitol police officer died the next day of injuries sustained while defending Congress. Hundreds of police were injured during the multi-hour onslaught by Trump supporters, and four…
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Source : france24
