US Capitol attack panel sets sights on key Republicans including McCarthy – live | US politics

Now we know what Donald Trump considered one of the biggest threats to his safety before and during his single term in office: tomatoes.

The revelation came during the former president’s testimony to attorneys representing a group of protestors suing over their violent removal from a Trump campaign rally in 2015, reported by CNN’s The Point.

“And you said: ‘If you see someone getting ready to throw a tomato, just knock the crap out of them, would you.’ That was your statement?” Benjamin Dictor, an attorney for the protestors, asked Trump.

The then-White House hopeful replied in the affirmative:

It’s very dangerous stuff. You can get killed with those things.

We were threatened. They were going to throw fruit. We were threatened. We had a threat.

Dictor wanted to know how Trump became aware of the threat of being beaned by a tomato. The answer:

We were told. I thought Secret Service was involved in that, actually. And you get hit with fruit, it’s very violent stuff. Tomato, when they start doing that stuff, it’s very dangerous. There was an alert out that day.

No doubt aware of the potentially serious consequences of admitting he had intended security staff or other rally attendees to commit violence, Trump when on to insist that his “knock the crap out them, would you” comment was a joke.

It was said sort of in jest. Buy maybe, you know, a little truth to it. I wanted to have people be ready because we were put on alert that they were going to do fruit. And some fruit is a lot worse than… tomatoes are bad by the way. But it’s very dangerous… they were going to hit very hard.

The videotaped deposition took place in New York’s Bronx county in October 2021.

Read the transcript here.

The Guardian’s Sam Levine looks at how changing electoral maps across the country spell big trouble for Democrats in November’s midterm elections:

New York’s highest court on Wednesday dealt national Democrats a major setback in their quest to keep control of the US House, when it struck down the state’s 26 congressional districts because they were illegally distorted in favor of Democrats.

New York is critical for Democrats in the decennial process of redrawing congressional districts. The state’s 26 seats offer the party one of the richest opportunities to use mapmaking power to their advantage.

Democrats currently have a 19-8 advantage in the congressional delegation, but drew a map that gives them three additional seats, increasing their advantage to 22-4 (New York is losing a congressional seat because of population loss). It would give the party 85% of the congressional seats in a state Joe Biden won with about 61% of the vote.

Democrats saw that advantage as a necessary effort to counter aggressive Republican efforts to distort district lines to add Republican-friendly seats in places like Florida, Texas, Tennessee and Georgia.

“For Democrats, a maximal gerrymander in New York was almost a prerequisite to any chances of holding the House,” said Dave Wasserman, a redistricting expert at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

Over the past few months, observers have noted that the redistricting process appeared to be going unexpectedly well for Democrats, who were buoyed by a mix of court rulings striking down Republican gerrymandered districts and anti-gerrymandering reforms. Some predicted that redistricting would end in a “partisan wash” or potentially even a balanced US House.

Now, that looks increasingly unlikely.

“A couple of months ago redistricting looked like a silver lining in an otherwise bleak election cycle for Democrats. Today, it looks like just another Republican bonus,” he said. “Democrats can’t catch a break.”

Overall, Republicans are poised to pick up between four and five in the House this year, according to FiveThirtyEight. Republicans need to flip five Democratic-held seats to take control of the House.

The ruling in New York, which could cost Democrats three seats, comes just after Florida governor Ron DeSantis successfully pushed an aggressively gerrymandered map that adds four additional GOP seats.

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The White House communications director Kate Bedingfield is the latest Biden administration official to announce that she has tested positive for Covid-19.

Vice-president Kamala Harris tested positive earlier this week, following recent infections for House speaker Nancy Pelosi, the White House press secretary Jen Psaki, and Democratic senators Chris Murphy and Ron Wydon.

In a tweet, Bedingfield said she was not considered “a close contact” of President Joe Biden, despite seeing him on Wednesday. Bedingfield said she is vaccinated and boosted, was experiencing only mild symptoms, and was working from home.

My colleague Hugo Lowell has more on the 6 January panel’s efforts to persuade Republicans to give evidence voluntarily:

The House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol is expected to issue letters requesting voluntary cooperation from House minority leader Kevin McCarthy and around a dozen other Republican members of Congress, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

The panel intends to issue a letter to McCarthy – the top House Republican – and is considering further letters to Scott Perry, Jim Jordan, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Mo Brooks, Lauren Boebert, Andy Biggs, as well as some Republican senators, the sources said.

Congressman Bennie Thompson, the chair of the select committee, is expected to authorize the list of Republican members of Congress caught up in the investigation potentially as soon as this week. The letters may come either this week or next week, the sources said.

The scope and subjects of the letters are not yet finalized, and the sources cautioned that the members of Congress approached for cooperation may still change. On Thursday, Thompson said only that he would send letters to McCarthy and other Republicans.

But the select committee’s move to seek cooperation from some of Donald Trump’s fiercest defenders on Capitol Hill – and for some members like McCarthy, Jordan and Perry, the second such request – marks a new gear for the inquiry as it reaches its final stages.

Read more:

Subpoenas for Republican politicians from the 6 January House inquiry into Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his election defeat could be upcoming, a senior Democrat on the panel is hinting.

The Maryland congressman Jamie Raskin gave his assessment Friday in an interview with the Washington Post’s Early 202, one day after the bipartisan committee’s Democratic chair, Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, announced that a series of public hearings would begin on 9 June.

Raskin has previously asserted the hearings “will blow the roof of the House”, and said in his interview Friday that the public has so far learned “only a very small fraction” of the information the bipartisan committee has gathered to date about Trump’s plotting and the deadly Capitol attack by the former president’s supporters.

Subpoenas to testify for Trump allies who could hold crucial information, including House minority leader Kevin McCarthy, and right-wing congress members Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, are not the panel’s preferred route, Raskin said.

But he warned that if McCarthy, who has already failed to respond to one request, and other Trump allies Jim Jordan of Ohio and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania continue to stonewall, more forceful action could be taken:

The committee has been resolved to hear from everyone who has relevant information about what happened on January 6. And we also have expressed a strong preference for inviting people to come speak voluntarily at least first.

The moment subpoenas are involved the prospective witnesses can tie it up in court for a long time. I’m not saying it wouldn’t happen. But it would be just a lot better if everyone recognized his or her legal and civic obligations.

The former Trump adviser Steve Bannon has pleaded not guilty to contempt charges, and the House voted to recommend similar charges for Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows in December.

As for what information the panel has learned, Raskin said:

Even with all the leaks, it’s a very small fraction of the information we have that has become public. Most of the evidence has not been divulged. And, in any event, it has not been put together in a way that tells a single coherent story. And that’s our challenge.

Good morning readers, welcome to Friday’s US politics blog.

It’s a party weekend in the capital, with DC figures including Joe Biden looking forward to tomorrow’s return of the White House correspondents’ dinner – those who don’t have Covid-19 at least.

But there’s no let up in the 6 January House committee’s pursuit of Republicans who could hold crucial information about Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his election defeat. The panel plans public hearings in June, and my colleague Hugo Lowell reports that the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, and rightwing Congress members Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, are in the investigation’s sights.

This morning, the Washington Post has published an in-depth interview with the Democratic congressman Jamie Raskin, who says the public knows “only a very small fraction” of the information the panel has gathered to date.

For developments in the Ukraine conflict, hop on over to our live 24-hour news blog here.

In the US today:

• Joe Biden will speak at lunchtime with Mexico’s president Andrés Manuel López Obrador to discuss mutual interests and priorities in the region.
• Biden will meet later with inspectors general of various government agencies to talk about how his $1tn infrastructure package will be implemented.
• Democrats’ fears are growing that changing electoral maps across the country spell big trouble for their prospects in November’s midterm elections.
• The White House press secretary Jen Psaki will deliver her final briefing of the week at 2pm.