Closing summary
Democrats cried foul after Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy sent about 40,000 hours of footage of the January 6 insurrection to Tucker Carlson – Fox News’s best-known conservative commentator, who has repeatedly downplayed the attack. Meanwhile, special prosecutor Jack Smith moved to pre-empt former vice-president Mike Pence’s attempt to get out of testifying before a grand jury investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss. Expect to hear more about that in weeks and days to come.
Here’s what else happened today:
Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg visited the Ohio village where a train derailment sparked fears of toxic contamination, and expressed regret for not stopping by sooner.
Trump and FBI director Christopher Wray could be deposed as part of a lawsuit by two former bureau employees – unless Joe Biden stops it.
The United States has seen a disturbing streak of extremist-driven mass killings, a new report found.
The latest Twitter feud is between New York mayor Eric Adams and congressman and fabulist George Santos.
Did you know? Jon Tester has only seven fingers.
Judge allows ex-FBI agents to depose Trump — unless Biden objects
Two former FBI agents will be allowed to depose Donald Trump and the bureau’s director Christopher Wray as part of a lawsuit against the government, Politico reports.
But in an unusual twist, Joe Biden could put a stop to the deposition by asserting executive privilege. The lawsuit stems from the FBI’s firing of Peter Strzok, an agent who it was revealed exchanged text messages disparaging Trump with Lisa Page, an attorney for the bureau who resigned. Strzok was involved in the investigation into ties between Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russia, and the then-president attacked the pair repeatedly once the exchanges were revealed.
According to Politico, the pair are suing the FBI alleging breach of privacy for releasing their messages, while Strzok is contesting his firing. Here’s more from the report:
In the suits, Strzok and Page contend that Trump and his Justice Department appointees were carrying out a political vendetta.
The Justice Department and the FBI have both denied that Trump’s public attacks played any role in the bureau’s decision to fire Strzok, saying it was a decision arrived at by career officials and carried out without political pressure. They’ve argued that deposing Trump or Wray would shed little light on decisions that were made by others at the FBI.
But Jackson’s ruling suggests there might be evidence that she thinks only Trump and Wray can provide. She noted that her decision was rooted in an analysis of the “apex doctrine,” which requires litigants to first seek information from figures at lower rungs of an organization before pursuing testimony of more senior officials.
Jackson also indicated that the depositions would be limited to a “narrow set of topics” that were defined in a sealed hearing on Thursday.
