Liz Cheney on Donald Trump’s Jan 6 behaviour
The January 6 committee has announced the date of its next hearing, confirming it will be in prime time on Thursday 21 July. The hearing is expected to lay out the details of the 187 minutes between when then-President Donald Trump left the stage at the Ellipse in front of the White House south lawn on January 6 and his initial public response to the attack on Congress.
Meanwhile, the US Secret Service has denied a report that it deliberately deleted texts sent on 5 and 6 January 2021, calling the claim ”malicious” and “false”.
The story began with a letter from the Department of Homeland Security claiming that the messages were deleted after an agency internal watchdog requested them. However, a spokesman said the Secret Service “began to reset its mobile phones to factory settings as part of a pre-planned, three-month system migration,” and that “in that process, data resident on some phones was lost”.
The back-and-forth comes shortly after the 6 January committee broadcast witness testimony that Donald Trump had to be restrained by members of his detail on 6 January when he realised he was not being taken to the Capitol along with his supporters.
Committee member Rep Jamie Raskin says: “We are determined to recover and retrieve all of the texts that have been lost.”