Former president Donald Trump claims he can declassify top secret documents just ‘by thinking about it’
New excerpts from Maggie Haberman’s interviews with Donald Trump reveal the former president’s thoughts on spurious voter fraud lawsuits, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Senator Mitch McConnell and what he was doing as a mob of his supporters breached the US Capitol on 6 January, 2021.
The House select committee investigating the attack will reconvene for its first public hearing since July on 28 September.
Congressman Jamie Raskin said the panel is “aware” of allegations that a White House switchboard patched a call from a rioter as the attack was underway, among “thousands of details” that the committee is investigating.
US Rep Adam Schiff has also has rebuked Mr Trump’s claim that he could declassify documents at the centre of a separate probe led by the US Department of Justice into his Mar-a-Lago estate simply by saying so, claims that “don’t demonstrate much intelligence of any kind,” according to the congressman.
Legal analysts have argued that the former president has put his lawyers in a precarious legal situation, after a federal judge demanded proof of Mr Trump’s dubious claims.
