Closing summary
This concludes our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day, but we will resume our labors on Thursday. Here are the day’s developments:
Lindsey Halligan, the former White House aide installed as interim US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, plans to seek an indictment against James Comey, the former FBI director, for allegedly lying to Congress, despite being briefed by prosecutors that there is insufficient evidence to obtain a conviction.
Donald Trump demanded an investigation of what he called “triple sabotage” of his UN address on Tuesday: a malfunctioning escalator, a faulty teleprompter and an apparent sound problem in the hall. UN officials said the US delegation was responsible for the first two, and the third was less dramatic than Trump claimed.
JD Vance, the vice-president, claimed without evidence that a gunman who opened fire at an Ice facility in Dallas, killing one detainee and wounding two more before taking his own life, was a “violent leftwing extremist”.
The White House used a wall of the presidential residence to stage an elaborate prank, creating a “walk of fame” featuring framed portraits of 44 of the 45 men to have served as president, all except for Joe Biden, who was represented by an image of an autopen, to suggest that he did not actually run his administration.
House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, said that Democrats “have drawn a line in the sand” when it comes to the Republican-written short term spending bill, that extends government funding until 21 November.
The state superintendent in Oklahoma announced plans to put rightwing Turning Point USA chapters in every high school in the state, saying it would counter “radical leftist teachers’ unions” and their “woke indoctrination”.
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Key event
The US justice department notified a lawyer for the families of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting on Wednesday that it is dropping an investigation of a retired FBI agent who responded to the 2012 school shooting and testified in a defamation lawsuit against Alex Jones, over the radio host’s damaging conspiracy theory that the massacre was staged by the government.
Ed Martin, a veteran Republican operative who now leads a “weaponization working group” inside the department of justice had previously sent a letter to the Sandy Hook families’ lawyer, Christopher Mattei, asking for information about the former FBI agent, William Aldenberg, who was a plaintiff in the lawsuit, along with victims’ relatives, that led to a $1.4bn judgment against Jones for calling the massacre a hoax.
Martin’s letter suggested that he was looking into whether Aldenberg broke a federal law by receiving financial benefits for helping to organize the lawsuit. Jones, who said he met with Martin last week in Washington, has accused Democrats and justice department officials of orchestrating the lawsuit to silence him.
Jones had posted a copy of a letter Martin sent to Mattei this month on his X account on Tuesday. Jones and Martin had posed for a photograph together earlier this month, prompting speculation that the Trump administration was using the threat of investigation to harass the plaintiffs who won the judgement against the Trump-supporting rightwing conspiracy theorist who rallied Trump supporters outside the Capitol on 6 January 2021.
Mattei posted a copy of a new letter he received from Martin on Wednesday in which the justice department official said there was no investigation of Aldenberg and “I hereby withdraw my request for information.”
“Jones and Martin corruptly used DOJ to harass Sandy Hook families and the heroic FBI agent who ran into the school to save any children he could,” Mattei wrote on X. “I called them out and now the so-called inquiry has been withdrawn. This is a moment to stand up to bullying, lawless misconduct.”
The school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, on 14 December 2012 killed 20 first graders and six educators. Jones, based in Austin, Texas, repeatedly called it a hoax and pushed false claims that it was staged by the government in an effort to increase support for gun control, and the grieving family members were all “crisis actors”.
Under pressure, the Infowars host eventually said he believed the shooting was “100% real”.
At the 2022 defamation trial in Connecticut, Aldenberg and relatives of many of the victims testified about being subjected to threats and abuse by people who believed Jones’ conspiracy theories about the shooting.
Aldenberg was among the law enforcement officers who responded to the school, and he broke down while testifying during the trial about finding dead children and teachers.
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