Trump news today: Jan 6 committee to hold final public hearings – live

A Tennessee man who was charged in connection with the January 6 riot has been indicted on charges of conspiring to kill the law enforcement personnel who played a role in his criminal investigation.

The Department of Justice said on Friday that 33-year-old defendant Edward Kelley — and 26-year-old co-defendant Austin Carter — are both charged in a criminal complaint with conspiracy, retaliating against a federal official, solicitation of a crime of violence and making threats across state lines.

Follow this case in The Independent:

The House Select Committee investigating the January 6 2021 insurrection is set to hold its final meeting today.

In the meeting, the panel will vote on making criminal referrals to the Department of Justice (DOJ).

The committee is expected to vote to recommend that Donald Trump face at least three charges: the crime of insurrection, obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress, and conspiracy to defraud the United States.

Monday’s meeting marks the culmination of a year of exhaustive investigations and witness interviews by the House select committee on what happened that day at the Capitol and how it was fuelled by the former president’s ongoing lies about the 2020 presidential election.

California Democratic Representative Adam Schiff has said that Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the election were “criminal” ahead of the January 6 House Select Committee’s expected referrals to the Justice Department.

Appearing on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday morning, the former federal prosecutor was asked by host Jake Tapper if he thinks “the evidence is there that Donald Trump committed … crimes … and that the cases are prosecutable, that you could get a conviction?”

Struggling to unify after another disappointing election, the Republican National Committee is consumed by an increasingly nasty leadership fight as the GOP navigates its delicate relationship with former President Donald Trump.

With a vote for RNC chair not scheduled until late January, the public feud may get worse before it gets better.

“It’ll be ugly as hell for a while,” says longtime RNC member Ron Kaufman.

Read more in The Independent:

Donald Trump compared the US to a person dying from cancer in a furious Truth Social rant following reports that the January 6 committee is preparing to recommend criminal charges against him.

Mr Trump shared a string of outraged posts on his social media network in the early hours on Saturday, including one where he declared: “Our Country is SICK inside, very much like a person dying of Cancer”.

Read more about Mr Trump’s latest denigration of the state of American life under his successor’s presidency:

Saturday Night Live has joined the chorus of mockery growing in the wake of Donald Trump’s sale of $99 digital “trading cards” — NFTs — to his fans.

In its cold open on 17 December, the NBC programme roasted Mr Trump’s “major announcement” days earlier.

Read more and see the clip:

Utah’s senior senator, having survived a reelection challenge from an independent candidate backed by state Democrats, is launching a two-pronged assault on companies that host pornography on their websites.

Advocates for free speech online and opponents of conservatives’ efforts to narrow the window of what content is acceptable in American culture are viewing the bill as a possible sign of the right’s next assault in their culture war against progressivism and the left.

Read more in The Independent:

Donald Trump has “truthed” a compilation of two tweets he sent urging “peace” among his supporters during their 2021 attack on the Capitol, likely driven by his fears of a criminal referral by the January 6 committee.

The former president has not returned to Twitter since CEO Elon Musk unbanned his account as part of a “free speech” campaign that quickly dissolved into Mr Musk giving preferential treatment to conservatives while banning liberals and journalists on totally arbitrary grounds.

But that hasn’t stopped Mr Trump from seeking to use his obviously half-hearted statements on the platform prior to his ban in an attempt to show that he does not bear responsibility for the deadly siege that his supporters launched on police and lawmakers at the US Capitol.

Rick Tyler, a former spokesperson for Texas Senator Ted Cruz, appeared on MSNBC arguing that the Republican Party must remove Trumpism “like a cancerous tumour and celebrate its defeat”.

“You have people running around claiming to be conservatives like people chewing on raw meat claiming to be vegetarian,” he added.

Former Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake was spreading conspiracies about US elections at a Turning Point USA event this weekend as she pivots from the failed launch of her career in public service to a position as the newest influencer in the Maga right.