Capitol attack committee issues sweeping request for Trump White House records – live | US news

Secretary of state Antony Blinken is now providing an update on the evacuation mission in Kabul, as the US looks to complete the operation by August 31.

Blinken said the state department believes there were roughly 6,000 Americans in Afghanistan on August 14, before the Taliban took control of Kabul.

Since then, about 4,500 Americans have been evacuated, and another 500 US citizens are in contact with the state department about leaving the country.

That leaves about 1,000 Americans who may still be in Afghanistan and are not in contact with the US government. Blinken said the state department is “aggressively” reaching out to those people multiple times a day and in multiple different ways.

The secretary of state noted these numbers are “dynamic calculations” that are being refined hour by hour, as more evacuation flights leave Kabul.

Joe Biden is now holding a meeting on cybersecurity at the White House, following a string of recent high-profile ransomware attacks that have affected several major companies.

A number of well-known CEOS — including Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, Sundar Pichai of Google’s parent company Alphabet and Tim Cook of Apple — are present for the meeting.

(Reporters noted that, when Cook was previously at the White House, Donald Trump mistakenly referred to him as “Tim Apple”.)

The White House press pool was escorted into the East Room at the start of the meeting, and Peter Alexander of NBC News shouted a question at Biden about extending the Kabul evacuation mission past August 31 if there are still Americans left in Afghanistan at the end of the month.

After initially ignoring the question, Biden told Alexander, “You’ll be the first person I call.”

Earlier this month, Donald Trump received bipartisan criticism for threatening the US Capitol Police officer who fatally shot Ashli Babbitt during the 6 January insurrection.

“I spoke to the wonderful mother and devoted husband of Ashli Babbitt, who was murdered at the hands of someone who should never have pulled the trigger of his gun,” Trump said in an 11 August statement.

“We know who he is. If that happened to the ‘other side,’ there would be riots all over America and yet, there are far more people represented by Ashli, who truly loved America, than there are on the other side.”

Babbitt was killed while participating in a violent insurrection that sought to overturn the results of a free and fair election. That insurrection ultimately resulted in the deaths of five people, including Babbitt.

After Trump issued the statement, lawmakers from both parties, including Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney, criticized the former president for using language that could provoke violence against USCP officers.

NBC News anchor Lester Holt will sit down for an interview with the US Capitol police officer who fatally shot insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt, the network just announced.

“Speaking out and revealing his identity publicly for the first time, the officer will share his perspective on the events of that day, including the aftermath of the deadly insurrection and the threats he has received,” NBC said in a press release.

Holt’s interview with the USCP officer will air tomorrow night on NBC Nightly News at 6:30 PM ET.

The interview comes days after the USCP cleared the officer of wrongdoing in the fatal shooting, which occurred as Babbitt and other Trump supporters attacked the Capitol on 6 January.

In a statement released on Monday, USCP said: “After interviewing multiple witnesses and reviewing all the available evidence, including video and radio calls [we have] completed the internal investigation.

“USCP’s office of professional responsibility determined the officer’s conduct was lawful and within department policy, which says an officer may use deadly force only when the officer reasonably believes that action is in the defence of human life, including the officer’s own life, or in the defence of any person in immediate danger of serious physical injury.”

Babbitt has become somewhat of a cause célèbre among the far right, with some extremist groups painting the insurrectionist as a political martyr.

The chairman of the 6 January select committee, Democrat Bennie Thompson, gave government agencies two weeks to respond to their records request.

However, given the wide breadth of documents requested, the eight agencies named by the committee may not be able to meet that deadline.

The records request comes one month after the committee held its first hearing on the 6 January insurrection, which featured searing testimony from four police officers who responded to the attack.

Michael Fanone, a Metropolitan police department officer who suffered a heart attack and a brain injury on 6 January, recounted how he was attacked by Trump supporters as the insurrection unfolded.

“I was grabbed, beaten, Tased, all while being called a traitor to my country. I was at risk of being stripped of and killed with my own firearm, as I heard chants of ‘Kill him with his own gun,’” Fanone said. “I can still hear those words in my head today.”

The January 6 select committee is also seeking all internal White House communications regarding the following people as the Capitol attack unfolded:

• Hope Hicks
• Mark Meadows
• Dan Scavino
• Stephan Miller
• Kayleigh McEnany
• Ivanka Trump
• Eric Trump
• Lara Trump
• Donald Trump, Jr.
• Jared Kushner
• Melania Trump
• Kimberly Guilfoyle
• Steve Bannon
• Michael Flynn
• Rudy Giuliani

And that’s just a partial list of the people the committee is interested in. So there are going to be many documents swept up in this request.

The select committee investigating the 6 January insurrection has issued its first sweeping records request, seeking a wide range of documents regarding the Trump administration’s preparation for and response to the Capitol attack.

“The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol is examining the facts, circumstances, and causes of the January 6th attack,” the select committee chairman, Bennie Thompson, wrote in a letter to the National Archives and Records Administration.

“Our Constitution provides for a peaceful transfer of power, and this investigation seeks to evaluate threats to that process, identify lessons learned and recommend laws, policies, procedures, rules, or regulations necessary to protect our republic in the future.”

Eight government agencies, including the department of defense and the department of justice, received letters from the select committee requesting documents from the final days of Donald Trump’s presidency.

Among other records, the committee is asking for communications between Trump White House officials as the Capitol attack unfolded on 6 January.

Here’s where the day stands so far:

• Johnson & Johnson shared data showing a booster shot of its coronavirus vaccine produced a “rapid and robust increase in spike-binding antibodies”. The promising news comes as intensive care units across the US fill up due to the continued spread of the Delta variant. In states like Florida, Texas and Mississippi, more than 90% of ICU beds are now being used, and more than half of ICU patients have coronavirus.
• The US has helped evacuate more than 80,000 people out of Kabul, according to the latest update from the White House. During today’s Pentagon briefing, Major General Hank Taylor said an evacuation flight left Kabul every 39 minutes yesterday.
• A classified US intelligence study on the origins of coronavirus was inconclusive, according to reports. Joe Biden ordered the assessment earlier this year, but researchers were reportedly unable to reach a definitive conclusion on whether the virus jumped to humans via animals or escaped from a Chinese lab.

The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.