Donald Trump news today: New details of Jan 6 inaction uncovered in special counsel probe

Anti-Trump Republican group The Lincoln Project has released a statement following Rep Elise Stefanik’s “disturbing” comments on this morning’s edition of Meet the Press on NBC.

The New York Republican mimicked Donald Trump by referring to those awaiting trial or serving sentences for their crimes during the Capitol riot as “hostages”.

In response, The Lincoln Project said: “J6 prisoners are not hostages or heroes. They are radicalized terrorists who were doing the bidding of the most anti-democratic man to ever hold office in the history of our nation. “Elise Stefanik is desperately pleading for the attention and favor of Donald Trump in a misguided attempt to further her political ambitions at the expense of American democracy. She is an embarrassment to the office she holds and to the oath she has taken to defend this nation against enemies foreign and domestic.”

Ms Stefanik also would not commit to certifiying the result of the 2024 election and said she would stand by the former president despite his paraphrasing of comments made by Adolf Hitler.

Democratic Rep Jamie Raskin has slammed Elise Stefanik for mimicking Donald Trump’s reference to Capitol riot prisoners as “hostages”.

Mr Rasking wrote on X: “People convicted of violently assaulting police officers and conspiring to overthrow the government are not ‘hostages’. Stefanik must apologize to the families of 130 people being held hostage by Hamas right now. Her pandering to Trump is dangerous.”

A former US Capitol police officer is now running to join the ranks of those elected officials who he protected from a riotous mob of former president Donald Trump’s supporters on January 6.

Harry Dunn, a former college football player who recently retired from the US Capitol Police after nearly two decades as an officer, was one of the key voices that a House of Representatives panel heard in its investigation of the January 6 attack in 2021.

In a Friday appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Mr Dunn announced that he would be running in Maryland’s third district, where incumbent Democrat John Sarbanes recently announced that he would not stand for re-election this year.

As recently as this weekend Donald Trump has continued to spread the baseless theory that Antifa and the FBI were behind the attack on Congress rather than his own supporters.

Speaking to CNN’s Jake Tapper on State of the Union on Sunday morning from Tel Aviv — just one day after the third anniversary of the attack — former Vice President Pence said: “We’ve been assured again and again that it was not the case.”

Three years after a violent breach of the US Capitol that stopped the certification of millions of Americans’ votes, nearly one-third of its elected members have denied the election’s outcome, including 127 sitting members of Congress who refused to certify the 2020 results.

Those members – who supported legal battles to reverse results, voted against them, or promoted election conspiracy theories – represent voters in 36 states.

They include 19 Senators and 152 members of the House of Representatives, including its Republican speaker, labelled “the most powerful election denier in Washington.”

Members of far-right extremist groups. Former police officers. An Olympic gold medalist swimmer. And active duty U.S. Marines.

They are among the hundreds of people who have been convicted in the massive prosecution of the Jan 6, 2021, riot in the three years since the stunned nation watched the U.S. Capitol attack unfold on live TV.

Washington‘s federal courthouse remains flooded with trials, guilty plea hearings and sentencings stemming from what has become the largest criminal investigation in American history. And the hunt for suspects is far from over.

“We can not replace votes and deliberation with violence and intimidation,” Matthew Graves, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, told reporters on Thursday.

Authorities are still working to identify more than 80 people wanted for acts of violence at the Capitol. And they continue to regularly make new arrests, even as some Jan. 6 defendants are being released from prison after completing their sentences.

The cases are playing out at the same courthouse where Donald Trump is scheduled to stand trial in March in the case accusing the former president of conspiring to overturn his 2020 election loss in the run up to the Capitol attack.

Here’s a look at where the cases against the Jan. 6 defendants stand:

President Joe Biden’s defence chief Lloyd Austin is facing questions over transparency with the news that the president of the United States had been kept in the dark about his hospitalisation for three days.

NBC News and Politico first reported the revelation on Saturday evening, citing senior officials in the Biden administration. The news added a new level of seriousness to the issue of America’s defence chief being hospitalised for days without informing the general public. Those same senior officials who alerted the press were described as alarmed by the delay between Mr Austin’s hospitalisation and the president being made aware.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan was reportedly the first official in the West Wing to be told of Mr Austin’s hospitalisation, on Thursday, and promptly alerted the president at that time.

John Bowden reports from Washington, DC: