Trump news today: Kevin McCarthy refuses to cooperate with Jan 6 committee

As pressure continues to mount on former president Donald Trump, his successor, Joe Biden, along with other Western leaders were lambasted by Human Rights Watch on Thursday.

The criticism came over the countries’ weak defense of democracy and for failing to meet challenges from the climate crisis and Covid-19 pandemic to poverty, inequality and racial injustice.

Human Rights Executive Director Kenneth Roth said Biden took office in January 2021 with a pledge to put human rights at the center of his foreign policy, in contrast to what he described as former US president Donald Trump’s “embrace of friendly autocrats”.

“But he continued to sell arms to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Israel despite their persistent repression,” Roth wrote in Human Rights Watch’s annual World Report, released on Thursday.

“Other Western leaders displayed similar weakness in their defense of democracy,” Roth wrote, referring to French President Emmanuel Macron and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Biden was also critised for seeming to “lose his voice when it came to public denunciation of serious human rights violations” during summits.

“If democracies are to prevail in the global contest with autocracy, their leaders must do more than spotlight the autocrats’ inevitable shortcomings. They need to make a stronger, positive case for democratic rule,” Roth said.

Kayleigh McEnany, former White House press secretary for Donald Trump and current Fox News host, has appeared before the House select committee investigating the 6 January insurrection.

The appearance was virtual and had been “going on all day”, the panel’s chairman Bennie Thompson told CBS News on Wednesday.

The Fox News host was serving as a top spokesperson for then-president Donald Trump and was an adviser to the Trump 2020 campaign.

She was subpoenaed in November by the committee, asking her to turn over any related records and appear for deposition.

The subpoena expressed interest in speaking with her based on her public statements pushing the former president’s baseless voter fraud claims and noted that her comments contributed to public distrust in the election and fueled insurrection.

The panel also noted that she was with Trump on 6 January when he travelled to Ellipse and delivered the incendiary speech to “fight like hell” and “stop the steal”.

The committee has so far issued 85 subpoenas to Trump allies, former White House officials and individuals who are suspected to be involved in planning of the rally before riots broke out at the Capitol.

Michael Cohen announced on Thursday that Donald Trump was served legal papers for a new lawsuit against him and other members of the Trump administration for allegedly violating his right to free speech and placing him in solitary confinement for two weeks.

Tweeting on Thursday, former Trump lawyer said the “case progresses and the guilty will not go unpunished”.

In the lawsuit, Cohen, who was once Mr Trump’s private lawyer, claimed that federal authorities forced him into 16 harrowing days in solitary confinement where he suffered shortness of breath, severe headaches and anxiety inside a small cell.

It was after he threatened to leak damning information about Trump.

The lawsuit seeks damages for “extreme physical and emotional harm” and violations of Cohen’s First Amendment rights.

Kyle “Based Stickman” Chapman, who is infamous for attacking counter-protesters with a stick during a Donald Trump rally, has been arrested for allegedly attacking a health care worker in Idaho, reported the Daily Beast.

He was arrested on Tuesday after a local hospital called police to report battery on a worker, a felony in Idaho, Boise Police spokesperson Haley Williams said.

During his arraignment, the next day, the former leader of the right-wing group said he was being treated in the hospital for pneumonia. But Chapman allegedly grabbed a hospital employee and became verbally abusive when they went there to fix a device.

Chapman was on probation until 17 July from a Texas case for giving a man a brain haemorrhage and he might have violated his probation terms by attacking the worker.

Former President Donald Trump proved his ability to dominate the attention of the US political sphere this week with a pair of interviews given to National Public Radio (NPR) and One America News, a right-wing broadcaster.

In the two interviews, Mr Trump went after his opponents both directly and indirectly; he called Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell a “loser”, a Republican senator who denied his false claims about 2020 “crazy”, and took a shot at politicians (clearly referring to Florida Gov Ron DeSantis, a 2024 rival) who refuse to share their vaccination status as “gutless”.

Andrew Naughtie reports on the NPR interview that was cut short after the host questioned him repeatedly on his false claims about 2020:

Tom Fenton examines his attack against Mr DeSantis:

House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy has refused to cooperate with the House select committee investigating the 6 January insurrection, citing the “illegitimate” investigation by the panel.

In a statement released hours after the committee sent a formal request to him for an interview, McCarthy said that the “illegitimate” panel was trying to interview him about his “private conversations not remotely related to the violence that unfolded at the Capitol.”

“The committee’s only objective is to attempt to damage its political opponents,” he said.

“It is with neither regret nor satisfaction that I have concluded to not participate with this select committee’s abuse of power that stains this institution today and will harm it going forward.”

The panel requested “voluntary cooperation” after noting that he had previously acknowledged having at least one telephone conversation with Donald Trump while a mob of his supporters was storming the Capitol in hopes of stopping Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral college victory.

The Justice Department won’t say why Ray Epps, a man previously identified on a website set up by the FBI to catch Capitol rioters, is no longer facing charges.

The decision has spawned a conspiracy theory on the right, where some supporters of former President Donald Trump have spread the idea that Mr Epps was a federal agent involved in inciting other rioters to violence. There’s no currently-public evidence, however, placing Mr Epps physically inside the Capitol building during the riot.

The House select committee investigating January 6 has said that “Mr Epps informed us that he was not employed by, working with, or acting at the direction of any law enforcement agency on January 5th or 6th or at any other time, and that he has never been an informant for the FBI or any other law enforcement agency”.

Justin Vallejo investigates the conspiracist right’s newest fixture:

A congressman from Oklahoma, GOP Rep Kevin Wallace, penned a letter to a DC judge…