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The Independent UK
The Independent UK
National
Oliver O'Connell,Andrew Naughtie,Maroosha Muzaffar,Sravasti Dasgupta and Gustaf Kilander

Jan 6 hearings: Trump-linked lawyer compares FBI to Stasi, as ex-president’s call to Putin revealed

Getty Images

Trump to DOJ: Say the election was corrupt and ‘leave the rest to me’

Donald Trump is celebrating the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning the constitutional right to abortion, saying it will “work out for everybody” and amounts to “giving rights back when they should have been given long ago” – this as the furor over the decision overshadows devastating evidence of his plan to subvert the US’s democratic process in 2020 and 2021.

At yesterday’s hearing of the 6 January select committee, several ex-Justice Department appointees confirmed that even after being repeatedly briefed that his election claims were meritless, Mr Trump still praised supporters who rioted at the Capitol.

“They’re smart,” Mr Trump told filmmaker Alex Holder, “and they see and they saw what happened, and I believe that that was a big part of what happened on January 6.”

Mr Holder has described an incident in October 2020 when an interview he had scheduled with Mr Trump was cancelled because the then-president was on the phone with Vladimir Putin. The substance of their conversation is so far unknown.

Meanwhile, a former Department of Justice lawyer who tried to advance Donald Trump’s baseless election claims inside the government has been searched by the FBI.

In an interview with Fox news shortly after, Jeffrey Clark compared the raid to the Stasi secret police of East Germany.

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