Trump phones mother of shot Capitol rioter Ashli Babbitt
In an interview this morning, Donald Trump once again claimed that he had “absolute authority” as president to declassify documents, and that he had declassified the files found at Mar-a-Lago by the FBI in its August search.
The claim is misleading in that there are standardised protocols that generally have to be followed when documents are declassified, and there is no evidence Mr Trump or his team did so. More important for Mr Trump is that the classification status of the files he took with him to Florida is irrelevant to any of the crimes the FBI cited in its affidavit seeking a warrant for the search.
Meanwhile, the select committee investigating the 6 January attack on the US Capitol has obtained “thousands” of communications between Secret Service staff around the time of the riot, according to chair Bennie Thompson.
It is unclear what if any materials included in the data are new to the committee, but the announcement comes after two months of back-and-forth between the panel and the service after it emerged that the latter had deleted messages sent by agents before, during and after the insurrection.
