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US Capitol Riot Panel Expects to See Secret Service Texts

The U.S. congressional panel probing the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6 of last year expects to be able to look at text messages sent by Secret Service agents from the day before the mayhem and as it unfolded, a member of the investigative committee said Sunday.

“We expect to get them by this Tuesday,” Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren told ABC’s “This Week” show. “We need all of the texts from the fifth and sixth of January.”

The riot unfolded as about 2,000 supporters of then-President Donald Trump, a Republican, stormed into the Capitol to try to block Congress from certifying that Democrat Joe Biden had won the 2020 election. The certification of the Electoral College vote showing Biden had turned back Trump’s reelection bid was delayed for hours as the rioters scuffled with police, vandalized the Capitol building and ransacked congressional offices.

Lofgren said the investigative committee needs the Secret Service texts “to get the full picture” of what occurred before and during the Capitol insurrection. The Secret Service said last week that some phone data was lost during a routine reset of iPhones, but that all the requested texts had been saved.

“I was shocked to hear that they didn’t back up their data before they reset their iPhones,” Lofgren said. “That’s crazy, and I don’t know why that would be, but we need to get this information.”

“We went into it trying to do our job. We were assigned the task as a committee of uncovering all of the facts about the sixth and all of the events leading up to the sixth so that we could report on that,” Lofgren said. “We hope to do it in a way that is accessible to all Americans.”

The Secret Service said last week that any “insinuation” that it intentionally deleted texts was false and that the committee had its “full and unwavering cooperation.”

The texts could be relevant to understanding how Trump berated his security detail about its refusal to drive him to the Capitol after he finished speaking at a rally near the White House, and just ahead of the time in the early afternoon when the first of the rioters breached the Capitol as lawmakers were starting to certify Biden’s victory.

Witnesses testifying before the committee and police radio communications show that Trump demanded to join his supporters at the Capitol but that his Secret Service detail refused to take him there out of fear for his safety in a volatile situation.

One witness, Cassidy Hutchinson, then a top assistant to Mark Meadows, Trump’s last White House chief of staff, testified about a secondhand account she heard that Trump attempted to grab the wheel of his limo to head to the Capitol, although the Secret Service has disputed her account.

In what could be its last public hearing, the committee is hearing testimony Thursday night about what Trump was doing for three hours and 17 minutes between the time he finished his rally speech contending, as he does to this day, that he was cheated out of another four-year term in the White House, and the time he issued a short video telling the rioters at the Capitol to leave the building.

Witnesses have already said that Trump watched the insurrection unfold on television, while ignoring entreaties from his aides and his daughter Ivanka, a White House adviser, to publicly tell the rioters to disperse.

At one point, according to insider accounts of his comments during the rioting, Trump voiced approval of the demonstrators who were chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” The then-vice president had refused to accede to demands by Trump to return the election results to legislatures in states that he narrowly lost so that pro-Trump electors could replace the official Biden electors.   

In the United States, presidents are effectively chosen in separate elections in each of the 50 states, not through the national popular vote. Each state’s number of votes in the Electoral College is dependent on its population, with the biggest states holding the most sway.

Eventually, Trump told the rioters, “I know your pain, I know you’re hurt. But you have to go home now; we have to have peace. We have to have law and order; we have to respect our great people in law and order.”

In another tweet sent later, he said, “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!”

After the rioters were cleared from the Capitol, lawmakers in the early hours of January 7, 2021, certified that Biden had won the election by a 306-232 margin in the Electoral College, and he was inaugurated as the country’s 46th president two weeks later.  
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Biden Vows ‘Strong’ Climate Action Despite Dual Setbacks

President Joe Biden is promising “strong executive action” to combat climate change, despite dual setbacks in recent weeks that have restricted his ability to regulate carbon emissions and boost clean energy, such as wind and solar power.

The Supreme Court last month limited how the nation’s main anti-air pollution law can be used to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. Then late Thursday, Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia said he wants to delay sweeping environmental legislation that Democrats have pushed as central to achieving Biden’s ambitious climate goals.

Biden, who has pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030, compared with 2005 levels, said Friday that “action on climate change and clean energy remains more urgent than ever.”

If the Senate will not act to address climate change and boost clean energy, “I will take strong executive action to meet this moment,” Biden said in a statement from Saudi Arabia, where he met Friday with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Biden did not specify what actions he will take on climate, but said they will create jobs, improve energy security, bolster domestic manufacturing and protect consumers from oil and gas price increases. “I will not back down,” he promised.

Some advocates urged Biden to use the moment to declare a national climate emergency and reinstate a ban on crude oil exports, among other steps. Declaring a climate emergency would allow Biden to redirect spending to accelerate renewable energy such as wind and solar and speed the nation’s transition away from fossil fuels, such as coal, oil and natural gas.

Climate advocates, including some of Manchin’s Democratic colleagues in the Senate, slammed his opposition, noting that it was the second time he has torpedoed climate change legislation.

“It’s infuriating and nothing short of tragic that Senator Manchin is walking away, again, from taking essential action on climate and clean energy,” said Democratic Senator Tina Smith of Minnesota. “The world is literally burning up while he joins every single Republican to stop strong action to cut emissions and speed the transition to clean energy.”

Other Democrats said Manchin’s announcement that he cannot back the climate provisions in the Senate bill — at least for now — frees Biden of the obligation to cater to a powerful, coal-state senator eager to protect his energy-producing home state. Manchin’s vote is decisive in the evenly divided Senate, where Republicans unanimously oppose climate action.

“Free at last. Let’s roll. Do it all and start it now,” tweeted Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, who has long pushed stronger action on climate. “With legislative climate options now closed, it’s now time for executive Beast Mode,” Whitehouse wrote.

Whitehouse suggested a series of actions Biden could take, including “a robust social cost of carbon rule” that would force energy producers to account for greenhouse gas emissions as a cost of doing business. The senator also urged Biden to require major polluters to use technology to capture carbon dioxide emissions and impose stronger pollution controls on cars, light trucks and heavy-duty vehicles.

Advocates also urged Biden to reject all onshore and offshore drilling on federal lands and in federal waters — a step he promised during the 2020 campaign but has not enacted — and restrict approval of natural gas pipelines and other fossil fuel projects.

Manchin, in a radio interview Friday, said climate activists want an immediate end to U.S. use of oil, coal and gas.

“That’s crazy,” he told West Virginia talk show host Hoppy Kercheval. “I’m not throwing caution to the wind. I think we need an energy policy that works for our country.”

Even before Manchin’s apparent rejection of the climate measures, Democrats had slimmed their down their plan from about $555 billion in climate spending to just more than $300 billion in a bid to secure his support. Proposed tax credits for wind, solar and nuclear energy, along with still-unproven carbon-capture technology, could reduce emissions by up to 40% by 2030, advocates said.

Manchin earlier had forced Democrats to drop two tax provisions he opposes: direct payments of clean energy credits and tax credits for drivers who purchase electric vehicles. Manchin forced other concessions last year, including killing a proposal that would have paid utilities that increase clean energy while penalizing those that do not.

Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said he still hopes to salvage the clean energy tax provisions and said failure “really is not an option here.”

Manchin’s request to postpone action on the climate measure follows a June 30 ruling by the Supreme Court, which said in a 6-3 vote that the Clean Air Act does not give the Environmental Protection Agency broad authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

The ruling by the court’s conservative majority likely complicates the Biden administration’s plan to manage power plant pollution but does not eliminate its authority to regulate greenhouse gases. EPA Administrator Michael Regan has said the agency is moving forward with proposed rules for power plants in the coming months. 
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