Trump acknowledges 'new administration' – as it happened

That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan, for today – thanks, as always, for following along.

We’ll now be closing this blog. Here is a summary of what happened over the last few hours:

• A Capitol police officer who confronted Wednesday’s mob died of his injuries, Capitol Polic have announced.US Capitol Police said late on Thursday that a police officer named Brian Sicknick died due to injuries sustained in response to the riot led by supporters of US President Donald Trump on Wednesday at the US Capitol.
• Joe Biden condemned the “domestic terrorists” who stormed the Capitol yesterday. Speaking at an event to introduce his attorney general nominee, the president-elect said of those who breached the Capitol, “Don’t call them protesters. They were a riotous mob, insurrectionists, domestic terrorists.”
• Donald Trump promised an “orderly” transition and denounced the violent attack on the US Capitol that he incited yesterday in a video statement released more than 24 hours after the sacking of the Capitol. It was the closest Trump has come to admitting he lost the presidential election.
• Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer called for Trump to be removed from office through the invoking of the 25th amendment. Pelosi said that the House was prepared to impeach Trump (again) if he was not removed from office. The Democratic leaders said in a statement that Mike Pence had not responded to their phone call about the situation.
• Donald Trump, the first lady and their son Baron may leave the White House the day before president-elect Joe Biden is inaugurated, the New York Times reported.
• At least six Republican state legislators “took part in events surrounding the storming of the US Capitol”, the Independent reported.
• Three top officials responsible for the security of the US Capitol resigned under pressure from lawmakers. They are the chief of the US Capitol police and the sergeants-at-arms for the House and Senate. The law enforcement agencies have come under heavy criticism for their abject failure on Wednesday. The AP reported that the Capitol police had turned down offers of assistance from the departments of defense and justice.
• Transportation secretary Elaine Chao and education secretary Betsy Devos resigned in response to the violence yesterday. Chao, who is married to the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, a Republican, said in a statement the violence “has deeply troubled me in a way that I simply cannot set aside”. DeVos said that Trump’s rhetoric had inflamed the violence.
• Facebook indefinitely suspended Trump’s account in response to his comments about the events at the Capitol. The CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, said the president’s account would be suspended for at least two weeks, until after he left office. Other social media platforms rushed to deplatform the president, though his 12-hour Twitter suspension expired and he was allowed to post his video there.
• William Barr accused Trump of “orchestrating a mob to pressure Congress”. The former attorney general, who left office late last month, described the president’s conduct as a “betrayal of his office and supporters”.
• More Democrats called for Mary Miller to resign over Hitler statement. A growing number of Democrats called Thursday for the resignation of US Representative Mary Miller of Illinois, a newly sworn-in Republican who quoted Adolf Hitler at a rally outside the US Capitol this week.

And here again is our main story on today’s events:

Another last-minute resignation:

Jake Angeli, the much-photographed man who wore horns and fur while storming the Capitol yesterday has gloated to NBC about the event, saying, “The fact that we had a bunch of our traitors in office hunker down, put on their gas masks and retreat into their underground bunker, I consider that a win.”

Angeli is QAnon conspiracy theorist and YouTuber.

In the interview with NBC he compared himself to Gandhi and Martin Luther King, saying, “What I was doing was civil disobedience.”

He added that he “didn’t do anything wrong,” and, in hitting the metaphor on the head, said: “I walked through an open door, dude.”

Here, with some context, is Trump acknowledging in a video released on Thursday night that a “new administration” will be inaugurated on 20 January, one day after he repeated baseless claims at a Washington DC rally that the election had been stolen:

A second newspaper in Josh Hawley’s home state has called for his resignation.

The St Louis Post-Dispatch has published and editorial in which the paper writes:

These Republican leaders, all having shared a spot on the national stage during the Trump presidency, all had multiple occasions and strong justifications to stand up and condemn Trump’s dangerous rhetoric. Yet they waited to speak out until long after armed thugs, instigated by Trump, had rampaged across Capitol Hill, defiling the House and Senate.

The Republican senator from Missouri was the first senator to support Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the presidential election. Publisher Simon & Schuster today cancelled their publication of his book.

As we reported earlier, the editorial board of the second hometown newspaper, the Kansas City Star, wrote that Hawley “has blood on his hands”.

The Washington branch of the FBI has announced that it is offering a US$50,000 reward for anyone with information leading to the “location, arrest and conviction” of the people or person responsible for the two pipe bombs recovered by DC police yesterday.

The first bomb was found outside the Democratic National Committee and the other outside the Republican National Committee (police also found a car cooler on Capitol grounds that contained a long gun and Molotov cocktail):

Our podcast episode on yesterday’s events – and the days that preceded them – is out. In this episode of Today in Focus, the Guardian’s DC bureau chief David Smith and political correspondent Lauren Gambino describe a week in US politics like no other:

A lesson in brevity from the American Federation of Teachers, via Huffington Post:

The release reads:

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten issued the following statement after Education Secretary Betsy DeVos resigned her position tonight:

“Good Riddance.”

Here is our full story on what happened so far today:

Hi, Helen Sullivan jumping aboard now.

I’ll be bringing you the latest developments for the next few hours.

As always, it would be great to hear from you. The easiest way to send news tips, questions and comments is on Twitter @helenrsullivan.

Here is a copy of Betsy DeVos’s resignation letter, in which she blames Donald Trump’s “rhetoric” for “the mess caused by violent protestors overrunning the US Capitol in an attempt to undermine the people’s business”.

Union leaders have responded positively to Joe Biden’s announcement that he intends to nominate Boston mayor Marty Walsh as labor secretary.

Walsh served as president of Laborers Local 223 and headed up the Boston Building Trades, a union umbrella organization, before taking office. The son of Irish immigrants, he grew up in a triple-decker in Boston’s working-class Dorchester neighborhood, the Associated Press reports, and survived a four-year bout with Burkitt lymphoma.

Mary Kay Henry, international president of the Service Employees International Union, told the AP Walsh brings a “pro-worker vision” to the Labor Department that is badly needed and called him a “champion for working people.”

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said Walsh will be an “exceptional” labor secretary who understands that collective bargaining will combat inequality, beat Covid-19 and expand opportunities for immigrants, women and people of power.

Joe Biden has announced a slew of new cabinet nominations on Thursday evening.

The president-elect plans to nominate Boston mayor Marty Walsh for labor secretary. Walsh, a Democrat, is a former union worker and has served as the mayor of Boston since 2014.

Biden also selected Rhode Island governor Gina Raimondo to be the commerce secretary. And he tapped Isabel Guzman, a California small-business advocate, to lead the Small Business Administration.

Biden is expected to formally introduce the nominees at a public event on Friday.

Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer placed a telephone call to Mike Pence to “urge him to invoke the 25th Amendment” earlier today, and have not yet heard back, the Speaker of the House and Senate minority leader said in a joint statement.

The Democratic leaders said earlier on Thursday that if the vice president and the Cabinet refused to remove Donald Trump from office, they would pursue an unprecedented second impeachment of the president.

Here is their full statement:

This morning, we placed a call to Vice President Pence to urge him to invoke the 25th Amendment which would allow the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet to remove the President for his incitement of insurrection and the danger he still poses. We have not yet heard back from the Vice President.

The President’s dangerous and seditious acts necessitate his immediate removal from office. We look forward to hearing from the Vice President as soon as possible and to receiving a positive answer as to whether he and the Cabinet will honor their oath to the Constitution and the American people.”

The US Senate sergeant at arms, Michael Stenger, has resigned at the request of Mitch McConnell, the outgoing Senate majority leader said in a statement.

Earlier on Thursday, Chuck Schumer, who is expected to become majority leader after the newly elected Democratic senators for Georgia are seated, said he would fire Stenger if he hadn’t resigned by then.

Stenger’s resignation follows those of the House sergeant at arms, Paul D Irving, and the chief of the US Capitol police, Steven Sund. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had called for the resignation of both Irving and Sund.

The Senate sergeant at arms and doorkeeper is elected by members of the Senate and works as the “chief law enforcement officer” of the Senate, a job that includes overseeing security of the Capitol, Senate office buildings, and senators themselves. The House sergeant at arms plays a similar role.

The editorial board of the rightwing Wall Street Journal, long a bastion of Donald Trump apologists, has called on the president to resign rather than face impeachment or a forced removal under the 25th amendment.

“This was an assault on the constitutional process of transferring power after an election,” the paper’s editorial board wrote of Trump’s actions on Wednesday. “It was also an assault on the legislature from an executive sworn to uphold the laws of the United States. This goes beyond merely refusing to concede defeat. In our view it crosses a constitutional line that Mr Trump hasn’t previously crossed. It is impeachable.”

The lengthy editorial takes pains to avoid conceding that any of Trump’s liberal critics may have been right about his unfitness for presidency, but concludes that resignation is preferable to forced removal:

If Mr Trump wants to avoid a second impeachment, his best path would be to take personal responsibility and resign. This would be the cleanest solution since it would immediately turn presidential duties over to Mr Pence. And it would give Mr Trump agency, a la Richard Nixon, over his own fate.

This might also stem the flood of White House and Cabinet resignations that are understandable as acts of conscience but could leave the government dangerously unmanned. Robert O’Brien, the national security adviser, in particular should stay at his post.

We know an act of grace by Mr Trump isn’t likely. In any case this week has probably finished him as a serious political figure. He has cost Republicans the House, the White House, and now the Senate. Worse, he has betrayed his loyal supporters by lying to them about the election and the ability of Congress and Mr Pence to overturn it. He has refused to accept the basic bargain of democracy, which is to accept the result, win or lose.

It is best for everyone, himself included, if he goes away quietly.

Also calling for Trump’s removal today is the editorial board of USA Today, which expressed a preference for the 25th amendment as the mechanism of removal. “Trump’s continuance in office poses unacceptable risks to America,” the board wrote.

While acknowledging that a forced removal might fuel the conspiracy-addled grievances of Trump’s supporters, the paper concluded that “the question is one of relative risks, and leaving an unpunished Trump in office is the greater threat.”

The editorial continues:

Trump appears mentally incapacitated — living in a fantasy world of voting fraud, unable to accept being labeled a loser, checking out of his job even as thousands of Americans are dying every day from the raging coronavirus ... Now is the time for the vice-president and members of the Cabinet to prove they are patriots.

Simon & Schuster has cancelled its planned publication of a book by Josh Hawley, the Republican senator from Missouri who was the first senator to support Donald Trump’s futile and unconstitutional attempt to overturn the results of the presidential election.

“As a publisher it will always be our mission to amplify a variety of voices and viewpoints; at the same time we take seriously our larger public responsibility as citizens, and cannot support Senator Hawley after his role in what became a dangerous threat to our democracy and freedom,” the publishing house said in a statement.

The book, The Tyranny of Big Tech, had been scheduled for publication in June.

Hawley responded to the news in his typical, pseudo-Trumpian style, calling the publisher whose money he had previously been happy to take a “woke mob” and invoking Orwell and “cancel culture”.

Hawley also attempted to recast his participation in an effort to throw out the votes of tens of millions of Americans as an exercise in representative democracy, writing, “Simon & Schuster is canceling my contract because I was representing my constituents, leading a debate on the Senate floor on voter integrity, which they have now decided to redefine as sedition.”

The Stanford- and Yale-educated 41-year-old ended his statement with an apparent threat to sue.

Hawley’s hometown newspaper, the Kansas City Star, has excoriated the senator for his role in Wednesday’s mob violence, writing: “No one other than President Donald Trump himself is more responsible for Wednesday’s coup attempt at the U.S. Capitol than one Joshua David Hawley, the 41-year-old junior senator from Missouri, who put out a fundraising appeal while the siege was underway.”

As lawmakers and the public continue to ask why the Capitol police were so unprepared for yesterday’s mob violence, the Associated Press reports that both the Pentagon and the justice department offered the law enforcement agency support – and were rejected.

The defense department asked the Capitol police if they needed assistance from the national guard three days before the riot, while DOJ officials offered backing from the FBI on Wednesday, three sources told the AP.

“Still stinging from the uproar over the violent response by law enforcement to protests last June near the White House, officials also were intent on avoiding any appearance that the federal government was deploying active duty or national guard troops against Americans,” the AP writes.

The lack of contingency planning and insufficient staffing by the Capitol police has drawn heavy criticism and pointed comparisons to the agency’s record of aggressively policing Black Lives Matter protesters, or the violent arrests of disability activists during the 2017 debate over repealing the Affordable Care Act.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany just delivered a statement “on behalf of the entire White House” in the briefing room, then departed rapidly without taking a single question. The statement condemned the “violent rioters” that invaded the Capitol while drawing a false equivalence between their efforts to overturn a democratic election and the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020.

McEnany’s statement did not address Donald Trump’s role in inciting the violent mob. Here is a full transcript of her remarks:

I am here to deliver this message on behalf of the entire White House. Let me be clear. The violence we saw yesterday at our nation’s capitol was appalling, reprehensible and antithetical to the American way. We condemn it, the president and this administration, in the strongest possible terms. It is unacceptable and those that broke the law should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

I stood here at this podium, the day after a historic church burned, amid violent riots and I said this, ‘The first amendment guarantees the right of the people to peaceably assemble. What we saw last night in Washington and across the country was not that.’ End quote.

Make no mistake, what we saw yesterday afternoon in the halls of our Capitol likewise was not that. We grieve for the loss of life and those injured. And we hold them in our prayers and close to our hearts at this time. We thank our valiant law enforcement officers who are true American heroes.

What we saw yesterday was a group of violent rioters undermining the legitimate first amendment rights of the many thousands who came to peacefully have their voices heard in our nation’s capital.

Those who violently besieged our Capitol are the opposite of everything this administration stands for. The core value of our administration is the idea that all citizens have the right to live in safety, peace and freedom.

Those who are working in this building are working to ensure an orderly transition of power. Now it is time for America to unite to come together to reject the violence that we have seen. We are one American people, under God. Thank you.

Hello everyone, this is Julia Carrie Wong in Oakland, California, picking up the liveblog on another extraordinary day in US politics.

The White House has just announced a press briefing by Kayleigh McEnany to begin at 5:15pm EST, so we’ll be bringing you any news from that momentarily.

The acting US attorney in DC said Donald Trump may be investigated over his comments to supporters before a mob stormed the Capitol, per the Washington Post.

Michael Sherwin, the top federal prosecutor in Washington, said today, “We are looking at all actors here, not only the people that went into the building, but … were there others that maybe assisted or facilitated or played some ancillary role in this. We will look at every actor and all criminal charges.”

When asked whether that applied to Donald Trump, Sherwin replied, “We are looking at all actors here, and anyone that had a role, if the evidence fits the element of a crime, they’re going to be charged.”

While addressing supporters at a Washington rally yesterday, Trump said, “We’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Ave -- I love Pennsylvania Avenue -- and we’re going to the Capitol.” He added, “We’re going to try and give our Republicans -- the weak ones because the strong ones don’t need any of our help -- we’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.”

The Capitol was stormed shortly after that.

Boeing has been fined $2.5bn by the US justice department after being charged with fraud and conspiracy in connection with the fatal crashes of its 737 Max airliner.

The Max was grounded worldwide in March 2019 after crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia that killed 346 people. A March 2020 congressional concluded that Boeing promoted a “culture of concealment” and was “grossly inefficient” in its oversight of the Max’s development.

“The tragic crashes of Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 exposed fraudulent and deceptive conduct by employees of one of the world’s leading commercial airplane manufacturers,” acting assistant attorney general David Burns of the justice department’s criminal division wrote in a release.

“Boeing’s employees chose the path of profit over candor by concealing material information from the FAA concerning the operation of its 737 Max airplane and engaging in an effort to cover up their deception.”

More from Lindsey Graham’s press conference: the Republican senator and Trump ally said he did not support removing the president from office by invoking the 25th amendment.

Graham told reporters, “I‘m telling you as a Republican, I don’t support an effort to invoke the 25th amendment. Now, if something else happens, all options would be on the table. But I hear from Schumer and Pelosi just political talk.”

Given that Donald Trump incited a violent mob to storm the Capitol yesterday, one has to wonder if anything would convince Graham to support removing the president from office.

Kamala Harris lamented inequality in the justice system a day after a violent, pro-Trump mob stormed the US Capitol.

Speaking at the event where Joe Biden introduced his top department of justice nominees, the vice-president-elect compared the treatment of yesterday’s rioters to the response to Black Lives Matter protesters during the George Floyd protests last summer.

“We witnessed two systems of justice when we saw one that let extremists storm the United States Capitol, and another that released tear gas on peaceful protesters last summer,” Harris said. “We know this is unacceptable. We know we should be better than this.”

Harris added, “I believe we must ask ourselves two questions about what happened yesterday. What went wrong? And how do we make it right?”

Senator Lindsey Graham said Donald Trump’s presidency was “tarnished by yesterday,” when a pro-Trump mob stormed the US Capitol.

“Anyone in charge of defending the Capitol failed in their duties,” the Republican senator said, adding that those leaders would be court-martialed if they were in the military.

“The first thing that has to happen is to hold those accountable for failing to defend the nation’s Capitol while the Congress was in session,” Graham said.

Graham called for the formation of a task force to determine how these “domestic terrorists” were able to gain access to the Capitol.

“How could that happen 20 years after 9/11?” Graham asked. “It is mind-boggling that such an event could occur.”

But when addressing calls for Trump to be removed from office by invoking the 25th Amendment, Graham said, “I do not believe that is appropriate at this point. I’m looking for a peaceful transfer of power.”

Graham’s comments came moments after Nancy Pelosi said the House was prepared to impeach Trump again if he is not removed from office.

Nancy Pelosi is calling for the resignation of the chief of the Capitol Police, Steven Sund, and noted the House sergeant of arms, Paul Irving, has already resigned.

The Democratic speaker applauded the brave actions of many Capitol Police officers, but she said there was a “failure of leadership” at the top of the agency.

Pelosi also revealed that Sund has not called her since yesterday, when a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, forcing lawmakers to evacuate.

Nancy Pelosi lambasted Donald Trump as “a very dangerous person who should not continue in office,” even if his term will end in two weeks anyway.

“This is urgent. This is emergency of the highest magnitude,” the Democratic speaker said at her press conference.

Pelosi noted that since the violence at the Capitol yesterday, she has received many text messages urging her to “impeach, impeach, impeach.”

“The president must held accountable again,” Pelosi said.

Joe Biden said one of his granddaughters, Finnegan, sent him a text yesterday noting that hundreds of troops guarded the Lincoln Memorial last summer, as demonstrators protested the police killing of George Floyd.

The level of security around the National Mall yesterday, as a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, was much lower.

“No one can tell me that if it had been a group of Black Lives Matter protesting yesterday, they wouldn’t have been treated very, very differently than the mob of thugs that stormed the Capitol,” Biden said.

“We all know that’s true. And it’s unacceptable. Totally unacceptable.”

AOC calls on Cruz and Hawley to resign. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is not only pushing for the second impeachment against Donald Trump, she has also called on Republican Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri to resign or face being expelled from the US Senate.

She posted: “Senator Cruz, you must accept responsibility for how your craven, self-serving actions contributed to the deaths of four people yesterday. And how you fundraised off this riot. Both you and Senator Hawley must resign. If you do not, the Senate should move for your expulsion.”

This after Cruz earlier tweeted condemnation of the pro-Trump mob attack on the Capitol yesterday afternoon.

Cruz and Hawley had also been leading lights in the move by Trump ultra-loyalists to obstruct the certification in Congress of Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in November’s presidential election, in a futile but damaging boosting of the outgoing president’s efforts to overturn the election result.

The certification finally was made just before 4am on Thursday after Congress resumed its business following the mob invasion of the Capitol.

A group of progressive lawmakers, led by Ilhan Omar, is circulating a “Dear colleague” letter calling for the (second) impeachment of Donald Trump.

The letter accuses the president of once again violating his constitutional oath and argues the nation is in danger “every single hour” that Trump is in office.

The letter is co-signed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley, among others.

Omar, a Democrat of Minnesota, announced yesterday that she was drafting articles of impeachment following the violence at the Capitol.

But some Democrats have said they do not believe it’s worth impeaching Trump now that he has less than two weeks left in his term.

The national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, confirmed that his deputy had resigned following the violence at the Capitol yesterday.

Reports of Matt Pottinger’s resignation emerged yesterday, hours after a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, forcing lawmakers to evacuate.

“Matt Pottinger has served the nation and the Administration with distinction for the past four years. His work lead to a great awakening in our country and around the world to the danger posed by the Chinese Communist Party,” O’Brien said in a statement.

“Asking Matt Pottinger to serve as my deputy was my first act as NSA and it turned out to be one of my best decisions. As he heads West to rejoin his family in beautiful Utah, Matt does so with my appreciation for a job well done and with my enduring friendship.”

Several senior administration officials, including former acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, have announced their resignations since the violence yesterday.

Among the president’s many critics, the resignations have been generally met with the question, “What took you so long?”

It appears the White House notified the Senate yesterday that it was withdrawing Chad Wolf’s nomination to lead the department of homeland security.

The White House sent a statement this morning announcing the withdrawal, hours after Wolf released a statement calling on Donald Trump to condemn the violence, prompting speculation that the acting DHS secretary was being punished for his comments.

The DC police chief said 68 people had been arrested so far in connection to the storming of the Capitol yesterday.

The police chief, Robert Contee, said law enforcement officials are still working to collect information about other people who joined the pro-Trump mob, which could result in additional arrests.

It’s worth noting that more than 400 people were arrested in Washington last summer amid the protests over the police killing of George Floyd.

Contee also confirmed that four people died amid the violence yesterday, and three of those deaths have been attributed to medical emergencies.

The White House has withdrawn Chad Wolf’s nomination to lead the department of homeland security, hours after the acting DHS secretary issued a statement calling on Donald Trump to condemn yesterday’s violence.

The White House announced in a statement this morning that it had notified the Senate it was withdrawing Wolf’s nomination.

The announcement came hours after Wolf, who has led the department in an acting capacity since November 2019, issued a statement condemning the violent storming of the Capitol.

“This is unacceptable,” Wolf said. “These violent actions are unconscionable, and I implore the President and all elected officials to strongly condemn the violence that took place yesterday.”

Donald Trump will also be indefinitely suspended from Instagram, which is owned by Facebook.

The US president was initially suspended from Facebook for just 24 hours, as a result of two posts shared to the platform in which he appeared to praise the actions of the rioters who stormed the Capitol yesterday.

Trump’s 12-hour ban from Twitter ended at 7am ET. Trump did not immediately return to the social network. A few hours earlier, his deputy chief of staff, Dan Scavino, had shared on his behalf a short statement committing to an “orderly transition” of power – albeit maintaining that he “totally disagrees with the outcome of the election”.

The initial suspensions, the first the president had faced in his four-year term of office, were derided by many as not being severe enough for the harm inflicted by Trump’s posts.

The Guardian’s Peter Beaumont, Matt Fidler, Nikhita Chulani, Paul Scruton, Paul Torpey, Chris Watson and Finbarr Sheehy have put together a visual guide of yesterday’s events.

It begins with Donald Trump encouraging a crowd of his supporters to march to the Capitol, shortly before the building was stormed by a mob, forcing lawmakers to evacuate.

Sally Yates, the former deputy attorney general under Barack Obama, offered her congratulations to Merrick Garland about his nomination to lead the justice department.

“Congratulations to Judge Garland and the outstanding team nominated to lead DOJ,” Yates said in a tweet. “A highly respected jurist and dedicated public servant, Judge Garland will ensure that DOJ earns the trust of the people it serves. Under his leadership, the Justice Department will live up to its name.”

Yates was reportedly one of the top contenders to be nominated as attorney general, along with former senator Doug Jones, but Joe Biden ultimately selected Garland.

Marco Rubio criticized Donald Trump and some of his Republican colleagues -- without naming them of course -- after a mob stormed the Capitol yesterday, amid the certification of Joe Biden’s victory.

“Some misled you,” the Republican senator said in a tweet. “That the VP could reject ballots[.] That objections could pass or used as leverage to force an audit[.] They knew the truth but thought it was a great way to get attention & raise money[.]”

Rubio did not say who these “some” people were, but it is quite obvious he is referring to Trump and his colleagues who objected to the certification yesterday while citing the president’s baseless claims of widespread election fraud.

Rubio did not support the objections, but he also did not issue any kind of criticism of the president or his colleagues until after violence struck the Capitol yesterday.

Joe Biden will introduce some of his justice department nominees during his event today, the president-elect’s transition team said in a statement.

Biden will introduce the following nominees:

• Merrick Garland, the federal judge who will serve as attorney general if confirmed.
• Lisa Monaco, who will be nominated as deputy attorney general.
• Vanita Gupta, who will be nominated as associate attorney general.
• Kristen Clarke, who will be nominated as assistant attorney general for the civil rights division.

Barack Obama nominated Garland to the supreme court in 2015 after the death of Antonin Scalia, but Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell refused to consider the nomination.

This is Joan Greve in Washington, taking over for Martin Belam.

Here’s what the blog is keeping an eye on today: Joe Biden will deliver remarks in Wilmington, Delaware, a day after a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol.

The president-elect spoke briefly yesterday, denouncing the “insurrection” at the Capitol and calling on Donald Trump to demand an end to the “siege.”

Biden’s remarks yesterday were originally supposed to focus on the economy, so his speech today may make up for that.

The president-elect could also touch on the Georgia Senate elections, which Democrats swept, giving them control of the chamber.

That’s still coming up later today, so stay tuned.

Forewarned is forearmed, and Steve Benen writes at MSNBC this morning about an email that you can expect “from your weird relatives” in the near future blaming the left for the Capitol riot. He cites:

Lou Dobbs and Rep. Mo Brooks, discussed the possibility of antifa instigators’ infiltrating the pro-Trump mob. And former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin made the same claim, telling Fox News host Martha MacCallum that it was unclear who was instigating the riots. “A lot of it is the antifa folks,” Palin said, citing “pictures” she had seen. Laura Ingraham, one of the channel’s primetime hosts, spent much of the hour of her show suggesting without evidence that the Trump protesters had been infiltrated by antifa.

Benen finishes:

After he incited the violent attack on the Capitol, Trump praised the rioters, offered a justification for their crimes. In a missive that Twitter soon after removed, the president referred to his supporters as “great patriots,” before adding, “Remember this day forever!”

These were not the words of a man who was disappointed with an attack on his own country’s Capitol; these were the words of a man who approved of what he saw and was sympathetic to those who acted at his behest.

Which makes the “antifa” talk that much more bewildering. The rioters are simultaneously patriots who did the right thing and secret leftists to be condemned? The mob is both a source of pride and an embarrassment?

Read more here: The right’s new conspiracy theory: blame left for Capitol riot

Today have just put up a clip of Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Jeff Merkley talking about their experiences yesterday being inside the Capitol when it was stormed by the pro-Trump mob which caused the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory to be delayed.

It’s quite a lengthy clip, but in it Klobuchar again praises the staff who protected the integrity of the electoral process, and spoke of the Democrats determination to get the job done. She said:

We were doing our jobs, and taking on the scurrilous objections that Senator Cruz was making to a verified vote in the state of Arizona, and then we heard that there had been a breach. We were eventually told to leave the chamber, we were hustled out of there, knowing that people had entered the Capitol complex. One of the smart things that some of the staff did – and this has been little noted – was take those verified ballots with them from each state, because they would for certain have been ransacked and taken if they had been left. So we went to another room, and the entire time our goal was to get back no matter what state that chamber was in, to show the American people, as horrific as this was, that people engaged in an insurrection would not prevail.

You can watch the full clip here:

After four years supporting Donald Trump, yesterday several senior Republican figures and former members of his White House team finally peeled away to condemn the president’s actions in attempting to overturn November’s election result and inciting a mob to storm the Capitol. Here’s a selection of what some of them said:

Mitch McConnell, Republican Senate majority leader:

The voters, the courts, and the states have all spoken. If we overrule them all, it would damage our republic forever. If this election were overturned by mere allegations from the losing side, our democracy would enter a death spiral. We’d never see the whole nation accept an election again. It would be unfair and wrong to disenfranchise American voters and overrule the courts and the states on this thin basis. And I will not pretend such a vote would be a harmless protest gesture while relying on others to do the right thing.

Sen. Lindsey Graham:

Trump and I, we’ve had a hell of a journey. I hate it to end this way. All I can say is count me out. Enough is enough. I’ve tried to be helpful. They said 66,000 people in Georgia under 18 voted. I said give me ten. Haven’t had one. They said 8000 felons in prison in Arizona voted. Give me 10. Haven’t got one. I don’t buy this. Enough’s enough. We’ve got to end it.

Mick Mulvaney, former Trump acting White House Chief of Staff, who has resigned today as Trump’s special envoy to Northern Ireland:

Now is the time for the president to be presidential. He can stop this now and needs to do exactly that.

Ronna McDaniel, RNC chair:

What these violent protesters are doing is the opposite of patriotism. It is shameful and I condemn it in the strongest possible terms. Anyone who thinks they are helping the country by participating in this is wrong.

Kevin McCarthy, Republican House minority leader:

I condemn any of this; this is appalling. This is un-American. This should never happen in our nation and whatever is going on right now has got to stop. I want everybody to take a deep breath and understand we all have some responsibility here. I don’t care what we’ve ever said on Facebook, what we’ve ever done to one another, we are all Americans, we need to stop. We can disagree with one another, but to take it to how this has gone is beyond anything I’ve ever envisioned that was possible in this nation.

Giovanni Russonello has made this assessment of yesterday’s events in the New York Times “On Politics” newlsetter this morning:

If Trump has driven the Republican Party off a political cliff, most of the momentum is still inside the car: Well over half of rank-and-file Republican voters still think that the election was stolen from him.

While the Senate’s Republican caucus mostly came together to allow Biden’s win to be confirmed, some senators logged official objections in the record. And on the House side, well over 100 legislators voted in support of objections that the Democratic majority overruled.

While conservative news outlets like Fox News and Newsmax were heavily critical of the rioting at the Capitol, it remains hard to imagine that the coalition Trump has assembled will easily disintegrate or meaningfully change course — even after such a traumatic event.

The fact remains that a violent protest was able to delay the adoption of the election’s legitimate results, and a president who still holds his followers in thrall garnered significant support in refusing to give up power.

Donald Trump’s brief suspension from Twitter has come to an end, after the outgoing president deleted three tweets the social network says violated its “civic integrity policy”.

Trump did not immediately return to the social network as his ban was lifted, at 7am Washington time. Just a few hours earlier, his deputy chief of staff, Dan Scavino, had shared on his behalf a short statement committing to an “orderly transition” of power – albeit maintaining that he “totally disagrees with the outcome of the election”.

On Facebook, Trump’s suspension for the same posts will last a full 24 hours, the social network said.

The 12-hour suspension, the first the president has faced in his four-year term of office, was derided by many as not being severe enough for the harm inflicted by the tweets, which appeared to support and encourage the far-right mob that stormed the US Capitol building.

“Facebook, Twitter and YouTube must terminate Donald Trump’s social media accounts,” said Eric Naing, media relations officer for American civil liberties group Muslim Advocates. “After today’s mob violence inside the US Capitol, it is clear that the president’s social media accounts are the world’s most prominent organizing tool for violent white nationalists. For years, social media companies have done little or nothing at all while President Trump used their platforms to foment violence, spread hate and put people’s lives in danger – all in clear violation of the companies’ policies.”

“Weak warning labels or a policy of selectively deleting certain posts after the damage has been done will do little to stem the fire hose of hate, violence, conspiracy theories and white nationalism that comes from the president’s Facebook, Twitter and YouTube accounts. What we saw today was not the beginning of this violence and it will not be the end. The only way to protect the public is to permanently terminate Donald Trump’s social media accounts.”

Read more of Alex Hern’s report here: Donald Trump Twitter ban comes to end amid calls for tougher action

Lawrence Douglas writes for us today saying: Don’t blame Trump for the chaos in Washington DC. Blame his enablers

The Trump supporters who stormed the Congress were not the only insurrectionists in the Capitol building yesterday; a sizeable number were already gathered in the lawmakers’ chambers well before any barriers were breached. In contrast to the agitators in their MAGA hoodies and army fatigue coats, these insurrectionists were seated in their crisp suits when Nancy Pelosi gaveled the opening of the joint session. They are products of our elite schools: Stanford and Yale Law School, Princeton and Harvard Law. They are fully aware that Trump decisively lost a fair election. Yet they have opportunistically chosen to ally themselves with a potentially mortal attack on our democracy.

Yet blaming Trump for the violence is pointless. Those who have followed this president knew he would never concede defeat. For the last two months, Trump has essentially become our subversive-in-chief, working overtime to overturn a democratic election. Yesterday, Mitch McConnell finally said, “back in your cage”— overlooking the fact that for years he had fed and nurtured the beast. Yet McConnell’s belated defense of democracy rings heroic compared to the tinny sounds emerging from Ted Cruz.

Cruz is already positioning himself as Trump 2.0; as a smoother, more intelligent and articulate demagogue. Trump lies in gross profusion; Cruz dresses his lies in the mantle of reasoned argument. Yesterday, we heard him speak of a “better way” that would help lawmakers avoid two “lousy” choices. The first lousy choice was “setting aside the election”. Only that choice wasn’t lousy, it was seditious – and two-thirds of congressional Republicans were, before the ugly scenes, scurrying to embrace it.

The second lousy choice was the one mandated by our constitutional democracy – certifying the results that had been duly ratified by the states and upheld by the courts. What makes that choice lousy? The fact, Cruz said, that “nearly half the country believes the election was rigged”. Well, yes, but perhaps the senator might have mentioned that this is only because of the disinformation that he and the president have been force-feeding the American people.

Read more here: Lawrence Douglas – Don’t blame Trump for the chaos in Washington DC. Blame his enablers

It looks like the social media manager at Arizona’s Republican Party needs to have a stern word with themselves. These two tweets are just a month apart.

The Washington Post have an interesting look this morning at the security implications of yesterday’s events, when a pro-Trump mob easily broke into the Capitol. They report Kim Dine, chief of the Capitol Police from 2012 to 2016 saying “It’s like watching a real-life horror movie. I mean, we train and plan and budget every day, basically, to have this not happen.”

Dine said he was surprised to see that, on Wednesday, the Capitol Police had allowed rioters to gather so close to the building, on the Capitol steps — and that, once they forced their way inside, the rioters were not immediately arrested.

“We protect the people, the place and the process that makes us the United States. That’s why we’re there,” Dine said. But, he said, on Wednesday, “The people, the place, the process — all were attacked.”

One source told the Washington Post that the police were simply unprepared.

Law enforcement officials said the Capitol Police and other federal agencies also seemed to underestimate the potential threat posed by Trump’s supporters — even as the DC police grew more alarmed. DC police patrol the streets around the Capitol but do not usually have any role in protecting the building itself. In recent days, DC officials said, they had tracked reservations for incoming buses, and read Trump’s calls for supporters to gather for a “wild” protest in Washington. “It was then that we realized this could be a stadium-sized crowd — a full-fledged Trump rally, and much bigger than anything we had seen previously,” said a senior District official.

Former commissioner of police in Boston, Ed Davis, told the Post as he watched events unfold that the force’s preparations around the perimeter were inadequate:

A good perimeter, and then a show of force. Enough people that can deal with the crowd that’s coming at you. Right now, there’s almost nothing here. This is incomprehensible.

Read more here: Washington Post – Capitol breach prompts urgent questions about security failures

Among the unsung heroes of yesterday’s storming of the Washington DC Capitol by a pro-Trump mob were the Senate aides who protected the US election paperwork when the joint session of Congress was breached.

The certificates are both an important and ceremonial part of the process. The certificates are transported to the Congressional chamber in ceremonial leather-lined mahogany boxes, where they are presented to the vice president so that he can announce them to the joint session of the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Each certificate contains the signed votes of the Electoral College who elect the US president. Oregon’s Senator Jeff Merkley stated in a tweet that if they hadn’t been rescued, they would have been “burned by the mob”

Had the certificates been seized or destroyed, while unprecedented, it wouldn’t have been the end of the electoral process – as they are not the only copies.

When states certify their electoral college result, they are required to make six copies. As well as the copy sent to Congress, the state’s secretary of state, a local judge and the national archive receive all receive copies, as part of a system designed in the 18th century, rather than for an era when results can be sent electronically.

Rudy Giuliani, the lawyer who has been spearheading Donald Trump’s lengthy failed legal attempt to overturn the 2020 US election result, has tweeted this morning to reject political violence.

People have not been slow to point out that this is the same man who yesterday literally stood up at a rally in Washington DC and called for “trial by combat” before people attending that event went on to storm the Capitol.

Journalist Aymann Ismail has written a first person account for Slate of what it was like inside the Capitol yesterday as the mob incited by president Trump broke into the building.

As “Don’t Stop Believin’ ” blared from a speaker somewhere, large crowds chanted “USA! USA!” A man screamed about the American people’s will. The entryway was already messed up. Rioters were smashing the windows, and there was wooden furniture piled up and destroyed. I saw a man in a conference room with his feet up. He and his friends were smoking weed, and when we clocked each other, they offered me a joint.

In another room, people were lounging and rummaging through furniture. They put up stickers and scrawled slogans like “Trump Won” and “Our House.” Some invited me to take their picture. One young guy put his feet up on one of the desks, posed, and told me, “Yeah, this is my desk. I paid for this.”

At one point, I’m pretty sure I saw Gavin McInnes, the Proud Boys founder, strolling around inside in military-style gear. The mood was giddy, but it was chaos. The people I managed to speak to didn’t seem to understand the gravity of what they had done. Inside a building they had broken into, they described themselves as “peaceful” to me.

I talked to a kid from Florida, who must have been no more than 17 or 18. He told me, “This is nothing compared to what Antifa does.” I said, “Look, they’re breaking the glass.” He answered, “Yeah, but at least they’re not destroying the things.” I showed him pictures of things destroyed. It didn’t register. On the way up, there was a woman holding a sign saying, “If we were leftists, we would be rioting.”

Read more here: Slate – What I saw inside the Capitol riot

Kasie Hunt of NBC News has just tweeted to try and bring home to people the huge difference between the usual level of security oversight in the Capitol, and what we saw yesterday.

My colleague Julian Borger wrote for us earlier today about the disparity between the treatment of MAGA rioters and BLM demonstrators by law enforcement in the US. It’s an essential read, illustrated with photographs that highlight the double standards at play.

You will hear a lot over the next 24 hours about the 25th amendment and whether it could be used to remove Donald Trump from power immediately, following his incitement of his followers yesterday and his continued refusal to accept that he lost November’s election, even if he has conceded that he will leave the White House.

Our political reporter Sabrina Siddiqui explains what it is, and how it works…

In all the furore surrounding the invasion of the Capitol yesterday by a pro-Trump mob, it shouldn’t be lost that Rev. Raphael Warnock and John Ossoff were elected to the Senate, giving the Democrats control and transforming how the first two years of a Biden presidency will look. Kenya Evelyn reports for us on how Black voters lifted the Georgia Democrats to those Senate runoff victories.

Black voters showed up in record numbers for Georgia’s Senate runoff election on Tuesday, handing the Democratic Senate candidates Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff decisive victories against the Republican incumbents Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, respectively.

According to the Associated Press, more than 4.4 million votes were cast, about 88% of the number who voted in November’s contest, when turnout was 68 percent overall.

Just weeks after flipping the conservative stronghold in the general election, local strategists and community organizers across the state are being credited with once again galvanizing a voting bloc critical in delivering Democrats’ victory.

“Black runoff turnout was phenomenal and the [Donald] Trump base just couldn’t keep up,” the political analyst Dave Wasserman tweeted shortly after being one of the first to call the race for Warnock.

Tuesday’s win makes the senior pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist church the first Black senator from Georgia and the first in a former Confederate state since Reconstruction. The milestone is considered by some analysts to be a factor in the surge in participation.

Black voters in the state were the deciding force in both Democratic victories, particularly in urban and rural communities with large Black populations. Typically, these groups are less likely to vote in state and local contests than their white counterparts.

The runoffs garnered national attention after Black voters – along with new Georgia residents of all races – successfully flipped the state from reliably Republican to a competitive purple in November, with the Democrat Joe Biden narrowly winning over the incumbent president by more than 11,000 votes.

“The margins are so small that every action, including your vote, matters and will make a difference,” Nse Ufot, CEO of the New Georgia Project, told CNN. “Black voters got that message. Black voters recognized that we need to complete the task.”

Read more of Kenya Evelyn’s report here: How Black voters lifted Georgia Democrats to Senate runoff victories

Here’s the moment again at 3:41am local time in Washington DC that the joint session of Congress announced that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris would be the next president and vice president of the US. Their inauguration is in 13 days time.

Welcome to our continued live coverage of US politics for Thursday, after a momentous and unprecedented day in Washington DC. Here’s a quick catch-up on where we are…

• The US Congress has certified Joe Biden as the next president of the United States hours after an insurgent mob loyal to Donald Trump stormed the Capitol in what lawmakers condemned as an attempted insurrection aimed at overturning the results of an American election.
• Over one hundred Republican lawmakers still voted to object to some state election results, even after the Capitol had been stormed by a mob of pro-Trump rioters intent on disrupting the certification of the election results.
• The joint session of Congress adjourned twice for debate, over objections to results in Arizona and Pennsylvania. The Arizona objection was defeated 93-6 in the Senate and 303-122 in the House, and the Pennsylvania objection was defeated 92-7 in the Senate and 282-138 in the House.
• DC police have confirmed that a woman died after being shot in the chest, and three other people died from medical emergencies during the riot. At least 52 people were reportedly arrested.
• Outgoing president Donald Trump is currently locked out of his Twitter and Facebook accounts for breaking the social media sites policies after they judged him to be spreading misinformation and inciting violence.
• Through his aide Dan Scavino the president has issued a statement promising that there will be a peaceful transition of power on 20 January – Inauguration Day – while maintaining the lie that he won November’s election. Trump said “While this represents the end of the greatest first term in presidential history, it’s only the beginning of our fight to Make America Great Again!”
• Democrats will control both the House of Representatives and the Senate for the first two years of the Biden presidency after Rev. Raphael Warnock and John Ossoff were confirmed as victors in the Georgia Senate run-offs.