Kushner says Trump would have stopped Jan 6 riots if he knew beforehand – follow live

President Joe Biden and his allies hope big recent wins on climate, health care and more will at least temporarily tamp down questions among top Democrats about whether he will run for reelection.

That optimism may be short-lived, at risk if and when former President Donald Trump announces another White House campaign. But for now, the “Will he or won’t he” Washington parlor game appears to be on hold.

Jared Kushner has claimed that the FBI raid on his father-in-law’s Mar-a-Lago estate is another example of the former president’s “enemies” persecuting him.

“President Trump is a fighter, he’s always been a fighter,” Mr Kushner told Fox News host Mark Levin on Saturday in his first public comments about the 8 August search of Mr Trump’s Florida home.

“In the way that he drives his enemies so crazy, they always over pursue him and make mistakes in trying to get him. That’s basically what happened here.”

Read the full story here:

Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has said that the former president would have attempted to stop the violence at the US Capitol building had he known about it beforehand, calling the historical attack on the prestigious building unexpected.

In his new memoir “Breaking History”, Mr Kushner wrote: “What is clear to me is that no one at the White House expected violence that day. I’m confident that if my colleagues or the president had anticipated violence, they would have prevented it from happening,” reported The Washington Times.

“After more than six hundred peaceful Trump rallies, these rioters gave Trump’s critics the fodder they had wanted for more than five years,” Mr Kushner said.

He added: “The claim was as false as the narrative that the violent Antifa rioters who desecrated American cities that summer were representative of the millions of peaceful demonstrators who had marched for equality under the law.”

Donald Trump has claimed rank and file FBI agents “love” him after he spent days verbally attacking the agency over the Mar-a-Lago raid.

Mr Trump’s comments on Truth Social came as his new lead attorney Jim Trusty promised to “come out swinging” as he prepares to file a new legal challenge against the breadth of the Justice Department search warrant.

Mr Trump has led a chorus of Republican criticism against the FBI over the 8 August search of his private club in Palm Beach, Florida, for classified materials he took with him when he left office.

There’s more bad news for Donald Trump-endorsed GOP Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, Dr Mehmet Oz.

As per a new Fox News poll, Dr Oz trails his Democratic opponent, Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman, by a significant margin.

What’s unique about this poll, however, is the deficit it shows the Republican nominee faces among even his own supporters. Many other polls have also shown the same report card for Mr Trump’s elect.

The celebrity TV doctor already faced questions about his Yinzer bona fides before posting an embarrassing video last weekend filmed in a grocery story in which he tried to point out the painful toll of inflation, succeeding only in attracting mockery with his mispronunciation of the market’s name and apparent unfamiliarity with the task of shopping for groceries.

Congressman Adam Schiff warned that a potential decision by a judge to unseal an affidavit detailing the evidence that led to the FBI’s execution of a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago could imperil the DoJ’s investigation.

The move could potentially lead to witnesses being intimidated by former president Donald Trump, which his panel has warned publicly on multiple occaisions is occurring in regards to their own witnesses, the California Democrat and Jan 6 committee member speculated while speaking with CNN’s Jake Tapper on State of the Union.

Mr Schiff said: “You could learn a great deal [from the sealed affidavit] and that’s just the problem for the Justice Department.”

“I think probably their concern is very legitimate … we’ve seen the president retaliate against anyone he considers a whistleblower, accuse them of treason,” he said.

John Bowden has the full report here:

Ted Cruz has claimed that the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago was a “fishing expedition” for incriminating documents related to the US Capitol riots.

Without offering any evidence, Mr Cruz asserted the 8 August raid on Donald Trump’s Florida residence was part of a secret plan by the Department of Justice to gather evidence on the January 6 insurrection.

“What is really distressing now looking at the warrant and what they were searching for, this was a fishing expedition,” Mr Cruz said on his podcast Verdict with Ted Cruz.

Rep Liz Cheney, vice chair of the January 6 House select committee, says that the panel still wants to hear directly from former Vice President Mike Pence.

“Look, he played a critical role on January 6. If he had succumbed to the pressure that Donald Trump was putting on him, we would have had a much worse constitutional crisis,” she told Jonathan Karl, chief Washington correspondent for ABC News.

The Justice Department has been ordered to release a secret memo in which it discussed whether Donald Trump had obstructed Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The decision by a federal appeals court found that former Attorney General Bill Barr had improperly withheld portions of the March 2019 memo which he said he relied on to determine if Mr Trump should face prosecution.

The memo has been at the centre of a legal battle for more than a year after the advocacy group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) fought for its release in a public records lawsuit.

A new book claims that an associate of Rudy Giuliani tried to pass a message to Donald Trump shortly after the 6 January 2021 Capitol riot asking if he could grant Mr Giuliani a general pardon and award him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Maggie Haberman reports in The New York Times that the associate, Maria Ryan, also pleaded for Mr Giuliani that he be paid for his services to the president and sent a separate note allegedly seeking tens of thousands of dollars for herself.

Mr Trump never saw the request because Bernard Kerik, Mr Giuliani’s close adviser and the New York City police commissioner for part of his time as mayor, stopped the letter from getting to the president.