Panel probing Jan. 6 Capitol riot has met with 250 people so far
WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Capitol insurrection has interviewed about 250 people so far, its chairman said Thursday, as lawmakers work to compile the most comprehensive account yet of the violent attack and hold public hearings next year.
Members and staff have conducted the interviews in private, and most witnesses have appeared voluntarily. The committee has subpoenaed more than 40 people, and lawmakers say that only two have defied their demands. The investigation began in July.
Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., disclosed the number of private interviews as he tried to make the case at a House hearing for contempt charges against Jeffrey Clark, a former Department of Justice official who championed then-President Donald Trump’s efforts to reverse the 2020 election that Joe Biden won.
Thompson’s committee has scheduled a second deposition with Clark for Saturday and says it will determine afterward whether to move ahead with the contempt charges.
Looking to 2022, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., and the vice chairwoman, said the committee anticipates it will hold “multiple weeks of public hearings, setting out for the American people in vivid color exactly what happed every minute of the day on January 6th, here at the Capitol and at the White House, and what led to that violent attack.”
Lawmakers are moving to finish before the midterm elections, viewing their work as a crucial corrective to the growing tendency among Republicans and others to play down the siege by Trump’s supporters.
The mob echoed Trump’s false claims that he won the election, beating police as rioters broke in and making lawmakers flee when they interrupted the certification of Biden’s victory.
The seven Democrats and two Republicans on the committee argue that democracy is at stake as Trump considers a second run for office and as many Americans still believe his false claims of widespread fraud in the election, even though they have been rejected by courts and election officials across the country.
Child brought to riot: Federal prosecutors said Thursday that a North Carolina woman deserves a prison sentence for bringing her 14-year-old child into the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot.
Virginia Marie “Jenny” Spencer and her husband, Christopher, had the child “in tow” when they joined other rioters who overwhelmed a line of police officers, invaded House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office suite and demanded entry to the House chamber, prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo.
Prosecutors recommended three months in prison for Jenny Spencer, who pleaded guilty in September to parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building. U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly is scheduled to sentence her Jan. 7.
Ohio deputy charged: The Ohio sheriff ’s deputy who shot Casey Goodson Jr. in the back five times was charged with murder Thursday.
The December 2020 shooting of Goodson, who was Black, by longtime deputy Jason Meade, who
is white, led to protests in Columbus and many lingering questions, in part because the killing wasn’t recorded on body or dash camera footage.
Meade’s lawyer says the deputy fired when Goodson pointed a gun at him. Goodson’s family has said he was holding a sandwich, but noted he also had a license to carry a firearm.
The case remains under criminal investigation by the U.S. attorney’s office with help from the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
The shooting happened as Meade, a 17-year member of the sheriff ’s office, was finishing an unsuccessful search for a fugitive with a U.S. Marshals Service task force. Goodson was not the subject of the fugitive search and the Marshals have said Meade wasn’t performing a mission for them at the time of the shooting. Archbishop resigns: Pope Francis on Thursday accepted the resignation
of the archbishop of Paris, who offered to step down last week after admitting to an “ambiguous” relationship with a woman in 2012.
Paris Archbishop Michel Aupetit said in a statement Thursday that he offered to step down “to preserve the diocese from the division that suspicion and loss of trust are continuing to provoke.”
The Vatican said in a statement that the pope accepted Aupetit’s offer, and named Monsignor Georges Pontier to serve temporarily in his place pending the pontiff ’s appointment of a permanent new archbishop.
The Vatican gave no reason for why Francis had accepted Aupetit’s resignation, or why the decision had come so quickly.
Sanctions on Belarus: The United States, European Union, Britain and Canada slapped simultaneous sanctions Thursday on dozens of officials, organizations and companies in Belarus, with the EU taking aim at those
accused of participating in a “hybrid attack” on the bloc using migrants.
The three countries and the 27-nation EU have targeted Belarus since President Alexander Lukashenko won a sixth term last year in an election that the West and other observers say was fraudulent, and over the security crackdown on peaceful protestors that followed.
The U.S. State Department said the U.S. Treasury has “identified three aircraft as blocked property and designated 32 individuals and entities, including Belarusian state-owned enterprises, government officials, and other persons, who support the regime and facilitate its repression.”
The EU, meanwhile, imposed travel bans and asset freezes on 17 more people, including senior border guard and military officials, government representatives and judges.
Britain said it had imposed sanctions “on eight Belarusian individuals responsible
for repression and human rights violations.”
Belarus’ Foreign Ministry charged that the new sanctions aim to “economically stifle Belarus.” Philanthropist slain: A man has been arrested in the death of philanthropist Jacqueline Avant, who was fatally shot this week at the Beverly Hills home she shared with her husband, legendary music executive Clarence Avant, police said Thursday.
Aariel Maynor, 29, is on parole and was taken into custody early Wednesday by Los Angeles police at a separate residence, police said.
Police recovered an AR-15 rifle at that home that was believed to have been used in the shooting of Jacqueline Avant. Maynor accidentally shot himself in the foot with the gun, police said, and is being treated before he can be booked into jail.
Police have not yet determined Maynor’s motive. It was not immediately known if Maynor had an attorney.