British documentary filmmaker Alex Holder confirmed on Tuesday that he had complied with a subpoena from the Jan. 6 committee to turn over never-before-seen footage of former President Donald Trump in the leadup to the insurrection.
The committee will also conduct a deposition of Holder on Thursday, he said in a statement shared on Twitter.
Holder had access to Trump, as well as his family members and associates, while directing a documentary series surrounding the final six weeks of the former president's reelection campaign in 2020. He said the footage he turned over includes interviews with Trump and his family leading up to the election, as well as never-before-seen footage of the Capitol riot.
Holder said his team would never have predicted their work would be subpoenaed by Congress when they started the project in September 2020, but are cooperating fully.
"As a British filmmaker, I had no agenda coming into this," he said. "We simply wanted to better understand who the Trumps were and what motivated them to hold onto power so desperately."
He said the series includes "unparalleled access and exclusive interviews" with officials including Trump, his children, son-in-law Jared Kushner and former Vice President Mike Pence both before and after the events of Jan. 6, in a variety of locations: the White House, Trump's Mar-A-Lago resort and on the campaign trail. [snip]
The magazine reported that several former officials on Trump's reelection campaign have claimed they did not know that the documentary about his reelection campaign was being filmed in the first place, and heard about it for the first time after seeing the Politico report about the subpoena.
"What the f*** is this?" a former top Trump 2020 official messaged the publication after seeing the news.
The House select committee on Tuesday unveiled new information showing the role that Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson played in pushing “fake” electors for then-President Donald Trump on January 6, 2021.
A Johnson aide texted a staffer for then-Vice President Mike Pence that the Wisconsin Republican wanted to hand-deliver “fake” electors to Pence just before the start of the January 6 congressional session to certify Joe Biden’s 2020 election win.
The committee showed text messages that Johnson aide Sean Riley had sent to Pence aide Chris Hodgson saying that Johnson “needs to hand something to VPOTUS please advise.”
“What is it?” Hodgson asked.
“Alternate slates of electors for MI and WI because archivist didn’t receive them,” Riley responded.
“Do not give that to him,” Hodgson said.
After the hearing, Johnson told CNN he had “no idea” who had tried to get him to share the fake electors from Michigan and Wisconsin with Pence but he acknowledged he had been aware of the ask on the morning of January 6, 2021. [snip]
The messages between the aides, which have not been previously disclosed, show that Johnson was playing a role in the effort to put forward “fake” Trump electors who had not been certified by any state legislatures.
The messages were exchanged just after 12:30 p.m. ET on January 6, according to the committee, minutes before Pence gaveled in the joint session of Congress at 1 p.m. ET – and rioters began breaching the Capitol to disrupt the certification.
A Ukrainian photojournalist and a soldier accompanying him appear to have been “coldly executed” during the first weeks of the war in Ukraine as they searched in Russian-occupied woods for the photographer’s missing camera drone, Reporters Without Borders said Wednesday.
The press freedom group said it sent investigators back to the woods north of the capital, Kyiv, where the bodies of Maks Levin and serviceman Oleksiy Chernyshov were found April 1. The group said its team counted 14 bullet holes in the burned hulk of the pair’s car, which remained at the spot.
Citing the findings from its investigation into the deaths, the group said disused Russian positions, one of them still booby-trapped, were found close by. Also found were the remains of food rations, cigarette packs and other litter seemingly left by Russian soldiers.
Some of Levin and Chernyshov’s belongings, including the soldier’s ID papers and parts of his bulletproof vest and the photographer’s helmet, were also recovered, Reporters Without Borders said.
A Ukrainian team with metal detectors also located a bullet buried in the soil where Levin’s body had been, it said. The group said that finding suggests “he was probably killed with one, perhaps two bullets fired at close range when he was already on the ground.”
For every Dmitry Muratov, there seems to be a murderous Russian thug acting on his basest, most subhuman instincts. (And, yes, we're not a nation that can occupy the high moral ground when it comes to pointing fingers at murderous thugs.)
