Trump’s lawyer says FBI agents identities should be made public after Mar-a-Lago raid
One of the attorneys representing Donald Trump in the wake of the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago has said that CCTV from the search should be released and the agents who carried it out identified – this despite a surge in violent threats against law enforcement agents and justice officials from outraged Trump supporters.
Judge Bruce Reinhart, who signed the search warrant for the raid, says he is inclined to partially release the document as media organisations have requested. He will make a final decision next week after the redactions have been made.
The Justice Department has rebuffed demands to release the affidavit, warning that it could “chill” future efforts to secure witness cooperation, and argued that the investigation is still in its early days. Mr Trump has said he wants the affidavit to be released, but his legal team have taken no official steps to make it public.
This comes a January 6 Committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney has said that the panel are “in discussions” with the counsel for former Vice President Mike Pence.
Judge rejects Lindsey Graham’s last-ditch bid to avoid testifying in Georgia election probe
For the second time in a week, a federal judge in Georgia has ordered South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham to give evidence before the Fulton County grand jury investigating former president Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election in the Peach State.
Earlier this week US District Judge Leigh Martin May rejected Mr Graham’s motion to quash a subpoena ordering him to give evidence before the special grand jury, which is operating under the supervision of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.
According to a copy of the subpoena viewed by The Independent, the Georgia judge who signed off on the document found that Mr Graham “questioned Secretary Raffensperger and his staff about reexamining certain absentee ballots cast in Georgia in order to explore the possibility of a more favourable outcome” for the then-president, who in November 2020 became the first Republican to lose the Peach State’s electoral votes since Bill Clinton defeated then-president George HW Bush in 1992.
The South Carolina Republican had claimed immunity from having to testify before the grand jury because he is a “high-ranking government official”, and because the US Constitution’s “speech or debate” clause prohibits the court from requiring him to appear. But Judge May rejected both of those claims, writing that “there are considerable areas of potential grand jury inquiry” which would not be covered by the “speech or debate” clause, which only shields senators official acts from scrutiny.
Read More:Trump lawyer says FBI agents’ identities should be made public despite
