US President Joe Biden warned that the "forces" behind the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol last year remain a threat to American democracy.
"It's important the American people understand what truly happened, and to understand that the same forces that led to January 6 remain at work today," he said during an address in Los Angeles, where he was hosting the Summit of the Americas.
A congressional hearing into the US Capitol attack by former president Donald Trump's supporters trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat has presented testimony showing that close allies, even his daughter, rejected his false claims of election fraud.
Ivanka Trump "checked out" on election issues in the aftermath of the 2020 election, her father said today after the release of testimony in which she said did not believe his claims of election fraud.
A congressional panel probing the 6 January 2021 attack on the Capitol yesterday aired recorded testimony in which Ivanka Trump said she did not believe his false claims that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen from him.
In a post on the social media platform Truth Social today, Mr Trump sought to downplay his daughter's involvement in his efforts to contest the election.
Ivanka Trump was one of her father's most trusted allies during his four years in the White House.
"Ivanka Trump was not involved in looking at, or studying, election results," Mr Trump said.
"She had long since checked out and was, in my opinion, only trying to be respectful to Bill Barr and his position as Attorney General (he sucked!)."
Mr Trump was referring to Ivanka's video deposition given in April that she believed then-Attorney General William Barr's assessment that there was no significant evidence of fraud during the election.
"I respect Attorney General (William) Barr. So I accepted what he was saying," Ivanka Trump told congressional investigators.
Reuters was not able to locate a spokesperson for Ivanka Trump.
There was no immediate response to a request for comment via private message to her Instagram account.
The 6 January 2021 riot followed shortly after Trump gave an incendiary speech to thousands of supporters outside the White House, repeating his false claims of a stolen 2020 election and urging them to march on the Capitol and "fight like hell."
Giuliani faces ethics charges over election claims
The District of Columbia office that polices attorneys for ethical misconduct filed charges today against Mr Trump's former attorney Rudy Giuliani over baseless claims he made in federal court alleging the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
In the new charges, the District's disciplinary office alleges that Mr Giuliani, who is a member of the D.C. bar, made baseless claims in federal court filings about the results of the 2020 presidential election in Pennsylvania.
A lawyer for Mr Giuliani did not have an immediate comment.
Mr Giuliani has been among Mr Trump's most fervent supporters, and repeatedly claimed without evidence that the election had been stolen.
The new ethics charges filed today by the D.C. Office of Disciplinary Counsel with the District of Columbia Court of Appeals Board on Professional Responsibility center on a series of legal challenges Mr Giuliani filed in the Pennsylvania federal court.
In legal pleadings and during oral arguments in November 2020, the complaint says Mr Giuliani sought "extraordinary relief" from the court including an emergency order to prohibit the certification of the presidential election, an order to invalidate ballots cast by certain voters in seven counties, and other orders that would have permitted the state's assembly to choose its electors and declare Trump the winner in Pennsylvania.
Mr Giuliani's reputation has also been stained by his dealings with Ukraine and he is being probed by Manhattan federal prosecutors over those business ties.
He began representing Mr Trump, a fellow Republican and New Yorker, in April 2018 in connection with then-Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation that documented Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Probe skewers Trump but faces battle to sway voters
Americans were served up an engrossing night of television as a congressional panel laid out damning evidence of Mr Trump's culpability in last year's US Capitol insurrection.
Yet 17 months after the mayhem, the biggest challenge for the House of Representatives committee investigating the riot could be ensuring the brutal images of violence it played in prime time will pack the intended political punch.
Yesterday's presentation was devastating for Mr Trump, who has been characterized as an ongoing threat to US democracy - bidding to carry a campaign to steal the last election into the next.
The committee's footage of hand-to-hand combat between police and the mob Trump sent to the Capitol to stop the 2020 vote being certified in Biden's favor, made for gut-wrenching viewing.
Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards was shown being knocked unconscious and gave evidence in person about "slipping in people's blood" as the assault turned to "carnage."
The hearing concluded with video of several members of the mob saying they marched on the Capitol simply because Trump had asked them to.
Liz Cheney - a rising Republican star until she refused to accept Trump's false claims of a stolen election carefully filleted every aspect of the former president's so-called "Big Lie."
She repeatedly referred to the "illegality" of his "sophisticated seven-point plan" to overturn the election.
Images of carnage
The night got progressively worse for Mr Trump, who didn't lift a finger for hours to help quell the insurrection, according to the committee.
And there were gasps in the room when Ms Cheney quoted a witness claiming that Mr Trump had said vice president Mike Pence deserved to be hanged by the mob storming the Capitol.
The challenge for Democrats - burned by the lukewarm public reaction to Mr Trump's two impeachments and numerous other revelations of misconduct - will be to ensure that his latest calumny registers with voters.
While powerful images of the riot may have jogged memories, much of the outrage appears to have dissipated since January last year, with voters increasingly focused on pocketbook issues such as soaring inflation.
In a YouGov/University of Massachusetts poll in May, just 42% of respondents backed the drive to hold the insurrectionists accountable - a drop of 10 points in a year.
"Trump is still doing well with his followers at the grassroots level," Ahmed Zohny, a political science professor at Coppin State University in Baltimore, told AFP.
"So unless the congressional committee on January 6 comes up with criminal evidence that prevents him from running again, it is unlikely that the (Republicans) in both the House and Senate will go against him."
TV audience reaches 20 million
An estimated 20 million people tuned into live US television broadcasts of yesterday's hearing by lawmakers probing the 2021 riot at the US Capitol, the Nielsen ratings agency said.
The viewership across 12 networks ranked below other political events such as President Biden's State of the Union address, which pulled in 38 million viewers in March, but higher than most congressional hearings.
The first televised hearing of the impeachment inquiry into Mr Trump, for example, attracted about 14 million viewers on 10 networks in 2019. It was held during the day, when TV viewership is lower.
The committee probing the 6 January 2021, attack by supporters of Mr Trump is holding rare primetime hearings to spotlight the findings of its nearly year-long investigation.
Broadcasters including ABC, CBS and NBC interrupted regular programming to show the event.
Nielsen's figures included people who watched via traditional television or streamed through Internet-connected TVs, but they do not capture the full extent of online viewing via social media.
The tally also does not include Fox News Channel, which opted to run its regular opinion programming during the hearing. Fox Business Network covered the hearing live.
Of the 20 million viewers, 15.2 million were age 55 and older, Nielsen said. Less than 1 million people age 18 to 34 watched via the TV networks.
