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President Trump is facing a historic second impeachment after Democrats in the House of Representatives formally charged him with one count of “incitement of insurrection” over the Capitol Hill riot. Earlier, ABC News said it had obtained an internal FBI bulletin which detailed plans for “armed protests” and calls for the “storming” of state, local and federal courthouses and buildings across the country if Trump was removed from power before then.
In a video released one day after rioters stormed the US Capitol, President Donald Trump condemned their actions and acknowledged for the first time that the Biden administration will take over on January 20th, promising a “smooth, orderly, and seamless transition of power”. A US Capitol police officer has died from injuries sustained in the attack as top Democrats have called for the president to be removed for “inciting” the riot.
World leaders expressed their shock as supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol building where Congress meets in an attempt to overturn the results of the Nov. 3 election won by Joe Biden. Iran’s president said it proved the weakness of Western democracy while officials in China and Russia compared the storming to protests in Hong Kong and Ukraine.
Raphael Warnock, the senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist church in Atlanta where Martin Luther King once preached, has won one of the two runoff elections for the US Senate in Georgia, putting the Democrats within striking distance of taking control of the upper chamber. The result puts the Democrats just one seat away from gaining control of the Senate.
Joe Biden urged Georgia voters to surprise the nation once again by sending two Democrats to the US Senate, on the eve of a pair of critical runoff elections that will determine the balance of power in Washington and the scope of the president-elect’s ambitious legislative agenda. Meanwhile, Trump, who spoke hours later at a rival rally for the Republican candidates in Dalton, Georgia, continued to deny that he lost the presidential election.
In an hour-long phone call on Saturday, President Trump pressed Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to overturn Joe Biden’s victory there in the election the president refuses to concede. The Washington Post obtained a tape of the “extraordinary” conversation, which Trump acknowledged on Twitter. Trump did not win Georgia, which went Democratic for the first time since 1992.
The General Services Administration has declared president-elect Joe Biden the apparent winner of the US election, clearing the way for the formal transition from Donald Trump’s administration to begin after weeks of delay. Trump said on Twitter he had directed his team to cooperate on the transition, but vowed to continue fighting the election results. The Trump legal team dismissed the certification as “simply a procedural step.”
President Donald Trump has fired the director of the federal agency that vouched for the reliability of the 2020 election and pushed back on the president’s claims of voter fraud. Trump fired Christopher Krebs in a tweet on Tuesday, saying Krebs “has been terminated” and that his recent statement defending the security of the election was “highly inaccurate”.
The US attorney general, William Barr, has authorized federal prosecutors to begin investigating “substantial allegations” of voter irregularities across the country in a stark break with longstanding practice and despite a lack of evidence of any major fraud having been committed. Barr wrote on Monday to US attorneys, giving them the green light to pursue “substantial allegations of voting and vote tabulation irregularities.”
US President-elect Joe Biden is to make tackling the coronavirus pandemic his top priority following his win over Donald Trump, his team says. Announcing the first steps in his transition plan, his team said there would be more testing and Americans would be asked to wear masks. On Monday, Mr Biden is expected to name a 12-member coronavirus task force.