World

For Maria Goncharova, a 93-year-old survivor of the devastating famine that hit Ukraine in the 1930s, Russia’s invasion has awoken fears that the nightmare of starvation could happen again.

Scarred for life by Stalin’s campaign of forced “collectivisation”, when seized grain and other foodstuffs left millions to starve, this elderly lady still hoards everything for fear of going without. 

Since the Russian invasion began, the skies over her small pale blue house in Cheremushna, a village in the eastern Kharkiv region, have been filled with missiles, the war bringing back some awful memories. 

“We only survived by cooking a potato and some flour each day,” says Goncharova, a red scarf covering her hair, who has three chickens in her small garden. 

Her tiny monthly pension of 2,000 hryvnia (65 euros/$68) means every penny counts, with everything cooked on her wood-fired stove. 

The Russians “have already stolen a lot of grain from us and they are capable of taking everything,” she sighs, crossing herself. 

– The Holodomor –

Known as the “Holodomor” — Ukrainian for “death by starvation” — the 1932-1933 famine is regarded by Kyiv as a deliberate act of genocide by Stalin’s regime with the intention of wiping out the peasantry.

“Food was used by the Soviet authorities to achieve their objectives by killing those who were resisting their authority on a large scale,” said Lyudmyla Grynevych, a historian who heads the Holodomor research and education centre. 

The Holodomor has long been a major sticking point in ties between Russia and Ukraine.

Moscow rejects Kyiv’s narrative, placing the events in the broader context of famines that devastated regions of Central Asia and Russia. 

And the current conflict has only fuelled fears that history may repeat itself, with Russia’s targeting of grain storage facilities and its blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea exports sparking accusations that Moscow is once again using food as a weapon of war.

European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen raised the allegation at Davos and earlier this month, Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian presidency, accused Russia of “trying to recreate the Holodomor” through its shelling of agricultural areas.

“The 1930s are very appropriate for drawing parallels because that was also an attempt to annihilate what we would call today the political entity that is Ukraine,” says Grynevych. 

“Ukrainians had their grain confiscated and starved to death, and then the Soviet authorities sent in some grain but only to those who agreed to join the kolkhozes,” she said, referring to the huge Soviet agricultural cooperatives.

– A mark on every family –

Kharkiv, which lies more than 450 kilometres (280 miles) east of Kyiv, was the first capital of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic from 1919-1934. 

At the time, the area was considered to be one of the top 23 most fertile regions in the entire Soviet Union. 

Around Cheremushna village where Goncharova grew up, “a third of the residents died” during the famine, says Tamara Polishchuk, who runs a museum dedicated to the Holodomor. 

But even then, not all deaths were registered as the process “was suspended”, said Polishchuk, who has done extensive research into the subject. 

For her, every family in the area is marked by the memory of the devastating famine that the USSR tried for decades to erase, and which Ukraine was only able to commemorate in its own right after independence in 1991. 

Showing off the supplies she has put away, Goncharova proudly says she “still has a little bit of everything”. 

“Many countries help us. They bring us things and give it to the people. But only God knows how much longer it will continue,” she says before going out to sit on her porch in the shade of a walnut tree.

Western allies vowed on Tuesday to boost NATO’s defences and to back Ukraine to the end as Moscow demanded Kyiv’s surrender.

As NATO leaders gathered in Madrid for a summit, alliance chief Jens Stoltenberg said Finland and Sweden would be formally invited to join NATO after Turkey lifted its block on their bids.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had stubbornly refused to approve their applications — lodged in response to Russia’s war on Ukraine — despite calls from his NATO allies to clear their path to membership.

But he abandoned his opposition following crunch talks on Tuesday with the leaders of the two Nordic countries in Madrid.

Erdogan’s office said late on Tuesday it had agreed to back their applications, saying Ankara had “got what it wanted”.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson hailed the agreement between Finland, Sweden and Turkey, saying their membership would make the defence alliance “stronger and safer”.

Meanwhile, a senior US official said their membership would be a “powerful shot in the arm” for NATO unity.

NATO’s expansion came as Russian missiles continued to pound Ukrainian cities. 

US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters arriving with President Joe Biden that Washington will announce “historic” new long-term military deployments in Europe.

The reinforcements will join NATO’s eastern flank, Russia’s nervous neighbours like the Baltic states, and reflect a long-term change “in the strategic reality” elsewhere in Europe.

Ahead of the summit, Stoltenberg said the allies would boost their high-readiness forces from 40,000 to 300,000.

– New sanctions –

Before travelling to Madrid, Biden and other leaders of the G7 powers — the world’s richest democracies — had held a summit in the German Alps.

Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz boasted afterwards that his country, a laggard in defence spending, would build “the largest conventional army within the NATO framework in Europe”.

Russia’s invasion, he said, had convinced Berlin “that we should spend more… an average of around 70 to 80 billion euros a year on defence over the next few years”.

NATO member Bulgaria announced it would expel 70 staff from Russia’s diplomatic mission accused of working against its interests.

At the G7 summit, the leaders agreed to impose new sanctions targeting Moscow’s defence industry, raising tariffs and banning gold imports from the country.

The US Treasury said the measures “strike at the heart of Russia’s ability to develop and deploy weapons and technology used for Vladimir Putin’s brutal war of aggression against Ukraine,” 

The new set of sanctions target Rostec, Russia’s largest defence conglomerate, as well as military units and officers implicated in human rights abuses in Ukraine, the Treasury said.

Putin’s Kremlin was not fazed by the sanctions, warning that Ukraine’s forces’ only option was to lay down their arms.

“The Ukrainian side can stop everything before the end of today,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

“An order for the nationalist units to lay down their arms is necessary,” he said, adding Kyiv had to fulfil a list of Moscow’s demands.

– ‘Everything burned’ –

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called for the United Nations to visit the site of a missile strike on a shopping mall in the central city of Kremenchuk, as he addressed the UN Security Council on Tuesday.

“I suggest the United Nations send either a special representative, or the secretary-general of the United Nations, or a plenipotentiary commission to the site of this terrorist act… so the UN could independently find out information and see that this indeed was a Russian missile strike,” Zelensky said of the attack on Monday that killed at least 18 people.

“Everything burned, really everything, like a spark to a touchpaper. I heard people screaming. It was horror,” witness Polina Puchintseva told AFP.

All that was left of the mall was charred debris, chunks of blackened walls and lettering from a smashed store front.

Russia claims its missile salvo was aimed at an arms depot — but none of the civilians who talked to AFP knew of any weapons store in the neighbourhood.

And, outside Russia, the latest carnage sparked only Ukrainian fury and western solidarity.

“Indiscriminate attacks on innocent civilians constitute a war crime,” the G7 leaders said in a statement, condemning the “abominable attack”.

Zelensky declared on his social media channels: “Only total insane terrorists, who should have no place on Earth, can strike missiles at civilian objects.

“Russia must be recognised as a state sponsor of terrorism. The world can and therefore must stop Russian terror,” he added.

The G7 leaders did not go so far as to brand Putin a terrorist — but they vowed that Russia, already under tough sanctions, would face more economic pain.

“The G7 stands united in its support for Ukraine,” Scholz told reporters. 

“We will continue to keep up and drive up the economic and political costs of this war for President Putin and his regime.”

– Oil price cap? –

The G7 had announced several new measures to put the squeeze on Putin, including a plan to work towards a price cap on Russian oil.

The group also agreed to impose an import ban on Russian gold. At the same time, the G7 powers heaped financial support on Ukraine, with aid now reaching $29.5 billion.

Meanwhile, with fierce artillery duels continuing in the eastern Donbas region, Ukrainian officials said the central city of Dnipro and several other sites had been hit by more Russian missiles.

Pro-Moscow forces detained Igor Kolykhayev, the elected mayor of the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson.

Russian media said the “nationalist” was an opponent of Moscow’s supposed efforts to “de-Nazify” Ukraine, but Kolykhayev’s aides said he had been “kidnapped” by the city’s illegitimate occupiers.

The UN said 6.2 million people are now estimated to have been displaced within Ukraine, in addition to 5.26 million who have fled abroad.

“Ukraine now faces a brutality which we haven’t seen in Europe since the Second World War,” Stoltenberg said as leaders began to gather in Madrid.

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Ghislaine Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison Tuesday for helping late financier Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse girls, capping the former socialite’s sordid fall from grace.

The Oxford-educated daughter of the late British press baron Robert Maxwell appeared not to react as New York Judge Alison Nathan handed down the term in a packed Manhattan federal court.

The sentence was much less than prosecutors sought but still means the 60-year-old friend to royalty and former US presidents is likely to spend much of the rest of her life in jail.

Nathan called Maxwell’s crimes “heinous and predatory” as she went with the amount of time recommended by the US probation office, rejecting Maxwell’s claims that she was pursued by prosecutors only because Epstein escaped trial by killing himself in prison.

“It is important to emphasize that although Epstein was central to this criminal scheme, Ms Maxwell is not being punished in place of Epstein or as a proxy for Epstein,” said the judge.

Maxwell was convicted late last year on five of six counts, the most serious for sex trafficking minors following a month-long high-profile trial in New York.

The charges stemmed from crimes committed against four women between 1994 and 2004.

Prosecutors successfully proved that she was “the key” to Epstein’s scheme of enticing young girls to give him massages, during which he would sexually abuse them.

Two of Epstein’s victims, identified as “Jane” and “Carolyn,” testified that they were as young as 14 when Maxwell began grooming them.

Maxwell expressed sympathy for the victims during a statement in court Tuesday, saying she was “sorry for the pain that you experienced” but blamed Epstein.

“I believe that Jeffrey Epstein was a manipulative, cunning and controlling man who lived a profoundly compartmentalized life and fooled all of those in his orbit,” she said.

Prosecutors had called for Maxwell to receive between 30 and 55 years in jail, saying she “was an adult who made her own choices.”

In a statement, Damian Williams, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, said the 20-year term “holds Ghislaine Maxwell accountable for perpetrating heinous crimes against children,” he said.

Annie Farmer, the only victim not to testify under a pseudonym, welcomed the sentence as proof that “it is never too late for the truth to come out and never too late for there to be accountability.”

– Appeal –

Maxwell has already been held in detention for some two years following her arrest in New Hampshire in the summer of 2020, meaning she will likely be released in her late 70s, possibly earlier for good behavior.

“Ghislaine must die in prison,” accuser Sarah Ransome told reporters outside court before Maxwell’s fate was delivered.

Her sentencing completes a dramatic fall for the former international jetsetter who grew up in wealth and privilege as a friend to royalty.

Maxwell’s circle included Britain’s Prince Andrew, former US president and real estate baron Donald Trump and the Clinton family.

In February, Prince Andrew settled a sexual abuse lawsuit with Virginia Giuffre, who said she had been trafficked to the royal by Epstein and Maxwell.

Maxwell’s lawyers asked Nathan to show leniency and sentence their client to no more than five years.

They said she had suffered “a difficult, traumatic childhood with an overbearing, narcissistic, and demanding father.”

“It made her vulnerable to Epstein, whom she met right after her father’s death,” they wrote in submissions this month, adding that Maxwell “cannot and should not bear all the punishment for which Epstein should have been held responsible.”

Money manager Epstein, then aged 66, hanged himself in jail in 2019 while awaiting his own sex crimes trial in New York.

Maxwell’s lead attorney Bobbi Sternheim told reporters that she would appeal the sentence.

In April, Nathan rejected a request by Maxwell for a new trial. 

She unsuccessfully argued that a juror, who had boasted of helping convince fellow panelists to convict Maxwell by recalling his own experiences as a sex abuse victim, had biased the jury.

Ghislaine Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison Tuesday for helping late financier Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse girls, capping the former socialite’s sordid fall from grace.

The Oxford-educated daughter of the late British press baron Robert Maxwell appeared not to react as New York Judge Alison Nathan handed down the term in a packed Manhattan federal court.

The sentence was much less than prosecutors sought but still means the 60-year-old friend to royalty and former US presidents is likely to spend much of the rest of her life in jail.

Nathan called Maxwell’s crimes “heinous and predatory” as she went with the amount of time recommended by the US probation office, rejecting Maxwell’s claims that she was pursued by prosecutors only because Epstein escaped trial by killing himself in prison.

“It is important to emphasize that although Epstein was central to this criminal scheme, Ms Maxwell is not being punished in place of Epstein or as a proxy for Epstein,” said the judge.

Maxwell was convicted late last year on five of six counts, the most serious for sex trafficking minors following a month-long high-profile trial in New York.

The charges stemmed from crimes committed between 1994 and 2004.

Prosecutors successfully proved that she was “the key” to Epstein’s scheme of enticing young girls to give him massages, during which he would sexually abuse them.

Two of Epstein’s victims, identified as “Jane” and “Carolyn,” testified that they were as young as 14 when Maxwell began grooming them.

Maxwell expressed sympathy for the victims during a statement in court Tuesday, saying she was “sorry for the pain that you experienced” but blamed Epstein.

“I believe that Jeffrey Epstein was a manipulative, cunning and controlling man who lived a profoundly compartmentalized life and fooled all of those in his orbit,” she said.

Prosecutors had called for Maxwell to receive between 30 and 55 years in jail, saying she “was an adult who made her own choices.”

In a statement, Damian Williams, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, said the 20-year term “sends a strong message that no one is above the law and it is never too late for justice.”

“Today’s sentence holds Ghislaine Maxwell accountable for perpetrating heinous crimes against children,” he said.

– Appeal –

Maxwell has already been held in detention for some two years following her arrest in New Hampshire in the summer of 2020, meaning she will likely be released in her late 70s.

“Ghislaine must die in prison,” Maxwell and Epstein accuser Sarah Ransome told reporters outside court before the sentence was read out.

Maxwell’s sentencing completes a dramatic fall for the former international jetsetter who grew up in wealth and privilege as a friend to royalty.

Her circle included Britain’s Prince Andrew, former US president and real estate baron Donald Trump and the Clinton family.

In February, Prince Andrew settled a sexual abuse lawsuit with Virginia Giuffre, who said she had been trafficked to the royal by Epstein and Maxwell.

Maxwell’s lawyers asked Nathan to show leniency and sentence their client to no more than five years.

They said she had suffered “a difficult, traumatic childhood with an overbearing, narcissistic, and demanding father.”

“It made her vulnerable to Epstein, whom she met right after her father’s death,” they wrote in submissions this month, adding that Maxwell “cannot and should not bear all the punishment for which Epstein should have been held responsible.”

Money manager Epstein hanged himself in jail in 2019 aged 66 while awaiting his own sex crimes trial in New York.

Maxwell’s lead attorney Bobbi Sternheim told reporters that she would appeal the sentence.

In April, Nathan rejected a request by Maxwell for a new trial. 

She unsuccessfully argued that a juror, who had boasted of helping convince fellow panelists to convict Maxwell by recalling his own experiences as a sex abuse victim, had biased the jury.

Safeguarding the world’s oceans will be fundamental to tackling global warming, US climate envoy John Kerry told AFP on Tuesday, warning that war in Ukraine and its economic fallout meant efforts to curb dangerous carbon pollution were facing “powerful headwinds”.

The interview, on the margins of the UN Ocean Conference in Lisbon, has been edited for length.

Q. This meeting has no negotiating agenda. How will it feed into critical year-end summits on biodiversity and climate change?

You cannot solve the problem of the climate crisis without dealing with the ocean, which is a critical as a sink for carbon dioxide. And you can’t solve the problems in the oceans without dealing with climate, because greenhouse gas emissions are acidifying and warming ocean waters.

We just discussed this at a high-level session with a cross-section of countries. Everybody was in complete agreement about the priority of the oceans being integrated into the Sharm el-Sheikh COP (the November UN climate summit in Egypt).

Whether it is the green shipping corridors initiative (for carbon-free shipping); the memorandum that President Biden signed today to combat illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing on the high seas; or setting aside 30 percent of nations’ exclusive economic zones as protected areas — every step of the way, there are linkages between the ocean and what we need to do on climate.

Q: Does the US support a call made here by the leaders of Palau and Fiji for a moratorium on deep sea mining for minerals used in making electric car batteries?

We haven’t taken an official position on it. But we have expressed deep concerns about adequately researching the impacts of any deep-sea mining, and we have not approved any. 

Q. Maritime shipping accounts for about three percent of global greenhouse gas emissions — just over a billion tonnes of C02 — per year. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has set a goal of cutting those emissions 50 percent by 2050 from 2008 levels. Is that good enough?

No. We want zero-emissions for that sector no later than 2050. That includes compatible goals for 2030 and 2040 in order to reach that. The next months are critical.

Q. The war in Ukraine has seen an upsurge in shipping liquified natural gas (LNG). Is there not a danger of creating a temporary solution for energy that becomes a permanent problem for climate?

It depends what rules are established for the transition. We are not in favour of building out 20-, 30- and 40-year LNG infrastructure without it being green-hydrogen ready, ammonia ready. You have to stay on a track to hit net-zero by 2050. That includes gas. So we’re going to have to be able to capture carbon and store or utilise it.

Preparing for the G7 summit (June 26-28 in Germany), I just viewed language (of the draft communique) that specifically says any replacement gas for Russia has to stay within the bounds of the climate goals accepted in Glasgow and Paris. Nobody is talking about stepping outside of that. 

Ukraine is not an excuse to suddenly turn away and not adhere to the promises made. If we do not reduce enough between 2020 and 2030, you cannot reach net zero by 2050 –- it’s just that simple.

Q. A minister from a Caribbean nation — whose portfolio includes managing subsidies — told me this morning that in a period of inflation and recession, climate priorities come last. Are we headed for rough weather?

Yes. There are very powerful headwinds right now. But we have to keep our eye on the ball. If the economic transition gets the investment it needs -– and that’s what we’re working on — there will be a huge number of jobs, supply chains will improve, and inflation can come down.

The climate crisis is not going away. If you think it’s expensive today to deal with climate wait until we see tens of millions of people who have to move from somewhere because of the extreme heat, or the breadbasket of a particular country has completely imploded as a result of drought. 

None of this is going to get easier. Damage from the climate crisis is going to now grow for literally centuries. That’s the predicament we have already put ourselves in by not facing up to the need for clean energy.

Here are the latest developments in the war in Ukraine:

– Turkey backs Finland, Sweden NATO membership – 

Turkey has agreed to support Finland and Sweden’s NATO membership bid, Finland and Turkey say.

A trilateral agreement signed in Madrid “confirms that Turkey will at the Madrid (NATO) Summit this week support the invitation of Finland and Sweden to become members of NATO,” Finnish president Sauli Niinisto says in a statement, after he and the leader of Sweden met Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Erdogan’s office confirms that Ankara will back the membership drive, saying Ankara “got what it wanted” from Sweden and Finland.

Turkey has been resisting attempts by the two longstanding non-aligned Nordic states to join NATO in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, saying Finland and Sweden have provided a safe haven for Kurdish militants engaged in a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state.

NATO leaders will formally invite Finland and Sweden to join the alliance Wednesday, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg says. 

– G7 to make Russia ‘pay’ –

The Group of Seven leading industrialised powers vows to make Russia pay for its invasion of Ukraine, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz says, stressing that “(President Vladimir) Putin must not be allowed to win”.

“The G7 stands united in its support for Ukraine,” Scholz tells a news conference at the end of a three-day summit in the German Alps.

“We will continue to keep up and drive up the economic and political costs of this war for President Putin and his regime.”

The leaders agree to work on a price cap for Russian oil, as part of efforts to cut the Kremlin’s revenues, a US official says.

– Ukraine must surrender: Kremlin –

The Kremlin says Russia will halt its offensive as soon as Ukraine surrenders, urging Kyiv to order its troops to lay down arms.

“The Ukrainian side can stop everything before the end of today,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov tells reporters. “An order for the nationalist units to lay down their arms is necessary.”

– Mall ‘terror’ – 

Ukrainian officials say at least 18 people were killed and 59 wounded in a Russian missile strike on a shopping mall in central Ukraine on Monday in what G7 leaders call a “war crime”. 

The Russian military says the target of the strike was an arms depot and that the resulting explosions triggered the blaze at the shopping mall, which it claims was shut at the time of the attack.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky says Russia must be labelled a “state sponsor of terrorism” after the attack.

– ‘Brutality’ –

 

NATO chief Stoltenberg urges alliance leaders at their Madrid summit to keep up their backing for Ukraine amid the Russian onslaught. 

“It is extremely important that we are ready to continue to provide support because Ukraine now faces a brutality which we haven’t seen in Europe since the Second World War,” he says.

At the meeting NATO is expected to boost high readiness forces to more than 300,000 troops.

The United States will also announce new long-term military deployments across Europe in response to the threat from Russia, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan says.

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Former US president Donald Trump tried to take the steering wheel from his Secret Service limousine driver in a bid to join the crowd marching on the US Capitol, a top aide in his administration testified Tuesday.

Trump got into his car after addressing his supporters at a rally near the White House on January 6, 2021, Cassidy Hutchinson told a congressional panel, and was told he couldn’t be with his supporters who were gathering ahead of the protest that turned into a deadly insurrection. 

“I’m the effing president, take me up to the Capitol now,” Trump said, according to Hutchinson, who said the story was relayed to her by another administration official.

White House counsel Pat Cipollone had voiced legal concerns about Trump marching to the Capitol alongside his supporters, Hutchinson said. 

“We’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable if we make that happen,” Hutchison recalled Cipollone warning.

Hutchinson, a former top White House aide with unique access to Trump and the inner workings of the West Wing, was testifying at the sixth June hearing of the House committee probing the attack on the US Capitol.

An executive assistant to Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, she was a central figure in the White House around the period of the insurrection on January 6 last year.

In some of the most explosive testimony from the hearings so far, Hutchinson said Trump and some of his top lieutenants were aware of the possibility of violence ahead of the attack — contradicting claims that the assault was spontaneous and had nothing to do with the administration.

– ‘Things might get real’ –

Hutchinson said she recalled her boss saying four days before the insurrection: “Things might get real, real bad on January 6.”

Hutchinson had sought out Meadows, she said, after a White House meeting involving Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani. 

As they were heading to Giuliani’s car, he asked her if she was “excited” for January 6, she testified. 

When she asked what was happening on that day, Hutchinson testified that Giuliani “responded something to the effect of, ‘We’re going to the Capitol,'” Hutchinson said.

“‘It’s going to be great. The president’s going to be there. He’s going to look powerful. He’s going to be with the members. He’s going to be with the senators. Talk to the chief about it. Talk to the chief about it. He knows about it.'”

She told Meadows what Giuliani had said, she testified.

“He didn’t look up from his phone and said something to the effect of, ‘There’s a lot going on, Cass, but I don’t know. Things might get real, real bad on January 6,'” Hutchinson told the hearing.

“When hearing Rudy’s take on January 6, and then Mark’s response, that was the first moment that I remember feeling scared and nervous for what could happen on January 6,” she added.

Hutchinson told the committee that she heard the names of far right groups the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys discussed in the White House as January 6 approached.

Meadows and Trump were aware of the possibility of violence, including that members of the pro-Trump mob were armed when they gathered on the Ellipse that day, Hutchinson said.  

– ‘Lack of reaction’ –

When she told Meadows violence had erupted, Meadows “almost had a lack of reaction,” Hutchinson said.

Vice chair Liz Cheney said the committee had obtained police reports that people at the Trump rally on the Ellipse had knives, Tasers, pepper spray and blunt objects that could be used as weapons.

Police transmissions played at the hearing showed that others outside the rally had firearms including AR-15 semi-automatic rifles.

Hutchinson has already been the source of several blockbuster revelations, appearing in videotaped depositions at two previous hearings and memorably naming a group of House Republicans who sought pardons from Trump following the violence.

She was also in contact with officials in the battleground state of Georgia, where Trump infamously pressured officials to “find” enough votes to overcome Biden’s victory margin in a phone call that is the subject of a criminal probe.

It was Hutchinson, according to CNN, who told the select committee that Trump voiced approval for the “hang Mike Pence” chants from rioters at the Capitol — an allegation that was among the many eye-popping claims to come out of the opening hearing on June 9.

Meadows himself has refused to testify before the panel since handing over thousands of text messages and other documents in the early stages of the investigation.

The House of Representatives held Meadows in contempt in December but the Justice Department decided not to charge him.