Trump news today: Jared Kushner appears before Jan 6 committee

Donald Trump’s son-in-law and former White House adviser Jared Kushner has appeared virtually before the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riot. His testimony is said to have been “really valuable”.

The meeting comes as White House records turned over to the committee by the National Archives and Records Administration do not include any calls made or received by Mr Trump between the hours of 11.17am and 6.54pm on the day of the storming of Congress.

The panel is now probing whether Mr Trump or his advisers used untraceable “burner phones” to evade official record-keeping systems which documented the president’s inbound and outbound phone calls that day. Mr Trump denied doing so in a statement in which he claimed to have “no idea what a burner phone is” and has never used the term. However, law suits filed on his behalf and a statement by former national security adviser John Bolton indicate otherwise.

Meanwhile, the current administration blasted Mr Trump’s request for Russian President Vladimir Putin to release potentially damaging information on President Joe Biden’s son in the middle of the war in Ukraine.

“What kind of American, let alone an ex-president, thinks that this is the right time to enter into a scheme with Vladimir Putin and brag about his connections to Vladimir Putin? There is only one, and it’s Donald Trump,” White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield said to reporters on Wednesday.