Arizona senator Kyrsten Sinema leaves Democrats to become independent – live

Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate majority leader, has issued a brief statement on the decision by Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema to sit in the chamber as an independent.

He says she will keep her committee assignments, which he doesn’t really have a choice about if Democrats are to retain a semblance of control:

Senator Sinema informed me of her decision to change her affiliation to Independent. She asked me to keep her committee assignments and I agreed.

Kyrsten is independent; that’s how she’s always been. I believe she’s a good and effective Senator and am looking forward to a productive session in the new Democratic majority Senate.

We will maintain our new majority on committees, exercise our subpoena power, and be able to clear nominees without discharge votes.

Meanwhile, The Hill has been collating reports that the 6 January House panel looking into Donald Trump’s insurrection is also considering criminal referrals, for Trump and at least four of the ex-president’s team.

They are Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff; John Eastman, a conservative lawyer; Jeffrey Clark, a former justice department official; and Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s one-time personal attorney.

All four were involved in plotting or executing Trump’s scheme to try to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden, the panel believes, and is considering whether to recommend them to the justice department for criminal investigation or charges.

“The committee has not officially decided whom to refer for prosecution and for what offenses,” CNN reported, citing anonymous sources, and says others could also be considered.

The Guardian reported Tuesday that criminal referrals were imminent from the January 6 committee, but this is the first time these names have been reported. Representatives of the panel would not comment.

You can read The Hill’s report here.

While we’ve been occupied this morning with Kyrsten Sinema’s defection and Brittney Griner’s homecoming, we haven’t taken our eye off Donald Trump’s legal peril, and developments with the investigations into his insurrection and mishandling of classified documents. Here’s the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell on the latest:

The US justice department is seeking a top federal judge to hold Donald Trump’s political office in contempt of court for not fully complying with a grand jury subpoena issued in May demanding the return of all classified documents in its possession, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The department in recent weeks asked the chief US district court judge for the District of Columbia, Beryl Howell, to hold Trump’s office in contempt after prosecutors were unable to get the former president’s lawyers to designate a custodian of records to certify all records were returned.

Howell has not ruled on the matter, which remains under seal. But the move, earlier reported by the Washington Post, significantly raises the stakes for Trump as he stares down a criminal investigation into unauthorized retention of national security information and obstruction of justice.

The issue is to do with the Trump legal team’s reluctance to designate a custodian of records to certify that Trump is no longer in possession of any documents marked classified and thus in compliance with the subpoena that demanded the return of all such government records, the source said.

If the Trump legal team could not find someone to certify under oath that all documents bearing classified markings had been returned, the department is said to have communicated, it would seek a judicial sanction.

The contempt action is understood to be focused on Trump’s office because the subpoena, issued on 11 May, sought the return of all documents and writings “in the custody of Donald J Trump and/or the Office of Donald J Trump” bearing classification markings.

Read the full story:

As we’ve mentioned Republican criticism of Joe Biden for trading basketball star Brittney Griner for convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout, here’s Florida senator Marco Rubio’s considered opinion:

“We have to recognize, even as we’re happy an American’s coming home, it does incentivize the taking of more Americans,” he told reporters on Friday morning.

The theme from Republicans seems to be that the exchange was a very poor deal for Biden. Even Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who angered his party by joining the January 6 committee, weighed in.

Although Biden stressed on Thursday the deal was essentially “get Griner or get nobody”, Kinzinger appeared furious that Paul Whelan, an American detained in Russia for four years on espionage charges, was left behind:

Not so fast, says Tristan Snell, a political analyst and lawyer who helped prosecute the Trump University scam while at the New York attorney general’s office. As president, Snell says, Trump secured the release of a Taliban leader, Abdul Ghani Baradar, for… absolutely nobody.

Russia’s president Vladimir Putin has said more prisoner swaps are possible after Moscow yesterday released American basketball star Brittney Griner in exchange for arms dealer Viktor Bout, the Associated Press reports.

“Everything is possible,” Putin said, when asked in an interview if another such exchange could happen. “We aren’t refusing to continue this work in the future.”

Still detained in Russia is Paul Whelan, an American corporate security executive who is facing espionage charges. Republicans criticized Joe Biden for agreeing to a deal that did not include Whelan, a former marine, while the president pledged to continue working for his release.

A major question facing Democrats is whether Kyrsten Sinema will continue to caucus with them in the Senate.

While they don’t strictly need her vote to control the chamber, they were counting on her to push their majority from its current 50-50 split – where vice-president Kamala Harris breaks ties – to an outright 51 seat majority, which would make getting their agenda through the Senate easier.

The senator dodged a question about that in an interview with Phoenix’s KTAR radio station, while suggesting she’d caucus with neither party but still remain on committees:

Kyrsten Sinema distinguished herself among senators for avoiding reporters and rarely granting interviews over the last two years. She reversed that trend today, speaking to Politico and writing an op-ed in the Arizona Republic.

She also spoke about her decision in an interview with CNN:

Kyrsten Sinema has infuriated Democrats to such a degree that a group had already organized to challenge her in the party’s primary.

That won’t be happening since the senator has departed the party, but the group, aptly named Primary Sinema, has pledged to fight on:

White House expects to ‘continue to work successfully’ with Sinema

Women’s basketball star Brittney Griner is back on American soil after yesterday’s prisoner exchange with arms dealer Viktor Bout:

The American basketball star Brittney Griner returned to the US early on Friday after being freed in a high-profile prisoner exchange from nearly 10 months in detention in Russia.

The deal, in which she was swapped for the Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, secured the release of the most prominent American detained abroad and achieved a top goal for Joe Biden. But Washington failed to win freedom for another US citizen, Paul Whelan, who has been jailed for nearly four years.

Griner is a two-time Olympic gold medallist, Baylor University All-American and Phoenix Mercury pro basketball star. Her status as an openly gay Black woman, locked up in a country where authorities have been hostile to the LBGTQ community, injected racial, gender and social dynamics into her legal saga and brought unprecedented attention to the population of wrongful detainees.

Sinema’s departure from the Democratic party is less about frustrating their ability to run the Senate for the next two years, and more about protecting her own position in Arizona, Semafor reports.

She’s unpopular enough with Democrats in the state that she was widely expected to face a primary in 2024. But now that she’s out of the party, that primary won’t happen. Instead, Democrats are going to face the tough decision of whether to run a candidate against her – and risk splitting their voters and losing the seat to the GOP – or accept that she’s their best bet, even if she isn’t actually in the party.

Here’s more from Semafor:

Sinema: independence ‘won’t change my work in Senate’

Sinema leaves Democrats to become independent