The United States is proposing more international sanctions against North Korea, as part of a wider effort to ramp up pressure on Pyongyang following its most recent missile tests.

The United States Wednesday strengthened its own sanctions against North Korea, designating five North Koreans it alleges are responsible for securing goods for Pyongyang’s weapons programs.

On top of those measures, the United States wants the United Nations Security Council to impose stronger sanctions, according to a tweet from Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

She did not offer any more details.

There was no immediate reaction from China and Russia, which are permanent members of the Security Council and would need to approve any sanctions. Both have recently called for North Korea sanctions to be relaxed rather than strengthened.

North Korea is already barred from a wide range of economic activity under a series of Security Council resolutions. China and Russia agreed to many of those sanctions following North Korea’s 2017 nuclear and long-range missile tests.

Since then, North Korea has refrained from nuclear tests or intercontinental ballistic missile launches. In 2019, though, the North resumed launches of shorter-range weapons. It has since unveiled several new systems, including many designed to evade the missile defenses of the U.S. and its allies.

Already this year North Korea has conducted two tests of what it described as hypersonic missiles. The missiles feature maneuverable reentry vehicles that detach in flight and are theoretically harder to intercept.

U.S. officials condemned the launches, pointing out that North Korea is banned from ballistic missile activity by existing U.N. sanctions.

On Wednesday, the United States went a step further. The Treasury Department sanctioned four China-based North Koreans and a Russia-based North Korean, accusing them of procuring materials for North Korea’s weapons programs.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States “will use every appropriate tool” to address North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs, “which constitute a serious threat to international peace and security and undermine the global nonproliferation regime.”

Taken together, the moves suggest the United States is taking a firmer stance on North Korean missile tests. Since 2019, the United States has played down North Korea’s short-range launches, presumably to preserve the possibility for future talks.

State Department spokesperson Ned Price said Wednesday that the U.S. approach toward North Korea “remains unchanged.”

“I would strenuously object to the idea that these sanctions indicate anything other than a genuine effort to constrain North Korea’s – in this case, their ballistic missile programs,” Price said at a regular press briefing. The United States remains “willing, ready, and able” to engage in diplomacy with North Korea, he added.

North Korea walked away from nuclear talks in 2019 and has said it will not rejoin them until the United States drops its “hostile policy.”

The United States appears to be balancing the need to respond to North Korea’s tests against its goal of keeping the door open to negotiations, Eric Brewer, a former White House National Security Council official, said.

“It seems they are framing this in strictly counterproliferation terms and avoiding some of the language that would suggest a larger pressure-centric effort is in the offing,” said Brewer, who now focuses on nuclear policy at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Despite the apparent inability of existing sanctions to prevent North Korea from developing its nuclear weapons program, U.S. officials have defended the approach, saying it is important to set a precedent for other nations considering acquiring nuclear weapons.

“We continue to enact measures that put constraints on these WMD and ballistic missile programs, that hold proliferators and other bad actors accountable for their activity,” Price said Wednesday. “We’ll continue to do that.” 

 
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Only a tiny percentage of thousands of vulnerable Afghans seeking to move to the United States under a refugee resettlement program announced last summer have relocated overseas to begin the processing of their applications, according to unpublished State Department data. 

There are two primary avenues for Afghans seeking to move to the United States. One is a decade-old special immigrant visa program open to military interpreters and others who worked on government-funded contracts. The other is a refugee admission program run by the State Department and other agencies. 

In early August, as a Taliban onslaught threatened to bring down the U.S.-backed government in Kabul and triggered a surge in demand for special immigrant visas, the State Department announced that at-risk Afghans ineligible for the SIV program could seek refugee status under a new Priority 2 designation. 

Although the United States and its allies evacuated more than 124,000 people from Kabul after the Taliban takeover, tens of thousands of other vulnerable Afghans who were left behind are struggling to find a pathway to safety. 

The Priority 2, or P-2, refugee program was meant to help relocate at-risk Afghans such as journalists and rights activists who were otherwise ineligible for special immigrant visas available to military interpreters. 

To be eligible, an individual must have worked in Afghanistan for the U.S. government, a U.S.-based media organization or nongovernmental organization, and must be referred by the U.S.-based employer. 

Unprotected Afghans who do not meet the P-2 criteria may be referred under the State Department’s pre-existing Priority 1 refugee program by the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees or a designated NGO. 

But regardless of the designation, referral to the program came with a catch that has hindered the ability of most Afghans to take advantage of it. Applicants must first relocate to a third country where their applications are processed, a procedure that, according to the State Department, can take 14 to 18 months or more. 

For Afghans without appropriate travel documents to leave Afghanistan or the financial means to live in a third country, the requirement has proved to be an insurmountable obstacle. As a result, the vast majority of applicants to the refugee program, many of them journalists, human rights activists and aid workers, have remained stranded in Afghanistan facing an uncertain future.

“It clearly is not suited for a situation where people are being prevented from leaving,” said a U.S. government official with access to the Afghan refugee data who asked to remain anonymous when discussing the program’s challenges. “If this was a country where it was easy to get out, then P-2 would be fine.” 

State Department data shared with VOA by a spokesman show that the department has received about 12,000 referrals to the Afghan P-2 refugee resettlement program and approximately 17,000 P-1 referrals. 

Of the total number of referrals, more than 4,200 have “accepted” status, meaning they have submitted all the required documents. But just over 350 — a little more than 1% of all P-1 and P-2 applicants together — are identified as having been moved to a third country, including Pakistan and Turkey, where processing of their cases has begun, according to two people familiar with the data. 

The government official cautioned that the actual number of people who have relocated to a third country could be higher, noting that some refuge-seeking Afghans may not have contacted the State Department yet. But even if more people have left, tens of thousands still are stranded in Afghanistan. 

“Hearing that only one percent of people have been able to leave the country and move to the next step, unfortunately, confirms our worst fears,” said Betsy Fisher, director of strategy at International Refugee Assistance Project, a refugee advocacy organization based in New York. “I think it shows that there is a tremendous amount of work to be done to make this program work.” 

Logistical challenges frustrate P-2 applicants

The State Department has long recognized the difficulty many Afghans face in moving overseas to begin the processing of their refugee cases. Asked what the State Department was doing to make the P-2 program work, the spokesman said, “We continue to call for safe passage for all those who wish to leave Afghanistan, and we have been very public about advocacy to other countries to respect the principle of nonrefoulement and to allow entry for Afghans seeking protection. 

“Individuals with urgent protection needs should follow procedures to register for international protection and assistance with the government of the country they are in,” the spokesman said. 

For P-2 applicants unable to leave Afghanistan, that’s no comfort. Most lack passports to travel and money to live on for an extended period in a foreign country. What is more, uncertainty over whether a case will be approved deters many from leaving the country, said a Kabul-based TV writer and producer who has been referred to the program by a U.S.-based nongovernmental organization. 

“I can try to sell everything I own and move to a third country but what if, at the end of the process, they reject my case? What do I do then?” the writer, who requested anonymity, said in a WhatsApp message to VOA. 

Even those who have made it to a third country and received a status confirmation from the State Department complain about the exorbitant cost of an unpredictably long waiting time. 

“Without money, a job, and a house to live in, I simply cannot afford to wait for a process that could take years,” said a veteran Afghan editor who is staying at a guesthouse in Islamabad, Pakistan. 

This quandary has led some frustrated refugee advocates to suggest that the administration should simply shut down the program if it can’t find a way to help the applicants leave the country. 

Pushing for changes

Others, however, say shuttering the program is not a solution. Instead, they’ve been pressing the Biden administration to institute a number of changes to the program. 

One proposal would expand the SIV program to allow employees of NGOs and other Afghans to apply for immigrant visas. Another would direct the State Department to prioritize the evacuation of P-2 applicants along with SIV applicants. Some advocates have pushed for financial support for P-2 applicants living in a third country. 

None of the proposals has gained public support from the Biden administration, which, according to refugee advocates, remains focused on evacuating American citizens, permanent residents and special immigrant visa holders. 

“The administration has told us in many, many different ways that the P-2 program is not a priority of theirs,” said Katie LaRoque, senior manager for democracy, rights and governance at InterAction, an alliance of U.S.-based international NGOs. 

Supporters of the Afghan evacuation say they haven’t given up the fight. 

“While the U.S. military is no longer present in Afghanistan, our mission there is not over,” said Republican Representative Peter Meijer, who last year co-sponsored legislation that would expand the SIV program and ask the administration to prioritize the evacuation of P-2 applicants from Afghanistan. 

“We still have interpreters and other Afghan partners who put themselves and their loved ones at risk now stranded in Afghanistan, and the chaotic and heartbreaking withdrawal that the world witnessed over the summer shows just how vulnerable they still are.” 

This week the United Nations launched a more than $5 billion funding appeal for Afghanistan, much of it aimed at direct payments to health workers and others, instead of financial support for the Taliban government. Aid groups warn half the population faces acute hunger in what is one of the world’s most quickly worsening humanitarian crises. 

VOA’s Cindy Saine and Nike Ching contributed to this report.
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Iran and the United States are displaying little flexibility on core issues in indirect nuclear talks, raising questions about whether a compromise can be found soon to renew a 2015 deal that could dispel fears of a wider Middle East war, diplomats say. 

After eight rounds of talks, the thorniest points remain the speed and scope of lifting sanctions on Tehran — including Iran’s demand for a U.S. guarantee of no further punitive steps — and how and when to restore curbs on Iran’s atomic work. 

The nuclear deal limited Iran’s uranium enrichment activity to make it harder for it to develop nuclear arms — an ambition Tehran denies — in return for lifting international sanctions. 

But former U.S. President Donald Trump ditched the pact in 2018, saying it did not do enough to curb Iran’s nuclear activities, ballistic missile program and regional influence, and reimposed sanctions that badly damaged Iran’s economy. 

After waiting for a year, Iran responded to Trump’s pressure by gradually breaching the accord, including rebuilding stockpiles of enriched uranium, refining it to higher fissile purity and installing advanced centrifuges to speed up output. 

Following months of stop-start talks that began after Joe Biden replaced Trump in the White House, Western officials now say time is running out to resurrect the pact. But Iranian officials deny they are under time pressure, arguing the economy can survive thanks to oil sales to China. 

‘We need guarantees’ 

A former Iranian official said Iran’s rulers “are certain that their uncompromising, maximalist approach will give results.” 

France said on Tuesday that despite some progress at the end of December, Iran and world powers were still far away from reviving the deal. 

The U.S. State Department said on January 4 the issues “at the heart of the negotiations” were sanctions relief and the nuclear steps that Iran would take to return the accord. 

Iran insists on immediate removal of all Trump-era sanctions in a verifiable process. Washington has said it would remove curbs inconsistent with the 2015 pact if Iran resumed compliance with the deal, implying it would leave in place others such as those imposed under terrorism or human rights measures. 

“Americans should give assurances that no new sanctions under any label would be imposed on Iran in future. We need guarantees that America will not abandon the deal again,” said a senior Iranian official. 

Iran’s Nournews, a media outlet affiliated to the Supreme National Security Council, reported on Wednesday that Iran’s key conditions at the talks “are assurances and verifications.” 

U.S. officials were not immediately available to comment on the question of guarantees. However, U.S. officials have said Biden cannot promise the U.S. government will not renege on the agreement because the nuclear deal is a non-binding political understanding, not a legally-binding treaty. 

Asked to comment on that U.S. constitutional reality, an Iranian official said: “It’s their internal problem.” 

On the issue of obtaining verification that sanctions have been removed — at which point Iran would have to revive curbs on its nuclear program — the senior Iranian official said Iran and Washington differed over the timetable. 

“Iran needs a couple of weeks to verify sanctions removal (before it reverses its nuclear steps). But the other party says a few days would be enough to load oil on a ship, export it and transfer its money through banking system,” the official said. 

Threats 

Shadowing the background of the talks have been threats by Israel, widely believed to have the Middle East’s only nuclear weaponry but which sees Iran as a existential threat, to attack Iranian nuclear installations if it deems diplomacy ultimately futile in containing Tehran’s atomic abilities and potential. 

Iran says it would hit back hard if it were attacked. 

A Western diplomat said “early-February is a realistic end-date for Vienna talks” as the longer Iran remains outside the deal, the more nuclear expertise it will gain, shortening the time it might need to race to build a bomb if it chose to. 

“Still we are not sure whether Iran really wants a deal,” said another Western diplomat. 

Iran has ruled out adhering to any “artificial” deadline. 

“Several times, they asked Iran to slow down its nuclear work during the talks, and even Americans conveyed messages about an interim deal through other parties,” said a second Iranian official, close to Iran’s negotiating team. 

“It was rejected by Iran.” 

Asked for comment, a State Department spokesperson who declined to be identified told Reuters: “Of course we — and the whole international community — want Iran to slow down their nuclear program and have communicated that very clearly.” 

“Beyond that, we don’t negotiate the details in public, but these reports are far off.” 

Other points of contention include Iran’s advanced nuclear centrifuges — machines that purify uranium for use as fuel in atomic power plants or, if purified to a high level, weapons. 

“Discussions continue on Iran’s demand to store and seal its advanced centrifuges. … They wanted those centrifuges to be dismantled and shipped abroad,” the first official said. 

Asked to comment on this question, a Western diplomat said: “We are looking for ways to overcome our differences with Iran about verification process.” 

 
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A new study suggests the United States is about to undergo a dramatic decline in new  COVID-19 infections driven by the omicron variant of the coronavirus.

Researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle predict that the number of daily reported cases will peak at 1.2 million by January 19 before undergoing a sharp fall. Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrics sciences at the university, told The Associated Press the reason for the expected decline is “simply because everybody who could be infected will be infected.”

The British government is also reporting a sharp decline in new COVID-19 cases, falling from more than 200,000 cases per day earlier this month to about 140,000 daily in the last week.  

A separate study conducted by researchers at Kaiser Permanente of Southern California shows omicron causes less severe disease than other variants. The researchers studied the records of nearly 70,000 coronavirus patients treated by the health system, and found that more than 50,000 of them infected with omicron did not have to be put on a mechanical breathing machine.  The researchers also found that the omicron-infected patients had a shorter period of hospitalization compared to the delta variant of the coronavirus.  

The study, which was posted online Tuesday and has not been peer reviewed, confirms similar findings from studies conducted last month in Britain and South Africa, where the omicron variant was first detected back in November before its rapid global spread.  

Meanwhile, members of the World Health Organization’s special COVID-19 vaccine advisory board warned Tuesday that the current vaccines need to be updated to ensure they are effective against omicron and other coronavirus variants.  The board issued a statement saying a strategy based on “repeated booster doses of the original vaccine composition is unlikely to be appropriate or sustainable.”   

In a story published last month by the U.S.-based military publication Defense One, researchers at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, the largest of its kind in the U.S. military, are developing an experimental  “pan-coronavirus” shot that can offer protection against all coronaviruses, including the one that causes COVID-19, as well as its strains, including omicron and delta.  

In other vaccine news, South Korea has authorized the use of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by U.S.-based drugmaker Novavax. This version will be used alongside the other two-dose vaccines developed by AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot vaccine. The new vaccine will be administered to South Korean adults 18 years old and older beginning next month.  

The European Medicines Agency recommended the Novavax vaccine last month for use in the 27-nation European Union. India’s drug regulator also granted emergency use authorization for the Novavax shot last month.   

Some information for this report came from the Associated Press and Reuters.
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Benjamin Whitely headed to a Safeway supermarket in Washington D.C. on Tuesday to grab some items for dinner. But he was disappointed to find the vegetable bins barren and a sparse selection of turkey, chicken and milk.

“Seems like I missed out on everything,” Whitely, 67, said. “I’m going to have to hunt around for stuff now.”

Shortages at U.S. grocery stores have grown more acute in recent weeks as new problems — like the fast-spreading omicron variant and severe weather — have piled on to the supply chain struggles and labor shortages that have plagued retailers since the coronavirus pandemic began.

The shortages are widespread, impacting produce and meat as well as packaged goods such as cereal. And they’re being reported nationwide. U.S. groceries typically have 5% to 10% of their items out of stock at any given time; right now, that unavailability rate is hovering around 15%, according to Consumer Brands Association President and CEO Geoff Freeman.

Part of the scarcity consumers are seeing on store shelves is due to pandemic trends that never abated – and are exacerbated by omicron. Americans are eating at home more than they used to, especially since offices and some schools remain closed.

The average U.S. household spent $144 per week at the grocery last year, according to FMI, a trade organization for groceries and food producers. That was down from the peak of $161 in 2020, but still far above the $113.50 that households spent in 2019.

A deficit of truck drivers that started building before the pandemic also remains a problem. The American Trucking Associations said in October that the U.S. was short an estimated 80,000 drivers, a historic high.

And shipping remains delayed, impacting everything from imported foods to packaging that is printed overseas.

Retailers and food producers have been adjusting to those realities since early 2020, when panic buying at the start of the pandemic sent the industry into a tailspin. Many retailers are keeping more supplies of things like toilet paper on hand, for example, to avoid acute shortages.

“All of the players in the supply chain ecosystem have gotten to a point where they have that playbook and they’re able to navigate that baseline level of challenges,” said Jessica Dankert, vice president of supply chain at the Retail Industry Leaders Association, a trade group.

Generally, the system works; Dankert notes that bare shelves have been a rare phenomenon over the last 20 months. It’s just that additional complications have stacked up on that baseline at the moment, she said.

As it has with staffing at hospitals, schools and offices, the omicron variant has taken a toll on food production lines. Sean Connolly, the president and CEO of Conagra Brands, which makes Birds Eye frozen vegetables, Slim Jim meat snacks and other products, told investors last week that supplies from the company’s U.S. plants will be constrained for at least the next month due to omicron-related absences.

Worker illness is also impacting grocery stores. Stew Leonard Jr. is president and CEO of Stew Leonard’s, a supermarket chain that operates stores in Connecticut, New York and New Jersey. Last week, 8% of his workers – around 200 people – were either out sick or in quarantine. Usually, the level of absenteeism is more like 2%.

One store bakery had so many people out sick that it dropped some of its usual items, like apple crumb cake. Leonard says meat and produce suppliers have told him they are also dealing with omicron-related worker shortages.

Still, Leonard says he is generally getting shipments on time, and thinks the worst of the pandemic may already be over.

Weather-related events, from snowstorms in the Northeast to wildfires in Colorado, also have impacted product availability and caused some shoppers to stock up more than usual, exacerbating supply problems caused by the pandemic.

Lisa DeLima, a spokesperson for Mom’s Organic Market, an independent grocer with locations in the mid-Atlantic region, said the company’s stores did not have produce to stock last weekend because winter weather halted trucks trying to get from Pennsylvania to Washington.

That bottleneck has since been resolved, DeLima said. In her view, the intermittent dearth of certain items shoppers see now are nothing compared to the more chronic shortages at the beginning of the pandemic.

“People don’t need to panic buy,” she said. “There’s plenty of product to be had. It’s just taking a little longer to get from point A to point B.”

Experts are divided on how long grocery shopping will sometimes feel like a scavenger hunt.

Dankert thinks this is a hiccup, and the country will soon settle back to more normal patterns, albeit with continuing supply chain headaches and labor shortages.

“You’re not going to see long-term outages of products, just sporadic, isolated incidents __ that window where it takes a minute for the supply chain to catch up,” she said.

But others aren’t so optimistic.

Freeman, of the Consumer Brands Association, says omicron-related disruptions could expand as the variant grips the Midwest, where many big packaged food companies like Kellogg Co. and General Mills Inc. have operations.

Freeman thinks the federal government should do a better job of ensuring that essential food workers get access to tests. He also wishes there were uniform rules for things like quarantining procedures for vaccinated workers; right now, he said, companies are dealing with a patchwork of local regulations.

“I think, as we’ve seen before, this eases as each wave eases. But the question is, do we have to be at the whims of the virus, or can we produce the amount of tests we need?” Freeman said.

In the longer term, it could take groceries and food companies a while to figure out the customer buying patterns that emerge as the pandemic ebbs, said Doug Baker, vice president of industry relations for food industry association FMI.

“We went from a just-in-time inventory system to unprecedented demand on top of unprecedented demand,” he said. “We’re going to be playing with that whole inventory system for several years to come.”

In the meantime, Whitely, the Safeway customer in Washington, said he’s lucky he’s retired because he can spend the day looking for produce if the first stores he tries are out. People who have to work or take care of sick loved ones don’t have that luxury, he said.

“Some are trying to get food to survive. I’m just trying to cook a casserole,” he said.
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Former Sen. Harry Reid will lie in state at the U.S. Capitol as colleagues and friends pay tribute to a hardscrabble Democrat who rose from poverty in a dusty Nevada mining town to the most powerful position in the U.S. Senate. 

Reid will be honored Wednesday in the Capitol Rotunda during a ceremony closed to the public under COVID-19 protocols. He died last month at 82 after a four-year battle with pancreatic cancer. 

The longest-serving Nevadan in Congress and the Senate majority leader alongside two presidents, Reid helmed the chamber during one of its more consequential legislative sessions — securing the economic recovery bill during the Great Recession and President Barack Obama’s landmark health care law.

President Joe Biden called Reid a “great American,” one who “looked at the challenges of the world and believed it was within our capacity to do good, to do right.” 

During a funeral service last weekend in Las Vegas, Biden, Obama and others recalled one of Reid’s best-known traits — abruptly hanging up on people, even presidents, rather than close with lengthy goodbyes. 

The few words Reid did say were often flinty and fiery, the senator unafraid to take on presidents (he called George W. Bush a “loser”), criticize the fossil fuel industry (“coal makes us sick”) or declare the war in Iraq “lost.” He titled his 2008 autobiography “The Good Fight.” 

Influential in retirement, Reid said Biden should give his new presidency just three weeks to try to work with Republicans. If not, Biden should force changes in the Senate’s filibuster rules to allow simple majority passage of elections and voting rights legislation and other priorities, Reid said. 

“The time’s going to come when he’s going to have to move in and get rid of the filibuster,” Reid told The Associated Press. 

Reid was born in the desolate mining town of Searchlight, Nevada, his father a hard-rock miner who later committed suicide, his mother doing laundry at home for bordellos. (He and other kids would swim in a brothel’s pool.) Searchlight was a place, he said, that “had seen its better days.” 

The town had no churches, his family no religion. But a picture of President Franklin D. Roosevelt hanging in the Reid home would influence his political career. 

Reid hitchhiked some 40 miles to attend high school and joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as he made his way through college and law school. An amateur boxer, he once leveled a punch at his future father-in-law after being denied a date with Landra Gould, who would become his wife. They were married for 62 years. 

First elected to the House in 1982 and reelected in 1984, Reid then served 30 years in the Senate, including a decade as the Senate Democratic leader. 

Along the way, Reid rewrote the map of Nevada by expanding public lands, halting the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste outside of Las Vegas; and securing national monument status around artist Michael Heizer’s “City” installation in the desert. He quietly ensured federal funding to research UFOs. 

A man of few words, Reid often wrote notes instead — to family, colleagues and a Nevada student advocate who had reached out on immigration law changes. He championed the Dream Act and Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals to protect young immigrants in the U.S. without legal status from deportation. 

As his power rose, Reid engineered a Democratic legacy for his state with Nevada’s early presidential caucus. He left behind a state party apparatus that was sometimes referred to as the “Reid Machine” for its enduring political power seeking to elect the next generation of Democratic leaders. 

After suffering an exercise accident at home, and with Democrats back in the Senate minority, Reid announced he would not seek reelection in 2016. 

In his farewell address to the Senate, he acknowledged he had done things that “probably a lot of people wouldn’t do.” But he passed on his advice to those wondering how he made it from Searchlight to Washington. 

“I didn’t make it because of my good looks. I didn’t make it because I am a genius. I made it because I worked hard,” Reid said. “Whatever you want to try to do, make sure you work as hard as you can to try to do what you want to do.”
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The House panel investigating the U.S. Capitol insurrection is demanding records and testimony from a former White House aide they say helped draft former President Donald Trump’s January 6 speech, along with two others it says were in communication with people close to Trump.

Mississippi Representative Bennie Thompson, Democratic chairman of the panel, issued subpoenas on Tuesday to Andy Surabian and Arthur Schwartz, strategists who advised Donald Trump Jr., and Ross Worthington, a former White House official who the committee says helped draft the speech Trump gave at the rally directly preceding last year’s attack.

“We have reason to believe the individuals we’ve subpoenaed today have relevant information, and we expect them to join the more than 340 individuals who have spoken with the Select Committee as we push ahead to investigate this attack on our democracy and ensure nothing like this ever happens again,” Thompson said in a letter Tuesday.

Worthington is a former Trump White House and campaign aide who served as a speechwriter and policy adviser. He had previously worked for former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Trump ally.

Surabian is a GOP strategist who has worked with Trump’s eldest son, Trump Jr., former Trump strategist Steve Bannon and others within the Trump orbit. The committee alleges he and Schwartz, another strategist who has worked with Trump Jr. and Bannon, communicated with people, including Trump Jr. and his fiancée and Trump fundraiser, Kimberly Guilfoyle, regarding the January 6 rally on The Ellipse.

An attorney representing Surabian said his client will cooperate with the committee “within reason,” but does not understand why the subpoena was issued in the first place. 

“He had nothing at all to do with the events that took place at the Capitol that day, zero involvement in organizing the rally that preceded it, and was off the payroll of the Trump campaign as of November 15, 2020,” Daniel Bean said in a statement.

Schwartz had no comment when reached by The Associated Press on Tuesday, and Worthington did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

Trump at the time was pushing false claims of widespread voter fraud and lobbying Vice President Mike Pence and Republican members of Congress to try to overturn the count at the January 6 congressional certification. Election officials across the country, along with the courts, had repeatedly dismissed Trump’s claims. 
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