this is bbc news. the headlines: ukraine's president zelensky is visiting rome, where he'll have an audience with the pope and meet italian political leaders. the prime minister, giorgia meloni, has been one of kyiv�*s more vocal backers. turkey's election candidates are taking part in the last few hours of campaigning, before the country goes to the polls. president erdogan is fighting for his political survival against opponents promising what they're calling "a return to democracy". rail passengers across england are facing further disruption as members of the rmt union walk out on strike. the latest indutrial acton is part of a long—running dispute about pay and conditions.

the excitement is building in liverpool as last minute preparations are made for the eurovision song contest final. the uk's entry will be the last of the 26 acts to perform. now on bbc news, proud boys: the battle forjanuary the 6th. we all know what happened onjanuary the 6th in washington — a violent mob intent on overturning the 2020 election result stormed the capitol. be advised, there's probably about 300 proud boys marching eastbound towards the united states capitol. i was there and filmed 200—300 members of a group called the proud boys as they marched towards their target. they are right—wing nationalists who believe the united states is being betrayed by internal enemies and an overbearing government. on the day, the proud boys

were tight—lipped. but we've seen thousands of hours of evidence of exactly what was going on that day. this is ethan nordean, one of the leaders of the proud boys, along with us army veteran joseph biggs in the checked shirt and zack riel on the left in the cap, they've been convicted for leading the capitol insurrection. also convicted of seditious conspiracy is proud board chairman enrico tarrio. he wasn't at the capitol that day, having been arrested on another charge two days previously. much of the evidence came from this man, another leader, charles donohoe, who pled guilty and cooperated with the authorities, taking our country back. but despite all the evidence shown

in court, over 1,000 people have now been prosecuted, january the 6th is still very much contested territory in america. returning to the scene over two years on, almost nothing is agreed by all sides. january the 6th has become emblematic of america's bitter political divide. what we saw is that over the weeks and months, the narrative got rewritten. history got rewritten. i think there were a lot of unanswered questions for the public. and in terms of the story we're going to tell ourselves about what january 6th meant. still very unsettled. when i remember what happened here on that day, i don't really recall it as a sort of separate event, more as another episode of political violence in what was an extremely politically violent year in american history that i witnessed and reported on.

we already had extremist groups, we had paramilitary organizations, we had conspiracy theorists. and then thatjust accelerated in 2020 between the pandemic and the opposition to government shutdown orders and masking orders and vaccine orders, which led to actually armed assaults on state houses. kind of like a mini version of what we saw on january 6th, but much smaller. but we saw that in lansing, michigan. we saw it in boise, idaho. we saw it in a number of different state capitals. in the spring of 2020, a wave of protests against covid lockdowns erupted, particularly in democrat—controlled states. i went to one at the state house in lansing, michigan. the protesters accused the state government of imposing lockdown restrictions that ignored constitutionally guaranteed rights. the atmosphere was revolutionary.

all i can do is affect my local government. my state government. of course, support donald trump. i think it's tyranny. civil disobedience included getting haircuts, all the salons and barbers having been closed down. it's hard to look at this crowd and conclude this isn't exactly as president trump wants it to be. and we're reopening our country and it's very exciting. some of the impetus for the protests had come from donald trump. we built the greatest economy in the world and i want to get that back as soon as possible. i think we can start getting it back very, very quickly. he thought the democratic governors were keeping their economy shuttered to harm his re—election prospects. earlier friday, the president posted tweets saying, "liberate virginia, michigan and minnesota,"

among the states where protesters have rallied against stay at home orders. these are people expressing their views. i see where they are and i see the way they're working. they seem to be very responsible people to me. many of what the president called "the very responsible people" protesting were carrying guns — lots of them. how is it notjust intimidating to have people with weapons? i don't know why there's any intimidation. if the government listened to us, we wouldn't even be here. we'd be at home happy. they'd be happy. i can't even get a haircut. if i'm looking for a job, they say this is an open economy, i go on with this to an employer, they're going to say, "you're a scruff." some of the protests went further than haircuts. in april of 2020, several hundred people stormed the michigan state house. among the members of the wolverine watchmen militia group. militias are quite

common in america — groups of armed citizens, some who see it as their role to stand up against an overbearing government. i met them and others outside, armed to the teeth. this is pete musico, co—founder of the wolverine watchmen. you have to intimidate your government to keep them in check. if not, you look at japan or china, look at history when you take away weapons, government has a chance to run you over. musico is now serving 12 years in prison for his part in a plot to kidnap the governor of michigan. so, well before january the 6th, statehouses across america were already being targeted by people sympathetic to donald trump, motivated by the thought that their rights, their constitution, their country was being stolen from them. representing spirit of 1776, if you haven't noticed. real men are here. we know in those days for support, defend the constitution of the united states against foreign enemies and domestic. let us remind those who have

forgotten what that means. a supposedly stolen election was only the latest in a long list of grievances, and the authorities also had specific detailed intelligence that violent disorder was being planned at the us capitol forjanuary the 6th. among the warnings was this situation report from the fbi�*s field office in norfolk, virginia, saying there was the potential for violence in washington dc in connection with the stop the steal protest on the 6th of january 2021. the warning quoted from an online discussion thread planning violence. there were also details of transport

convoys and assembly points and maps of the tunnel system around congress. yet the authorities didn't act. they were unprepared and there's really not good reason for it. there were plenty of people, certainly outside the government researchers who were monitoring the planning that was going on in extremist social media circles and chat forums. sometimes there's a lot of talk, but no real mobilization, but here you saw the logistics. by the time i got here onjanuary the 6th with the proud boys, it was clear something had gone badly wrong with the police operation. not only had i not seen any police officers on the march up here now, it was clear the capitol hill police force was panicking. as the proud boys marched past, police were scrambling to put on their riot gear. meanwhile, at the capital, low barriers and a tiny number of police — just one lone officer on the senate steps.

but when it came to the january 6th committee, the democratic party controlled congressional investigation, the lack of police preparation and the clear failure of intelligence was barely mentioned. why don't the democrats want to get to the truth? why don't they want to answer the fundamental question, which is why wasn't there a better security posture on that day? the then chief of the capitol hill police force says he did make a request for national guard help three days before, but this was turned down by the house sergeant at arms because of "optics". his concern for the optics, i believe, goes back to pelosi's decision, the statement that she referred to federal agents and national guard on the streets of america as stormtroopers. and i think she just didn't want the look of stormtroopers up on the hill. in the summer of 2020, the use of national guard or riot police was controversial in america. many on the left thought they were being used to shut down legitimate protest

in the wake of the murder of george floyd. in a year when everything was political, donald trump wanted overwhelming force on the streets. today, i have strongly recommended to every governor to deploy the national guard in sufficient numbers that we dominate the streets. meanwhile, democrats pushed back, criticizing the huge numbers of national guard deployed to protect the lincoln memorial. some said it looked more like an army of occupation than policing a demonstration. at the end of may, protests and rioting came to a head in washington, dc. the fires were burning right up to the gates of the white house. to many americans, it felt that the country was on the brink of anarchy. the next day, lafayette park, in front of the white house, was cleared by the overwhelming force the president had been advocating. but by then, the crowd

was entirely peaceful. democrats blasted this as an overreaction ordered by trump, they said, so that he could stage a bizarre photo opportunity on the edge of the park. while i have great respect for our men and women in uniform, i don't think it was appropriate to have them on the steps of the lincoln memorial. i don't think it was appropriate for people to rough people up in lafayette square who were demonstrating peacefully so that the president could come through and do his staged event. an official inquiry later determined that the park service had been planning to clear the area well before anyone knew of the president's plans. but nonetheless, democrats objected strongly against the use of fences and military forces against protesters. democratic politicians were saying, you know, these are just peaceful protesters, that these crackdowns were terrible. trump got a lot of heat, particularly from the media and other elected officials, about what happened

at lafayette square, some of which is completely legitimate criticism of what they did, but when you have a situation of a large group of people, very angry, very upset, it could devolve into some form of violence. you always have to consider that and i think the overcorrection we saw forjanuary 6th, when we talk aboutjanuary 6th, we have to understand, is coming out of that. republicans say, therefore, that the democrat controlled january the 6th committee had very good reason to ignore the issue of the lack of law enforcement and fencing onjanuary the 6th. and they did look at that. itjust didn't make it into the ultimate 850—page report. and, yes, there's criticism about the things that didn't make it into that report and i honestly think if they had more time, we probably would have seen more make it into that report. the problem with congress, the house of representatives, it's a two—year entity and they timed out. the republican party refused to participate in the committee, dismissing it as a political

cover—up and hatchetjob. it has permanently damaged the house and divided this country. and let's be honest, it is a smoke screen for democrats to push their radical agenda. the room where the january 6th hearings took place is now renamed after nancy pelosi. decades ago, this was where the house un—american activities committee grilled those accused of communist subversion. the january 6th committee met for the last time in december. what's happened since, of course, is that the republicans now control the house of representatives and that means that they now control this furniture of congressional inquiry, and they get to deploy it with their own political aims in mind. jimjordan is now the chair of the housejudiciary committee. he's formed a new subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government. some on the right feel that other violent protests following the murder of george floyd were treated differently, more leniently, while

the authorities focused exclusively on the right. over the course of our work in this committee, we expect to hear from government officials and experts like we have here today. we expect to hear from americans who've been targeted by their government. we expect to hear from people in the media and we expect to hear from the fbi agents who have come forward as whistle—blowers. jim jordan is one of the most vocal of president trump's supporters. i met him two days after the 2020 election while the votes were still being counted. he was leading a small but vocal protest at the statehouse in harrisburg, pennsylvania, alleging the election was being stolen. when the president says there's been widespread fraud, how do you explain the fact that 23,000 ballots show up and, shazam,

they're all for biden? how does that happen? it's statistically impossible. itjust can't have happened. things happen. do you think do you think 23,000 ballots, one whole batch of ballots shows up and there's not one single vote for president trump? one of the lawsuits is about 53 votes, isn't it? well, i mean, iwant every legitimate ballot counted. i think every single american wants every legitimate ballot counted. what we don't want is illegitimate illegal votes, illegal ballots counted, because that undermines the integrity of our election system, plain and simple. get out. despite dozens of court cases, investigations by election officials and donald trump's own attorney general, no evidence has been found indicating any fraud or irregularities that would have changed the result in any state, still less of the presidential election as a whole. nevertheless, jim jordan, like former president trump, still thinks there are important unanswered questions about the election.

on january the 6th, i remember speaking to peaceful protesters who had a fundamental belief that the election had been stolen despite the absence of any evidence. i believe we're in big trouble there. i do. i believe that this election has made a lot of people think, "why bother?" you know, if it's going to be rigged or there's going to be results that don't come out to be true... there's a reason that trump is so upset. i haven't seen any hard evidence of any flat—out deception or fraud, but there's a reason that man is so upset and it ain't just because he didn't win the election. that belief was inspired by people like representative jim jordan. the difference now is that mr jordan occupies one of the most powerful positions in the house of representatives. yes, representative jim jordan has this committee that's called

the weaponization of the federal government. i do not applaud the the words he's using. i don't think it's helpful to talk about something vague like the deep state or to say things like, "we're going to talk about the weaponization of the federal government." the federal government is a vast beast. if you want to talk about taming aspects of it that have over overreached their authority, then you should be specific and you should be rigorous in how you investigate that, and i think setting the tone by calling it the weaponization of federal government is entirely political. he's a politician. he's allowed to do that. but if your purpose and i think there is serious reform needed in institutions like the fbi, certainly in some of our intelligence gathering institutions and the relationship between our large technology and social media platforms, and our intelligence gathering services at the domestic level. ifear, though, that there's a real looking back quality to the weaponization commission. it's going to be settling scores rather than fixing problems. all this is indicative of an institution that the political

writer yuval levin describes as no longer formative but performative. he argues that institutions like this have changed fundamentally. they're no longer molds that shape the behavior and character of the people who work here. instead, he says, they've become platforms for those people to gain attention and of course, in america, raise money. we have many elected officials who go to congress not to legislate, not to practice oversight, not to do the job that people elected them and pay with our tax dollars for them to do, but to become celebrities. i mean, some of them seem to be auditioning for cable news networks every time they open their mouths at a committee hearing. that's unfortunate, but they're being rewarded for that behavior by voters, by more extreme edges on either side of the aisle in their party, voters in elections saying no to that. the question that america is now having to grapple with is how much are these extreme divided opinions being driven by a media landscape that fosters outrage and upset

and rewards performance politics? chris stirewalt gave evidence to the january 6th committee. he worked for fox news, but was fired after he correctly called the 2020 presidential election forjoe biden. 0ur poll in arizona was beautiful and it was doing just what we wanted it to do and it was cooking upjust right. fox viewers just didn't want to hear that donald trump had lost. in american media today, across the spectrum, audience capture is a serious problem when you have narrowcasting instead of broadcasting, and you are dependent on a small but highly addicted group of consumers, you cannot afford to offend those consumers. that's certainly true at fox, but it's true in a lot of places. it's one of the things that we have really struggled with in the past ten or 15 years in america is when our status quo blew up in media that we had enjoyed or endured, depending on how you want to look at it,

for 60 or 70 years, when that went away, then the model forjournalism changed from giving people information to sharing opinions and feelings and emotional connection and belonging with people, because you need a tighter bunching, if you have fewer people, you need them to be more addicted, and that became the business model and we have seen lots of corrosive consequences. it turns out there's quite a bit of video you haven't seen... and that and it's this partisan media lens that's focused onjanuary the 6th. having taken control of the house, the new republican speaker, kevin mccarthy, released 41,000 hours of january the 6th video footage to the fox news anchor tucker carlson, who's now presenting an alternative narrative. the crowd was enormous. a small percentage of them were hooligans. they committed vandalism. you've seen their pictures again and again. but the overwhelming majority weren't — they were peaceful. they were orderly and meek. these were not insurrectionists.

they were sightseers. we all have eyes and ears. and we witnessed january 6th, whether you were there or watching on tv, and you can say it was a peaceful protest, but we're not stupid. we can see it for ourselves. and there's just nothing at all comparable to what this weaponization committee is looking at. they they are suggesting. they they are suggesting that the department ofjustice weaponized the rule of law for political purposes, but if the department ofjustice had ignored january 6th, that would have been the real undercutting of the rule of law, because that would have just been ceding this kind of lawlessness to those who were engaged into it in it as something that's ok, and that's that's what failing democracies do. good evening and welcome

to tucker carlson... 0n the day that lawyers began their closing arguments in the trial of a number of proud boys leaders, fox news announced that tucker carlson was leaving the network, although there was considerable disquiet about his attempts to reframe the january 6th narrative. at the moment, it's not clear if this was a factor in his departure and if fox news is going to change the tone of its coverage. more than 1,000 people have been tried and convicted for what happened here on january the 6th, now including some of the leaders of the proud boys. there's now an active criminal investigation into donald trump's role that day, which will make this more contentious. the place where the mob stormed the capitol is now bristling with new fences and barriers, but the institution itself is perhaps weaker than ever.

hello, thanks forjoining me. time to see what's happening on the weather front over the next ten days or so. in the short term, it's actually looking fairly promising for many of us. i think saturday especially is going to be a nice day with warm sunshine. come sunday, some rain clouds on the horizon. but let's concentrate on saturday and you can see a large area of high pressure across the uk. it won't last for very long, there is a cold front approaching which we will talk about in just a second.

focusing on saturday, sunshine right from the word go across many western areas. a little bit of a nip in the air first thing but notice how cloudy it is across many parts of england first thing on saturday. it will take time for the sun to break through the clouds, but eventually it should. maybe some north sea coasts remaining cloudy through the course of the afternoon. so here it will be cooler, say around 1a degrees in hull, but widely the high teens to 20 degrees in cardiff, belfast and glasgow — probably in london as well. so a beautiful day overall for many of us. however, the sun is very strong this time of year and the uv index will be officially high in many parts of the country. now on that cold front, so saturday night into sunday, the high pressure weakens and it basically allows that cold front to gently waft in off the atlantic. it's not going to be roaring through but it will bring a breeze, an increasing breeze to the north—west of the uk. thick cloud and some rain for northern ireland, scotland, the north west of england and we can

see the western fringes of wales as well as south—western england. we've got the cooler yellows and even lime greens there. temperatures really struggling in some areas of the north and west. the warmth from the sunshine contracts to the south—east and eastern parts of the uk. could be 22 degrees in london on sunday. and then another area of high pressure builds behind that cold front that will have moved across the country during the weekend. and behind it, we also see fresher air riding around this area of high pressure so the cooler air from the north atlantic once again slips over the uk and that of course means a cooler atmosphere, the temperatures are going to drop. in fact, if you look at the wind arrows, they are pointing in from the north, pushing in cloud, a few showers because we are still close to a weather front here. it's not going to feel particularly pleasant i think on the north sea coasts or parts of east anglia on monday. really disappointing temperatures for this time of the year, look at that 12 to 15 celsius on monday. not really where we'd like to be in may. here is tuesday's weather map,

so still just about the chance of some showers in the south—east, but generally speaking it's a rather large area of high pressure and you can see it here centred just to the west of ireland. but look at the wind direction, it's coming in from the north so it's a relatively cool source. again, the temperatures are going to struggle, in fact our friends in lerwick may see temperatures no higher than 8 celsius and the best around 15 to 16 degrees across central and southern parts of the uk. the high pressure is still with us on wednesday, so that does mean that yes, slightly cooler conditions but generally dry weather. let's have a look at the outlook and see what the icons are saying for next week and into next weekend. it does look as though the temperatures may recover somewhat and, overall, you can see generally speaking, we are talking about mostly dry weather. bye— bye.

laughter —— laura gallagher.

live from london, this is bbc news. ukraine's president visits rome — he's already met the prime minister and president, and later he'll have an audience with the pope. turkey's election candidates take part in the last few hours of campaigning, before the country goes to the polls. and merry across the mersey — excitement builds in liverpool ahead of the final of the eurovision song contest. hello. ukraine's president volodymyr zelensky is in rome, where

he's meeting italy's leaders ahead of an audience with pope francis. this was the moment he arrived at the prime minister's residence