Judge: No car show trip for man arrested in Capitol riot
18 Jun 2021
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — A federal judge on Friday said he won't allow an Arkansas man arrested after he was photographed sitting at a desk in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office during the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot to travel for a classic-car swap meet.
U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Cooper rejected the request by Richard Barnett to loosen the restrictions on how far he can travel while he's awaiting trial.
Barnett is allowed to travel only up to 50 miles (80 kilometers) from his residence while he is on home detention awaiting trial. Barnett's attorney said the Gravette, Arkansas, man needed to be able to travel to make a living buying and selling classic cars.
Petit Jean Mountain, where the car show is being held, is 200 miles (320 kilometers) from Gravette.
“The Court is not persuaded that the defendant cannot pursue gainful employment within a 50-mile radius of his home as permitted by the current conditions," Cooper's order said.
Barnett, 61, was among supporters of President Donald Trump who stormed the Capitol as lawmakers assembled to certify Joe Biden’s victory over Trump. Prosecutors say Barnett was carrying a stun gun when he entered the building.
Federal prosecutors opposed Barnett's request and said his conduct while awaiting trial — including an interview with Russian State Television — indicates more conditions, not fewer, were needed.
I see signs for businesses hiring all over the place. My guess is that he would consider it an insult what is being offered for pay, while still being against raising wages for workers.
The guy is a hero of the Kremlin now!
The interview with with Russian State Television is the cherry on top of this shit sundae.
Judge: No car show trip for man arrested in Capitol riot
18 Jun 2021
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — A federal judge on Friday said he won't allow an Arkansas man arrested after he was photographed sitting at a desk in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office during the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot to travel for a classic-car swap meet.
U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Cooper rejected the request by Richard Barnett to loosen the restrictions on how far he can travel while he's awaiting trial.
Barnett is allowed to travel only up to 50 miles (80 kilometers) from his residence while he is on home detention awaiting trial. Barnett's attorney said the Gravette, Arkansas, man needed to be able to travel to make a living buying and selling classic cars.
Petit Jean Mountain, where the car show is being held, is 200 miles (320 kilometers) from Gravette.
“The Court is not persuaded that the defendant cannot pursue gainful employment within a 50-mile radius of his home as permitted by the current conditions," Cooper's order said.
Barnett, 61, was among supporters of President Donald Trump who stormed the Capitol as lawmakers assembled to certify Joe Biden’s victory over Trump. Prosecutors say Barnett was carrying a stun gun when he entered the building.
Federal prosecutors opposed Barnett's request and said his conduct while awaiting trial — including an interview with Russian State Television — indicates more conditions, not fewer, were needed.
I see signs for businesses hiring all over the place. My guess is that he would consider it an insult what is being offered for pay, while still being against raising wages for workers.
The guy is a hero of the Kremlin now!
The interview with with Russian State Television is the cherry on top of this shit sundae.
If you haven’t spent any time taking in OANN, you really need to. Their/there/they’re reporting is partly responsible for the direction this country is headed. I watched Grover Norquist be interviewed and the leading questions and his answers were unbelievable. It didn’t hurt that they had a 6’2’ leggy, blonde busty Russian vixen interviewing him but she kept looking at her phone to see what to say next. No Kaitlin Collins that one. And all of the voice over film reporting sounded like the announcers had marbles in their/there/they’re mouths. Even the studio host gave off a smarmy Frat boy, fucker Carlson wannabe vibe. I don’t know how that shit passes as “news,” or how they get credentials. Come to find out, a reporter for OANN is also bankrolling the fraudit in Arizona. ‘Murica.
If you haven’t spent any time taking in OANN, you really need to. Their/there/they’re reporting is partly responsible for the direction this country is headed. I watched Grover Norquist be interviewed and the leading questions and his answers were unbelievable. It didn’t hurt that they had a 6’2’ leggy, blonde busty Russian vixen interviewing him but she kept looking at her phone to see what to say next. No Kaitlin Collins that one. And all of the voice over film reporting sounded like the announcers had marbles in their/there/they’re mouths. Even the studio host gave off a smarmy Frat boy, fucker Carlson wannabe vibe. I don’t know how that shit passes as “news,” or how they get credentials. Come to find out, a reporter for OANN is also bankrolling the fraudit in Arizona. ‘Murica.
That alternative news channels like OANN and NEWSMAX have been chipping away at FOX' viewership. Carlson still leads them all though.
They are painful to watch but a must if you want to see what kind of fuckery is coming.
Both high school drop outs, one a convicted felon. In possession of firearms. And I think he meant to say "hood" instead of "mask." 'Murica and freedumb. The future is not looking so bright.
Unmasking the far right: An extremist paid a price when his identity was exposed online after a violent clash in Washington
In a flash, Laura Jedeed was surrounded by screaming men. The freelance journalist was filming a group of Trump supporters walking the streets of the District after the “Million MAGA March” on Nov. 14 when a man wearing an American flag gaiter mask approached her, stepped on her toes and began yelling.
“What’s up, you stupid b----?” the man shouted, his mask slipping down his face.
Jedeed yelled at the man to stop touching her. A crowd formed around her and another journalist, with unmasked men screaming at them from all directions. Jedeed kept her camera rolling, and when she got away from the crowd, she uploaded video of the incident to YouTube and Twitter, and it went viral.
Reaction was swift.
The man in the flag mask was quickly identified as Washington state resident Edward Jeremy Dawson by a local antifa group. Twitter users mining public records later released his address and phone number.
The video was amplified by Christian Exoo, a prominent anti-fascist activist who tweeted it out to his 50,000-plus followers. Exoo also included contact information for Dawson’s employer.
Two days later, Dawson lost his job as an ironworker, his employer citing his actions in D.C. His wife, Michelle, uploaded a tearful self-shot video to Twitter announcing his firing, and later that month she was asked to hand in her vest and badge at a Walmart in Battle Ground, Wash., where she worked as an online-order fulfiller. She thinks she was fired over her politics but acknowledges that she had missed a substantial amount of work because of back problems.
Anonymous abusive callers deluged the Dawsons’ cellphones, with some urging the couple to kill themselves, the Dawsons said.
The disclosure online of Dawson’s personal information — a phenomenon known as doxing — is part of a growing effort by left-wing activists to punish members of far-right groups accused of violent behavior by exposing them to their employers, family and friends. The doxing of Dawson highlights the effect the tactic can have — unemployment and personal upheaval followed by a new job that pays much less than his old one — but also the limits of the technique: Dawson is unrepentant for his role in galvanizing a mob to harass Jedeed and continues to espouse far-right views.
Indeed, some on the left, including Jedeed, who is a well-known activist in Portland, Ore., have qualms about the tactic and how effective it can be in the fight against extremism.
“From a practical perspective, I feel like being unemployable is going to push him in a more extreme direction,” Jedeed said. “On the other hand, you shouldn't be able to act like that and then have nothing happen to you.”
Antifa activists say that hateful rhetoric is protected by the First Amendment but that that doesn’t mean those who advocate or use violence as part of their ideology shouldn’t be exposed, including to their employers. They argue that doxing is a nonviolent response to violence.
Conservatives typically portray militant antifascists as the far-left equivalent of violent armed groups on the hard right, but right-wing extremist attacks and plots greatly eclipse those from the far left and cause more deaths, a Washington Post analysis showed. The FBI regards far-right extremists as the most active and lethal domestic terror threat.
“Our focus is on protecting our communities by making it as hard as possible to be a Nazi,” said Exoo, a part-time library employee at St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y., who also teaches classes on public records and social media research to activists. “We can’t always change hearts, but at least organizing is going to be harder for [Dawson] in the future.”
Fervent supporters
The Dawsons consider themselves friends and followers of Joey Gibson, who founded Patriot Prayer in 2016.
The far-right group has rallied dozens of times in the Portland area and engaged in violent clashes with anti-fascist counterprotesters.
Michelle Dawson first attended a Patriot Prayer rally in 2019. “He talked a lot about freedom and God,” she said of Gibson. “I’ve seen his fire and I’ve seen that he had a voice and he wasn’t afraid to use it.”
In 2019, Michelle Dawson won a seat on the city council in Yacolt, Wash., just north of Portland, running on a gun rights platform. A high school dropout from Utah, she said she never had any interest in politics until after Donald Trump was elected president. She voted in a presidential election for the first time in 2020.
“I was the kind of person that didn’t talk about politics,” she said. “I felt like my vote didn’t matter.”
Her husband also dropped out of high school, in 11th grade, eventually landing a job as an ironworker in Ridgefield, Wash. He says he started abusing drugs and alcohol and soon became addicted to crystal meth. He was arrested for felony possession of a controlled substance in 2007 and spent six years in a Washington state prison.
Dawson said he got clean in prison.
“I came out, got rid of every friend that ever had anything to do with it and started building,” he said. “Met my wife, got married, bought a home, bought trucks, toys. It’s totally changed my life.”
The couple joined Patriot Prayer and became regulars at gatherings, often with other far-right factions including the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters and hate groups such as Identity Evropa.
Dawson says he doesn’t consider himself a white nationalist and doesn’t see anything wrong with such beliefs.
“How is white nationalism racist?” he asked. “Is it racist to be proud of who you are? There’s nothing more racist than saying ‘Black lives matter,’ yet I’m the racist one when I say all lives matter?”
The Dawsons also became fervent supporters of Trump and were drawn to D.C. in November because they believed the falsehood then gathering strength on the right that Trump had won the election.
“I like everything that Trump stood for,” said Michelle Dawson. “I loved how he loved our country.”
“So yeah,” Dawson said, “I had a little anger with me going to D.C.”
The MAGA march was over and Dawson, who said he had been drinking, and a group of about 20 others were wandering around downtown when someone saw Jedeed filming and shouted that she was an “antifa journalist.”
The 34-year-old had spent the day covering the march and was a known figure at such events. “I’m fascinated by the way Trump has transformed the right,” Jedeed said.
She had been writing about the allure of Patriot Prayer in particular for several years and had earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Reed College for a thesis titled “Making Monsters: Right-Wing Creation of the Liberal Enemy.”
Jedeed had grown up in a family steeped in a deeply conservative vein of libertarianism known as objectivism, a philosophy developed by the late author Ayn Rand.
She joined the Army after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and served with the 82nd Airborne Division in signals operation and analysis, including two tours in Afghanistan. But she became disillusioned with the war and said her beliefs gradually moved left.
“I was a big believer in the war on terrorism,” Jedeed said. “I thought bringing freedom and democracy to oppressed people would be cool, but it was pretty hard to escape the fact that the Afghans did not want us there. . . . And you think, ‘We’re not the good guys here.’ ”
Jedeed’s time in the military, she thinks, has given her the ability to remain calm in moments of high tension, and that’s how she reacted to those attempting to intimidate her in Washington.
Dawson says that when he approached Jedeed and stepped on her foot, he was “being pushed from behind.” There is, however, no one behind him at that moment, according to the footage of the incident.
Dawson led the group of hecklers in chants of ‘F--- antifa!’ and repeatedly bumped into Jedeed. “How does it feel to be a Nazi fascist?” he yelled at her.
“This was as bad as it’s ever been,” said Jedeed, who has been involved in other confrontations with far-right activists. “I’ve studied the way they make propaganda and I know that the only way out is to be as calm and assertive as possible and not rise to the bait.”
After multiple men berated Jedeed and one slapped away her camera, Jedeed asked, “Do you realize how bad you look right now?”
The mood suddenly shifted. A few moments later, Dawson offered to lead Jedeed out of the fracas.
“So I kind of knew at that point in time that I needed to defuse the situation,” Dawson said. “I was pushing Proud Boys and patriots out of the way to get her to safety. I mean, I wasn’t harassing anyone. I just wanted to make her feel just a little bit scared.”
Jedeed recalled, “He actually leads me out of the cluster — after initiating it. I'm so glad he did it, but I’m not really willing to give him a lot of credit for it, because he created that.”
She said she stayed up all night in her hotel room with the door locked and chained, sleepless over the possibility that the men who surrounded her might locate her, because they were all staying in the same hotel and had seen each other that morning.
“I still have dreams where they find me,” Jedeed said.
No regrets
The work of learning Dawson’s identity had been done months in advance by Rose City Antifa, whose anonymous members organize against far-right groups and work to identify frequent far-right rally attendees in and around Portland before they’ve committed a crime.
“Our decision to identify people has less to do with our desire for them to experience tons and tons of immediate consequences, and more to do with tracking their behavior,” said a representative of the group, who spoke on the condition of anonymity citing security issues.
“There seems to be a visceral pleasure that brings people into these groups, and that is really interrupted when people have to deal with the repercussions at home and at work,” he said. “They’re not ideologically hardcore about this stuff. They get wrapped up in this story that’s quite divorced from their day-to-day lives.”
Doxing works, Dawson said. He guesses that 60 percent of his friends in the movement have been doxed and that some have had to move and change jobs.
The targets of doxing are increasingly responding in the courts, alleging they were harassed by doxers.
Exoo, for instance, is being sued by a handful of people he has doxed, including Daniel D’Ambly, a New Jersey man who faced death threats and lost his job as a printing employee at the New York Daily News after Exoo exposed his affiliation with the New Jersey European Heritage Foundation, a white supremacist organization, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
The suit accuses Exoo and Twitter of interference with commerce by threats or violence. Exoo has filed a motion to dismiss the suit.
The Dawsons installed a security system at their home, moved their firearms to spots with easier access, deactivated their social media accounts and stopped answering their phones. When Dawson’s wife left the house to attend rallies, she wore a bulletproof vest.
“I was terrified for my life,” she said.
“It’s just not fun. And it’s not right,” Dawson said. “It should be illegal.”
The couple said their children had mixed reactions to the video. Dawson’s 19-year-old daughter didn’t see what the big deal was, Dawson said. Michelle Dawson said her 18-year-old daughter was disgusted with her: “But she’s 18, so she’s all, ‘Orange man is bad. George Floyd shouldn’t have died. Blah, blah, blah.’ She hates what I do.”
The Dawsons asked that their children not be contacted directly.
Dawson said he is upfront with potential employers about his online reputation and has struggled to find work. His current job pays considerably less than his old one, he said.
But he said he has no regrets and would do only one thing differently.
“I’d do it all again,” he said, “but with the mask on.”
Both high school drop outs, one a convicted felon. In possession of firearms. And I think he meant to say "hood" instead of "mask." 'Murica and freedumb. The future is not looking so bright.
Unmasking the far right: An extremist paid a price when his identity was exposed online after a violent clash in Washington
In a flash, Laura Jedeed was surrounded by screaming men. The freelance journalist was filming a group of Trump supporters walking the streets of the District after the “Million MAGA March” on Nov. 14 when a man wearing an American flag gaiter mask approached her, stepped on her toes and began yelling.
“What’s up, you stupid b----?” the man shouted, his mask slipping down his face.
Jedeed yelled at the man to stop touching her. A crowd formed around her and another journalist, with unmasked men screaming at them from all directions. Jedeed kept her camera rolling, and when she got away from the crowd, she uploaded video of the incident to YouTube and Twitter, and it went viral.
Reaction was swift.
The man in the flag mask was quickly identified as Washington state resident Edward Jeremy Dawson by a local antifa group. Twitter users mining public records later released his address and phone number.
The video was amplified by Christian Exoo, a prominent anti-fascist activist who tweeted it out to his 50,000-plus followers. Exoo also included contact information for Dawson’s employer.
Two days later, Dawson lost his job as an ironworker, his employer citing his actions in D.C. His wife, Michelle, uploaded a tearful self-shot video to Twitter announcing his firing, and later that month she was asked to hand in her vest and badge at a Walmart in Battle Ground, Wash., where she worked as an online-order fulfiller. She thinks she was fired over her politics but acknowledges that she had missed a substantial amount of work because of back problems.
Anonymous abusive callers deluged the Dawsons’ cellphones, with some urging the couple to kill themselves, the Dawsons said.
The disclosure online of Dawson’s personal information — a phenomenon known as doxing — is part of a growing effort by left-wing activists to punish members of far-right groups accused of violent behavior by exposing them to their employers, family and friends. The doxing of Dawson highlights the effect the tactic can have — unemployment and personal upheaval followed by a new job that pays much less than his old one — but also the limits of the technique: Dawson is unrepentant for his role in galvanizing a mob to harass Jedeed and continues to espouse far-right views.
Indeed, some on the left, including Jedeed, who is a well-known activist in Portland, Ore., have qualms about the tactic and how effective it can be in the fight against extremism.
“From a practical perspective, I feel like being unemployable is going to push him in a more extreme direction,” Jedeed said. “On the other hand, you shouldn't be able to act like that and then have nothing happen to you.”
Antifa activists say that hateful rhetoric is protected by the First Amendment but that that doesn’t mean those who advocate or use violence as part of their ideology shouldn’t be exposed, including to their employers. They argue that doxing is a nonviolent response to violence.
Conservatives typically portray militant antifascists as the far-left equivalent of violent armed groups on the hard right, but right-wing extremist attacks and plots greatly eclipse those from the far left and cause more deaths, a Washington Post analysis showed. The FBI regards far-right extremists as the most active and lethal domestic terror threat.
“Our focus is on protecting our communities by making it as hard as possible to be a Nazi,” said Exoo, a part-time library employee at St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y., who also teaches classes on public records and social media research to activists. “We can’t always change hearts, but at least organizing is going to be harder for [Dawson] in the future.”
Fervent supporters
The Dawsons consider themselves friends and followers of Joey Gibson, who founded Patriot Prayer in 2016.
The far-right group has rallied dozens of times in the Portland area and engaged in violent clashes with anti-fascist counterprotesters.
Michelle Dawson first attended a Patriot Prayer rally in 2019. “He talked a lot about freedom and God,” she said of Gibson. “I’ve seen his fire and I’ve seen that he had a voice and he wasn’t afraid to use it.”
In 2019, Michelle Dawson won a seat on the city council in Yacolt, Wash., just north of Portland, running on a gun rights platform. A high school dropout from Utah, she said she never had any interest in politics until after Donald Trump was elected president. She voted in a presidential election for the first time in 2020.
“I was the kind of person that didn’t talk about politics,” she said. “I felt like my vote didn’t matter.”
Her husband also dropped out of high school, in 11th grade, eventually landing a job as an ironworker in Ridgefield, Wash. He says he started abusing drugs and alcohol and soon became addicted to crystal meth. He was arrested for felony possession of a controlled substance in 2007 and spent six years in a Washington state prison.
Dawson said he got clean in prison.
“I came out, got rid of every friend that ever had anything to do with it and started building,” he said. “Met my wife, got married, bought a home, bought trucks, toys. It’s totally changed my life.”
The couple joined Patriot Prayer and became regulars at gatherings, often with other far-right factions including the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters and hate groups such as Identity Evropa.
Dawson says he doesn’t consider himself a white nationalist and doesn’t see anything wrong with such beliefs.
“How is white nationalism racist?” he asked. “Is it racist to be proud of who you are? There’s nothing more racist than saying ‘Black lives matter,’ yet I’m the racist one when I say all lives matter?”
The Dawsons also became fervent supporters of Trump and were drawn to D.C. in November because they believed the falsehood then gathering strength on the right that Trump had won the election.
“I like everything that Trump stood for,” said Michelle Dawson. “I loved how he loved our country.”
“So yeah,” Dawson said, “I had a little anger with me going to D.C.”
The MAGA march was over and Dawson, who said he had been drinking, and a group of about 20 others were wandering around downtown when someone saw Jedeed filming and shouted that she was an “antifa journalist.”
The 34-year-old had spent the day covering the march and was a known figure at such events. “I’m fascinated by the way Trump has transformed the right,” Jedeed said.
She had been writing about the allure of Patriot Prayer in particular for several years and had earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Reed College for a thesis titled “Making Monsters: Right-Wing Creation of the Liberal Enemy.”
Jedeed had grown up in a family steeped in a deeply conservative vein of libertarianism known as objectivism, a philosophy developed by the late author Ayn Rand.
She joined the Army after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and served with the 82nd Airborne Division in signals operation and analysis, including two tours in Afghanistan. But she became disillusioned with the war and said her beliefs gradually moved left.
“I was a big believer in the war on terrorism,” Jedeed said. “I thought bringing freedom and democracy to oppressed people would be cool, but it was pretty hard to escape the fact that the Afghans did not want us there. . . . And you think, ‘We’re not the good guys here.’ ”
Jedeed’s time in the military, she thinks, has given her the ability to remain calm in moments of high tension, and that’s how she reacted to those attempting to intimidate her in Washington.
Dawson says that when he approached Jedeed and stepped on her foot, he was “being pushed from behind.” There is, however, no one behind him at that moment, according to the footage of the incident.
Dawson led the group of hecklers in chants of ‘F--- antifa!’ and repeatedly bumped into Jedeed. “How does it feel to be a Nazi fascist?” he yelled at her.
“This was as bad as it’s ever been,” said Jedeed, who has been involved in other confrontations with far-right activists. “I’ve studied the way they make propaganda and I know that the only way out is to be as calm and assertive as possible and not rise to the bait.”
After multiple men berated Jedeed and one slapped away her camera, Jedeed asked, “Do you realize how bad you look right now?”
The mood suddenly shifted. A few moments later, Dawson offered to lead Jedeed out of the fracas.
“So I kind of knew at that point in time that I needed to defuse the situation,” Dawson said. “I was pushing Proud Boys and patriots out of the way to get her to safety. I mean, I wasn’t harassing anyone. I just wanted to make her feel just a little bit scared.”
Jedeed recalled, “He actually leads me out of the cluster — after initiating it. I'm so glad he did it, but I’m not really willing to give him a lot of credit for it, because he created that.”
She said she stayed up all night in her hotel room with the door locked and chained, sleepless over the possibility that the men who surrounded her might locate her, because they were all staying in the same hotel and had seen each other that morning.
“I still have dreams where they find me,” Jedeed said.
No regrets
The work of learning Dawson’s identity had been done months in advance by Rose City Antifa, whose anonymous members organize against far-right groups and work to identify frequent far-right rally attendees in and around Portland before they’ve committed a crime.
“Our decision to identify people has less to do with our desire for them to experience tons and tons of immediate consequences, and more to do with tracking their behavior,” said a representative of the group, who spoke on the condition of anonymity citing security issues.
“There seems to be a visceral pleasure that brings people into these groups, and that is really interrupted when people have to deal with the repercussions at home and at work,” he said. “They’re not ideologically hardcore about this stuff. They get wrapped up in this story that’s quite divorced from their day-to-day lives.”
Doxing works, Dawson said. He guesses that 60 percent of his friends in the movement have been doxed and that some have had to move and change jobs.
The targets of doxing are increasingly responding in the courts, alleging they were harassed by doxers.
Exoo, for instance, is being sued by a handful of people he has doxed, including Daniel D’Ambly, a New Jersey man who faced death threats and lost his job as a printing employee at the New York Daily News after Exoo exposed his affiliation with the New Jersey European Heritage Foundation, a white supremacist organization, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
The suit accuses Exoo and Twitter of interference with commerce by threats or violence. Exoo has filed a motion to dismiss the suit.
The Dawsons installed a security system at their home, moved their firearms to spots with easier access, deactivated their social media accounts and stopped answering their phones. When Dawson’s wife left the house to attend rallies, she wore a bulletproof vest.
“I was terrified for my life,” she said.
“It’s just not fun. And it’s not right,” Dawson said. “It should be illegal.”
The couple said their children had mixed reactions to the video. Dawson’s 19-year-old daughter didn’t see what the big deal was, Dawson said. Michelle Dawson said her 18-year-old daughter was disgusted with her: “But she’s 18, so she’s all, ‘Orange man is bad. George Floyd shouldn’t have died. Blah, blah, blah.’ She hates what I do.”
The Dawsons asked that their children not be contacted directly.
Dawson said he is upfront with potential employers about his online reputation and has struggled to find work. His current job pays considerably less than his old one, he said.
But he said he has no regrets and would do only one thing differently.
“I’d do it all again,” he said, “but with the mask on.”
No jail time in 1st riot sentence; Oath Keeper pleads guilty
By ALANNA DURKIN RICHER and MICHAEL KUNZELMAN
Today
An Indiana woman on Wednesday became the first defendant to be sentenced in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and avoided time behind bars, while a member of the Oath Keepers extremist group pleaded guilty in a conspiracy case and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in a major step forward for the massive investigation.
The two developments signal that the cases against those charged in the deadly siege are slowly advancing, even as the U.S. Department of Justice and the courthouse in Washington, D.C., struggle under the weight of roughly 500 federal arrests across the U.S. And it comes as Republicans in Washington attempt to downplay the violence committed by members of the mob supporting former President Donald Trump.
Graydon Young, who was accused alongside 15 other members and associates of the Oath Keepers of conspiring to block the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s presidential victory, pleaded guilty to two counts: conspiracy and obstruction of an official proceeding. It was the first guilty plea in the major conspiracy case brought against members of the group.
The second charge calls for up to 20 years in prison, but U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta said federal sentencing guidelines call for Young to serve between 5 1/4 years and 6 1/2 years behind bars. Prosecutors may seek even less time in exchange for his cooperation against other defendants.
Young, 55, of Englewood, Florida, was arrested in February and charged in the sweeping conspiracy case accusing members of the Oath Keepers of coming to Washington prepared to use violence and intent on stopping the certification of the vote. Authorities said in court documents that Young joined the Florida chapter of the Oath Keepers in December, writing that he was “looking to get involved in helping ...”
Later that month, Young reached out to a company that does firearms and combat training about a rifle class for four people, according to the indictment. Authorities say Young, wearing a helmet and tactical vest, was part of the military-style “stack” seen on camera marching through the crowd before entering the Capitol building.
Young's attorneys didn't immediately respond to emails sent Wednesday seeking comment.
Another Oath Keepers member, Jon Ryan Schaffer, has also pleaded guilty in the riot, but was not charged in the conspiracy case. Schaffer has agreed to cooperate with investigators and potentially testify against other defendants.
Anna Morgan Lloyd, 49, of Indiana, was ordered by a federal judge to serve three years of probation, perform 120 hours of community service and pay $500 in restitution after admitting to unlawfully entering the Capitol. She pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor charge under a deal with prosecutors.
After the riot, Lloyd described Jan. 6 on Facebook as the “best day ever."
On Wednesday, she apologized to the court, her family and “the American people,” saying she went to Washington that day to peacefully show her support for Trump.
“I’m ashamed that it became a savage display of violence that day. And I would have never been there if I had a clue it was going to turn out that way,” Lloyd told the judge. “It was never my intent to be a part of anything that’s so disgraceful to our American people.”
In seeking probation for Lloyd, prosecutors noted that she was not involved in any violence and destruction or preplanning and coordination of the Capitol breach. Lloyd was invited by her hairdresser to drive to Washington to hear Trump speak, her attorney wrote in court documents.
U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth said he was giving her a “break,” but didn’t want others to think that probation — and not a stiffer sentence — would be the norm.
“Legally, I could give you the six months, but is that really what we want our judiciary to do?” the judge asked.
Lamberth said he struggled with what would be an appropriate sentence for Lloyd because he views the riot as a serious crime. “This wasn’t a peaceful demonstration the way it turned out. It was not an accident,” he said. “It was intended to and brought a halt to the very functioning of our government.”
He said he was “especially troubled” by some lawmakers who are seeking to rewrite the history of the Capitol riot.
“I don’t know what planet they were on, but there were millions of people in this country that saw what happened on Jan. 6 and that saw what you saw and what you just described: a disgrace to our country,” the judge said.
In a letter to the judge asking for leniency, Lloyd wrote that she was a registered Democrat but that she and her husband began supporting Trump in 2016 because “he was standing up for what we believe in.”
After her arrest, Lloyd’s lawyer gave her a list of books and movies to help her “see what life is like for others in our country,” Lloyd wrote. Lloyd said she has sought to educate herself by watching movies such as “Schindler’s List” and the History Channel’s “Burning Tulsa” and reading Bryan Stevenson’s “Just Mercy.”
“I’ve lived a sheltered life and truly haven’t experienced life the way many have,” Lloyd wrote. “I’ve learned that even though we live in a wonderful country things still need to improve. People of all colors should feel as safe as I do to walk down the street.”
Four other people — a Tennessee man, a Maryland man and a Virginia couple — have pleaded guilty to the same misdemeanor charge in the last two weeks.
Earlier Wednesday, another man, Robert Maurice Reeder of Maryland, admitted to entering the Capitol, but his lawyer said he didn’t force his way inside and didn’t damage any property or hurt anyone.
Before his arrest, an attorney for Reeder provided federal authorities with a compilation of photos and videos that he took with his cellphone at the Capitol. A video seemed to show Reeder chanting, “Fight for Trump!” and he recorded an assault on a Capitol police officer, according to the FBI.
“You need to retreat!” Reeder apparently told the officer, an FBI agent wrote in a court filing.
A prosecutor said Tennessee resident Brian Wayne Ivey, who pleaded guilty on Tuesday, entered the Capitol through a window that somebody else broke with a riot shield and spent roughly 30 minutes inside the building.
Joshua Bustle of Virginia, who pleaded guilty alongside his wife, will also be seeking probation, his lawyer said. Jessica Bustle’s attorney described them as “good, decent, hardworking people,” who were urged to come to Washington by “very powerful people and groups.”
“They are not criminals or insurrectionists or rioters. They were not looking to break laws when they came to DC on the 6th. They violated minor laws on the 6th and they have accepted responsibility and accountability for doing so,” Jessica Bustle’s attorney, Nabeel Kibria, wrote in an email.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
The convicted will help bring on bigger sentences for the bigger fish a report on NPR said. The report said that the ones convicted are helping with ongoing investigations. That is good.
The convicted will help bring on bigger sentences for the bigger fish a report on NPR said. The report said that the ones convicted are helping with ongoing investigations. That is good.
The convicted will help bring on bigger sentences for the bigger fish a report on NPR said. The report said that the ones convicted are helping with ongoing investigations. That is good.
Snitches get stiches.
lol, I hate that line sooooo much.
You broke the law and I tell on you and I'm a snitch?
Gotta love Tejas. Tiki? Was that you? ^^^^^^ From the comments section.
A caravan of Trump backers tried to run a Biden bus off a road. Now they’re being sued under an anti-KKK act.
Timothy Holloway clutched the wheel of a Biden-Harris campaign bus last October, swerving and dodging as one hostile car bearing a Trump flag after another tried to run him off a Texas highway.
“We were terrified,” Holloway said in a news release. “They were clearly trying to scare us and prevent us from arriving at our destination in peace.”
The tactic worked — the Biden campaign canceled the rest of the day’s events, saying it feared for the safety of campaign staffers, supporters and local political candidates. Some prominent Republicans cheered the effort by the self-proclaimed “Trump Train,” while President Donald Trump himself lauded their efforts, calling the drivers “patriots” who “did nothing wrong.”
Now, Holloway — along with a White House staffer, a formerTexaslawmaker and a campaign volunteer — are suing several members of the caravan, accusing them of violating the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, which bars violent election intimidation, as well as local Texas laws. The group is also suing local law enforcement, claiming they failed to provide protection.
“Those on the bus feared injury or for their lives. All suffered lingering trauma in the days and months thereafter,” says one of a pair offederal lawsuits filed to the Western District of Texas court on Thursday. “The events of October 30 arose from a campaign of politically motivated intimidation.”
The lawsuits come as hundreds of other fervent Trump supporters face criminal charges for storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Some of those who participated in the “Trump Train” were at the Capitol during the insurrection, the lawsuit alleges. The FBI has also announced it is investigating the “Trump Train” incident.
The case isn’t the only recent attempt to invoke the Ku Klux Klan Act against Trump supporters. In February, Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, invoked the Klan Act in a lawsuit against Trump, Rudolph W. Giuliani and two extremist groups whose members are accused of participating in the insurrection. Thompson alleged that Trump and Giuliani violated the act by inciting the riots with false claims of a rigged election. The lawsuit is ongoing.
Along with Holloway, the bus heading up Interstate 35 on Oct. 30 also included former Texas state senator Wendy Davis, who made national headlines during a 13-hour filibuster in 2013 to halt the passage of an antiabortion bill. The bus had been driving north from Laredo, Tex., to San Antonio, when those inside noticed dozens of cars sporting Trump campaign gear waiting along the highway and then swarming the campaign bus. Staffers frantically called 911 as the cars boxed them in, driving dangerously close and slowing down the bus.
“I flew down to Texas to help with the Biden/Harris bus tour, intended to drum up enthusiasm at polling locations. Instead, I ended up spending the afternoon calling 911,” tweeted campaign volunteer Eric Cervini — another plaintiff in the new lawsuit, who was driving a separate car during the incident. Cervini also claimedthat many of the Trump supporters were armed.
The lawsuit claims that the group started coordinating “to intercept and intimidate the bus as it traveled through Bexar, Comal, Hays, and Travis counties” as soon as the campaign announced events in the state.
As the bus tried to dodge the caravan, police responded to the panicked calls for help. But as the bus made its way to San Marcos, police refused to send patrol cars as escorts, the suit says.
“Certain officers from the San Marcos Police Department said that they would not respond unless the Biden-Harris Campaign was ‘reporting a crime,’ explaining: ‘we can’t help you,’” the lawsuit says.
Advertisement
The lawsuit alleges that San Marcos Director of Public Safety Chase Stapp and officials from the San Marcos Police Department and San Marcos City Marshal’s Department “failed to take reasonable steps to prevent planned acts of violent political intimidation.”
The San Marcos police and marshal’s departments did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the suit. It’s not clear who is representing the individual drivers named in the second lawsuit.
Several of the people named in that lawsuit bragged about their escapades online, the lawsuit says, noting that one defendant,Eliazar Cisneros, boasted on social mediathat he “slammed” into the bus.
The day’s events were traumatic, the lawsuit says. The plaintiffs, who also include White House staffer David Gins, who was on the bus that day, are suffering from “ongoing psychological and emotional injury.”
Advertisement
“Gins was extremely shaken as a result of his ordeal,” the lawsuit says. “During the incident, he felt ‘terrorized.’ … About an hour into the ordeal, he walked to the back of the bus and broke down in tears.”
Holloway, the bus driver, had trouble sleeping for a month after the incident and says he can’t drive a bus anymore. Davis noted that she feared she’d be physically harmed if she spoke out about her experience that day.
“Those who engage in organized threats — whether they’re online death threats or mob violence — are breaking the law and will be called to account for their actions in federal court,” Michael Gottlieb, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, said in a news release.
House poised to launch new probe of Jan. 6 insurrection
By MARY CLARE JALONICK
Today
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House is poised to launch a new investigation of the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection on Wednesday with expected approval of a 13-person select committee to probe the violent attack.
The panel would be led by Democrats, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appointing a chairperson and at least eight of the committee's members. The resolution up for a vote gives Pelosi a possible say in the appointment of the other five members as well, directing that they will be named “after consultation” with House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy.
In a memo to all House Republicans late Tuesday, No. 2 House Republican Steve Scalise urged his members to vote against the resolution, saying the select panel “is likely to pursue a partisan agenda” in investigating the siege by former President Donald Trump’s supporters. Scalise and McCarthy have so far declined to say whether Republicans will even participate.
Pelosi is moving to form the select committee after Senate Republicans blocked the creation of a separate independent and bipartisan panel that would have been evenly split between the parties and modeled after a commission that investigated the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Republicans ready to move on from the insurrection — and Trump's role in it — argued against that as well, claiming it would be duplicative and partisan.
The speaker has said that it was her preference to have an independent panel lead the inquiry, but that Congress could not wait any longer to begin a deeper look at the insurrection.
The GOP role in the probe, and the appointments to the panel, could help determine whether the committee becomes a bipartisan effort or a tool of further division. Two Senate committees issued a bipartisan report with security recommendations earlier this month, but it did not examine the origins of the siege, leaving many unanswered questions about the events of the day.
McCarthy is facing pressure to take the investigation seriously from police officers who responded to the attack, Democrats and even some of his fellow Republicans. Pelosi has invited representatives of the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia and the U.S. Capitol Police to sit in the gallery and watch Wednesday’s vote, according to a person familiar with the plan who wasn’t authorized to discuss it and spoke on condition of anonymity. Dozens of those officers were brutally beaten and suffered injuries as Trump’s supporters pushed past them and broke into the building to interrupt the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory.
Two of the officers who responded, Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone and Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn, met with McCarthy on Friday and asked him to take the House investigation seriously.
Fanone, who has described being dragged down the Capitol steps by rioters who shocked him with a stun gun and beat him, said he asked McCarthy for a commitment not to put “the wrong people” on the panel, a reference to those in the GOP who have downplayed the violence and defended the insurrectionists. Fanone said McCarthy told him he would take his request seriously.
Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, has also publicly pressured McCarthy. “I hope he appoints people who are seen as being credible,” he said Sunday on CNN.
Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, a close Trump ally, said that he doesn't know what McCarthy is going to do but that it's possible Republicans will just choose not to be involved.
“I know I've got real concerns, I know he does, that this is all just political, and that this is impeachment three against President Trump," Jordan said.
Trump was twice impeached by the House and twice acquitted by the Senate, the second time for telling his supporters just before the insurrection to “fight like hell” to overturn his defeat to Biden.
Pelosi has not yet said who will lead the panel, but one possibility is House Homeland Security Committee Chair Bennie Thompson, D-Miss. Thompson said Tuesday that it would be an “honor” to serve as chair and that it's Pelosi's call if she wants to have a say on the Republican members.
“They had an opportunity to really engage,” Thompson said of Republicans who voted against the bipartisan commission. “And they didn't. So they can't now come back and say, ‘Oh, that’s not fair.'"
Many Republicans have expressed concerns about a partisan probe, since majority Democrats are likely to investigate Trump’s role in the siege and the right-wing groups that participated in it. Almost three dozen House Republicans voted last month for the legislation to create an independent commission, and seven Republicans in the Senate have also supported moving forward on that bill. But that was short of the 10 Senate Republicans who would be necessary to pass it.
Many Republicans have made clear that they want to move on from the Jan. 6 attack. But some have gone further, including Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia, who suggested that video of the rioters looked like a “tourist visit." Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona insisted that a Trump supporter named Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed that day while trying to break into the House chamber, was “executed.” Others have defended the rioters as they have been charged with federal crimes.
In their meeting with McCarthy, Fanone and Dunn asked the GOP leader to publicly denounce those comments downplaying the violence, as well as the 21 Republicans who recently voted against giving medals of honor to the U.S. Capitol Police and the Metropolitan Police to thank them for their service. They said McCarthy, who voted for the measure, told them he would only deal with those members privately.
Seven people died during and after the rioting, including Babbitt and three other Trump supporters who suffered medical emergencies. Two police officers died by suicide in the days that followed, and a third officer, Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, collapsed and later died after engaging with the protesters. A medical examiner later determined he died of natural causes.
___
Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro, Kevin Freking and Padmananda Rama contributed to this report.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
0
Options
mickeyrat
up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 35,781
Inside the Capitol Riot: An Exclusive Video Investigation
The Times analyzed thousands of videos from the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol Building to understand how it happened — and why. Here are some of the key findings.
Day of Rage: An In-Depth Look at How a Mob Stormed the Capitol
A six-month Times investigation has synchronized and mapped out thousands of videos and police radio communications from the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, providing the most complete picture to date of what happened — and why.June 30, 2021
By The New York Times
June 30, 2021, 11:54 a.m. ET
In the six months since an angry pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol, immense efforts have been made not only to find the rioters and hold them accountable, but also — and perhaps more important — to dig into the details of Jan. 6 and slowly piece together what actually happened that day.
Congressional committees have looked into police and intelligence failures. The Justice Department has launched a nationwide investigation that has now resulted in more than 500 arrests. And while Republicans in Congress blocked the formation of a blue-ribbon bipartisan committee, House Democrats are poised to appoint a smaller select committee.
Even now, however, Republican politicians and their allies in the media are still playing down the most brazen attack on a seat of power in modern American history. Some have sought to paint the assault as the work of mere tourists. Others, going further, have accused the F.B.I. of planning the attack in what they have described — wildly — as a false-flag operation.
The work of understanding Jan. 6 has been hard enough without this barrage of disinformation and, hoping to get to the bottom of the riot, The Times’s Visual Investigations team spent several months reviewing thousands of videos, many filmed by the rioters themselves and since deleted from social media. We filed motions to unseal police body-camera footage, scoured law enforcement radio communications, and synchronized and mapped the visual evidence.
ADVERTISEMENT
What we have come up with is a 40-minute panoramic take on Jan. 6, the most complete visual depiction of the Capitol riot to date. In putting it together, we gained critical insights into the character and motivation of rioters by experiencing the events of the day often through their own words and video recordings. We found evidence of members of extremist groups inciting others to riot and assault police officers. And we learned how Donald J. Trump’s own words resonated with the mob in real time as they staged the attack.
Here are some of the major revelations.
Multiple Points of Attack
We pinpointed at least eight locations where rioters breached and entered the Capitol building — more than were previously known. The scenes revealed the extent of the rioters’ disregard for the law as they surged violently around the building’s perimeter and, eventually, inside.
The police were outnumbered and responded differently at various breach points, allowing rioters to break through doors using weapons like crowbars or, in some places, to simply walk through as the police stepped aside.
The multiple breaches also revealed the Capitol’s vulnerability. Despite locked doors and, in certain places, thick windows, rioters without specialized equipment were able to break in instantly in some places.
ADVERTISEMENT
A Delay Turns Deadly
In the Senate, proceedings to certify the election results were halted almost immediately when a building-wide lockdown was called after the first breach by rioters. But we found that it took much longer for the House of Representatives to do the same. This delay appeared to have contributed to a rioter’s death.
Instead of evacuating, members of the House sheltered in place and resumed their work even as rioters overran the building. Speaker Nancy Pelosi was rushed to safety, but Representative Jim McGovern took her place presiding over the session. He told us that Capitol building security staff had said it was safe to resume.
Eventually, the House session was halted and members began streaming out of a rear door guided by security personnel. Rioters had arrived at almost the same moment, just on the other side of a hallway door with glass panels. They became incensed at the sight of the evacuating lawmakers — a situation that could have been avoided if the lawmakers had left before the mob arrived.
Ashli Babbitt, a Trump supporter and follower of the QAnon conspiracy theory, tried to climb through one of the door’s broken windows toward the lawmakers. A plainclothes Capitol Police officer charged with protecting the House shot her once through the upper chest. The wound was fatal.
ADVERTISEMENT
The Makeup of the Mob
One of the biggest questions hanging over the aftermath of Jan. 6 was whether the riot was planned and carried out by organized groups.
By identifying and tracking key players throughout the day, we found that most — even some at the forefront of the action — were ardent, but disorganized Trump supporters swept up in the moment and acting individually.
The first person to enter the Capitol building, for example, was a 43-year-old husband and father from Kentucky named Michael Sparks. He has no known affiliation with any organized groups. Ray Epps, an Arizona man seen in widely-circulated videos telling Trump supporters on multiple occasions to go into the Capitol, also seemed to have acted on his own.
Yet we also found that the crowd did include members of groups who seemed eager for a confrontation, like well-organized militias and far-right groups including the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys. This proved to be a combustible mix. In the videos we analyzed, they can be seen with baseball bats and body armor, and coordinating with one another using radios. On several occasions, a calculated move by a more organized actor — for example, a Proud Boy identifying a weakness in the police line near a set of stairs — set off a surge by the mob.
Evidence collected by the F.B.I. suggests that the Proud Boys in particular were aware that they had inflamed the mob of ordinary people — and may have intended to do so in advance. Just before the assault, one Proud Boy leader wrote on a group chat on Telegram that he was hoping his men could incite the “normies” to “burn that city to ash today” and “smash some pigs to dust.” Then, after the riot, another Proud Boy leader wrote on Telegram: “This is NOT what I expected to happen. All from us showing up and starting some chants and getting the normies all riled up.”
Domino Effect
By synchronizing footage from both sides of the Capitol building, we were able to establish how crowds on each side interacted with one another.
We tracked the movement of a group of rioters from the west side of the Capitol — which faces the National Mall and absorbed most of the attendees arriving from Mr. Trump’s speech — to the opposite eastern side.
The eastern crowd had remained largely behind the barricades, but all that changed with the arrival of rioters from around the side of the building. This more violent group was the trigger that put the entire mob over the edge, spurring them to push easily through a line of officers and surround the Capitol on every front.
Echoing the President
Most of the videos we analyzed were filmed by the rioters. By carefully listening to the unfiltered chatter within the crowd, we found a clear feedback loop between President Trump and his supporters.
As Mr. Trump spoke near the White House, supporters who had already gathered at the Capitol building hoping to disrupt the certification responded. Hearing his message to “walk down to the Capitol,” they interpreted it as the president sending reinforcements. “There’s about a million people on their way now,” we heard a man in the crowd say, as Mr. Trump’s speech played from a loudspeaker.
The call and response didn’t stop there. We found evidence of his influence once the violence was well underway. In one moment, a woman with a megaphone urged rioters to climb through a broken window by asking them to “stand up for our country and Constitution” — echoing the language in an earlier tweet from Mr. Trump. In another, as the police were pushing to clear the mob off the building, a rioter screamed at officers: “I was invited here by the president.”
Taking Back the Capitol
One unanswered question when we began this investigation was how the police managed to reclaim the Capitol building from the mob. We found that once officers increased their numbers, armor and crowd-control weapons, clearing the rioters happened quickly and effectively.
The footage revealed that officers cleared several locations in less than an hour after being reinforced by local Metropolitan Police, Virginia State Police and other local and federal agencies that arrived with more manpower and authorization to use more powerful crowd-control weapons.
It’s a stark contrast to what we saw during the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020, when federal officers were on scene from the start, already equipped with riot gear and authorized to use higher levels of force. Law enforcement’s relatively quick success in clearing the Capitol building once reinforcements arrived shows how the rioters might have been stopped far earlier with a different level of preparation — possibly preventing fatalities, countless officer injuries, over $30 million in damages.
There was another difference between the Capitol riot and those connected to this summer’s racial justice protests: Very few people who broke into the Capitol were arrested at the scene. Most were allowed to leave the building, forcing the F.B.I. to track them down later and take them into custody — a process that is still continuing today.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
McCarthy to GOP: Don't let Pelosi name you to 1/6 riot panel
By ALAN FRAM
26 mins ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has threatened to strip Republicans of committee assignments if they accept an appointment from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to join the new select panel investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, a top House GOP aide said Thursday.
The warning by McCarthy, R-Calif., underscores party leaders' opposition to the new committee, which the House created Wednesday on a near party-line 222-190 vote, and their desire to shape the narrative about its work as much as they can. Republicans have complained that the panel will be dominated by Democrats and will produce a skewed, partisan report, even though the GOP previously scuttled an earlier Democratic attempt to form a bipartisan commission.
McCarthy told a closed-door meeting of first-term House GOP members on Wednesday that he, not Pelosi, D-Calif., controls Republicans' committee assignments, the aide said. He told them that if Pelosi names them to the committee and they accept, they should plan on getting all their committee assignments from her — an apparent threat to remove them from their current panels.
The aide spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the private meeting. McCarthy's threat was first reported by Punchbowl News, a political news organization.
The panel will be led by Democrats, with Pelosi appointing a chairperson and at least eight of the 13 members. The resolution gives her a possible say in the appointment of the other five members as well, directing that they will be named “after consultation” with McCarthy.
Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who was removed by Republicans from a House leadership job this year after repeatedly clashing with President Donald Trump, and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, another Trump critic, were the only Republicans to vote Wednesday in favor of forming the new committee.
GOP leaders have not said whether Republicans will even participate in the new panel.
The committee is to investigate the storming of the Capitol by Trump’s supporters as Congress was formally affirming his reelection defeat by Democrat Joe Biden. The attack resulted in five deaths and dozens of injuries and was the worst assault on the Capitol since the War of 1812
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
I would guess she approached him and maybe he said no. I would think she'd want to have as many sane republicans as possible (as small of a pool as that is these days). I know the GQP doesn't really do "bi-partisan" anymore but the less Dem-dominated the better.
1995 Milwaukee 1998 Alpine, Alpine 2003 Albany, Boston, Boston, Boston 2004 Boston, Boston 2006 Hartford, St. Paul (Petty), St. Paul (Petty) 2011 Alpine, Alpine 2013 Wrigley 2014 St. Paul 2016 Fenway, Fenway, Wrigley, Wrigley 2018 Missoula, Wrigley, Wrigley 2021 Asbury Park 2022 St Louis 2023 Austin, Austin
Comments
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
They are painful to watch but a must if you want to see what kind of fuckery is coming.
Unmasking the far right: An extremist paid a price when his identity was exposed online after a violent clash in Washington
In a flash, Laura Jedeed was surrounded by screaming men. The freelance journalist was filming a group of Trump supporters walking the streets of the District after the “Million MAGA March” on Nov. 14 when a man wearing an American flag gaiter mask approached her, stepped on her toes and began yelling.
“What’s up, you stupid b----?” the man shouted, his mask slipping down his face.
Jedeed yelled at the man to stop touching her. A crowd formed around her and another journalist, with unmasked men screaming at them from all directions. Jedeed kept her camera rolling, and when she got away from the crowd, she uploaded video of the incident to YouTube and Twitter, and it went viral.
Reaction was swift.
The man in the flag mask was quickly identified as Washington state resident Edward Jeremy Dawson by a local antifa group. Twitter users mining public records later released his address and phone number.
The video was amplified by Christian Exoo, a prominent anti-fascist activist who tweeted it out to his 50,000-plus followers. Exoo also included contact information for Dawson’s employer.
Two days later, Dawson lost his job as an ironworker, his employer citing his actions in D.C. His wife, Michelle, uploaded a tearful self-shot video to Twitter announcing his firing, and later that month she was asked to hand in her vest and badge at a Walmart in Battle Ground, Wash., where she worked as an online-order fulfiller. She thinks she was fired over her politics but acknowledges that she had missed a substantial amount of work because of back problems.
Anonymous abusive callers deluged the Dawsons’ cellphones, with some urging the couple to kill themselves, the Dawsons said.
The disclosure online of Dawson’s personal information — a phenomenon known as doxing — is part of a growing effort by left-wing activists to punish members of far-right groups accused of violent behavior by exposing them to their employers, family and friends. The doxing of Dawson highlights the effect the tactic can have — unemployment and personal upheaval followed by a new job that pays much less than his old one — but also the limits of the technique: Dawson is unrepentant for his role in galvanizing a mob to harass Jedeed and continues to espouse far-right views.
Indeed, some on the left, including Jedeed, who is a well-known activist in Portland, Ore., have qualms about the tactic and how effective it can be in the fight against extremism.
“From a practical perspective, I feel like being unemployable is going to push him in a more extreme direction,” Jedeed said. “On the other hand, you shouldn't be able to act like that and then have nothing happen to you.”
The tactic also has been employed by the far right to target not just their leftist opponents but also the families of mass shooting victims, who have been harassed by those claiming the attacks were fabricated.
Antifa activists say that hateful rhetoric is protected by the First Amendment but that that doesn’t mean those who advocate or use violence as part of their ideology shouldn’t be exposed, including to their employers. They argue that doxing is a nonviolent response to violence.
Conservatives typically portray militant antifascists as the far-left equivalent of violent armed groups on the hard right, but right-wing extremist attacks and plots greatly eclipse those from the far left and cause more deaths, a Washington Post analysis showed. The FBI regards far-right extremists as the most active and lethal domestic terror threat.
“Our focus is on protecting our communities by making it as hard as possible to be a Nazi,” said Exoo, a part-time library employee at St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y., who also teaches classes on public records and social media research to activists. “We can’t always change hearts, but at least organizing is going to be harder for [Dawson] in the future.”
Fervent supporters
The Dawsons consider themselves friends and followers of Joey Gibson, who founded Patriot Prayer in 2016.
The far-right group has rallied dozens of times in the Portland area and engaged in violent clashes with anti-fascist counterprotesters.
Michelle Dawson first attended a Patriot Prayer rally in 2019. “He talked a lot about freedom and God,” she said of Gibson. “I’ve seen his fire and I’ve seen that he had a voice and he wasn’t afraid to use it.”
In 2019, Michelle Dawson won a seat on the city council in Yacolt, Wash., just north of Portland, running on a gun rights platform. A high school dropout from Utah, she said she never had any interest in politics until after Donald Trump was elected president. She voted in a presidential election for the first time in 2020.
“I was the kind of person that didn’t talk about politics,” she said. “I felt like my vote didn’t matter.”
Her husband also dropped out of high school, in 11th grade, eventually landing a job as an ironworker in Ridgefield, Wash. He says he started abusing drugs and alcohol and soon became addicted to crystal meth. He was arrested for felony possession of a controlled substance in 2007 and spent six years in a Washington state prison.
Dawson said he got clean in prison.
“I came out, got rid of every friend that ever had anything to do with it and started building,” he said. “Met my wife, got married, bought a home, bought trucks, toys. It’s totally changed my life.”
The couple joined Patriot Prayer and became regulars at gatherings, often with other far-right factions including the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters and hate groups such as Identity Evropa.
Dawson says he doesn’t consider himself a white nationalist and doesn’t see anything wrong with such beliefs.
“How is white nationalism racist?” he asked. “Is it racist to be proud of who you are? There’s nothing more racist than saying ‘Black lives matter,’ yet I’m the racist one when I say all lives matter?”
The Dawsons also became fervent supporters of Trump and were drawn to D.C. in November because they believed the falsehood then gathering strength on the right that Trump had won the election.
“I like everything that Trump stood for,” said Michelle Dawson. “I loved how he loved our country.”
Her husband said he also arrived in D.C. still mourning a friend, Aaron Danielson, 39, who was shot and killed after a pro-Trump caravan ride through Portland by Michael Reinoehl, an anti-fascist demonstrator, who was himself shot and killed by a federal fugitive task force days later.
“So yeah,” Dawson said, “I had a little anger with me going to D.C.”
The MAGA march was over and Dawson, who said he had been drinking, and a group of about 20 others were wandering around downtown when someone saw Jedeed filming and shouted that she was an “antifa journalist.”
The 34-year-old had spent the day covering the march and was a known figure at such events. “I’m fascinated by the way Trump has transformed the right,” Jedeed said.
She had been writing about the allure of Patriot Prayer in particular for several years and had earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Reed College for a thesis titled “Making Monsters: Right-Wing Creation of the Liberal Enemy.”
Jedeed had grown up in a family steeped in a deeply conservative vein of libertarianism known as objectivism, a philosophy developed by the late author Ayn Rand.
She joined the Army after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and served with the 82nd Airborne Division in signals operation and analysis, including two tours in Afghanistan. But she became disillusioned with the war and said her beliefs gradually moved left.
“I was a big believer in the war on terrorism,” Jedeed said. “I thought bringing freedom and democracy to oppressed people would be cool, but it was pretty hard to escape the fact that the Afghans did not want us there. . . . And you think, ‘We’re not the good guys here.’ ”
Jedeed’s time in the military, she thinks, has given her the ability to remain calm in moments of high tension, and that’s how she reacted to those attempting to intimidate her in Washington.
Dawson says that when he approached Jedeed and stepped on her foot, he was “being pushed from behind.” There is, however, no one behind him at that moment, according to the footage of the incident.
Dawson led the group of hecklers in chants of ‘F--- antifa!’ and repeatedly bumped into Jedeed. “How does it feel to be a Nazi fascist?” he yelled at her.
“This was as bad as it’s ever been,” said Jedeed, who has been involved in other confrontations with far-right activists. “I’ve studied the way they make propaganda and I know that the only way out is to be as calm and assertive as possible and not rise to the bait.”
After multiple men berated Jedeed and one slapped away her camera, Jedeed asked, “Do you realize how bad you look right now?”
The mood suddenly shifted. A few moments later, Dawson offered to lead Jedeed out of the fracas.
“So I kind of knew at that point in time that I needed to defuse the situation,” Dawson said. “I was pushing Proud Boys and patriots out of the way to get her to safety. I mean, I wasn’t harassing anyone. I just wanted to make her feel just a little bit scared.”
Jedeed recalled, “He actually leads me out of the cluster — after initiating it. I'm so glad he did it, but I’m not really willing to give him a lot of credit for it, because he created that.”
She said she stayed up all night in her hotel room with the door locked and chained, sleepless over the possibility that the men who surrounded her might locate her, because they were all staying in the same hotel and had seen each other that morning.
“I still have dreams where they find me,” Jedeed said.
No regrets
The work of learning Dawson’s identity had been done months in advance by Rose City Antifa, whose anonymous members organize against far-right groups and work to identify frequent far-right rally attendees in and around Portland before they’ve committed a crime.
“Our decision to identify people has less to do with our desire for them to experience tons and tons of immediate consequences, and more to do with tracking their behavior,” said a representative of the group, who spoke on the condition of anonymity citing security issues.
Doxing is having an effect on some far-right groups, particularly less committed members who may have drifted into the far right, said Daniel Martinez HoSang, a Yale University associate professor and co-author of the 2019 book “Producers, Parasites, Patriots: Race and the New Right-Wing Politics of Precarity.”
“There seems to be a visceral pleasure that brings people into these groups, and that is really interrupted when people have to deal with the repercussions at home and at work,” he said. “They’re not ideologically hardcore about this stuff. They get wrapped up in this story that’s quite divorced from their day-to-day lives.”
Doxing works, Dawson said. He guesses that 60 percent of his friends in the movement have been doxed and that some have had to move and change jobs.
The targets of doxing are increasingly responding in the courts, alleging they were harassed by doxers.
Exoo, for instance, is being sued by a handful of people he has doxed, including Daniel D’Ambly, a New Jersey man who faced death threats and lost his job as a printing employee at the New York Daily News after Exoo exposed his affiliation with the New Jersey European Heritage Foundation, a white supremacist organization, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
The suit accuses Exoo and Twitter of interference with commerce by threats or violence. Exoo has filed a motion to dismiss the suit.
The Dawsons installed a security system at their home, moved their firearms to spots with easier access, deactivated their social media accounts and stopped answering their phones. When Dawson’s wife left the house to attend rallies, she wore a bulletproof vest.
“I was terrified for my life,” she said.
“It’s just not fun. And it’s not right,” Dawson said. “It should be illegal.”
The couple said their children had mixed reactions to the video. Dawson’s 19-year-old daughter didn’t see what the big deal was, Dawson said. Michelle Dawson said her 18-year-old daughter was disgusted with her: “But she’s 18, so she’s all, ‘Orange man is bad. George Floyd shouldn’t have died. Blah, blah, blah.’ She hates what I do.”
The Dawsons asked that their children not be contacted directly.
Dawson said he is upfront with potential employers about his online reputation and has struggled to find work. His current job pays considerably less than his old one, he said.
But he said he has no regrets and would do only one thing differently.
“I’d do it all again,” he said, “but with the mask on.”
Doxing is part of a growing effort by left-wing activists to punish extremists by exposing their violent behavior - The Washington Post
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
An Indiana woman on Wednesday became the first defendant to be sentenced in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and avoided time behind bars, while a member of the Oath Keepers extremist group pleaded guilty in a conspiracy case and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in a major step forward for the massive investigation.
The two developments signal that the cases against those charged in the deadly siege are slowly advancing, even as the U.S. Department of Justice and the courthouse in Washington, D.C., struggle under the weight of roughly 500 federal arrests across the U.S. And it comes as Republicans in Washington attempt to downplay the violence committed by members of the mob supporting former President Donald Trump.
Graydon Young, who was accused alongside 15 other members and associates of the Oath Keepers of conspiring to block the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s presidential victory, pleaded guilty to two counts: conspiracy and obstruction of an official proceeding. It was the first guilty plea in the major conspiracy case brought against members of the group.
The second charge calls for up to 20 years in prison, but U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta said federal sentencing guidelines call for Young to serve between 5 1/4 years and 6 1/2 years behind bars. Prosecutors may seek even less time in exchange for his cooperation against other defendants.
Young, 55, of Englewood, Florida, was arrested in February and charged in the sweeping conspiracy case accusing members of the Oath Keepers of coming to Washington prepared to use violence and intent on stopping the certification of the vote. Authorities said in court documents that Young joined the Florida chapter of the Oath Keepers in December, writing that he was “looking to get involved in helping ...”
Later that month, Young reached out to a company that does firearms and combat training about a rifle class for four people, according to the indictment. Authorities say Young, wearing a helmet and tactical vest, was part of the military-style “stack” seen on camera marching through the crowd before entering the Capitol building.
Young's attorneys didn't immediately respond to emails sent Wednesday seeking comment.
Another Oath Keepers member, Jon Ryan Schaffer, has also pleaded guilty in the riot, but was not charged in the conspiracy case. Schaffer has agreed to cooperate with investigators and potentially testify against other defendants.
Anna Morgan Lloyd, 49, of Indiana, was ordered by a federal judge to serve three years of probation, perform 120 hours of community service and pay $500 in restitution after admitting to unlawfully entering the Capitol. She pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor charge under a deal with prosecutors.
After the riot, Lloyd described Jan. 6 on Facebook as the “best day ever."
On Wednesday, she apologized to the court, her family and “the American people,” saying she went to Washington that day to peacefully show her support for Trump.
“I’m ashamed that it became a savage display of violence that day. And I would have never been there if I had a clue it was going to turn out that way,” Lloyd told the judge. “It was never my intent to be a part of anything that’s so disgraceful to our American people.”
In seeking probation for Lloyd, prosecutors noted that she was not involved in any violence and destruction or preplanning and coordination of the Capitol breach. Lloyd was invited by her hairdresser to drive to Washington to hear Trump speak, her attorney wrote in court documents.
U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth said he was giving her a “break,” but didn’t want others to think that probation — and not a stiffer sentence — would be the norm.
“Legally, I could give you the six months, but is that really what we want our judiciary to do?” the judge asked.
Lamberth said he struggled with what would be an appropriate sentence for Lloyd because he views the riot as a serious crime. “This wasn’t a peaceful demonstration the way it turned out. It was not an accident,” he said. “It was intended to and brought a halt to the very functioning of our government.”
He said he was “especially troubled” by some lawmakers who are seeking to rewrite the history of the Capitol riot.
“I don’t know what planet they were on, but there were millions of people in this country that saw what happened on Jan. 6 and that saw what you saw and what you just described: a disgrace to our country,” the judge said.
In a letter to the judge asking for leniency, Lloyd wrote that she was a registered Democrat but that she and her husband began supporting Trump in 2016 because “he was standing up for what we believe in.”
After her arrest, Lloyd’s lawyer gave her a list of books and movies to help her “see what life is like for others in our country,” Lloyd wrote. Lloyd said she has sought to educate herself by watching movies such as “Schindler’s List” and the History Channel’s “Burning Tulsa” and reading Bryan Stevenson’s “Just Mercy.”
“I’ve lived a sheltered life and truly haven’t experienced life the way many have,” Lloyd wrote. “I’ve learned that even though we live in a wonderful country things still need to improve. People of all colors should feel as safe as I do to walk down the street.”
Four other people — a Tennessee man, a Maryland man and a Virginia couple — have pleaded guilty to the same misdemeanor charge in the last two weeks.
Earlier Wednesday, another man, Robert Maurice Reeder of Maryland, admitted to entering the Capitol, but his lawyer said he didn’t force his way inside and didn’t damage any property or hurt anyone.
Before his arrest, an attorney for Reeder provided federal authorities with a compilation of photos and videos that he took with his cellphone at the Capitol. A video seemed to show Reeder chanting, “Fight for Trump!” and he recorded an assault on a Capitol police officer, according to the FBI.
“You need to retreat!” Reeder apparently told the officer, an FBI agent wrote in a court filing.
A prosecutor said Tennessee resident Brian Wayne Ivey, who pleaded guilty on Tuesday, entered the Capitol through a window that somebody else broke with a riot shield and spent roughly 30 minutes inside the building.
Joshua Bustle of Virginia, who pleaded guilty alongside his wife, will also be seeking probation, his lawyer said. Jessica Bustle’s attorney described them as “good, decent, hardworking people,” who were urged to come to Washington by “very powerful people and groups.”
“They are not criminals or insurrectionists or rioters. They were not looking to break laws when they came to DC on the 6th. They violated minor laws on the 6th and they have accepted responsibility and accountability for doing so,” Jessica Bustle’s attorney, Nabeel Kibria, wrote in an email.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
You broke the law and I tell on you and I'm a snitch?
Yeah, ok.
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
A caravan of Trump backers tried to run a Biden bus off a road. Now they’re being sued under an anti-KKK act.
Timothy Holloway clutched the wheel of a Biden-Harris campaign bus last October, swerving and dodging as one hostile car bearing a Trump flag after another tried to run him off a Texas highway.
“We were terrified,” Holloway said in a news release. “They were clearly trying to scare us and prevent us from arriving at our destination in peace.”
The tactic worked — the Biden campaign canceled the rest of the day’s events, saying it feared for the safety of campaign staffers, supporters and local political candidates. Some prominent Republicans cheered the effort by the self-proclaimed “Trump Train,” while President Donald Trump himself lauded their efforts, calling the drivers “patriots” who “did nothing wrong.”
Now, Holloway — along with a White House staffer, a former Texas lawmaker and a campaign volunteer — are suing several members of the caravan, accusing them of violating the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, which bars violent election intimidation, as well as local Texas laws. The group is also suing local law enforcement, claiming they failed to provide protection.
“Those on the bus feared injury or for their lives. All suffered lingering trauma in the days and months thereafter,” says one of a pair of federal lawsuits filed to the Western District of Texas court on Thursday. “The events of October 30 arose from a campaign of politically motivated intimidation.”
The lawsuits come as hundreds of other fervent Trump supporters face criminal charges for storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Some of those who participated in the “Trump Train” were at the Capitol during the insurrection, the lawsuit alleges. The FBI has also announced it is investigating the “Trump Train” incident.
The case isn’t the only recent attempt to invoke the Ku Klux Klan Act against Trump supporters. In February, Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, invoked the Klan Act in a lawsuit against Trump, Rudolph W. Giuliani and two extremist groups whose members are accused of participating in the insurrection. Thompson alleged that Trump and Giuliani violated the act by inciting the riots with false claims of a rigged election. The lawsuit is ongoing.
The 150-year-old Ku Klux Klan Act being used against Trump in Capitol attack
Along with Holloway, the bus heading up Interstate 35 on Oct. 30 also included former Texas state senator Wendy Davis, who made national headlines during a 13-hour filibuster in 2013 to halt the passage of an antiabortion bill. The bus had been driving north from Laredo, Tex., to San Antonio, when those inside noticed dozens of cars sporting Trump campaign gear waiting along the highway and then swarming the campaign bus. Staffers frantically called 911 as the cars boxed them in, driving dangerously close and slowing down the bus.
“I flew down to Texas to help with the Biden/Harris bus tour, intended to drum up enthusiasm at polling locations. Instead, I ended up spending the afternoon calling 911,” tweeted campaign volunteer Eric Cervini — another plaintiff in the new lawsuit, who was driving a separate car during the incident. Cervini also claimed that many of the Trump supporters were armed.
The lawsuit claims that the group started coordinating “to intercept and intimidate the bus as it traveled through Bexar, Comal, Hays, and Travis counties” as soon as the campaign announced events in the state.
As the bus tried to dodge the caravan, police responded to the panicked calls for help. But as the bus made its way to San Marcos, police refused to send patrol cars as escorts, the suit says.
“Certain officers from the San Marcos Police Department said that they would not respond unless the Biden-Harris Campaign was ‘reporting a crime,’ explaining: ‘we can’t help you,’” the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit alleges that San Marcos Director of Public Safety Chase Stapp and officials from the San Marcos Police Department and San Marcos City Marshal’s Department “failed to take reasonable steps to prevent planned acts of violent political intimidation.”
The San Marcos police and marshal’s departments did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the suit. It’s not clear who is representing the individual drivers named in the second lawsuit.
Trump cheers supporters who swarmed a Biden bus in Texas: ‘These patriots did nothing wrong’
Several of the people named in that lawsuit bragged about their escapades online, the lawsuit says, noting that one defendant, Eliazar Cisneros, boasted on social media that he “slammed” into the bus.
The day’s events were traumatic, the lawsuit says. The plaintiffs, who also include White House staffer David Gins, who was on the bus that day, are suffering from “ongoing psychological and emotional injury.”
“Gins was extremely shaken as a result of his ordeal,” the lawsuit says. “During the incident, he felt ‘terrorized.’ … About an hour into the ordeal, he walked to the back of the bus and broke down in tears.”
Holloway, the bus driver, had trouble sleeping for a month after the incident and says he can’t drive a bus anymore. Davis noted that she feared she’d be physically harmed if she spoke out about her experience that day.
“Those who engage in organized threats — whether they’re online death threats or mob violence — are breaking the law and will be called to account for their actions in federal court,” Michael Gottlieb, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, said in a news release.
Biden campaign staff, Wendy Davis sue Trump supporters and Texas police for ‘Trump Train’ incident - The Washington Post
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House is poised to launch a new investigation of the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection on Wednesday with expected approval of a 13-person select committee to probe the violent attack.
The panel would be led by Democrats, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appointing a chairperson and at least eight of the committee's members. The resolution up for a vote gives Pelosi a possible say in the appointment of the other five members as well, directing that they will be named “after consultation” with House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy.
In a memo to all House Republicans late Tuesday, No. 2 House Republican Steve Scalise urged his members to vote against the resolution, saying the select panel “is likely to pursue a partisan agenda” in investigating the siege by former President Donald Trump’s supporters. Scalise and McCarthy have so far declined to say whether Republicans will even participate.
Pelosi is moving to form the select committee after Senate Republicans blocked the creation of a separate independent and bipartisan panel that would have been evenly split between the parties and modeled after a commission that investigated the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Republicans ready to move on from the insurrection — and Trump's role in it — argued against that as well, claiming it would be duplicative and partisan.
The speaker has said that it was her preference to have an independent panel lead the inquiry, but that Congress could not wait any longer to begin a deeper look at the insurrection.
The GOP role in the probe, and the appointments to the panel, could help determine whether the committee becomes a bipartisan effort or a tool of further division. Two Senate committees issued a bipartisan report with security recommendations earlier this month, but it did not examine the origins of the siege, leaving many unanswered questions about the events of the day.
McCarthy is facing pressure to take the investigation seriously from police officers who responded to the attack, Democrats and even some of his fellow Republicans. Pelosi has invited representatives of the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia and the U.S. Capitol Police to sit in the gallery and watch Wednesday’s vote, according to a person familiar with the plan who wasn’t authorized to discuss it and spoke on condition of anonymity. Dozens of those officers were brutally beaten and suffered injuries as Trump’s supporters pushed past them and broke into the building to interrupt the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory.
Two of the officers who responded, Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone and Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn, met with McCarthy on Friday and asked him to take the House investigation seriously.
Fanone, who has described being dragged down the Capitol steps by rioters who shocked him with a stun gun and beat him, said he asked McCarthy for a commitment not to put “the wrong people” on the panel, a reference to those in the GOP who have downplayed the violence and defended the insurrectionists. Fanone said McCarthy told him he would take his request seriously.
Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, has also publicly pressured McCarthy. “I hope he appoints people who are seen as being credible,” he said Sunday on CNN.
Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, a close Trump ally, said that he doesn't know what McCarthy is going to do but that it's possible Republicans will just choose not to be involved.
“I know I've got real concerns, I know he does, that this is all just political, and that this is impeachment three against President Trump," Jordan said.
Trump was twice impeached by the House and twice acquitted by the Senate, the second time for telling his supporters just before the insurrection to “fight like hell” to overturn his defeat to Biden.
Pelosi has not yet said who will lead the panel, but one possibility is House Homeland Security Committee Chair Bennie Thompson, D-Miss. Thompson said Tuesday that it would be an “honor” to serve as chair and that it's Pelosi's call if she wants to have a say on the Republican members.
“They had an opportunity to really engage,” Thompson said of Republicans who voted against the bipartisan commission. “And they didn't. So they can't now come back and say, ‘Oh, that’s not fair.'"
Many Republicans have expressed concerns about a partisan probe, since majority Democrats are likely to investigate Trump’s role in the siege and the right-wing groups that participated in it. Almost three dozen House Republicans voted last month for the legislation to create an independent commission, and seven Republicans in the Senate have also supported moving forward on that bill. But that was short of the 10 Senate Republicans who would be necessary to pass it.
Many Republicans have made clear that they want to move on from the Jan. 6 attack. But some have gone further, including Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia, who suggested that video of the rioters looked like a “tourist visit." Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona insisted that a Trump supporter named Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed that day while trying to break into the House chamber, was “executed.” Others have defended the rioters as they have been charged with federal crimes.
In their meeting with McCarthy, Fanone and Dunn asked the GOP leader to publicly denounce those comments downplaying the violence, as well as the 21 Republicans who recently voted against giving medals of honor to the U.S. Capitol Police and the Metropolitan Police to thank them for their service. They said McCarthy, who voted for the measure, told them he would only deal with those members privately.
Seven people died during and after the rioting, including Babbitt and three other Trump supporters who suffered medical emergencies. Two police officers died by suicide in the days that followed, and a third officer, Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, collapsed and later died after engaging with the protesters. A medical examiner later determined he died of natural causes.
___
Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro, Kevin Freking and Padmananda Rama contributed to this report.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Capitol RiotFallout
VISUAL INVESTIGATIONS
Inside the Capitol Riot: An Exclusive Video Investigation
The Times analyzed thousands of videos from the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol Building to understand how it happened — and why. Here are some of the key findings.
Day of Rage: An In-Depth Look at How a Mob Stormed the Capitol
A six-month Times investigation has synchronized and mapped out thousands of videos and police radio communications from the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, providing the most complete picture to date of what happened — and why.June 30, 2021By The New York Times
In the six months since an angry pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol, immense efforts have been made not only to find the rioters and hold them accountable, but also — and perhaps more important — to dig into the details of Jan. 6 and slowly piece together what actually happened that day.
Congressional committees have looked into police and intelligence failures. The Justice Department has launched a nationwide investigation that has now resulted in more than 500 arrests. And while Republicans in Congress blocked the formation of a blue-ribbon bipartisan committee, House Democrats are poised to appoint a smaller select committee.
Even now, however, Republican politicians and their allies in the media are still playing down the most brazen attack on a seat of power in modern American history. Some have sought to paint the assault as the work of mere tourists. Others, going further, have accused the F.B.I. of planning the attack in what they have described — wildly — as a false-flag operation.
The work of understanding Jan. 6 has been hard enough without this barrage of disinformation and, hoping to get to the bottom of the riot, The Times’s Visual Investigations team spent several months reviewing thousands of videos, many filmed by the rioters themselves and since deleted from social media. We filed motions to unseal police body-camera footage, scoured law enforcement radio communications, and synchronized and mapped the visual evidence.
What we have come up with is a 40-minute panoramic take on Jan. 6, the most complete visual depiction of the Capitol riot to date. In putting it together, we gained critical insights into the character and motivation of rioters by experiencing the events of the day often through their own words and video recordings. We found evidence of members of extremist groups inciting others to riot and assault police officers. And we learned how Donald J. Trump’s own words resonated with the mob in real time as they staged the attack.
Here are some of the major revelations.
Multiple Points of Attack
We pinpointed at least eight locations where rioters breached and entered the Capitol building — more than were previously known. The scenes revealed the extent of the rioters’ disregard for the law as they surged violently around the building’s perimeter and, eventually, inside.
The police were outnumbered and responded differently at various breach points, allowing rioters to break through doors using weapons like crowbars or, in some places, to simply walk through as the police stepped aside.
The multiple breaches also revealed the Capitol’s vulnerability. Despite locked doors and, in certain places, thick windows, rioters without specialized equipment were able to break in instantly in some places.
A Delay Turns Deadly
In the Senate, proceedings to certify the election results were halted almost immediately when a building-wide lockdown was called after the first breach by rioters. But we found that it took much longer for the House of Representatives to do the same. This delay appeared to have contributed to a rioter’s death.
Instead of evacuating, members of the House sheltered in place and resumed their work even as rioters overran the building. Speaker Nancy Pelosi was rushed to safety, but Representative Jim McGovern took her place presiding over the session. He told us that Capitol building security staff had said it was safe to resume.
Eventually, the House session was halted and members began streaming out of a rear door guided by security personnel. Rioters had arrived at almost the same moment, just on the other side of a hallway door with glass panels. They became incensed at the sight of the evacuating lawmakers — a situation that could have been avoided if the lawmakers had left before the mob arrived.
Ashli Babbitt, a Trump supporter and follower of the QAnon conspiracy theory, tried to climb through one of the door’s broken windows toward the lawmakers. A plainclothes Capitol Police officer charged with protecting the House shot her once through the upper chest. The wound was fatal.
The Makeup of the Mob
One of the biggest questions hanging over the aftermath of Jan. 6 was whether the riot was planned and carried out by organized groups.
By identifying and tracking key players throughout the day, we found that most — even some at the forefront of the action — were ardent, but disorganized Trump supporters swept up in the moment and acting individually.
The first person to enter the Capitol building, for example, was a 43-year-old husband and father from Kentucky named Michael Sparks. He has no known affiliation with any organized groups. Ray Epps, an Arizona man seen in widely-circulated videos telling Trump supporters on multiple occasions to go into the Capitol, also seemed to have acted on his own.
Yet we also found that the crowd did include members of groups who seemed eager for a confrontation, like well-organized militias and far-right groups including the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys. This proved to be a combustible mix. In the videos we analyzed, they can be seen with baseball bats and body armor, and coordinating with one another using radios. On several occasions, a calculated move by a more organized actor — for example, a Proud Boy identifying a weakness in the police line near a set of stairs — set off a surge by the mob.
Evidence collected by the F.B.I. suggests that the Proud Boys in particular were aware that they had inflamed the mob of ordinary people — and may have intended to do so in advance. Just before the assault, one Proud Boy leader wrote on a group chat on Telegram that he was hoping his men could incite the “normies” to “burn that city to ash today” and “smash some pigs to dust.” Then, after the riot, another Proud Boy leader wrote on Telegram: “This is NOT what I expected to happen. All from us showing up and starting some chants and getting the normies all riled up.”
Domino Effect
By synchronizing footage from both sides of the Capitol building, we were able to establish how crowds on each side interacted with one another.
We tracked the movement of a group of rioters from the west side of the Capitol — which faces the National Mall and absorbed most of the attendees arriving from Mr. Trump’s speech — to the opposite eastern side.
The eastern crowd had remained largely behind the barricades, but all that changed with the arrival of rioters from around the side of the building. This more violent group was the trigger that put the entire mob over the edge, spurring them to push easily through a line of officers and surround the Capitol on every front.
Echoing the President
Most of the videos we analyzed were filmed by the rioters. By carefully listening to the unfiltered chatter within the crowd, we found a clear feedback loop between President Trump and his supporters.
As Mr. Trump spoke near the White House, supporters who had already gathered at the Capitol building hoping to disrupt the certification responded. Hearing his message to “walk down to the Capitol,” they interpreted it as the president sending reinforcements. “There’s about a million people on their way now,” we heard a man in the crowd say, as Mr. Trump’s speech played from a loudspeaker.
The call and response didn’t stop there. We found evidence of his influence once the violence was well underway. In one moment, a woman with a megaphone urged rioters to climb through a broken window by asking them to “stand up for our country and Constitution” — echoing the language in an earlier tweet from Mr. Trump. In another, as the police were pushing to clear the mob off the building, a rioter screamed at officers: “I was invited here by the president.”
Taking Back the Capitol
One unanswered question when we began this investigation was how the police managed to reclaim the Capitol building from the mob. We found that once officers increased their numbers, armor and crowd-control weapons, clearing the rioters happened quickly and effectively.
The footage revealed that officers cleared several locations in less than an hour after being reinforced by local Metropolitan Police, Virginia State Police and other local and federal agencies that arrived with more manpower and authorization to use more powerful crowd-control weapons.
It’s a stark contrast to what we saw during the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020, when federal officers were on scene from the start, already equipped with riot gear and authorized to use higher levels of force. Law enforcement’s relatively quick success in clearing the Capitol building once reinforcements arrived shows how the rioters might have been stopped far earlier with a different level of preparation — possibly preventing fatalities, countless officer injuries, over $30 million in damages.
There was another difference between the Capitol riot and those connected to this summer’s racial justice protests: Very few people who broke into the Capitol were arrested at the scene. Most were allowed to leave the building, forcing the F.B.I. to track them down later and take them into custody — a process that is still continuing today.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
It's so weird how the GOP is trying to sabotage the investigation into 1/6.
It's *almost* as if they have something to hide.
WASHINGTON (AP) — House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has threatened to strip Republicans of committee assignments if they accept an appointment from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to join the new select panel investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, a top House GOP aide said Thursday.
The warning by McCarthy, R-Calif., underscores party leaders' opposition to the new committee, which the House created Wednesday on a near party-line 222-190 vote, and their desire to shape the narrative about its work as much as they can. Republicans have complained that the panel will be dominated by Democrats and will produce a skewed, partisan report, even though the GOP previously scuttled an earlier Democratic attempt to form a bipartisan commission.
McCarthy told a closed-door meeting of first-term House GOP members on Wednesday that he, not Pelosi, D-Calif., controls Republicans' committee assignments, the aide said. He told them that if Pelosi names them to the committee and they accept, they should plan on getting all their committee assignments from her — an apparent threat to remove them from their current panels.
The aide spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the private meeting. McCarthy's threat was first reported by Punchbowl News, a political news organization.
The panel will be led by Democrats, with Pelosi appointing a chairperson and at least eight of the 13 members. The resolution gives her a possible say in the appointment of the other five members as well, directing that they will be named “after consultation” with McCarthy.
Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who was removed by Republicans from a House leadership job this year after repeatedly clashing with President Donald Trump, and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, another Trump critic, were the only Republicans to vote Wednesday in favor of forming the new committee.
GOP leaders have not said whether Republicans will even participate in the new panel.
The committee is to investigate the storming of the Capitol by Trump’s supporters as Congress was formally affirming his reelection defeat by Democrat Joe Biden. The attack resulted in five deaths and dozens of injuries and was the worst assault on the Capitol since the War of 1812
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Pelosi taps Democrats, Republican Rep. Liz Cheney for committee investigating Capitol riot
https://share.smartnews.com/dmP7k
2013 Wrigley 2014 St. Paul 2016 Fenway, Fenway, Wrigley, Wrigley 2018 Missoula, Wrigley, Wrigley 2021 Asbury Park 2022 St Louis 2023 Austin, Austin
If I ever get investigated for something I'm going to use the "witch hunt" defense. Should bode well for me, no?