Trump lashes out at Gov. Doug Ducey following certification

[admin]

Capitol Police rejected offers of federal help to quell rioting
by Associated Press
JAN. 7, 20213:19 PM

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[William Brangham] Attorney General, I wonder if you could help us understand a little bit of, for people who don’t know Washington, D.C., and how law enforcement operates in the City, it’s a very confusing thing. There’s a police force for the Capitol; there’s the Secret Service for the President; D.C. has its own police force. In this case, we saw that this was primarily an issue for the Capitol Police to be dealing with. What other local and/or national law enforcement agencies should be involved here, and do you believe are involved in here?

[Karl Racine, Attorney General for the District of Columbia] William, the question is spoken from someone who knows Washington, D.C. So thank you for that. And it’s important for the citizens and residents of the United States to understand that the District of Columbia, unfortunately, is not a state. We pay taxes; we go to war, but we’re not a state. We have taxation without representation. And that means that our local police police our neighborhoods in the District of Columbia where we have 700,000 plus extraordinary Washingtonians live and work. But we have the Capitol Police responsible for policing the Capitol. We have the Secret Service who has broad responsibility for protecting, of course, the President, and other elected officials, and other national assets. We have the Park Police that is in charge of protecting our parks here in the District of Columbia that are beautiful. And so in a way, the District of Columbia is one of the most over-policed in the sense of having so many law enforcement officials who, generally speaking, actually work well together. I think the breakdown here is that the Metropolitan Police Department is trying with all of their might, and I think they are doing, to be honest, a very good job under the new chief Contee. But we have a dissonance because it appears that some crucial federal partners frankly didn’t come to play today. And I can only think that the order came from somewhere up high because I know those federal police officers. They go to work every day to do the right thing. I think they were frankly told not to post today.

[William Brangham] I want to follow up on that in a moment, but we are just getting some word from the apparently the Sergeant of Arms inside the Capitol announced an all-clear, that there was some sense that the majority of protesters have been either contained or that the threat is minimized. And allegedly there was some applause that broke out inside the Capitol. So hopefully that is some good news, and we’re working to try and confirm that. But Attorney General, you were saying before about this issue of the difficulty of a city not necessarily having full governance over its own affairs. We know that the mayor of D.C. , Muriel Bowser, has established a 6:00 p.m. curfew tonight in the city. Can you give us a sense of what other resources are going to be deployed in the city? What concerns you have about what might unfold as this protest continues?

Abrupt Change of Topic

Another way to deal with a subject that you don’t want to discuss is to wait for a person to catch her breath and change the topic to something that is more agreeable. Most people will take the hint, but if it doesn’t work, try it again. Smile when you do it so the person doesn’t perceive you as being antagonistic or think you’re not a good conversationalist.

Here are some examples of how to quickly change the subject:

• When people start gossiping about someone who isn’t there, point to the buffet (or another inanimate object) and make a comment about how much planning must have gone into it.
• If a person says she has issues with the company you work for, you can smile and ask if she has any pets, and if so, what are they. She should take the hint that your employer is off limits in this discussion.
• When a person starts criticizing your friend or coworker, flash a big smile and ask about her last vacation.

-- How to Gracefully Change the Subject, by Debby Mayne

-- Senate Republicans Challenge Electoral College Votes, by PBS News, 1/6/21

Trump supporters gather before the siege on the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday. (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

Three days before the pro-President Trump riot at the Capitol, the Pentagon asked the U.S. Capitol Police if it needed National Guard manpower. And as the mob descended on the building Wednesday, Justice Department leaders reached out to offer up FBI agents. The police turned them down both times, according to a Defense official and two people familiar with the matter.

Capitol Police had planned for a free-speech demonstration and didn’t need more help, those three told the Associated Press. The police weren’t expecting what actually happened — an insurrection.

But the Capitol ended up being overrun, overwhelming a law enforcement agency sworn to protect the lawmakers inside. Four rioters died, including one who was shot inside the building.

There had been plenty of warnings. Plenty of time to prepare. Plenty of money to do it.

The failure raised serious questions over security at the Capitol and the treatment of mainly white Trump supporters who were allowed to roam through the building, compared with the Black and brown protesters across the country who demonstrated last year over police brutality.

By the day after the rampage, the House sergeant at arms, the chief security officer for the House of Representatives, had resigned and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) had called for the resignation of the Capitol Police chief.

“There was a failure of leadership at the top,” Pelosi said.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), the incoming Senate majority leader, said he will fire the Senate sergeant at arms.

The Capitol had been closed to the public since March because of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed more than 364,000 people in the United States. In normal times, the building is open to the public and lawmakers pride themselves on their availability to their constituents.

It’s not clear how many Capitol Police officers were on duty Wednesday. There are 2,300 officers who patrol 16 acres of ground and protect the 435 House members, 50 senators and their staffs. By example, the city of Minneapolis has about 840 uniformed officers for a population of 425,000 across more than 6,000 acres of land.

Let me tell you something. I have filmed numerous times in the U.S. Capitol building, and in the Congressional offices for both the House and the Senate. I’ve done this for over 30 years. I can tell you first of all, it is impossible to get into these buildings. It is extremely difficult. Don’t think I haven’t tried to get my crew and my camera and everything in there. It is just virtually impossible. So there is a system to follow. If you’re bringing a crew and equipment in, everything has to be gone through. And it isn’t easy, and it takes time, and there are a ton of police there, Capitol police. And last Wednesday, there’s about 2,300 Capitol police that exist on the Capitol police force. There were less than 500 who were called into work that day, on a day when for weeks it was known that tens of thousands of angry people who said they were going to stop the vote count, the counting of the votes of the American people, the electoral votes, they were going to go to D.C. and stop it by any means necessary – that was their mission. And everybody knew it. So much to the extent that I have spoken to a number of members of Congress and their staff, and every single person that I’ve spoke to said that on Tuesday, the day before, they told their staff not to come into work on Wednesday because they didn’t feel it was going to be safe. And so much of the staff of many members of Congress were not there on Wednesday. They were home, to protect themselves.

So it was known! It was known by the members of Congress that this was going to be a potentially dangerous day. And when these members showed up to work early Wednesday morning, I can’t tell you how many have commented to me, or have commented to the media, how bizarre it seemed that when they pulled into the parking lot there behind the Capitol building, or when they walked through the grounds to go into work, how few police were around, knowing this was going to be such a huge protest day, and yet it felt like, as one person told me, it felt like a Saturday on Capitol Hill. That’s what it looked like.

So right away somebody made the decision to pull back, and not have the proper amount of police there. Jim Clyburn who is the third in command in the democratic party there in the House of Representatives, he said he pulled in and he said it looked bizarre. That’s the word he used: it looked” bizarre” to him that there just wasn’t much of a presence there.

So they all knew. They all knew. And they trusted that the Capitol Police somehow had a plan, they were going to be there to protect them, and everybody went into work and assumed nothing was going to happen, until it did.

I want to tell you too, that having worked in there, and having filmed in there, it is so difficult to get your bearings straight, to know where you’re at, to find anything. As I sit here right now, I cannot tell you where Nancy Pelosi’s office is, as many times as I’ve been in there. I cannot give you directions right now to the Speaker of the House’s office. There are so many tunnels underneath the Capitol building. They go out to five or six office buildings where the members of Congress and the Senators have their personal offices. Each of those buildings have five or six floors, at least. It’s very hard to find your way. You know that if you’ve ever gone there to drop in to see your member of Congress.

The one thing that is good about Capitol Hills is that if you are a citizen who wants to see your representative, you can do that. You can go look at the, “Okay, it’s in that building and it’s that office number,” and then you walk there. You go through the Police, you go through the metal detector, you go through the wanding – everything they do – and then you can go see your representative the way it should be in a democracy. It should not feel like a police state. It should feel like it’s open to any of us to go in there.

How did they find Nancy Pelosi’s office? How did they find Jim Clyburn’s secret office? As the majority whip, he has a unmarked office. They didn’t go to his real office that his name is on the door – they found his secret office that the majority whip uses. They found places in there that even I, who have worked there for so many years as a filmmaker, I could not tell you where they are at. I didn’t know Clyburn had a secret office. I mean, it’s that hard.

And why I’m saying all this is that it’s clear to me that this was a bit of an inside job, that Republicans who are either members of the House or Senate of their staff, or some of them, helped the leaders and the instigators of this mob. The mob knew right were to go. The mob did not walk in there like a bunch of yahoos, like “Well, Jesus, firs time I’ve been in here. Look at all the marble. No. NO! They knew right where to go, they knew the doors to find the floor of the chamber of the House and the Senate, how to get there, they knew the tunnels – they knew it all! And when there is an investigation of this and how it happened, we’re going to find out the truth. And hopefully we’ll find out who helped them. Because I’m tell you, this crowd could not have done it on their own. And I’m not saying they hadn’t done their own reconnaissance in the weeks leading up to this. I’m sure they did. But take my word for it, no average citizen could do what they did and get to where they got as quickly as they got without some help, without knowing, and without having police and law enforcement turn their heads and look the other way, or open the door for them. You’ve seen the footage. Or, what was the one with the New York Times, one of them said, “Where’s Chuck Schumer’s office,” and the cop showed them the way.

Over and over, you hear these stories the last couple of days on how helpful law enforcement was, once these people had broken in, and were already committing felonies, were already violating the law, were already knocking over statues, busting doors, busting windows! “Hey, could you tell me where Chuck Schumer’s office is?” “Well, yes I can, you just go down that hallways there, make a right, then a left, and it’s door 362.” Hmmm.

There were a lot of police that didn’t aid and abet, actual everyday Capitol police who fought back, who tried to block some of these doors, who got caught in the doors – you’ve seen the footage of the one young police officer bleeding. They were violently trying to come into the floor of the House, of the Senate, they wanted to grab the boxes with the electoral votes, and destroy them, they wanted to stop – you and me – our votes from being counted, as we prepared to inaugurate the next President of the United States. They wanted that not to happen.

And afterwards, they’re like – some who got out of there – “They maced me! They maced me!” Have you seen that woman? Yes, there were a lot of women there. Remember, when I say men or women, we’re talking about white people here. All right? Let’s just be honest. That’s the only reason they got away with it. Had they been black or brown people, they never would have got two steps in the door. But there were a number of the white women – 55% of the white women who voted for Trump – were there representing the majority of white women who wanted four more years of Donald Trump, and then were shocked that the police were trying to fight back and keep them from stealing the boxes with the electoral votes.

But there were many cops, and there are members of Congress, Congresswoman Jayapal and others have already said there was something wrong, something fishy going on here. They personally witnessed police helping the mob, helping the terrorists who have come into the building to destroy the election of 2020....

Think about this too. You’ve seen the footage now, or you were watching it that day, not only were the police hardly there, you’ve seen these scenes in the movies where the Mob pays off the cops to kind of disappear for an hour or so, turn their heads the other way, there were no barricades set up, even though 50,000 people were coming down Pennsylvania Avenue toward them. There were no police horses. I’m telling you, I’ve been to demonstrations there since Nixon’s inauguration, and there are horse at every demonstration in D.C. There are police on horses, and they are aggressive with it to block you from going down this street or that street. There were no horses! Only 500 of the 2,300 police present. What is that? What is that: 1/5th? Four-fifths of the cops not showing up to work! Let’s be very clear about this.

Oh, watch any of the footage from those hours – and remember it was hours – it was from 1:00 until the National Guard arrived after dark! That’s how long those members and their staff and people had to hide in closets and safe rooms in holy shit terror for their lives. Nobody showed up! Up in the sky, not a single helicopter. No helicopters! Aren’t there usually police helicopters ALWAYS at a protest, at a demonstration? This was not a protest or a demonstration! This was a mob terrorist attack on our Capitol building! And they were there to cause harm and to kill if necessary, and they did kill a police officer. So they weren’t just terrorists then, they were cop killers! These very people who we’ve listened to all year chant “Blue Lives Matter.” And what they ended up truly being, with the mask ripped off their face, a cop-killing terrorist mob....

Whew!!! All the other things – think about this -- that aren’t right about this. Where’s the press conference that we always see whenever there’s an event, a big event like this, a horrible event: a school shooting, something happens in a shopping mall, whatever, you have within an hour or two all the cops – the sheriff, the police chief, the mayor, the state representative, everybody’s at the big microphone speaking to the press and answering questions as to what happened. The Nashville bombing, right? Within hours, they are all there talking to the press. We haven’t had that press conference yet! Do you realize that, that none of them together have stood at a microphone? No Capitol police chief – who has now been fired? No D.C. police chief, no National Park police, no FBI, no Secret Service, no CIA, no military police – nobody has stood! And what are we in here now, day four of this? Day four, and no press conference. You know the one we’re used to when there’s a school shooting, or whatever, and they all get there, and get their face time in front of the microphone? Nobody in authority has stood there to tell us what was really going on! And the reason they’re not doing that is because by now they know. They’ve done their own work, and they know who the rogue cops and the rogue military, and the ex-military are, and were part of this, and it’s shameful for them – they don’t want to admit they – they want to get their story, a new story, they want to create a new narrative, and they’re not ready to tell us what that narrative is yet. So that’s why you’ve seen zero press conference. There’s been one press call that some FBI guy was on, and press could call into that number and listen to what he had to say. That’s it! You think that’s a little strange? Do you understand why I think they don’t want to talk to us, to the public? They don’t want to talk to the press? Because they got to get their freekin story straight. That’s why. I’ve been around this enough; I’ve been around all these bullshitters, these politicians, the police chiefs and the sheriffs and everybody. It’s all political; it’s all political. You know that. I’m not telling you anything you don’t know.

-- Michael Moore: The Terrorist Attack Is NOT Over, by Michael Moore, Rumble podcast, 1/9/21

The Capitol Police has an operating budget of $460 million and has experience with high-security, high-stakes moments. It is used to managing large crowds and large events such as the inauguration, the State of the Union and mass demonstrations.

There were signs for weeks that violence could strike on Jan. 6, when Congress convened for a joint session to finish counting the electoral college votes that would formalize Democrat Joe Biden’s election as president.

On far-right message boards and in pro-Trump circles, plans were being made.

The leader of the far-right extremist group Proud Boys was arrested coming into the nation’s capital this week on a weapons charge for carrying empty high-capacity magazines emblazoned with his group’s logo. He admitted to police that he made statements about rioting in the District of Columbia, local officials said.

Trump and his allies were perhaps the biggest megaphones, encouraging protesters to turn out in force and support his false claim that the election had been stolen from him. He egged them on during a rally shortly before they stormed the Capitol and rioted. His personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani called for “trial by combat.”

But the Capitol Police had set up no hard perimeter around the Capitol. Officers were focused on one side where lawmakers were entering to vote to certify Biden’s win.

Barricades on the plaza to the building were set up, but police retreated from the line and a mob of people broke through. Lawmakers, at first unaware of the security breach, continued their debate. Soon they were cowering under chairs. Eventually they were escorted from the House and Senate. Journalists were left alone in rooms for hours as the mob attempted to break into barricaded rooms.

“The violent attack on the U.S. Capitol was unlike any I have ever experienced in my 30 years in law enforcement here in Washington, D.C.,” Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund said. He said there had been a robust plan for what he had expected would be a free-speech demonstration. “But make no mistake — these mass riots were not 1st Amendment activities; they were criminal riotous behavior.”

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser had warned of impending violence for weeks, and businesses had closed in anticipation. She requested National Guard help from the Pentagon on Dec. 31, but the Capitol Police turned down the Jan. 3 offer from the Defense Department, according to Kenneth Rapuano, assistant Defense secretary for homeland security.

Federal officials, who were harshly criticized for the law enforcement crackdown on peaceful protests last June near the White House, were intent on avoiding any appearance that the federal government was deploying active-duty or National Guard troops against Americans.

The Justice Department’s offer for FBI support as the protesters grew violent was rejected by the Capitol Police, according to the two people familiar with the matter. They were not authorized to publicly discuss the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity.

By then, it was too late.

Officers from the Metropolitan Police Department descended. Agents from nearly every Justice Department agency, including the FBI, were called in. So was the Secret Service and the Federal Protective Service. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives sent two tactical teams. Police from as far away as New Jersey arrived to help.

It took four hours to disperse the rioters from the Capitol complex. By then, they had roamed the halls of Congress, posed for photos inside hallowed chambers, broken through doors, destroyed property and taken photos of themselves doing it. At least 80 people were arrested, but it will take time to sort through all the footage to determine who should be charged and with what, officials said.

In the aftermath, a 7-foot fence is being put up around the Capitol grounds for at least 30 days. The Capitol Police will conduct a review of the mayhem, as well as their planning and policies. Lawmakers plan to investigate how authorities handled the rioting.

[admin]

What went wrong with security at the Capitol? The Capitol Police, the 2,000-person force whose job is to secure the complex, failed to deploy enough officers and did not put them in riot gear.
by Ken Dilanian and Julia Ainsley
Jan. 7, 2021, 3:44 PM MST

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

[William Brangham] Attorney General, I wonder if you could help us understand a little bit of, for people who don’t know Washington, D.C., and how law enforcement operates in the City, it’s a very confusing thing. There’s a police force for the Capitol; there’s the Secret Service for the President; D.C. has its own police force. In this case, we saw that this was primarily an issue for the Capitol Police to be dealing with. What other local and/or national law enforcement agencies should be involved here, and do you believe are involved in here?

[Karl Racine, Attorney General for the District of Columbia] William, the question is spoken from someone who knows Washington, D.C. So thank you for that. And it’s important for the citizens and residents of the United States to understand that the District of Columbia, unfortunately, is not a state. We pay taxes; we go to war, but we’re not a state. We have taxation without representation. And that means that our local police police our neighborhoods in the District of Columbia where we have 700,000 plus extraordinary Washingtonians live and work. But we have the Capitol Police responsible for policing the Capitol. We have the Secret Service who has broad responsibility for protecting, of course, the President, and other elected officials, and other national assets. We have the Park Police that is in charge of protecting our parks here in the District of Columbia that are beautiful. And so in a way, the District of Columbia is one of the most over-policed in the sense of having so many law enforcement officials who, generally speaking, actually work well together. I think the breakdown here is that the Metropolitan Police Department is trying with all of their might, and I think they are doing, to be honest, a very good job under the new chief Contee. But we have a dissonance because it appears that some crucial federal partners frankly didn’t come to play today. And I can only think that the order came from somewhere up high because I know those federal police officers. They go to work every day to do the right thing. I think they were frankly told not to post today.

[William Brangham] I want to follow up on that in a moment, but we are just getting some word from the apparently the Sergeant of Arms inside the Capitol announced an all-clear, that there was some sense that the majority of protesters have been either contained or that the threat is minimized. And allegedly there was some applause that broke out inside the Capitol. So hopefully that is some good news, and we’re working to try and confirm that. But Attorney General, you were saying before about this issue of the difficulty of a city not necessarily having full governance over its own affairs. We know that the mayor of D.C. , Muriel Bowser, has established a 6:00 p.m. curfew tonight in the city. Can you give us a sense of what other resources are going to be deployed in the city? What concerns you have about what might unfold as this protest continues?

Abrupt Change of Topic

Another way to deal with a subject that you don’t want to discuss is to wait for a person to catch her breath and change the topic to something that is more agreeable. Most people will take the hint, but if it doesn’t work, try it again. Smile when you do it so the person doesn’t perceive you as being antagonistic or think you’re not a good conversationalist.

Here are some examples of how to quickly change the subject:

• When people start gossiping about someone who isn’t there, point to the buffet (or another inanimate object) and make a comment about how much planning must have gone into it.
• If a person says she has issues with the company you work for, you can smile and ask if she has any pets, and if so, what are they. She should take the hint that your employer is off limits in this discussion.
• When a person starts criticizing your friend or coworker, flash a big smile and ask about her last vacation.

-- How to Gracefully Change the Subject, by Debby Mayne

-- Senate Republicans Challenge Electoral College Votes, by PBS News, 1/6/21

Supporters of President Donald Trump breach the U.S. Capitol as election results are to be certified on Jan. 6, 2021.Carol Guzy / Zuma Wire

WASHINGTON — Amid growing evidence that pro-Trump extremists were planning to target the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, the day Congress was set to certify the election of Joe Biden as president, in recent days Congressman Tim Ryan had asked the people in charge of security whether they had everything they needed.

"I had conversations with the sergeant-at-arms and the chief of the Capitol Police, who gave me assurances that every precaution was being taken, that we had enough manpower, that we were going to keep people completely away from the Capitol," Ryan, the Ohio Democrat who chairs the subcommittee that funds the Capitol complex, told reporters Thursday.

What happened instead was a security failure that one federal law enforcement official described “as the darkest day since 9/11," and Ryan and other members of Congress are now seeking answers.

Not all of the facts are in, but some are clear. Defense Department officials said Thursday that during planning meetings prior to Jan. 6 led by the Justice Department, city officials and federal law enforcement agencies requested only modest support from the National Guard and did not anticipate large-scale violence. The Pentagon agreed to provide 300 unarmed troops, mostly to help oversee traffic checkpoints and Metro subway stations.

The Pentagon officials said that on Sunday, during a planning meeting, the Defense Department offered the Capitol Police and the city of Washington additional National Guard troops, but were turned down.

Said Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman, “We were informed that additional support from DoD was not needed.”

Kenneth Rapuano, assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and global security, said that during the meetings, law enforcement provided “general descriptions of some internet traffic” from groups who planned to support the Trump rally on Jan. 6, “but overall the assessment we got repeatedly was there was no indication of significant violent protests."

NBC News has previously reported that online forums popular with far-right activists were filled with threats and expectations of violence in the days leading up to Jan. 6.

On Jan. 6, the Capitol Police, the 2,000-person force whose job is to secure the legislative complex, failed to deploy enough officers to protect the Capitol from rioters, and put them out in regular uniforms instead of riot gear.


Members of law enforcement clash with pro-Trump protesters at the U.S. Capitol Building on Jan. 6, 2021. Picture taken January 6, 2021.Ahmed Gaber / Reuters

Those officers were no match for a determined group of rioters, some of whom bashed the police in the head with lead pipes and doused them with pepper spray, Ryan said.

"Make no mistake, these were violent people," Ryan said.

Meanwhile, whatever plan the Capitol Police had to request reinforcements didn't work. More than an hour elapsed from the time rioters approached the Capitol building to the time they began smashing their way inside through a window, Ryan said, but no help materialized. Rioters entered through the window at about 2 p.m.

Federal law enforcement officials in Washington said they watched with growing alarm as television images showed the rioters rampaging through the Capitol.

A Justice Department official said that the bulk of deployable agents from the DoJ and the Department of Homeland Security, usually held in reserve in advance of potentially violent events, were not called upon until after the protesters had breached the building.

Because the Capitol Police have first jurisdiction over protecting the Capitol building and members of Congress, federal agencies could only be involved at their discretion.

"We watched in horror," the official said. "As much as we wanted to be there, we couldn't send anyone in without the specific request of the Capitol Police. This is their area first."

In the hours after the breach, agents from the Federal Protective Service, Customs and Border Protection, the Bureau of Prisons, the FBI and Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms — some heavily armed, in tactical gear — were called in to assist Capitol Police and D.C.'s Metropolitan Police Department.

From DHS, some Secret Service agents were deployed, but agents from Customs and Border Protection, who responded to protests in D.C. this summer, were not called upon until much later.

A senior law enforcement official said that the DOJ offered federal law enforcement help to the Capitol Police on Wednesday as the situation deteriorated, but said the Capitol force was slow to accept the offer.

In preparation for the Jan. 6 demonstration, the Department of Homeland Security began a "virtual situation room." A DHS spokesman said the set up was "to facilitate department and interagency communication and coordination as we do for many large events in D.C."

Spokespeople for the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security declined to say what intelligence they had gathered before the event that may have indicated it would end with violence and a massive breach of the Capitol complex. Social media posts by extremists in the days prior to Jan. 6 had made the risk of confrontation clear.

Rep. Ryan told reporters on Thursday that as many as 60 Capitol Police officers were injured, including 15 who were hospitalized and one in critical condition, following Wednesday's violent clashes.

On Wednesday, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser had said in a letter to Defense and Justice officials that the city was "not requesting other federal law enforcement personnel" in addition to Secret Service, Capitol Police and Park Police.

"We are mindful that in 2020, MPD was expected to perform the demanding task of policing large crowds while working around unidentifiable personnel deployed in District of Columbia without proper coordination," Bowser said in a letter to the Pentagon and Justice Department.

Officials were also cognizant of the heavy-handed tactics the Trump administration used against Black Lives Matter protesters in the wake of the death of George Floyd.

But a former DHS official who declined to be named said that a reserve force should have been staged out of sight, to be able to respond if the situation spiraled out of the police's control.

Once the rioters moved on the building, "They should have had a very visible presence, with cops in riot gear," the official said. "You use overwhelming force. You declare it an unlawful assembly. And you immediately begin implementing crowd control techniques. They didn't do any of that. They did nothing."

Capitol Police shot and killed one rioter, identified as Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt of San Diego, as protesters were forcing their way toward the House Chamber where Members of Congress were sheltering in place.


Pro-Trump protesters rally at the U.S. Capitol Building on Jan. 6, 2021. Picture taken January 6, 2021.Ahmed Gaber / Reuters

Ryan said he was told that "no one was going to be anywhere close to the Capitol. The next thing you know you turn on the tv and they're swinging from the Capitol building with flags."

"The rank and file did everything they could," he said, but "for us not to have an expeditious plan" to provide reinforcements amounted to "an epic fail."

"That was a strategic blunder and it put a lot of lives in danger," he said. "We're going to dig deep and find out exactly what happened."

He added that there was an "intelligence failure" to anticipate the scope of the threat.

While praising the heroics of most rank and file Capitol Police, he said he was concerned about videos showing police officers appearing to act with passivity, and in one case posing for a selfie with a rioter.

The fallout was swift.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said he would fire the Senate's Sergeant-at-Arms Mike Stenger when Democrats assume power later this month. Late Thursday, current Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said he had asked for and received Stenger's resignation. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. said House Sergeant-at-Arms Paul Irving would be resigning, and she also called for the resignation of Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, saying she had not heard from him since the building was breached.

Chief Sund said in a statement on Thursday that his officers "responded valiantly when faced with thousands of individuals involved in violent riotous actions as they stormed the United States Capitol Building," but he didn't address the criticism. Later on Thursday, he announced he would resign his post effective Jan. 16.

Said Ryan, "The big question is with regard to backup and manpower and why wasn't that ready with a phone call being placed, hey we need more, and more show up. …When you get assurances that things are supposed to go a certain way and they don't, that is very frustrating."

Ryan also wondered whether the Capitol Police were instructed to avoid confrontation.

Capitol Police were so overwhelmed they didn't appear to arrest any of the rioters. But by Thursday afternoon, the acting D.C. U.S. Attorney, Mike Sherwin, said his office had charged 55 suspects with various offenses, including unlawful entry, assault, theft and weapons charges.

"We're never going to look at the Capitol the same way," Ryan said. "This was basically domestic terrorism at one of the great shrines of our democracy."

The Capitol Police and Mayor Bowser's office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Ken Dilanian is a correspondent covering intelligence and national security for the NBC News Investigative Unit.

Julia Ainsley is a correspondent covering the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice for the NBC News Investigative Unit.

[admin]

President Trump delivers remarks amidst chaos in Washington DC [Transcript]
by Donald Trump
Jan 6, 2021



[President Trump] I know your pain; I know your hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election, and everyone knows it, especially the other side. But you have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order. We have to respect our great people in law and order. We don't want anybody hurt. It's a very tough period of time. There's never been a time like this where such a thing happened, where they could take it away from all of us: from me, from you, from our country. This was a fraudulent election. But we can't play into the hands of these people! We have to have peace.

So go home. We love you. You're very special. You've seen what happens. You see the way others are treated that are SO BAD AND SO EVIL. I know how you feel. But go home, and go home in peace.


********************

A Message from President Donald J. Trump [Transcript]
The White House
Jan 7, 2021

On Thursday, White House aides pressured Trump to read a scripted video message, prepared by his staff, where he denounced the mob that stormed the Capitol and vowed there would be a smooth transition of power. The New York Times reports Trump only agreed to record the video after realizing he could be charged for his role in inciting the riots and facing the prospect of being removed from office. Just a day earlier, Trump had a very different message for the insurrectionists, saying, quote, “We love you. You’re very special.” The Times also reports Trump has had discussions in recent weeks with staff about pardoning himself before leaving office, a move no president has ever taken.

-- Rep. Ro Khanna: Republicans Should Back Impeachment After Trump Incited Mob Violence Against Them, by Amy Goodman, DemocracyNow!

[President Trump] I would like to begin by addressing the heinous attack on the United States Capitol. Like all Americans, I am outraged by the violence, lawlessness, and mayhem. I immediately deployed the National Guard and federal law enforcement to secure the building and expel the intruders. America is and must always be a nation of law and order. The demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American democracy. To those who engaged in the acts of violence and destruction, you do not represent our country. And to those who broke the law, you will pay.

We have just been through an intense election, and emotions are high. But now tempers must be cooled, and calm restored. We must get on with the business of America. My campaign vigorously pursued every legal avenue to contest the election results. My only goal was to ensure the integrity of the vote. In so doing, I was fighting to defend American democracy. I continue to strongly believe that we must reform our election laws to verify the identity and eligibility of all voters, and to ensure faith and confidence in all future elections.

Now Congress has certified the results. A new administration will be inaugurated on January 20th. My focus now turns to ensuring a smooth, orderly, and seamless transition of power. This moment calls for healing and reconciliation. 2020 has been a challenging time for our people. A menacing pandemic has upended the lives of our citizens, isolated millions in their homes, damaged our economy, and claimed countless lives. Defeating this pandemic and rebuilding the greatest economy on earth will require all of us working together. It will require a renewed emphasis on the civic values of patriotism, faith, charity, community and family. We must revitalize the sacred bonds of love and loyalty that bind us together as one national family. To the citizens of our country, serving as your President, has been the honor of my lifetime. And to all of my wonderful supporters, I know you are disappointed, but I also want you to know that our incredible journey is only just beginning.

Thank you. God bless you. And God bless America.

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Part 1 of 2

Rep. Ro Khanna: Republicans Should Back Impeachment After Trump Incited Mob Violence Against Them
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow.org
JANUARY 08, 2021

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Calls are growing for President Trump to resign or be removed from office after he incited supporters to storm the Capitol in an act of insurrection to disrupt the counting of Electoral College votes. The unrest left five people dead, including a Capitol Police officer who was reportedly struck in the head by a fire extinguisher. Trump is losing support from his inner circle, with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao both resigning before the end of Trump’s term. The chief of the Capitol Police is also expected to resign next week, as multiple reports reveal police officers aiding rioters, from removing barricades to giving out direction to the offices of specific lawmakers. Democratic Congressmember Ro Khanna says Republicans must support efforts to remove Trump, especially as much of Trump’s incitement targeted Republican lawmakers who refused to back his false claims of election fraud. “This was not an attack just on Democratic lawmakers. If anything, it was an incitement of violence against Republican lawmakers,” says Khanna.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: Calls are growing for President Trump to resign or be removed office for inciting supporters to storm the Capitol in an act of insurrection Wednesday to disrupt the counting of Electoral College votes. The unrest left five people dead, including a Capitol Police officer who was reportedly struck in the head by a fire extinguisher.

On Thursday, White House aides pressured Trump to read a scripted video message, prepared by his staff, where he denounced the mob that stormed the Capitol and vowed there would be a smooth transition of power. The New York Times reports Trump only agreed to record the video after realizing he could be charged for his role in inciting the riots and facing the prospect of being removed from office. Just a day earlier, Trump had a very different message for the insurrectionists, saying, quote, “We love you. You’re very special.” The Times also reports Trump has had discussions in recent weeks with staff about pardoning himself before leaving office, a move no president has ever taken.

On Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi threatened to impeach the president again if Vice President Mike Pence and the Cabinet does not invoke the 25th Amendment to remove him.

SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI: I join the Senate Democratic leader in calling on the vice president to remove this president by immediately invoking the 25th Amendment. If the vice president and Cabinet do not act, the Congress may be prepared to move forward with impeachment.

AMY GOODMAN: On Thursday, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao both resigned from their offices, joining at least 10 other Trump administration officials to quit since Wednesday. The Wall Street Journal editorial page is urging Trump to resign. That’s the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal.

Lawmakers are also vowing to investigate the massive security breach at the Capitol, where rioters overwhelmed Capitol Police. Congressional leaders ousted the sergeants-at-arms of both the House and Senate. The chief of the Capitol Police is also expected to resign next week. Multiple reports are emerging of police officers aiding the rioters by removing barricades, to giving out directions to offices of specific lawmakers, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer — who will become the Senate majority leader.

To talk more about this, we’re joined by Ro Khanna, Democratic congressmember from California, member of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, was inside the Capitol Wednesday during the insurrection.

Congressman Khanna, welcome back to Democracy Now! Where were you? And can you describe the scene, personally, from your vantage point?

REP. RO KHANNA: Amy, I was in my office in the Cannon Building, and then we heard that there was an evacuation because there was apparently a pipe bomb nearby. So I left my office, and I started to head towards the Capitol. Fortunately, I got frantic texts from people saying, “Don’t go into the Capitol. It is being overrun.” At that point, some of us turned back. We were told that the Cannon Building was clear, but we didn’t know, but that it was our best course, so I went to my office, locked the doors of the office and stayed in the office the rest of the day.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Congressman Khanna, you have the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, calling for the removal of President Trump. Can you talk about the different options? Can you talk about what the 25th Amendment invocation would mean? Can you talk about what impeachment would look like?

REP. RO KHANNA: Well, the 25th Amendment, Amy, is something that Vice President Pence can do. He just needs to get a majority of the Cabinet on board, and they can ask that the president be removed, and Vice President Pence then can become president. If they refuse to do that, then the House must impeach, and the Senate should convict.

Here’s why Republicans should be for impeachment. If you listen to the president’s incitement of violence and Rudy Giuliani’s incitement of violence, the target was actually Republican lawmakers. Donald Trump Jr. is saying, “Go show the Republicans they need to be on our side, and we’re going to have a trial by combat.” So this was not an attack just on Democratic lawmakers. If anything, it was an incitement of violence against Republican lawmakers.

AMY GOODMAN: Inside the Capitol, as the marauders smashed their way in, as, ultimately, five people died — a woman apparently trying to get in through a window was shot, it looks like, by Capitol Police. Now a Capitol Police officer has succumbed to his injuries, apparently slammed in the head by a fire extinguisher. And three others who died of medical emergencies on the Capitol grounds. Describe the feeling inside. Did you ever expect this would happen? President Trump’s whole family was at the rally — you had Ivanka Trump, you had Eric, you had Donald Trump — calling for people to move forward. Trump said he would go with them to the Capitol. Of course, he didn’t. And what that means? Do you see him as the leader of the insurrection? And do you think he should be criminally charged? He’s out of office in less than two weeks, if he’s not ousted before.

REP. RO KHANNA: Well, it is a case of classic incitement. It is illegal conduct to encourage people to go break the law. And in this case, there was a direct connection. It’s not like he made some generic call for protesting. What he said is “Go march at the Capitol.” Rudy Giuliani is saying it’s a “trial by combat.” He’s saying, “Go show strength.” This is basically an incitement of a mob to go commit criminal attacks.

And so, it absolutely needs to be investigated from a Justice Department perspective. But the first thing is, he needs to be removed from office. I don’t understand how you can have a president of the United States who has incited a violent attack remain in office any longer.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you support impeachment or the invoking of the 25th Amendment?

REP. RO KHANNA: I support both. I mean, I support whatever will get him out. What I don’t understand is why you can’t have McConnell call him and say, “President Trump, if you don’t resign, you’re going to be impeached.” And that is necessary not just for the stability of our democracy until Joe Biden gets into office; that’s necessary to send a message that in this country you cannot incite riots and have no consequences. I mean, what does it say to people if we have a president of the United States who has incited violence against the institution of the Capitol, and we say we’re fine with him still being president of this country? That is not a message that stands up for democratic values.

AMY GOODMAN: Contrast this with President Trump’s approach in Portland, Oregon, when he called for people put in jail for up to 10 years if they in any way damaged federal property. Here, as we saw people smashing the windows of the Capitol, climbing through those windows, you have President Trump safely at the White House saying, “We love you.”

REP. RO KHANNA: Well, his speech was reminiscent of Marc Antony’s speech in Julius Caesar, minus Shakespeare’s rhetorical genius, where he was basically manipulating people, saying, “OK, go home,” but really the thrust of the speech was: “We love you. We support you. I support what you’re doing.” And it was further inciting this violence.

But you’re right, Amy, to point out the racial disparity. I mean, I don’t think there’s a person in this country who believes if there were thousands of Black Lives Matter protesters or Black protesters there, that the response wouldn’t have been dramatically different. And that is something this country really needs to grapple with, the disparity in which we looked at white protesters for Trump and the way we looked at many African American protesters during this summer who were protesting for racial justice.

AMY GOODMAN: Forget thousands of Black Lives Matter activists. If 12 announced they were going to march on the Capitol and they were going to storm it, not to mention just protest in front of it, I daresay there would be a massive response. And that goes to the question — I mean, this wasn’t like a flash mob, where suddenly these people emerged. President Trump had been calling for this for weeks. The mayor of Washington, D.C., Muriel Bowser, already had written a letter to the Pentagon asking for the National Guard to come in. How is it possible that the Capitol Police were not only so completely unprepared, but actually we see the high-fiving, we see the selfies, we see the removal of the barricades, ushering people in? Now you have the resignation of the chief of the Capitol Police and the ousting of the sergeants-of-arms of both the Senate and the House.

REP. RO KHANNA: Well, there are a lot of questions that need to be answered. I agree with you that the Capitol Police acted in a way that was completely unprepared, and these incidents of taking selfies and letting people in are very troubling. I do think we need to acknowledge that there were a lot of first-line responders and police officers, who I personally saw, who were doing the right thing, who were risking their own lives to protect people in the Capitol. But the leadership was totally derelict. They did not have a plan. They did not take the proper precautions. And, of course, Washington, D.C., was restricted. It’s why we need it to become a state, because they couldn’t invoke the National Guard.

The final point, Amy, is that social media really needs to be looked at. This whole attack was being planned on Parler. People were actually talking about how they were going to get rifles. They were talking in specifics about what they were going to do. And nothing came down on those sites. And then Facebook and Twitter were live-streaming the calls to go march on the Capitol. So I think social media has to really — probably one of its most shameful days in contributing to what happened on the Capitol.

AMY GOODMAN: And you have the newly sworn-in Democratic Congressmember Cori Bush of Missouri tweeting, “My first resolution in Congress will be to call for the expulsion of the Republican members of Congress who incited this domestic terror attack on the Capitol.” This is Cori Bush speaking on MSNBC Wednesday.

REP. CORI BUSH: I’m walking through from the Capitol to my office, and there was not a lot of police activity. There was no one. No one came to the door to check and knock on the door to say, “Congressmember Bush, are you and your team OK?” You know, we’re sending text messages letting people know. I’m letting, you know, our committees know we’re OK, letting our other members know we’re OK. You know, this — something had to happen, because, I’ll tell you what, the National Guard, when they’re called — when they were called to Ferguson or any other part in St. Louis, that was not a — that was not a thing. We didn’t have to wait to find out if that was happening. Oftentimes that happened even when it was said that we were having a protest. So I don’t understand how this happened like this. I don’t understand how we were put in this position in our place of business. Our lives were — you know, our lives were at risk today.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Missouri Congressmember Cori Bush. And I’m wondering, Congressmember Khanna, if you’re among the lawmakers who are demanding the resignation of Republican Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, blaming them for helping instigate the violent mob of Trump supporters that stormed the Capitol. Cruz and Hawley were at the forefront of the efforts objecting to the certification of the electoral votes for President-elect Joe Biden.

Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted yesterday, “Sen. Cruz, you must accept responsibility for how your craven, self-serving actions contributed to the deaths of four people yesterday. And how you fundraised off this riot. Both you and Senator Hawley must resign. If you do not, the Senate should move for your expulsion,” unquote.

Meanwhile, publishing company Simon & Schuster said Thursday it’s canceling the publication of an upcoming book by Senator Hawley. And Senator Hawley’s home newspaper, The Kansas City Star, has said he “has blood on his hands.” Even after everything happened, Hawley insisted on continuing to object to the counts in Pennsylvania, for example. Your response?

REP. RO KHANNA: Well, Amy, I think what Hawley did is unconscionable. I mean, he actually was out there with a fist pump supporting and encouraging directly the protesters. And so, resignation, in that sense, makes complete sense. And there should be an ethics investigation.

I think there has to be a distinction between members of Congress, as much as I disagreed with them, who used the process to raise objections, and they should be defeated at the ballot box. But if there were senators, like Hawley, who were actually inciting violence, that breaks all ethics laws, and that is a grounds for expulsion. And that fact-based investigation should take place. In Hawley’s case, I think it’s clear and evident.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, through all of this, it almost became a sideshow, but Wednesday began and ended with history being made in Georgia. The first African American Democrat elected to the Senate from the South, Reverend Raphael Warnock, that was the beginning, in the early hours. And then you had, in the midst of all of this, the announcement that Jon Ossoff had won the second seat in Georgia, flipping the U.S. Senate to being Democrat-led, at least 50/50, and, of course, Vice President Kamala Harris will be the deciding vote. What does that mean for you in the House and the kind of legislation you want to see put forward?

REP. RO KHANNA: It’s absolutely historic. We now can get things done, like a $15 minimum wage, like a major infrastructure bill, like $2,000 cash for people who need it. This is a moment now that we have to deliver for the American people, whose wages have stagnated, who have not had good, secure jobs. But more than that, Amy, is it’s a step, after all this country has gone through, towards a multiracial, multiethnic democracy. We have a new South, with Reverend Warnock, not just an African American senator from the South, but an African American senator who ran talking about criminal justice, who ran talking about human rights in Palestine, who ran talking about issues of economic dignity. It is a new voice for this country. And I am hopeful that we’re going to turn a page after Donald Trump and start the serious work of building that kind of a democracy.

AMY GOODMAN: Ro Khanna, I want to thank you for being with us, California Democratic congressmember from Silicon Valley, member of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform.

Next up, we look at President-elect Joe Biden’s pick to head the Justice Department, Merrick Garland — yep, the judge who Republicans denied a seat on the Supreme Court five years ago. Stay with us.

***********************

White Supremacy in Action: Police Stand Down as Trump Mob Storms Capitol to Disrupt Election Vote
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow.org

The U.S. Congress has certified President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, hours after a violent, right-wing mob incited by President Trump interrupted proceedings and stormed the U.S. Capitol. Four people died during the chaos, which has been described as an attempted coup. The insurrection was the culmination of months of lies by President Trump, widely repeated in right-wing media and on social media platforms, that the 2020 presidential election was rigged for Joe Biden. At a rally Wednesday, Trump urged supporters to head to the Capitol, who later broke through barriers and lines of police outside the Capitol and made their way inside, where they ransacked offices and sent lawmakers scrambling. Bree Newsome Bass, an antiracist activist, artist and housing rights advocate arrested in 2015 after she tore down the Confederate flag at the South Carolina state Capitol, says it’s impossible not to note “the obvious difference in terms of how police have a coordinated, overtly militarized response to any kind of protest that is challenging racism in policing or racism in the government versus what we witnessed yesterday” in Washington, D.C. “It is very clear that the primary function of police forces in the United States is to enforce racism above enforcing public safety.”

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: The U.S. Congress certified the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris shortly before 4 a.m. Eastern time this morning, about 14 hours after a violent mob incited by President Trump stormed and occupied the U.S. Capitol in an act of insurrection to stop the counting of votes. Some lawmakers described the siege as an attempted coup.

Members of the right-wing mob smashed windows, broke down doors and scaled walls to enter the Capitol. They attacked Capitol Police. They ransacked and looted offices, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s. An armed standoff took place at the door of the U.S. House of Representatives. Rioters took over the Senate chamber, with some Trump supporters, including a prominent supporter of the QAnon conspiracy theory, posing for photos in the seat occupied by Vice President Mike Pence just minutes before. One man carried a large Confederate flag inside the Capitol. Another wore a shirt that read, quote, “Camp Auschwitz.”

Vice President Pence and many lawmakers were evacuated to secure locations just as the mob breached the Capitol. Other lawmakers hid in their offices.

Four people died, including a Trump supporter who was shot dead by police.

Meanwhile, explosive devices were found at the headquarters of the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee.

As of last night, Washington police had made just 26 arrests on Capitol grounds. Lawmakers are calling for probes into the Capitol Hill Police after officers were seen moving barricades for Trump supporters and taking selfies with members of the right-wing mob.

The insurrection began shortly after Trump spoke at a rally urging supporters to head to the Capitol, after once again falsely claiming the election had been stolen.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women. And we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them, because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.

AMY GOODMAN: When Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, the president remained silent, safely in the White House. The New York Times reports he initially rebuffed and resisted requests to mobilize the National Guard to protect the Capitol.

Hours after the insurrection began, Trump released a video statement urging his supporters to go home, while telling them, “We love you. You’re very special.”

Calls are mounting for Trump to be removed from office before his term ends January 20th. Multiple news outlets report some members of his Cabinet have discussed invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from power. Such a move would require the support of a majority of Cabinet members, as well as Vice President Mike Pence. The move has been backed by Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee, as well as the National Association of Manufacturers, which says it’s needed to, quote, “preserve democracy.” Congresswoman Ilhan Omar says she’s drawing up new articles of impeachment.

New Jersey Senator Cory Booker condemned the president for inciting the violence.

SEN. CORY BOOKER: I can only think of two times in American history that individuals laid siege to our Capitol, stormed our sacred civic spaces and tried to upend and overrun this government. One was in the War of 1812, and the other one was today.

What’s interesting about the parallel between the two is they both were waving flags to a sole sovereign, to an individual, surrendering democratic principles to the cult of personality. One was a monarch in England, and the other, with the flags I saw all over our Capitol, including in the hallways and in this room, to a single person named Donald Trump. The sad difference between these two times is, one was yet another nation in the history of our country that tried to challenge the United States of America, but this time we brought this hell upon ourselves.

AMY GOODMAN: President Trump’s former chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, announced this morning he would resign from his post as special envoy to Northern Ireland, following Wednesday’s insurrection. Shortly after the election, Mulvaney wrote an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal titled “If He Loses, Trump Will Concede Gracefully.” At least four other Trump administration officials resigned on Wednesday.

Shortly after Congress certified Biden’s victory, Trump issued a statement saying there will be an orderly transition of power on January 20th, but then repeated false claims that he had won the election, he keeps repeating, “by a landslide.” He ended the message saying, quote, “it’s only the beginning of our fight to Make America Great Again!”

The certification vote process was prolonged after Republican lawmakers challenged the election results in Arizona and Pennsylvania in a last-bid effort to overturn the election. The senators were led by Senator Hawley. The Kansas City Star said he “has blood on his hands” for continuing with challenging the vote after the mass insurrection.

We begin today’s show with two guests. Manisha Sinha is professor of American history at University of Connecticut. She’s author of The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition. And we go to North Carolina, where we’re joined by Bree Newsome Bass, artist and antiracist activist. Following the massacre of eight African American parishioners and their pastor by a white supremacist at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston in June 2015, Bree scaled the 30-foot flagpole at the South Carolina state Capitol and removed the Confederate flag. There were Confederate flags in the Capitol yesterday, carried by the insurrectionists. She’s now a housing activist in North Carolina.

Bree, let’s begin with you. You were tweeting up a storm as the storm was unfolding in Washington, D.C., yesterday. You said, “Y’all the DC mayor requested the national guard. The pentagon was discussing the threat long before today. It’s not possible security forces were caught off guard, unprepared or simply failed. Please cease this ridiculous narrative.” So, take it from there, Bree.

BREE NEWSOME BASS: Yes. Thank you for inviting me to join you.

I mean, I was on social media all yesterday and, like everyone else, was just kind of gripped by watching the events that were happening. And one of the things that we saw throughout the day yesterday were people like myself, who have been present for various protests, you know, and mostly people of color, Black people, noting the obvious difference in terms of how police have a coordinated, overtly militarized response to any kind of protest that is challenging racism in policing or racism in the government versus what we witnessed yesterday. And I think that what we saw yesterday is just another one of these kind of flashpoint moments in history that just represents a culmination of everything that came before it, and really shines a spotlight on everything that is fundamentally wrong. And one of those things is clearly policing.

The idea that we had no idea that this was coming, which I think, is, frankly, one of the, like, ongoing, most disturbing talking points that we have gotten throughout the Trump administration — people say, “How could we have gotten here? This isn’t who we are,” which just completely flies not just in the face of American history — right? — but in the face of the events of just the past five years. I mean, everything that we have seen in the past five years pointed to what happened yesterday happening. And so, the idea that security officials, people who are tasked with protecting the Capitol, could not have foreseen the conflict that played out yesterday is clearly beyond belief. I mean, there’s no way to believe that that is the case.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Bree, quite apart from the fact that, you know, it was just an astounding spectacle of all these, I mean, effectively domestic terrorists invading the Capitol, what’s also strange, if not outright stunning, is the fact that there was such little comment from either the Department of Justice or security agencies responding to this extraordinary event, apart, of course, from the FBI asking for explicit help in identifying those who instigated the violence — an extremely bizarre request given that it was quite apparent who the instigators were.

BREE NEWSOME BASS: Absolutely. I mean, again, the central issue here is white supremacy. And white supremacy was foundational to the establishment of this nation. That is the central conflict. I mean, that is the main thing that I continue to say as an activist, is that, clearly, this is the central conflict. It is baked into our institutions. It was baked into our Constitution at the founding. And that continues to be the case. And that explains why — I wouldn’t even describe it as a difficulty in figuring out what is going on. It’s just the fact that it is the defining internal conflict of the nation. So, yes, of course, you have people within the military. You have people within policing. You have people within the government. It was elected officials who initiated the events that led to this riot.

One of the things that was most striking to me yesterday — I was among the people who kind of stayed up into the wee hours of the morning watching how things played out at the Capitol — was, you know, you would see congressperson after congressperson condemning the insurrectionist mob — so you’re talking about, you know, the civilians who showed up — but there was still very little acknowledgment of the fact that the people who led the insurrection, the people who have incited these people to mob the Capitol, were sitting there in the chamber, were still voicing their objection to the election.

So, you know, this idea that we are somehow just going to reach across the aisle and shake hands and carry on as though we did not witness things play out as it did, as though the primary inciter of violence yesterday was not the president of the United States, is just completely unrealistic. And there’s no way that that can happen.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Bree, you also — among your tweets yesterday, you wrote that what was happening yesterday was not the culmination of the last four years, but in fact the culmination of the last five centuries. Could you talk about that?

BREE NEWSOME BASS: Yeah, that was actually me retweeting someone else who made that excellent point. And again, it goes to the heart of this false notion that we could not foresee what was happening or that this is not America. This is absolutely America. We have an ongoing, prolonged history not just of colonization and slavery and genocide in this country, but also this constant back-and-forth where we try to make strides towards having a democracy that truly recognizes the rights and citizenship of all people, and violent, white supremacist backlash against that cause.

I mean, you know, people were bringing up the Wilmington riots — right? — of 1898, which that took place here in North Carolina, another example in the aftermath of the Civil War where you had Black people being elected to Congress, working in collaboration with white elected officials, and they were overthrown. There was a white mob that just came to town, burned down buildings and violently overthrew the democratically elected government. And we are still, in our state, in the year 2021, dealing with the aftermath of that conflict.

So this is not something that is foreign to the United States. This is something that is very much baked into our DNA. What happened yesterday cannot be separated, of course, from the fact that we just had an election that not only ousted a blatant white nationalist president, but we just elected a Catholic president, a vice president who is Black and Indian American, and then we had the Senate just flip, day before yesterday, with the election of a Black man and a Jewish man from Georgia. So, yes, you know, of course we’re going to see white supremacists in the Capitol waving Confederate flags. Of course we have known for years now that the greatest imminent threat to the United States is both white supremacist, far-right terrorists and the current president of the United States.

So, again, for anyone in a position of security or authority who is tasked with securing national security and securing the Capitol and the safety of the people who work and reside there to claim that this was somehow unpredictable, again, flies in the face of any logic. And if we are going to be serious about addressing the threats that we face right now from fascism and from the far right, we have to confront the presence of that element in our police forces, point blank, period. This has been the main point that we have been making in the Black Lives Matter movement, in the call for defunding the police and shifting resources, because it is very clear that the primary function of police forces in the United States is to enforce racism above enforcing public safety.

AMY GOODMAN: As you point out, I mean, yesterday was bookended — the early-morning hours of Wednesday, it was announced that the first African American Democrat was elected senator from the South. And that was Raphael Warnock. Then, yesterday afternoon, the Democrat Jon Ossoff, it was announced, had beaten David Perdue. And that shifted the power of the U.S. Senate. This bookends this insurrection at the Capitol. And also, just two days ago in Wisconsin, the DA chose not to bring charges against the white police officer who shot Jacob Blake in the back, the African American 29-year-old, seven times at point-blank range.

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Part 2 of 2

“Americans Are Now Getting a Mild Taste of Their Own Medicine” of Disrupting Democracy Elsewhere
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow.org
JANUARY 07, 2021

World leaders reacted in horror over the storming of the U.S. Capitol, with the U.N. secretary-general calling on political leaders to demand their followers refrain from violence. Leaders of the U.K., New Zealand, Australia, Canada, India, Japan, France, Germany, NATO and the European Council called for a peaceful transfer of power to Joe Biden. Investigative journalist Allan Nairn looks at what steps Trump may take next, and says despite protestations from President-elect Joe Biden and others that the insurrection was “not who we are,” the U.S. has a long track record of disrupting democratic processes elsewhere. “What has shaken the U.S. population so badly, this assault on the Capitol yesterday, is really nothing by comparison to what U.S. operations have done in Latin America, in Asia, in Africa, in the Middle East, to other democratic movements and elected governments over the years,” says Nairn.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

World leaders reacted in horror over the storming of the U.S. Capitol. The U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called on U.S. political leaders to demand their followers refrain from violence. Leaders of the U.K., New Zealand, Australia, Canada, India, Japan, France, Germany, NATO and the European Council called for a peaceful transfer of power to Joe Biden.

In statement, Venezuela’s government condemned political polarization and the spiral of violence, adding, quote, “With this unfortunate episode, the United States is experiencing what it has generated in other countries with its policies of aggression.”

For more, we’re joined by award-winning journalist Allan Nairn, activist, investigative journalist.

Allan, as we watched what happened unfold yesterday in the U.S. Congress, and the difference between what happened with this mob of white supremacists, of what many are calling domestic terrorists — the difference in how the Capitol Police, some of them taking selfies with them, dealt with them versus what we saw in Lafayette Park, what happens with Black Lives Matter activists, or just African Americans in general, your response?

ALLAN NAIRN: Well, Trump, I think, lost his chance to actually seize full power on election night when he failed to stop the vote count. But yesterday he proved that he does have a street mob and that many in law enforcement are ready to stand back and let them rampage, I think, in part, because many in law enforcement see themselves as being on the same team.

The Capitol was under siege from the outside, from the crowd, but at the same time, it was also under siege intellectually from the inside. You had about a third of the Congress that was toying with the idea of abolishing presidential elections.

And Biden said, “This isn’t who we are.” But, in fact, this is consistent with a lot of deep traditions of the U.S. rulers, restricting the franchise, which the Founders always sought to do and which the U.S. right today sees as their only hope for political survival, and also the basic bipartisan U.S. principle of the current establishment that no election is sacrosanct.

Any election can be overturned, as long as it’s a foreign election. The U.S. has supported coups consistently, nonstop, through every administration. Obama and John Kerry — after the Egyptian Army staged a coup and overthrew the elected president, Kerry said they were acting to restore democracy. Trump, when he was president, along with General Kelly, his chief of staff, supported the stealing of an election in Honduras, where the candidate, Nasralla, was winning the vote count, and where, just shortly before, the U.S. had supported a coup to overthrow the elected president of Honduras, Zelaya. That was under Obama.

More recently, Trump supported a coup in Bolivia to overthrow the president, Evo Morales. And after that, Elon Musk, the second-richest man in the world, worth $184 billion, he tweeted this just on July 24th. He said, “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.” And I think that’s a pretty good statement of U.S. foreign policy. But now Trump, in a sense, is bringing that foreign policy home.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Allan, could you talk about the response from — I mean, the widespread condemnation of what happened from leaders around the world? And, in particular, one comment that stands out is the German foreign minister, Heiko Maas, on Twitter, writing, “From inflammatory words come violent actions – on the steps of the Reichstag and now in the Capitol,” in reference to the 1933 Reichstag fire that the Nazi Party used as a pretext to seize power.

ALLAN NAIRN: Well, it’s always been the case that the U.S. establishment was willing to use terror and kill civilians overseas, either to do things like seize oil, seize political power, or basically on whim. The presidency of George W. Bush was a prime example of that.

But Trump brought a unique aspect. He had this — he has this unique ability to unleash the beast in white America, to reach into people’s souls and bring out the worst aspects. And he also has the ability to create a fascistic atmosphere. He’s a product of the American elite. He’s an oligarch himself. But he takes a different approach from the respectable presidents, who have been the soft, friendly face of ruthless American power. And in a way, I think, he is kind of exposing the American system for what it is, in many respects, through his behavior and through the way he talks. But the movement that he has incited is a unique threat. And it has to be stopped.

But at the same time, I think it would be a huge mistake for people who are anti-fascist to respond to that by embracing the establishment, embracing authoritarian measures. You know, imagine how the laws are going to be rewritten now. Imagine how security procedures are going to be rewritten now. It’s almost a guarantee that it’s going to be much harder now to hold demonstrations in Washington, D.C., and in the vicinity of the Capitol. It’s going to be harder for movements legally, for movements like the Black Lives movement, for example, to go out on the streets again. There are sure to be more restrictions. And there are sure to be more restrictions on speech, through the newly empowered corporate censors, like Facebook and Twitter and so on, and perhaps through the government itself.

I think we have to be clear-eyed, and don’t let this Trumpist movement coopt the idea of rebellion. Rebellion against injustice is a good thing. The problem is that they — and the U.S. system is indeed unjust and murderous. But they are rebelling against the aspects of the U.S. system that happen to be good: the democracy, the tolerance, the chance for a democratic space in organizing. That’s what they’re rebelling against, on behalf of evils, like racism, like madness, like blind obedience to the leader, Trump. But we have to be careful and stand against both that, but also the establishment, which is still the main power in the United States and that is now in the middle of gutting the American poor, the American working class. That has to be rebelled against, just as we resist these fascistic forces. And it’s not easy to do both at the same time, but it’s necessary.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Allan, I mean, barring the successful invocation of the 25th Amendment, Trump is still in power for the next almost two weeks. Could you talk about some of the concerns you have about what might happen, what he might do in these 13 days?

ALLAN NAIRN: Well, one deep tradition of the American establishment, and especially the corporate press, is to rally around the flag whenever an American president launches a new war. So, if Trump wanted to and if he could get the military to go along, he could do something like bomb Iran, for example. And he, in fact, recently sent a U.S. warship toward Iran, just to be prepared for that possibility, if his whim pulls him in that direction. He had previously been calling for his law enforcement authorities to do things like arresting Biden, arresting Hillary Clinton. He wasn’t able to pull that off, but, clearly, you know, there’s still a lot — there’s still a lot he could do.

But even after Trump is gone, Elon Musk will still be there. He’ll still have his money. The American oligarchs will still be there. The U.S. security establishment will still be there, ready to do to capitols around the world what Trump’s mob just did to the U.S. Capitol.

Although I have to say, what has shaken the U.S. population so badly, this assault on the Capitol yesterday, is really nothing by comparison to what U.S. operations have done in Latin America, in Asia, in Africa, in the Middle East, to other democratic movements and elected governments over the years. You know, just days before this, remember, the U.S. Congress, by an overwhelming margin, passed the defense authorization bill to pump more money toward the Pentagon and overseas special operations, and, through other measures, is backing those operations of the CIA, basically dedicated to, whenever the order comes down, being ready to go in and overthrow democracy. So, Americans are now getting a mild taste of their own medicine, in a sense.

AMY GOODMAN: We have five seconds.

ALLAN NAIRN: And we have to recognize that and fight against it, stop it.

AMY GOODMAN: Allan Nairn, activist and award-winning journalist, thanks so much for joining us.

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“Unprecedented Moment”: Far-Right Forces Swarm D.C. to Back Overturning Election, Egged On by Trump
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow.org
JANUARY 06, 2021

Thousands who refuse to accept President Trump’s 2020 election loss to Joe Biden are protesting in Washington, D.C., as Congress meets to count the Electoral College votes and certify the results. Mayor Muriel Bowser has called in the National Guard ahead of the protests, after anti-democracy protesters clashed with police near Black Lives Matter Plaza. Police arrested six people on charges that include bringing illegal guns to the city. National security reporter William Arkin says it is “an unprecedented moment,” with the sitting president actively encouraging the unrest. We also speak with Jason Wilson, an investigative journalist who tracks the political right and extremist movements, who says the Trump presidency has seen a startling merger of the GOP with the far right. “There’s not really a sharp dividing line between violent, far-right street activists and the supporters of the president in Congress,” says Wilson.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

Thousands who refuse to accept President Trump’s 2020 election loss to Joe Biden are protesting in Washington, D.C., today as Congress meets to certify the results and make it official. Pro-Trump protesters clashed with police Tuesday night near Black Lives Matter Plaza. Mayor Muriel Bowser has called in the National Guard ahead of today’s protest. Police arrested six people on charges that include bringing illegal guns to the city.

This comes as the leader of the Proud Boys hate group, Enrique Tarrio, was released without bail Tuesday, after D.C. police arrested him Monday for allegedly burning a Black Lives Matter banner at a historically Black church during protests in the city last month and possession of high-capacity firearm magazines. Tarrio was ordered to stay out of D.C. He’s posted on social media that Proud Boys members would be incognito for this week’s protest.

Former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who Trump pardoned last month, spoke at last night’s rally and thanked the “digital soldiers” — a reference to the conspiracy theory QAnon. This is podcast host Clay Clark addressing Tuesday’s “Stop the Steal” protest.

CLAY CLARK: Last night, about 150 of us went into Whole Foods, and we dressed up like people that aren’t idiots hiding from a virus that’s not deadly: We did not wear a mask! Who here is up to the task of not wearing a mask? I ask you again: Who here is up to the task of not wearing a mask? Jesus is king, and it’s time to let freedom ring! … Turn to the person next to you and give them a hug, someone you don’t know. Go hug somebody. Go ahead and spread it out, mass spreader. It’s a mass spreader event! It’s a mass spreader event!

AMY GOODMAN: President Trump tweeted he’ll be speaking at today’s so-called Save America rally near the White House and has promoted the event for weeks.

Meanwhile, Trump signed an executive order Tuesday night that asks Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to, quote, “assess actions of Antifa activists,” stop its members from entering the United States, and see whether it can be classified as a terrorist organization.

All this comes as all 10 living former U.S. defense secretaries signed a Washington Post op-ed Sunday declaring the time for questioning the results of the election has passed. They also said the U.S. military should not intervene in the presidential election. They wrote, quote, “Efforts to involve the U.S. armed forces in resolving election disputes would take us into dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory.”

For more, we’re joined by William Arkin, national security reporter for Newsweek, whose recent piece is headlined “Threat of Pro-Trump Violence in Washington Overshadows Inauguration Security [Plans].”

Can you start, Bill Arkin, by talking about what the police and the authorities are most concerned about today in the streets of Washington, D.C.?

WILLIAM ARKIN: Well, they’re most concerned about Donald Trump, whether he is going to instigate the thousands of people who have flooded into the district to take up violence, either to march on the Capitol or even try to enter the Capitol during the elector count.

The people I’ve talked to — and it’s been a broad range of National Guard, law enforcement and military officials — all say to me that this is an unprecedented moment, unprecedented because you have a president who is not only instigating protest and violence against this constitutional process, but also because there are other conditions which have been introduced: first, talk of martial law; second, talk of an implementation of the Insurrection Act, which would allow the military and the National Guard to engage in law enforcement; third, a kind of break between the District of Columbia and the federal government, as was exemplified by a letter sent yesterday by the mayor of the district to the acting attorney general, to the acting secretary of defense, asking them not to put any nonuniformed people onto the streets of D.C.; and then, finally, the question of who is actually in charge of the U.S. Capitol Police, the U.S. Park Police, the uniformed branch of the Secret Service today and in the coming week, because there’s really no one in charge. In fact, the secretary of homeland security is in the Middle East right now.

So we have this very strange mixture of people who are both on high alert, but also the wildcard, in Donald Trump, as to what he will both do at his speech today at the Ellipse in front of the White House and then, secondly, what he could do in the coming days ahead in terms of issuing an order to the national security establishment, to the military, that the military would, I think, have to say that they could not follow because it was an unlawful order.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, William Arkin, I wanted to ask you — this issue of the joint statement by all the living former defense secretaries, which, according to some reports, was a letter or statement organized by former Vice President Dick Cheney, that would seem to indicate to me that these people, because they obviously are all connected to the current military establishment, that there are some — it’s not just rumors, but it’s actual — they’ve been getting some sense that the White House and President Trump might actually be thinking of attempting to, as you say, invoke the Insurrection Act or, in some way or other, bring the military in. Is it your sense that there’s actually been these kinds of discussions among top brass of the existing military?

WILLIAM ARKIN: Well, Juan, I’ve been covering the military for over 30 years. I remember when Dick Cheney was the secretary of defense, before he was vice president, in the first Bush administration. It is true that he was one of the organizers of this letter. And it really is an unprecedented statement, a bipartisan statement, that says that the military has no role. But I think it’s more of a message to the military itself, a reminder, if you will, that they need to go back to the Constitution and go back to their oath to the Constitution, to recognize that they are not just merely toys of the commander-in-chief. They’re not merely saluting soldiers without a brain. They have to also understand the difference between a lawful and an unlawful order.

And part of the problem that we’re facing right now is that there’s an acting secretary of defense, a person who was installed by Donald Trump after the election, a wildcard himself, that we don’t really know where he stands because he hasn’t said anything. And so, though, while the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, who got a lot of criticism in June when he accompanied the president into Lafayette Park in uniform, and thereby sort of implicitly gave the military’s imprimatur and support for what the president was doing — he has put out a statement saying that the military has no role in the election.

The reality is that there are an awful lot of active-duty military engaged in Washington, D.C., in inaugural security, in the air defense of D.C., in reconnaissance operations and in emergency response, in support of everything from weapons of mass destruction events to continuity of government, thousands of active-duty military who are on alert and who could be called out and who would be called out if in fact the local authorities were overwhelmed. And so you have, on the one hand, a kind of a secret operation going on in the background that is the standard for inaugural security and the transition from one presidency to another, and then, on the other hand, you have this highly charged political reality that the incoming White House is not speaking to the outcoming White House, and the president of the United States is off in his own fantasyland.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to bring Jason Wilson into this conversation, investigative journalist who tracks the political right and extremist movements for The Guardian, the Southern Poverty Law Center and elsewhere. Talk about who’s out there today, expected to be out there. You’ve got QAnon supporters, Proud Boy members, Republican leaders. Trump is apparently going to address them. Can you talk about the confluence of these groups and where guns fit into it? You even have the new congressmember, Boebert, from Colorado, who says she’s bringing her Glock into Congress, which Nancy Pelosi and others are trying to stop.

JASON WILSON: Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head, actually, Amy. I mean, you know, it’s just another demonstration of the fact that during the life of this presidency, there’s been a kind of merger between far-right activist groups and the Trump version of the GOP. There’s not really a sharp dividing line between violent, far-right street activists and the supporters of the president in Congress. You know, yeah, you’ve got at least three congresspersons, from my count, who are talking about participating in this rally. You’ve got all of these Trump-world figures, like Roger Stone, Jack Posobiec, Sebastian Gorka, who are all talking about being a part of this.

And yeah, I mean, the guns are not only a sort of indication of the militancy and radicalism of the GOP in 2021, but they’re bound up with the version of freedom that we’ve seen articulated by far-right street activists throughout the life of the presidency, as well. So, you know, the guns are integral, really, to the political ideology and the political project of this movement. And again, they’re an indication of militancy, as well.

And I’m pretty concerned that we’re going to see some violence today. And don’t forget, I mean, everyone is rightly focused on the rally in D.C., but there are parallel rallies happening all over the country at state capitols. So there are a lot of moving parts today. There’s a lot happening all around the country. And I’m concerned that the conditions are kind of ripe for some sort of violence, maybe in more than one of those places.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Jason Wilson, we only have about a minute or so left, but I’m wondering if you could comment on this whole issue that some of the Trump supporters are reportedly going to be coming dressed in black, which would make them indistinguishable perhaps from antifa folks, if some antifa folks show up, to counterprotest. Are you concerned about the possibility of agents provocateurs actually instigating violence as a means to give Trump an excuse for more drastic actions?

JASON WILSON: Yeah, I would — I mean, again, over the life of the Trump presidency, these groups have evolved in their tactics. And provocation has always been a quiver in their bow, not only provoking counterprotesters, but provocation of police or setting up the conditions where police respond with force to protests. So, yeah, I mean, disguising themselves as anti-fascists, they’ve done this before. And the fact that they’re talking about it now doesn’t surprise me at all. And, you know, as I said, they’re looking to trigger some kind of violence in the streets, I think.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you both for being with us. We’ll, of course, cover this closely today inside and outside Congress. We want to thank Jason Wilson, investigative journalist who tracks the political right, and William Arkin, national security reporter for Newsweek.

In 30 seconds, we’ll be back getting response to the Wisconsin judge ruling that the white police officer who shot Jacob Blake point blank in the back seven times will not be charged. Stay with us.

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Ahead of Pro-Trump Protest, Proud Boys Leader Arrested for Burning BLM Banner at Black Church
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow.org
JANUARY 05, 2021

As thousands are expected to descend on Washington, D.C., to join far-right protests over the election results Wednesday, the leader of the Proud Boys hate group, Enrique Tarrio, was arrested on property destruction charges for burning a Black Lives Matter banner off a historically Black church during similar protests last month. Many churches have requested extra protection, and the Metropolitan AME Church is suing the Proud Boys. “Sadly, our nation has a very dark and sordid history of targeting historically Black churches,” says Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, who represents the church in its lawsuit. “We will use civil rights law as a way of sending a message to extremists that they are not above the law and will be held accountable for their dangerous, toxic and dark actions.”

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking about what’s happening inside Congress tomorrow, but there are a lot who are deeply concerned about what’s happening outside on the streets. The Pentagon has approved a request by the Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser to call out the National Guard ahead of the planned anti-democracy protest by Trump supporters. Wednesday’s rally is scheduled to coincide with that joint session of Congress, when the lawmakers will vote to certify the results of the presidential election. During a similar protest in December, four people were stabbed, 33 arrested. There were violent confrontations between far-right groups and anti-fascist counterprotesters.

Meanwhile, the leader of the Proud Boys hate group, Enrique Tarrio, was arrested Monday on misdemeanor property destruction charges after he publicly admitted to tearing a Black Lives Matter banner off a historically Black church in Washington, D.C., and setting it on fire last month. Police say Tarrio had illegal high-capacity magazines of ammunition on him when he was arrested. The Metropolitan AME Church has sued the Proud Boys for, quote, “engaging in acts of terror and vandalizing church property in an effort to intimidate the church and silence its support for racial justice.” After the attack, the church’s pastor said, quote, “For me, it was reminiscent of cross burnings.” Shortly after the attack, Tarrio told The Washington Post, quote, “Let me make this simple. I did it.”

Kristen Clarke, you’re the lawyer who is spearheading for the church this lawsuit against Proud Boys. Talk about the significance of this.

KRISTEN CLARKE: Well, sadly, our nation has a very dark and sordid history of targeting historically Black churches, which are important institutions that have long provided a safe haven for Black communities. But the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church, which was targeted by the attack that you were describing, is a particularly special institution. It dates back to 1872. It’s a place where Frederick Douglass spoke, where luminaries and people who have fought for racial justice throughout the decades have taken to the podium and spoken to crowds across D.C. to advance justice. This is a very special institution, and it sits on one of the oldest properties in D.C. that has the longest and unbroken chain of Black ownership. It’s served righteously today by the Reverend William Lamar IV.

And this is a church that has openly demonstrated its support for the Black Lives Matter movement. And on December 12th, members of the Proud Boys and other extremists ripped their sign down and targeted other churches, in one instance involving the Asbury Methodist Church. They ripped that sign down, poured accelerant on the banner and burned it at night. And it was indeed a scene that really kind of hearkened back to the cross burnings of a bygone era, and it very much represents a kind of a modern-day cross burning intended to instill fear and to promote chaos in communities across our country.

So this lawsuit is about standing up and vindicating the rights of this historically Black church, but the lawsuit is also about sending a message to other bad actors out there seeking to carry out the objectives of the Proud Boys, seeking to promote racial chaos. When we look back at history in our country, you know, we think about the four girls at the Birmingham church that was bombed, the nine peaceful worshipers who were killed during a prayer service at the Charleston church. We think about three historically Black churches in Louisiana that were burned just a year ago. And this makes clear that there is kind of an unbroken chain of racial violence and a dark history when it comes to the targeting of Black churches. And with this lawsuit, we are making clear that we will not allow the Proud Boys to carry out mob violence with impunity. We will use the courts to hold him accountable. And we will use civil rights law as a way of sending a message to extremists that they are not, again, above the law and will be held accountable for their dangerous, toxic and dark actions.

AMY GOODMAN: Kristen Clarke, I want to thank you for being with us, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. But, Juan, I think you have one more question, and before we lose Kristen, I want to make sure you get that in.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yes, I wanted to ask her about this whole issue of the rally of the pro-Trump folks in front of Congress. I don’t think I recall a president calling for a rally, a protest, in Washington. I’ve heard of presidents speaking sometimes or addressing rallies that they supported. But especially in the context of the fact that these 10 former secretaries, all the living former secretaries of defense, issued this amazing letter this week calling for no intervention of the military on the issue of the election, do you have some concern about possible violence, not only by the right wing, but possibly by agents provocateurs who may pose as leftists or progressives trying to confront these right-wing folks to devolve into possible violence that no one is looking for?

KRISTEN CLARKE: Well, in many respects, what we saw on December 12th was the chaos and violence that ensues when you combine toxic election disinformation with racial violence, a threat that really has been growing across the country. And I do anticipate that there is some potential for the kind of chaos that we saw in December to unfold inside our nation’s capital once again. I’m glad that we’re seeing D.C. leadership, both the mayor and the D.C. attorney general, really taking bold and swift action to hold members of the Proud Boys accountable, to make clear that this is not a place where open carry is permitted. And I think that vigilance is required, and leadership is most certainly required at this moment.

It really has been incredibly chaotic and unruly, with members of Congress openly and brazenly planning to stage this baseless, you know, kind of sham protest tomorrow in the halls of Congress. But I think, for Americans, at the end of the day, we know the tremendous barriers and hurdles that were crossed to register our voice at the ballot box amid the pandemic. There is nothing that will change the final and fair outcome of this election. And I’m confident that we will move forward as a democracy.

AMY GOODMAN: Kristen Clarke, I want to thank you for being with us, of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

When we come back, we go to Georgia. Republican election officials there push back on Trump’s desperate attempt to steal the election, but voting rights activists say this may be a falling out among thieves. We’ll look at the purging of votes in Georgia up until this day. Stay with us.

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A Reuters photographer says he overheard pro-Trump insurrectionists saying they wanted to hang Mike Pence at the Capitol
by Sonam Sheth
Business Insider
January 9, 2021, 03:52 IST

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Babbitt’s journey — illuminated through her extensive social media activity, court and military records, and interviews with some who knew her — was one of paranoid devotion and enthusiasm that only increased as Trump’s fortunes waned.

She avidly followed the QAnon conspiracy theory, convinced that Trump was destined to vanquish a cabal of child abusers and Satan-worshiping Democrats. She believed Wednesday would be “the storm,” when QAnon mythology holds that Trump would capture and execute his opponents.

-- ‘The storm is here’: Ashli Babbitt’s journey from capital ‘guardian’ to invader, by Peter Jamison, Hannah Natanson, John Woodrow Cox and Alex Horton

Vice President Mike Pence finishes a swearing-in ceremony for senators in the Old Senate Chamber at the Capitol in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 3, 2021Scott J. Applewhite/AP

• A Reuters photographer said he heard at least three pro-Trump rioters at the Capitol on Wednesday saying they wanted to find Vice President Mike Pence and execute him by hanging.
• The photographer, Jim Bourg, tweeted that he heard the rioters "say that they hoped to find Vice President Mike Pence and execute him by hanging him from a Capitol Hill tree as a traitor."
• "It was a common line being repeated. Many more were just talking about how the VP should be executed," he added.
• Trump has repeatedly and falsely claimed that Pence could have stopped Congress from finalizing Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 election, even though Pence has no such legal or constitutional authority.
• When Pence released a statement saying he could not stop the process, the president publicly turned on him, tweeting that Pence didn't have the "courage" to do what was necessary.

A Reuters photographer said Friday that he overheard at least three pro-Trump insurrectionists at the US Capitol this week say they wanted to find Vice President Mike Pence and hang him.

"I heard at least 3 different rioters at the Capitol say that they hoped to find Vice President Mike Pence and execute him by hanging him from a Capitol Hill tree as a traitor," the photographer, Jim Bourg, tweeted. "It was a common line being repeated. Many more were just talking about how the VP should be executed."

The riot erupted Wednesday as Congress was counting electoral votes and debating Republican challenges to some battleground states' votes for Joe Biden. The pro-Trump mob breached barriers at the Capitol, broke into the building, and ransacked lawmakers' offices as police officers frantically evacuated Pence and senior lawmakers.

Other members of Congress, Hill staffers, and reporters hunkered down and sheltered in place, behind makeshift barricades, and in offices. An armed standoff ensued at the House chamber, and a Trump supporter was shot and killed by a Capitol Police officer. The riot resulted in five deaths, including the woman who was shot and a Capitol Police officer who was beaten by the president's supporters. Three other people died of medical emergencies.

At a rally before the joint session, President Donald Trump whipped his supporters into a frenzy, urging them "to fight," march to the Capitol, and stop Congress from counting the votes and finalizing Biden's victory. In the days before the riot, Trump repeatedly and falsely claimed that the vice president had the power to reject or "decertify" electors from battleground states that Trump lost.

"States want to correct their votes, which they now know were based on irregularities and fraud, plus corrupt process never received legislative approval. All Mike Pence has to do is send them back to the States, AND WE WIN. Do it Mike, this is a time for extreme courage!" Trump tweeted on Wednesday morning.

"If Vice President @Mike_Pence comes through for us, we will win the Presidency," he added. "Many States want to decertify the mistake they made in certifying incorrect & even fraudulent numbers in a process NOT approved by their State Legislatures (which it must be). Mike can send it back!"

Pence has no such legal or constitutional authority; he released a statement acknowledging that minutes before Congress convened on Wednesday afternoon. "Some believe that as Vice President, I should be able to accept or reject electoral votes unilaterally. Others believe that electoral votes should never be challenged in a Joint Session of Congress," he said. "After a careful study of our Constitution, our laws, and our history, I believe neither view is correct."

Trump vented on Twitter, saying the vice president lacked the "courage" to do what was necessary. The insurrectionists who later laid siege to the Capitol could be heard shouting "where's Mike Pence," a source close to the vice president told CNN on Thursday.

The source added that the president didn't bother checking on Pence's or his family's safety after unleashing the mob on the Capitol.

Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma told the Tulsa World that Pence was furious with Trump in the wake of the riot.

"I've known Mike Pence forever," Inhofe said. "I've never seen Pence as angry as he was today."

Trump hasn't seemed too concerned about tensions with the vice president. After Pence refused to block Congress' certification of Biden's victory, he reportedly told Pence, "I don't want to be your friend."

[admin]

Insurrectionist “Zip-Tie Guy” identified as retired Air Force lieutenant colonel
by Harm Venhuizen
militarytimes.com
1/9/21

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Retired Air Force lieutenant colonel Larry Rendall Brock Jr. was photographed on the Senate floor clad in tactical gear and holding flex cuffs. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

A man photographed in tactical gear and carrying zip-tie handcuffs on the Senate floor on Wednesday is a former Air Force officer who told The New Yorker magazine he stormed the Capitol because he believed the president wanted him to be there as the 2020 election was being certified.

“The President asked for his supporters to be there to attend, and I felt like it was important, because of how much I love this country, to actually be there,” Larry Rendall Brock, Jr. told reporter Ronan Farrow in a story published Friday evening.

Brock, a retired lieutenant colonel and combat veteran, was one of many insurrectionists to storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Five people died from injuries sustained in the ensuing riot, including two Air Force veterans, one of whom was a Capitol Police officer.

Brock was identified thanks to the efforts of The New Yorker and John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at Citizen Lab in the University of Toronto’s Munk School.

“I used a number of techniques to hone in on his identity, including facial recognition and image enhancement, as well as seeking contextual clues from his military paraphernalia,” Scott-Railton told the New Yorker.

One of those contextual clues was a 706th Fighter Squadron patch. Brock reportedly served as a chief operations inspector and flight commander within the unit, claiming to have received three Meritorious Service Medals, six Air Medals, and three Aerial Achievement Medals from service in Afghanistan and non-combat service in Iraq.

In a statement to the Military Times, Ann Stefanek, an Air Force spokesperson, said, “Lt. Col. Larry R. Brock, Jr. retired from the Air Force Reserves in 2014. As a private citizen, we no longer have jurisdiction over him.”

Brock entered active duty in 1989 and transferred to the Air Force Reserve in 1998. He was an A-10 pilot until 2007, according to Stefanek.

He now works for Hillwood Airways, a Texas-based private aviation company.

North Texans Team Up to Deliver Medical Supplies to Syrian Refugees: This cargo is being provided by Baylor Scott & White's FIAI [Faith in Action Initiative] to Hungarian Baptist Aid workers in Hungary, one of the countries in which Syrian refugees are seeking asylum. The delivery will be made by a specially configured cargo-capable Boeing 737 that is operated by Fort Worth-based ATX Air Services [now Hillwood Airways], a Perot company.

-- Texasstandard.org

Officials from Hillwood Airways did not immediately respond to requests for comment.


Researcher John Scott-Railton used Brock's gear, including a 706th Fighter Squadron patch, to identify him. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

As for the helmet and body armor, Brock told The New Yorker that he was afraid of being attacked by members of Black Lives Matter and Antifa. “I didn’t want to get stabbed or hurt,” he said.

The Air Force Academy graduate claimed to have found the flex cuffs he was carrying on the floor. “I wish I had not picked those up,” he said. “My thought process there was I would pick them up and give them to an officer when I see one.”

Brock can also be seen on a video from ITV News exiting Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office suite with a group of insurrectionists known to have been inside. Brock denied this allegation in conversations with The New Yorker, saying he stopped five to ten feet short of the offices when others entered.

ITV News
@itvnews
Watch@robertmorreitv's report from inside the Capitol building as the extraordinary events unfolded in Washington DC

itv.com/news/2021-01-1...
3:50 PM Jan 6, 2021

The retired officer’s family and friends expressed concerns about his radical political views. “I don’t contact him anymore ‘cause he’s gotten extreme,” Bill Leake, an Air Force officer who had served with Brock, told the New Yorker.

Some family members said white-supremacist beliefs may have motivated Brock to storm the Capitol.

Brock cited the president’s false claims of massive election fraud as his motivation and denied holding any racist views. “The President asked for his supporters to be there to attend, and I felt like it was important, because of how much I love this country, to actually be there,” he said.

He also added that he thought he was welcome to enter the Capitol when he arrived at its doors, despite the crowd of violent insurrectionists clashing with law enforcement.

The FBI is working to identify and charge the insurrectionists recorded entering the Capitol building. More than a dozen rioters have been charged so far, including a West Virginia lawmaker.

“We have deployed our full investigative resources and are working closely with our federal, state, and local partners to aggressively pursue those involved in criminal activity during the events of January 6,” the FBI said in a statement.

More than 1,000 National Guard troops were activated in response to the attacks, which were condemned by former Secretaries of Defense Mark Esper and Jim Mattis. All told, more than 6,000 National Guard troops are headed to the district.

“Today’s violent assault on our Capitol, an effort to subjugate American democracy by mob rule, was fomented by Mr. Trump,” Mattis said in a statement. “His use of the presidency to destroy trust in our election and to poison our respect for fellow citizens has been enabled by pseudo political leaders whose names will live in infamy as profiles in cowardice.”

Military Times managing editor Howard Altman contributed to this report.

[admin]

Officer killed in Capitol attack was an Air National Guard vet
by Leo Shane III and Stephen Losey
militarytimes.com
1/8/21

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Brian Sicknick, the Capitol Police officer who died Jan. 7 after being injured while confronting rioters at the Capitol, was formerly a staff sergeant with the New Jersey Air National Guard. He is shown here in a photo from his basic training in 1997. (New Jersey National Guard)

The Capitol Police officer killed in the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol by pro-Trump rioters on Wednesday was an Air National Guard veteran with multiple overseas deployments, military officials confirmed on Friday.

Brian Sicknick, a former staff sergeant with the New Jersey Air National Guard, died Thursday evening from injuries sustained while responding to the attack at the Capitol a day earlier. U.S. Capitol Police officials said he was hurt “while physically engaging with protesters.”

The death is under investigation by Washington, D.C. police and federal law enforcement officials. At least five deaths have been connected to the assault, where hundreds of individuals who had been attending a pro-Trump rally earlier in the day attacked security officials around the Capitol building in an effort to disrupt congressional certification of the November presidential election results.

In a statement, New Jersey Air National Guard officials said they were saddened by the loss and offered condolences to his family. “Staff Sgt Sicknick’s commitment to service and protect his community, state, and nation will never be forgotten.”

Sicknick served in the Guard from 1997 to 2003. Officials said he served on the 108th Security Forces Squadron, 108th Wing based out of Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey.


Brian Sicknick, the Capitol Police officer who died Jan. 7 after being injured confronting rioters at the Capitol a day earlier, is shown here while on a deployment to Kyrgyzstan in 2003 in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. (New Jersey National Guard)

Sicknick, 42, deployed to Saudi Arabia in 1999 in support of Operation Southern Watch and Kyrgyzstan in 2003 in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.

He had served on the Capitol Police force since 2008, and recently was assigned to the department’s First Responder’s Unit. Officials have not released specifics on the circumstances surrounding his death.

On Friday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ordered flags at the Capitol campus to be flown at half-staff in honor of Sicknick. Several lawmakers have also called for Sicknick to be allowed to lie in honor at the Capitol, as a way to recognize his sacrifice on behalf of the country.

Sicknick is at least the second veteran to be killed in Wednesday’s riots. Ashli Babbitt, a 35-year old who served in the Air Force, was shot by a Capitol Police officer as she tried to force her way into the House chamber.

Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund announced this week he will resign on Jan. 16 in response to security failures related to the attack. More than 50 law enforcement officials were injured responding to the violence through the building.

[admin]

‘The storm is here’: Ashli Babbitt’s journey from capital ‘guardian’ to invader
by Peter Jamison, Hannah Natanson, John Woodrow Cox and Alex Horton
Washington Post
Jan. 9, 2021 at 3:20 p.m. MST

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Ashli Babbitt, 35, was shot and killed in the Capitol on Wednesday.
(Courtesy of Timothy McEntee)

Ashli Babbitt, 35, was shot and killed in the Capitol on Wednesday. (Courtesy of Timothy McEntee)

The politician she revered above all others had lost an election. She’d struggled with crippling amounts of debt. Her home state of California was locking down again because of a virus she believed was fiction.

As she walked east along the Mall on Wednesday, wearing a backpack emblazoned with the American flag, Ashli Babbitt was elated.

“It was amazing to get to see the president talk,” Babbitt said, beaming in a video she streamed on Facebook early Wednesday afternoon that was later published by TMZ. “We are now walking down the inaugural path to the Capitol building. Three million-plus people.”



There was no crowd of three million: just a mob, lawless and maskless, that numbered in the thousands. Babbitt’s mission, which she had repeatedly avowed on social media, was to restore American democracy. But she was about to take part in a riot that would go down in history as one of that democracy’s most grievous attacks.

After a long but undistinguished military career and years of personal travails, Babbitt — a 35-year-old Air Force veteran from Southern California who once supported Barack Obama — believed she had found a cause that gave her life purpose. Within hours, that cause would bring her life to a violent end.

Hers was the first death reported Jan. 6, when rioters incited by President Trump overran the seat of the U.S. government. In the coming days there would be others. Brian D. Sicknick, a 42-year-old Capitol police officer who died after being injured while trying to push back the mob. Rosanne Boyland, Kevin D. Greeson and Benjamin Phillips, who died of medical emergencies during the chaos.

But it was Babbitt, fatally shot by police as she attempted to leap through the broken window of a door inside the Capitol, whose name would almost instantly become synonymous with the feverish movement that had propelled thousands of Americans to desecrate a pillar of their government.

Back in California, Babbitt’s brother, Roger Witthoeft, didn’t even know she had attended the protest before their dad, distraught, called him with news of the shooting. He found a video online.

“There was no doubt that it was my beautiful sister,” Witthoeft recalled.

Her comrades in the movement have declared her a martyr and planned to gather at the Washington Monument Saturday to hold a vigil in her name.

Babbitt’s journey — illuminated through her extensive social media activity, court and military records, and interviews with some who knew her — was one of paranoid devotion and enthusiasm that only increased as Trump’s fortunes waned.

She avidly followed the QAnon conspiracy theory, convinced that Trump was destined to vanquish a cabal of child abusers and Satan-worshiping Democrats. She believed Wednesday would be “the storm,” when QAnon mythology holds that Trump would capture and execute his opponents.

Long before she embraced those ideas, Babbitt was on a rocky path. She was loyal but rebellious, devoted to her country but often unable to get along with those who shared it. A believer in American pluck and free enterprise, she struggled in her attempts to run a small pool-service company outside San Diego.

She served more than a decade in the armed forces but chafed under the military hierarchy. Six of those years were spent in an Air National Guard unit whose mandate is to defend the Washington region and respond to civil unrest. Its nickname: the Capital Guardians.

Like so many others, she believed Jan. 6 would be not a day of infamy, but an end to her troubles.

“Nothing will stop us,” she tweeted Jan. 5. “They can try and try and try but the storm is here and it is descending upon DC in less than 24 hours....dark to light!”

It was the last thing she would write.

‘Absolutely unafraid’

She was fed up with her executive officer. It was 2014, and Babbitt — along with much of her Air National Guard unit, then stationed at the Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates — detested him, according to a former staff sergeant in the unit who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he fears backlash online.

But despite her reputation for being outspoken, she kept herself in check. Then one day, the executive officer slipped new papers into a briefing binder shortly before quizzing service members on its contents.

Babbitt asked for permission to speak freely, the former staff sergeant said, and the executive officer granted it — “which was a huge mistake for that captain.”

For the next several minutes, she “let him have it,” the former staff sergeant said. He and other members of the unit watched, riveted, as Babbitt shouted and gesticulated, warning that the officer — who far outranked her — was sapping morale. Another former airman who served with Babbitt said he also witnessed the interaction.

“She was like a dog with a bone,” the former staff sergeant said. “She could never let go of whatever her attention was on, and she was absolutely unafraid of anything.”

CommonAshSense
@Ashli_Babbitt
Video2 of 2... sorry I am not proficient at any of this yet!
#MAGA
10:57 AM Nov 26, 2018

AT 0:46

Babbitt, who grew up in a small town in the foothills of Southern California’s Cuyamaca Mountains, left similarly strong impressions on others who crossed her path. She was a fast talker, whipping through sentences “like a chinchilla that had just done a line of cocaine,” the staff sergeant said. She escaped punishment for confronting the officer in 2014, according to the airmen who served with her, but it was not the only time that her personality put her at odds with the culture and rules of the military.

She deployed at least seven times, an Air Force journalist wrote in 2014, and relished the opportunity to mentor newer airmen. But discipline issues and insubordination stunted her career, said two former airmen who served with her. She was demoted at least once, they said.

Babbitt left the military in 2016 as a senior airman — a relatively low rank for someone who spent more than a decade in uniform.

The same year, Babbitt spotted her husband Aaron Babbitt’s ex, Celeste Norris, pulling out of a shopping center parking lot in southern Maryland, according to a court petition for a protective order Norris later filed. Babbitt spun her white SUV in a U-turn and began chasing Norris, according to the petition, eventually rear-ending the other woman’s car three times and forcing her to stop.

Babbitt then exited her own car “screaming at me and verbally threatening me,” wrote Norris, who declined to comment for this report. Norris filed a second protective order petition in early 2017, saying Babbitt had followed her home from work and called her “all hours of day and night.”

Some who served with Babbitt kept in touch with her, remembering how fiercely she defended people she cared for. At one point in her life, that meant other service members.

But within a few years of leaving the military, “she had a new cause,” one of her fellow airmen said. “And her cause was QAnon.”


Supporters President Trump fly a U.S. flag with a symbol from the group QAnon as they gather outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

‘Today we save America’

Babbitt would eventually share more than 8,600 tweets, offering a vivid account of her descent into a world of conspiracy theories and delusion, but her first message was addressed to Trump, the man she believed was destined to rescue her country.

“#love,” she wrote Oct. 31, 2016, beside his name and above a photo of three signs nailed to a tree: “Make America Great Again,” “H FOR PRISON” and “CHRISTIAN DEPLORABLES LIVE HERE.”

A week later, on Election Day, she wrote to Trump again: “today we save America from the tyranny, collusion and corruption.” When he won, Babbitt cried.

She was an avid viewer of Fox News, praising Tucker Carlson and other far-right media personalities on the network as she derided their liberal targets. A registered Libertarian, she hadn’t always despised Democrats, declaring at least three times in recent years that she voted for Obama.

“I think Obama did great things...I think he jacked some s--- up,” she wrote in November 2018, “but I think he did do a lot of good...at a time where we needed him.”

But the man we needed now and for years to come, she had decided, was Trump, and her devotion only grew as she became more obsessed with baseless online propaganda — all while her professional life collapsed.


A Maryland driver's license photo of Ashli Babbitt. (Maryland MVA/Courtesy of the Calvert County Sheriff’s Office via AP)

On July 1, 2019, a judge issued a $71,000 judgment against her pool business because she had apparently failed to repay a loan. The day before, Babbitt had suggested starting a GoFundMe to pay for Trump’s addition to Mount Rushmore, and the day after, she lodged an angry tirade at U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).

“You are losing it,” Babbitt wrote, “seriously.”

She promoted far-right lies that Hillary Clinton has kidnapped children and described the left as modern-day enslavers. She appeared to use a QAnon hashtag for the first time early last year, parroting the cryptic jargon promoted by its most ardent followers.

“The best is yet to come,” she wrote Feb. 24.

“What is dark will come to light!” she added a month later.

“We have to #SaveTheChildren,” she demanded in one post, using a humanitarian hashtag that conspiracy theorists hijacked to promote their claim that a secretive group of elites run a pedophilia ring.


A sign on the door of the Spring Valley, Calif., pool-cleaning business co-owned by Ashli Babbitt, who believed the coronavirus was a hoax.. (REUTERS/Mike Blake)

Witthoeft, her brother, knew little about that side of his sister, he said. He understood, as millions of people do now, that she was an intense woman deeply devoted to Trump, but she didn’t push politics on Witthoeft, who preferred to talk to her about surfing, hockey or comedy.

“She was passionate yes but also very compassionate,” he told a Washington Post reporter through text, recalling a dark time in his own life about a decade ago. He was in California, where they had grown up, but she was living on the East Coast. He confided in her during a phone call and the next day, when he got home from work, she was waiting for him.

She was, to him, an optimist who was seldom overwhelmed, even by her business troubles.

“I’m healthy, have people that love me and live in the best country in the world,” he recalled her saying. "Every other problem is small.“

But online, she argued that the country’s problems were bigger than they had ever been.

Her anger appeared to intensify amid the pandemic, which she insisted was overblown, calling it the “controla virus” and “a F---ING JOKE.”

“We are being hoodwinked,” she wrote in July. “The sheep need to wake up.”

On Dec. 29, eight days before her death, she discovered a tweet from Vice President-elect Kamala D. Harris promising to distribute more vaccines, promote mask-wearing and get students back to school.

“No the f--- you will not!” Babbitt retorted.

In the week leading up to her trip to Washington for the Trump demonstration, however, her online fury receded, replaced with glee and a new sense of mission. She retweeted dozens of figures promoting Trump’s demands that his supporters gather to overturn the election, including Trump supporter Jack Posobiec, QAnon activists, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Donald Trump Jr.

“I will be there tomorrow!” she wrote Jan. 4 in response to another supporter heading to the nation’s capital. “Gods speed!”

She boarded a plane in San Diego the next morning and sat beside Will Carless, a journalist from USA Today who would later film the moment just before the pro-Trump rioters stormed the Capitol. He called her “gregarious and chatty” and said they talked about a California beach town each of them loved.

The next day, it was overcast and cold in the District. Babbitt dressed in a hooded jacket and put an American flag backpack on her shoulders. She listened to the president tell her and many others that the country could only be taken back with strength, not weakness. Then she marched to the Capitol, surrounded, she said in her final Facebook video, by fellow “patriots.”

“She loved her country, and she was doing what she thought was right to support her country, joining up with like-minded people that also love their president and their country,” her husband told Fox-5 San Diego.

Not long after 2 p.m., he said, he sent her a message to ask how she was doing. She never wrote back.

A truth affirmed

While her husband was waiting, Babbitt was with the mob that swarmed the lightly staffed barricades surrounding their national legislature. In a scene unlike any in American history, they bashed in the windows of the U.S. Capitol. They fought with the police, screaming and waving Trump campaign flags and Confederate battle flags. They wandered through the halls and chambers of the Capitol as panicked lawmakers sheltered in place or were evacuated. Tear gas canisters were discharged in the Rotunda.

And a gun was fired.


The Post obtained video showing the chaotic moment before 35-year-old Ashli Babbitt was fatally shot as rioters rushed toward the Speaker's Lobby. (The Washington Post)

Video shows moment woman was shot in U.S. Capitol riot
CGTN America
Jan 7, 2021

It is unclear exactly how and when Babbitt entered the Capitol. She undoubtedly understood law enforcement could use deadly force in response to the breach. Airmen in the role Babbitt once occupied in the D.C. Air National Guard’s 113th Air Wing receive riot-control training, and her former unit was mobilized to protect the Capitol on Wednesday.

But it has since become clear what happened inside: The raging crowd that bashed in the windows of a barricaded door to the Speaker’s Lobby, with a short tanned woman in an American backpack at the front of its ranks. Her attempt to climb through one of those windows, leading the way, despite a Capitol Police officer pointing a handgun in her direction. The abrupt way she toppled backward after a single shot resounded.


U.S. Capitol police officers stand near blood on the floor after demonstrators breached barricades to the Capitol. (Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg)

And it was clear how she left.

At about 3 p.m., a team of paramedics rushed a gurney to an ambulance parked at the southeast corner of the building. On it was Babbitt, staring listlessly in the direction of the building she had just tried to occupy, the place where her dreams of a revitalizing “storm” were supposed to come true.

Blood ran from her nose and covered half of her face. Her eyes were on the verge of closing. Riot police guarded the ambulance as its doors closed and pulled away. And that night — the night Babbitt died far from her home and family — Congress affirmed as true what she had died denying: Donald Trump would not remain president.

Julie Tate, Jennifer Jenkins, Dan Lamothe, Drew Harwell, Justin Jouvenal, Dalton Bennett, Greg Jaffe and Randy Dotinga contributed to this report.

[admin]

Woman dies after shooting during pro-Trump occupation of US Capitol
by ITV News
https://www.itv.com/news/2021-01-06/donald-trump-fires-up-protesters-in-washington-as-congress-prepare-to-confirm-biden-victory
Thursday 7 January 2021, 9:33pm

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Watch ITV News Washington Correspondent Robert Moore's report from inside the US Capitol as protesters stormed the building

A woman who was shot inside the US Capitol during violent pro-Trump protests has died, officials have told the Associated Press.

The protests - which were encouraged by President Donald Trump and turned violent - have been roundly condemned and led to the First Lady's chief of staff resigning.

The Republican National Committee described the extraordinary events as "domestic terrorism" and said the represent "an attack on our country and its founding principles.”

Lawmakers to be evacuated, which delayed the constitutional process to affirm President-elect’s Joe Biden's victory in the November election, after mobs stormed the US Congress on Wednesday.

The chaotic scenes culminated in a fatal shooting.

The Metropolitan Police Department said it was taking the lead on the investigation but did not immediately provide details about the circumstances of the shooting.


Trump supporters breach Capitol security and enter building

The police chief of Washington, DC said pro-Trump protesters deployed "chemical irritants" on police in order to breach the security perimeter and stormed the building.

More than a thousand National Guard troops were deployed to disperse the crowds and after a four-hour standoff, the site was declared secure by 6pm (local time).

Protesters, who were seen fighting with officers both inside the building and outside, were described as "special people" by President Donald Trump, who responded to calls to condemn the violence.

In a video address shared on Twitter, he urged his supporters to "go home" but repeated an unsubstantiated claim that the election was "stolen".


ITV News Washington Correspondent Robert Moore reports on an extraordinary day of unrest in DC:

He said: "I know your pain, I know you’re hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us, it was a landslide election and everyone knows it especially the other side.

"But you have to go home now, we have to have peace, we have to have law and order, we have to respect our great people in law and order. We don't want anybody hurt."

He described it as a "tough period of time", and repeated false claims that the November's election was "fraudulent".

He ended the video message by calling the protesters "very special", adding: "We can’t play into the hands of these people.

"We have to have peace. So go home. We love you. You’re very special."

Twitter disabled the video from being liked or retweeted "due to a risk of violence". It was later deleted.


Police try to hold back protesters outside the east doors to the House side of the U.S. Capitol.
Credit: AP

Trump shared his video address minutes after President-elect Joe Biden described the violent protests as "an assault on the most sacred of American undertakings: the doing of the people’s business."

Biden demanded Trump immediately make a televised address calling on his supporters to cease the violence.

"The words of a president matter, no matter how good or bad that president is," Biden said. "At best the worlds of a president can inspire, at the worst, they can incite."

He added: "Therefore I call on President Trump to go on national television now to fulfill his oath and defend the constitution and demand an end to this siege."

Biden added: "Let me be very clear, the scenes of the Capitol do not represent a true America, do not represent who we are.

"What we are seeing is a small number of extremists."

Former President Barack Obama added his condemnation, saying history will rightly remember the violence at the Capitol as a moment of great dishonor and shame for the nation.

Photographs from inside showing politicians ducking for cover while police guard windows to the room with guns drawn.

The Senate resumed debating the Republican challenge against Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential election victory more than six hours after the interruption.



The Republican National Committee said it strongly condemned the violence at the Capitol, adding that the violent scenes “do not represent acts of patriotism, but an attack on our country and its founding principles.”

The group’s communications director, Michael Ahrens, said: “What happened today was domestic terrorism.”

Stephanie Grisham, the current chief of staff for first lady Melania Trump, has resigned in the wake of the violent protests.

Stephanie Grisham, chief of staff and press secretary for first lady Melania Trump, has resigned following violent protests at the U.S. Capitol by supporters of President Donald Trump.

Grisham was one of Trump’s longest serving aides, having joined the campaign in 2015. She served as the White House press secretary and never held a press briefing.


Lawmakers and politicians in the chamber were evacuated as rioters stormed the room.
Credit: AP

At least one explosive device was found near the Capitol amid which law enforcement officials said the device was no longer a threat Wednesday afternoon.

Police Chief Robert Contee said officials had declared the scene a riot and confirmed one civilian was shot inside the Capitol and several police officers were injured.

Thirteen arrests were made of people from out of the area.

President Trump had encouraged his supporters to protest in Washington DC ahead of the confirmation of Joe Biden's election win.

He urged his supporters to march to the Capitol, telling them to “get rid of the weak Congress people” and saying, “get the weak ones get out; this is the time for strength.”


President Trump encouraged his supporters to protest during a speech in Washington DC.

He has embraced wild conspiracy theories about election fraud and demanding that November's already-certified election results are overturned.

Telling his supporters in Washington DC that he will "never concede" the election, he called on his Vice President Mike Pence to "do the right thing" and overturn Biden's victory.

"All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president and you are the happiest people," Trump said.

However, Pence released a statement saying he "does not have the power to discard electoral votes" in what would be a ceremonial role.

Mr Pence has gone further than President Trump by condemning the protests, warning on Twitter that they will be "prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law".

"The violence and destruction taking place at the US Capitol Must Stop and it Must Stop Now," he said. "Anyone involved must respect Law Enforcement officers and immediately leave the building."

Mike Pence @Mike_Pence Jan 6, 2021
The violence and destruction taking place at the US Capitol Must Stop and it Must Stop Now. Anyone involved must respect Law Enforcement officers and immediately leave the building.
Mike Pence
@Mike_Pence
Peaceful protest is the right of every American but this attack on our Capitol will not be tolerated and those involved will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
1:35 PM Jan 6, 2021

In a second Tweet, the Vice President said: "Peaceful protest is the right of every American but this attack on our Capitol will not be tolerated and those involved will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."

Rioters in the Chamber got up on the dais and yelled "Trump won that election" while several dozen others continue to roaming the halls of the building yelling: "Where are they?".

The mayor of Washington DC ordered a curfew in the capital from at 6pm (local time) in a bid to control the riots.

Approximately 20 minutes before the curfew, police used tear gas and percussion grenades to begin clearing pro-Trump protesters from the grounds.

The US Capitol complex was declared "secure" just before 6pm after after heavily armed police moved to end the nearly four-hour violent occupation.

Mayor Bowser said the behaviour of the Trump supporters was “shameful, unpatriotic and above all... unlawful.”

She added: "There will be law and order and this behaviour will not be tolerated.”

Members of Congress inside the chamber were told by police to put on gas masks after tear gas was dispersed to try and push back rioters.


Credit: AP

Law enforcement instructed lawmakers to retrieve masks from under their seats amid the clashes, before lawmakers and senators were evacuated.

One congresswoman reported "sounds like multiple gunshots" and said she had been evacuated from her office after reports of a pipe bomb.

Sophie Alexander
@SophieAlex1
We are out of the thick of it now. It's safe to say police were completely overwhelmed. As we left, rioters were still storming the #Capitol despite presence of National Guard @itvnews
2:02 PM Jan 6, 2021

British politicians have reacted to the chaotic scenes unfolding. The prime minister condemned the "disgraceful scenes".

Boris Johnson tweeted: "The United States stands for democracy around the world and it is now vital that there should be a peaceful and orderly transfer of power."

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer wrote on Twitter: "Horrendous scenes from the US. These are not ‘protestors’ - this a direct attack on democracy and legislators carrying out the will of the American people."

Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon described the scenes as "utterly horrifying," adding: "Solidarity with those in (the United States) on the side of democracy and the peaceful and constitutional transfer of power. Shame on those who have incited this attack on democracy."


Watch ITV News Washington Correspondent Robert Moore's live report from DC:

Trump was earlier defied by his vice-President who said he cannot reject the vote that confirmed Joe Biden's win.

Trump had called on Mike Pence to overturn the will of US voters by refusing to confirming Biden's win in Congress - something he has no authority to do.

Joe Biden won the electoral college vote by 306 to 232.



Addressing the crowds, Trump described the election as a "theft" - despite there being no evidence of any voter fraud.

President Trump falsely repeated his call to VP Pence to overturn the will of the voters and tip the results in the president’s favour.

He claimed VP Pence "has the power to do this" - but Pence's role is largely ceremonial in presiding over the certification of the electoral college vote count in front of a joint session of Congress.


Crowds gathered near the White House, despite the Covid pandemic.
Credit: AP

"Mike Pence, I hope you're gonna stand up for the good of our Constitution and for the good of our country," he said.

But VP Pence issued a statement shortly before his ceremonial duty in Congress saying he could not claim "unilateral authority" to reject electoral votes.

"My oath to support and defend the Constitution constrains me from claiming unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted and which should not," Pence said.

The president responded with a tweet later on writing: "Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution".

There has been no evidence of any voter fraud in the election, despite Trump's claims.

Addressing his supporters, President Trump encouraged the crowd to march towards the Capitol building and "make your voice heard".


Trump supporter Scott Matheny says his loyalty is unshaken:

Police had already reported 10 protest-related arrests on Tuesday and Wednesday for a variety of offences - including weapons charges, assault on a police officer, simple assault, possessing a stun gun and other violations.

Election officials from both political parties, governors in key battleground states and Trump’s former attorney general, William Barr, have said there was no widespread fraud in the election.

Nearly all the legal challenges from Trump and his allies have been dismissed by judges, including two challenges rejected by the Supreme Court.


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