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by **admin** » Sat Jan 23, 2021 10:15 am

‘A Total Failure’: The Proud Boys Now Mock Trump: Members of the far-right group, who were among Donald Trump’s staunchest fans, are calling him “weak” as more of them were charged for storming the U.S. Capitol.
by Sheera Frenkel and Alan Feuer
New York Times
Jan. 20, 2021

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

Members of the Proud Boys, who have engaged in political violence, at a rally in Portland, Ore., in September. Credit...Diana Zeyneb Alhindawi for The New York Times

After the presidential election last year, the Proud Boys, a far-right group, declared its undying loyalty to President Trump.

In a Nov. 8 post in a private channel of the messaging app Telegram, the group urged its followers to attend protests against an election that it said had been fraudulently stolen from Mr. Trump. “Hail Emperor Trump,” the Proud Boys wrote.

But by this week, the group’s attitude toward Mr. Trump had changed. “Trump will go down as a total failure,” the Proud Boys said in the same Telegram channel on Monday.

As Mr. Trump departed the White House on Wednesday, the Proud Boys, once among his staunchest supporters, have also started leaving his side. In dozens of conversations on social media sites like Gab and Telegram, members of the group have begun calling Mr. Trump a “shill” and “extraordinarily weak,” according to messages reviewed by The New York Times. They have also urged supporters to stop attending rallies and protests held for Mr. Trump or the Republican Party.

The comments are a startling turn for the Proud Boys, which for years had backed Mr. Trump and promoted political violence. Led by Enrique Tarrio, many of its thousands of members were such die-hard fans of Mr. Trump that they offered to serve as his private militia and celebrated after he told them in a presidential debate last year to “stand back and stand by.” On Jan. 6, some Proud Boys members stormed the U.S. Capitol.

But since then, discontent with Mr. Trump, who later condemned the violence, has boiled over. On social media, Proud Boys participants have complained about his willingness to leave office and said his disavowal of the Capitol rampage was an act of betrayal. And Mr. Trump, cut off on Facebook and Twitter, has been unable to talk directly to them to soothe their concerns or issue new rallying cries.

The Proud Boys’ anger toward Mr. Trump has heightened after he did nothing to help those in the group who face legal action for the Capitol violence. On Wednesday, a Proud Boy leader, Joseph Biggs, 37, was arrested in Florida and charged with unlawful entry and corruptly obstructing an official proceeding in the riot. At least four other members of the group also face charges stemming from the attack.

“When Trump told them that if he left office, America would fall into an abyss, they believed him,” Arieh Kovler, a political consultant and independent researcher in Israel who studies the far right, said of the Proud Boys. “Now that he has left office, they believe he has both surrendered and failed to do his patriotic duty.”

The shift raises questions about the strength of the support for Mr. Trump and suggests that pockets of his fan base are fracturing. Many of Mr. Trump’s fans still falsely believe he was deprived of office, but other far-right groups such as the Oath Keepers, America First and the Three Percenters have also started criticizing him in private Telegram channels, according to a review of messages.

Last week, Nicholas Fuentes, the leader of America First, wrote in his Telegram channel that Mr. Trump’s response to the Capitol rampage was “very weak and flaccid” and added, “Not the same guy that ran in 2015.”

On Wednesday, the Proud Boys Telegram group welcomed President Biden to office. “At least the incoming administration is honest about their intentions,” the group wrote.

Mr. Kovler said the activity showed that groups that had coalesced around Mr. Trump were now trying to figure out their future direction. By losing his ability to post on Twitter and Facebook, Mr. Trump had also become less useful to the far-right groups, who counted on him to raise their profile on a national stage, Mr. Kovler said.

Mr. Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys, could not be reached for comment. A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not respond to a request for comment.

Enrique Tarrio, leader of the Proud Boys, led a contingent of the group in Washington last month. Credit...Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

The Proud Boys were founded in 2016 as a club for men by Gavin McInnes, who also was a founder of the online publication Vice. Describing themselves as “Western chauvinists,” the group attracted people who appeared eager to engage in violence and who frequently espoused anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic views. The group had supported Mr. Trump since he assumed office.

The change toward Mr. Trump happened slowly. After November’s election, the group’s private Telegram channels, Gab pages and posts on the alternative social networking site Parler were filled with calls to keep the faith with the president. Many Proud Boys, echoing Mr. Trump’s falsehoods, said the election had been rigged, according to a review of messages.

The Proud Boys urged their members to attend “Stop the Steal” rallies. One Nov. 23 message on a Proud Boys Telegram page read, “No Trump, no peace.” The message linked to information about a rally in front of the governor’s home in Georgia.

As Mr. Trump’s legal team battled the election result with lawsuits, the Proud Boys closely followed the court cases and appeals in different states, posting frequent links in their Telegram channels to news reports.

But when Mr. Trump’s legal efforts failed, the Proud Boys called for him on social media to use his presidential powers to stay in office. Some urged him to declare martial law or take control by force. In the last two weeks of December, they pushed Mr. Trump in their protests and on social media to “Cross the Rubicon.”

“They wanted to arm themselves and start a second civil war and take down the government on Trump’s behalf,” said Marc-André Argentino, a researcher who studies the far right and a Ph.D. candidate at Concordia University. “But ultimately, he couldn’t be the authoritarian they wanted him to be.”

Then came the week of the Capitol storming. On Jan. 4, Mr. Tarrio was arrested by the Metropolitan Police on suspicion of burning a Black Lives Matter banner torn from a Black church in Washington. He was thrown out of the city by a judge the next day.

But nearly 100 other Proud Boys, who had been encouraged by leaders like Mr. Biggs, remained in Washington. According to court papers, Mr. Biggs told members to eschew their typical black-and-yellow polo shirts and instead go “incognito” and move about the city in “smaller teams.”

On the day of the riot, Mr. Biggs was captured in a video marching with a large group of Proud Boys toward the Capitol, chanting slogans like, “Whose streets? Our streets.”

Though prosecutors said Mr. Biggs was not among the first to break into the Capitol, they said he admitted to entering the building for a brief time. They also said he appeared to wear a walkie-talkie-style device on his chest, suggesting he was communicating with others during the incursion.

In an interview with The Times hours after the attack, Mr. Biggs said he and other Proud Boys arrived at the Capitol complex around 1 p.m. when the crowd in front of them surged and the mood grew violent. “It literally happened in seconds,” he said.

Prosecutors have also charged Dominic Pezzola, a Proud Boy from Rochester and a former Marine; Nicholas Ochs, founder of the Proud Boys’ Hawaii chapter; and Nicholas DeCarlo, who runs a news outfit called Murder the Media, which is associated with the group.

After the violence, the Proud Boys expected Mr. Trump — who had earlier told his supporters to “fight much harder” against “bad people” — to champion the mob, according to their social media messages. Instead, Mr. Trump began distancing himself from his remarks and released a video on Jan. 8 denouncing the violence.

The disappointment was immediately palpable. One Proud Boys Telegram channel posted: “It really is important for us all to see how much Trump betrayed his supporters this week. We are nationalists 1st and always. Trump was just a man and as it turns out an extraordinarily weak one at the end.”

Some Proud Boys became furious that Mr. Trump, who was impeached for inciting the insurrection, did not appear interested in issuing presidential pardons for their members who were arrested. In a Telegram post on Friday, they accused Mr. Trump of “instigating” the events at the Capitol, adding that he then “washed his hands of it.”

“They thought they had his support and that, ultimately, Trump would come through for them, including with a pardon if they should need it,” said Jared Holt, a visiting research fellow at the Atlantic Council’s DFR Lab. “Now they realize they went too far in the riots.”

Some Proud Boys now say in online posts that the group should “go dark” and retreat from political life by cutting its affiliation to any political party. They are encouraging one another to focus their energies on secessionist movements and local protests.

“To all demoralized Trump supporters: There is hope,” read one message in a Proud Boys Telegram channel on Wednesday. “There is an alternative. Abandon the GOP and the Dems.”

by **admin** » Sun Jan 24, 2021 8:25 am

Trump and Justice Dept. Lawyer Said to Have Plotted to Oust Acting Attorney General: Trying to find another avenue to push his baseless election claims, Donald Trump considered installing a loyalist.
by Katie Benner
New York Times
Jan. 22, 2021

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

Jeffrey Clark, who led the Justice Department’s civil division, had been working with President Donald Trump to devise ways to cast doubt on the election results.Credit...Susan Walsh/Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department’s top leaders listened in stunned silence this month: One of their peers, they were told, had devised a plan with President Donald J. Trump to oust Jeffrey A. Rosen as acting attorney general and wield the department’s power to force Georgia state lawmakers to overturn its presidential election results.

The unassuming lawyer who worked on the plan, Jeffrey Clark, had been devising ways to cast doubt on the election results and to bolster Mr. Trump’s continuing legal battles and the pressure on Georgia politicians. Because Mr. Rosen had refused the president’s entreaties to carry out those plans, Mr. Trump was about to decide whether to fire Mr. Rosen and replace him with Mr. Clark.

The department officials, convened on a conference call, then asked each other: What will you do if Mr. Rosen is dismissed?

The answer was unanimous. They would resign.

Their informal pact ultimately helped persuade Mr. Trump to keep Mr. Rosen in place, calculating that a furor over mass resignations at the top of the Justice Department would eclipse any attention on his baseless accusations of voter fraud. Mr. Trump’s decision came only after Mr. Rosen and Mr. Clark made their competing cases to him in a bizarre White House meeting that two officials compared with an episode of Mr. Trump’s reality show “The Apprentice,” albeit one that could prompt a constitutional crisis.

The previously unknown chapter was the culmination of the president’s long-running effort to batter the Justice Department into advancing his personal agenda. He also pressed Mr. Rosen to appoint special counsels, including one who would look into Dominion Voting Systems, a maker of election equipment that Mr. Trump’s allies had falsely said was working with Venezuela to flip votes from Mr. Trump to Joseph R. Biden Jr.

This account of the department’s final days under Mr. Trump’s leadership is based on interviews with four former Trump administration officials who asked not to be named because of fear of retaliation.

Mr. Clark said that this account contained inaccuracies but did not specify, adding that he could not discuss any conversations with Mr. Trump or Justice Department lawyers because of “the strictures of legal privilege.” “Senior Justice Department lawyers, not uncommonly, provide legal advice to the White House as part of our duties,” he said. “All my official communications were consistent with law.”

Mr. Clark categorically denied that he devised any plan to oust Mr. Rosen, or to formulate recommendations for action based on factual inaccuracies gleaned from the internet. “My practice is to rely on sworn testimony to assess disputed factual claims,” Mr. Clark said. “There was a candid discussion of options and pros and cons with the president. It is unfortunate that those who were part of a privileged legal conversation would comment in public about such internal deliberations, while also distorting any discussions.”

Mr. Clark also noted that he was the lead signatory on a Justice Department request last month asking a federal judge to reject a lawsuit that sought to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the results of the election.

Mr. Trump declined to comment. An adviser said that Mr. Trump has consistently argued that the justice system should investigate “rampant election fraud that has plagued our system for years.”

The adviser added that “any assertion to the contrary is false and being driven by those who wish to keep the system broken.” Mr. Clark agreed and said that “legal privileges” prevented him from divulging specifics regarding the conversation.

A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment, as did Mr. Rosen.

When Mr. Trump said on Dec. 14 that Attorney General William P. Barr was leaving the department, some officials thought that he might allow Mr. Rosen a short reprieve before pressing him about voter fraud. After all, Mr. Barr would be around for another week.

Instead, Mr. Trump summoned Mr. Rosen to the Oval Office the next day. He wanted the Justice Department to file legal briefs supporting his allies’ lawsuits seeking to overturn his election loss. And he urged Mr. Rosen to appoint special counsels to investigate not only unfounded accusations of widespread voter fraud, but also Dominion, the voting machines firm.

(Dominion has sued the pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, who inserted those accusations into four federal lawsuits about voter irregularities that were all dismissed.)

Mr. Rosen refused. He maintained that he would make decisions based on the facts and the law, and he reiterated what Mr. Barr had privately told Mr. Trump: The department had investigated voting irregularities and found no evidence of widespread fraud.

But Mr. Trump continued to press Mr. Rosen after the meeting — in phone calls and in person. He repeatedly said that he did not understand why the Justice Department had not found evidence that supported conspiracy theories about the election that some of his personal lawyers had espoused. He declared that the department was not fighting hard enough for him.

As Mr. Rosen and the deputy attorney general, Richard P. Donoghue, pushed back, they were unaware that Mr. Clark had been introduced to Mr. Trump by a Pennsylvania politician and had told the president that he agreed that fraud had affected the election results.

Election workers performing a recount in Atlanta in November. Mr. Trump focused on Georgia’s election outcome after he lost the state. Credit...Nicole Craine for The New York Times

Mr. Trump quickly embraced Mr. Clark, who had been appointed the acting head of the civil division in September and was also the head of the department’s environmental and natural resources division.

As December wore on, Mr. Clark mentioned to Mr. Rosen and Mr. Donoghue that he spent a lot of time reading on the internet — a comment that alarmed them because they inferred that he believed the unfounded conspiracy theory that Mr. Trump had won the election. Mr. Clark also told them that he wanted the department to hold a news conference announcing that it was investigating serious accusations of election fraud. Mr. Rosen and Mr. Donoghue rejected the proposal.

As Mr. Trump focused increasingly on Georgia, a state he lost narrowly to Mr. Biden, he complained to Justice Department leaders that the U.S. attorney in Atlanta, Byung J. Pak, was not trying to find evidence for false election claims pushed by Mr. Trump’s lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani and others. Mr. Donoghue warned Mr. Pak that the president was now fixated on his office, and that it might not be tenable for him to continue to lead it, according to two people familiar with the conversation.

That conversation and Mr. Trump’s efforts to pressure Georgia’s Republican secretary of state to “find” him votes compelled Mr. Pak to abruptly resign this month.

Mr. Clark was also focused on Georgia. He drafted a letter that he wanted Mr. Rosen to send to Georgia state legislators that wrongly said that the Justice Department was investigating accusations of voter fraud in their state, and that they should move to void Mr. Biden’s win there.

Mr. Rosen and Mr. Donoghue again rejected Mr. Clark’s proposal.

On New Year’s Eve, the trio met to discuss Mr. Clark’s refusal to hew to the department’s conclusion that the election results were valid. Mr. Donoghue flatly told Mr. Clark that what he was doing was wrong. The next day, Mr. Clark told Mr. Rosen — who had mentored him while they worked together at the law firm Kirkland & Ellis — that he was going to discuss his strategy with the president early the next week, just before Congress was set to certify Mr. Biden’s electoral victory.

Unbeknown to the acting attorney general, Mr. Clark’s timeline moved up. He met with Mr. Trump over the weekend, then informed Mr. Rosen midday on Sunday that the president intended to replace him with Mr. Clark, who could then try to stop Congress from certifying the Electoral College results. He said that Mr. Rosen could stay on as his deputy attorney general, leaving Mr. Rosen speechless.

Unwilling to step down without a fight, Mr. Rosen said that he needed to hear straight from Mr. Trump and worked with the White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, to convene a meeting for early that evening.

Mr. Clark asked Mr. Trump to oust Jeffrey A. Rosen, the acting attorney general. Credit...Ting Shen for The New York Times

Even as Mr. Clark’s pronouncement was sinking in, stunning news broke out of Georgia: State officials had recorded an hourlong call, published by The Washington Post, during which Mr. Trump pressured them to manufacture enough votes to declare him the victor. As the fallout from the recording ricocheted through Washington, the president’s desperate bid to change the outcome in Georgia came into sharp focus.

Mr. Rosen and Mr. Donoghue pressed ahead, informing Steven Engel, the head of the Justice Department’s office of legal counsel, about Mr. Clark’s latest maneuver. Mr. Donoghue convened a late-afternoon call with the department’s remaining senior leaders, laying out Mr. Clark’s efforts to replace Mr. Rosen.

Mr. Rosen planned to soon head to the White House to discuss his fate, Mr. Donoghue told the group. Should Mr. Rosen be fired, they all agreed to resign en masse. For some, the plan brought to mind the so-called Saturday Night Massacre of the Nixon era, where Attorney General Elliot L. Richardson and his deputy resigned rather than carry out the president’s order to fire the special prosecutor investigating him.

The Clark plan, the officials concluded, would seriously harm the department, the government and the rule of law. For hours, they anxiously messaged and called one another as they awaited Mr. Rosen’s fate.

Around 6 p.m., Mr. Rosen, Mr. Donoghue and Mr. Clark met at the White House with Mr. Trump, Mr. Cipollone, his deputy Patrick Philbin and other lawyers. Mr. Trump had Mr. Rosen and Mr. Clark present their arguments to him.

Mr. Cipollone advised the president not to fire Mr. Rosen and he reiterated, as he had for days, that he did not recommend sending the letter to Georgia lawmakers. Mr. Engel advised Mr. Trump that he and the department’s remaining top officials would resign if he fired Mr. Rosen, leaving Mr. Clark alone at the department.

Mr. Trump seemed somewhat swayed by the idea that firing Mr. Rosen would trigger not only chaos at the Justice Department, but also congressional investigations and possibly recriminations from other Republicans and distract attention from his efforts to overturn the election results.

After nearly three hours, Mr. Trump ultimately decided that Mr. Clark’s plan would fail, and he allowed Mr. Rosen to stay.

Mr. Rosen and his deputies concluded they had weathered the turmoil. Once Congress certified Mr. Biden’s victory, there would be little for them to do until they left along with Mr. Trump in two weeks.

They began to exhale days later as the Electoral College certification at the Capitol got underway. And then they received word: The building had been breached.

Maggie Haberman contributed reporting from New York.

Katie Benner covers the Justice Department. She was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for public service for reporting on workplace sexual harassment issues. @ktbenner

by **admin** » Tue Jan 26, 2021 3:06 am

Texas man charged in Capitol riots threatened to kill AOC: Garret Miller of Dallas County, Texas, posted often on social media about his involvement in the deadly riots during which insurrectionists and rioters stormed the Capitol, according to charging documents.
by Ben Leonard
Politico
01/23/2021 03:46 PM EST

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive and one of the most high-profile lawmakers in Congress, has said that death threats are “a normal part of [her] existence." | Alex Wong/Getty Images

A Texas man charged with illegally storming the U.S. Capitol Jan. 6. threatened to kill Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a Capitol Police officer, according to federal prosecutors.

Garret Miller, of Dallas County, Texas, posted often on social media about his involvement in the deadly riots during which insurrectionists stormed the Capitol, including sending a tweet saying “Assassinate AOC,” according to charging documents.

Miller was charged with several federal crimes and arrested Wednesday in Texas, Department of Justice filings show. He appeared in federal court in Dallas on Friday for an initial hearing and has a bail hearing Monday.

Miller allegedly posted a selfie of himself in the Capitol, to which a Facebook user said "bro you got in?! Nice!," according to charging documents.

“just wanted to incriminate myself a little lol,” Miller replied.

“Well you did!” Ocasio-Cortez clapped back at Miller on Twitter.

“On one hand you have to laugh, and on the other know that the reason they were this brazen is because they thought they were going to succeed,” she said in a subsequent tweet.

Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive and one of the most high-profile lawmakers in Congress, has said that death threats are “a normal part of [her] existence.” Ahead of the House’s vote to impeach then-President Donald Trump, the New York congresswoman said that GOP lawmakers fearing voting to impeach Trump after the riots are privileged to not face threats more often.

“I get it, but some of us just spent the last 2 years taking stances that have led to repeated attempts on our lives - for demanding guaranteed healthcare, immigrant justice, etc.,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote in a tweet. “Sorry if this lacks empathy, but it’s a privilege if this is their first time. They can do one vote.”

Trump was impeached for inciting an insurrection and faces a Senate trial slated for the week of Feb. 8. At a rally before the riots, Trump spoke to supporters.

“You’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong,” Trump said at the time.

Trump has defended his comments as "totally appropriate." Just 27 percent of respondents in a recent POLITICO/Morning Consult poll said Trump acted “appropriately” and that the Senate should not remove him from office.

Miller’s arrest comes as federal officials fear hundreds of cases of rioters being charged could clog the court system, leaving them weighing potentially not charging some Capitol rioters to ease the burden, the Washington Post reported Saturday.

The FBI got a tip from law enforcement about Miller posting a video from inside the Capitol on Twitter. On Jan. 2, he said on Facebook that he was going to drive cross-country "for this trump sh-t," according to charging documents.

“civil war could start . . . not sure what to do in DC,” he said in a Facebook post Jan. 2.

He posted a photo of himself on Facebook wearing a Make America Great Again hat on Jan. 11 from inside the Capitol, according to the filings. In a tweet Jan. 6, Miller said "next time we bring the guns."

On social media, Miller also discussed a woman who was shot by Capitol police on Jan. 6, saying Jan. 10 that “We going to get a hold of” the officer and “hug his neck with a nice rope,” according to the filings.

“On Jan. 6, he also tweeted that "we acted with honor and we where [sic] not armed. We where [sic] gentle with the police” in a reply to Ocasio-Cortez.

He also said on Instagram that he had a rope in his bag on the day of the Capitol riots.

“We stormed the capital [sic] as peacefully as we could without weapons ... The congress building,” Miller wrote on his Instagram, according to the documents.

by **admin** » Tue Jan 26, 2021 3:21 am

GOP Rep. Andy Harris Tries To Bring Gun Into House Chamber: Republicans keep complaining about the new metal detectors outside the House chamber. Now we know why.
by Matt Fuller
Huffington Post
01/21/2021 07:26 pm ET Updated 4 days ago

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

Rep. Andy Harris, MD @RepAndyHarrisMD

WASHINGTON ― New security measures outside the U.S. House chamber prevented a Republican lawmaker from bringing a gun onto the House floor Thursday.

Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), who has repeatedly flouted the magnetometers that were installed near the House chamber after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, set off the metal detectors while trying to enter. When an officer with a metal detector wand scanned him, a firearm was detected on Harris’s side, concealed by his suit coat. Police refused to let Harris in, and the officer signaled a security agent that Harris had a gun on him by motioning toward his own firearm.

HuffPost witnessed the interaction and later confirmed with a Capitol official that Harris was carrying a gun.

HuffPost watched Harris try to get another member to take the gun from him so he could go vote. The member, Rep. John Katko (R-N.Y.), told Harris he didn’t have “a license” and refused to hold the weapon for him.

HuffPost also heard Harris complain to some fellow members that he had asked his staff to remind him about the screenings and they hadn’t.

Harris then left on the elevators and 10 minutes later returned to the House chamber. He placed his cellphone and keys on a desk to the side, did not set off the magnetometer and was allowed to enter the House floor to vote on a waiver to allow retired Army Gen. Lloyd Austin to serve as President Joe Biden’s defense secretary.

Congress has been in a heightened state of security since the Jan. 6 siege on the Capitol as both chambers of Congress were meeting to count states’ Electoral College votes. Even though President Joe Biden has been inaugurated, there are still two large fences around the perimeter of the Capitol, and National Guard troops remain on the grounds.

During a security briefing with Democratic members early last week, some lawmakers suggested that members should have to go through a metal detector to get on the House floor. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) has said she’ll carry a gun around D.C., which does not allow the open carrying of a firearm, and Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) told his local paper that he was armed when insurrectionists stormed the Capitol.

When House lawmakers came back Jan. 12 for their first votes after the attack, they found magnetometers outside entrances to the House chamber. Most members followed police orders and went through the metal detectors, but some Republicans sidestepped the machines or refused to be checked with wands after they set it off ― Harris among them.

In response, Capitol Police put desks and velvet ropes on the sides of the magnetometers to block members from walking around the machines, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said she will fine members who bypass screenings $5,000 for their first offense and $10,000 for their second.

Those fines are not yet in effect, as the House hasn’t adopted those rules, and a few members continue to not comply with the screenings. On Thursday, HuffPost saw Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Rick Allen (R-Ga.) and Boebert all refuse to be wanded down after setting off the magnetometer.

But when Harris went through the metal detector Thursday and set it off, the police officer stepped in his way and directed Harris to spread his arms so he could use the handheld wand. Harris complied, and the officer found the gun on his side.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Capitol Police would only tell HuffPost that “USCP is investigating this matter,” and when we asked for clarification on whether the USCP was aware that Harris had attempted to bring a gun onto the House floor, the spokesperson said the agency couldn’t comment on “an ongoing investigation.”

Members are allowed to carry a gun in the office buildings, in the Capitol and on Capitol grounds, but they are expressly forbidden from carrying firearms onto the floor. And guns in the Capitol are not supposed to be loaded. Members can carry bullets separately.

Individual officers who witnessed the situation also wouldn’t comment. However, HuffPost heard officers talking about Harris having a weapon on him later Thursday afternoon.

Harris’s office did not return multiple requests for comment, nor did Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office.

HuffPost did ask Pelosi for comment Thursday afternoon as she walked by the House chamber, but she told reporters she wouldn’t be taking questions.

by **admin** » Tue Jan 26, 2021 3:33 am

US judge blocks release of Tennessee man [Eric Munchel] in Capitol riot
by Associated Press
January 24, 2021

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A federal judge on Sunday blocked the release of a Tennessee man who authorities say carried flexible plastic handcuffs during the riot at the U.S. Capitol earlier this month.

U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell for the District of Columbia set aside an order by a judge in Tennessee concerning the release of Eric Munchel of Nashville. Howell stayed the lower court’s order pending a review.

After testimony at a detention hearing, U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Frensley for the Middle District of Tennessee determined Friday that Munchel wasn’t a flight risk and didn’t pose harm to the public.

Federal prosecutors have argued that Munchel’s offenses are serious enough to detain him pending trial to ensure the community’s safety.

According to court records, an FBI search of Munchel’s home turned up the tactical gear he wore in the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol, five pairs of plastic handcuffs, multiple weapons, hundreds of rounds of ammunition and a drum-style magazine.

Munchel is charged with violent entry and disorderly conduct on the Capitol grounds, conspiracy and civil disorder. He faces up to 20 years if convicted.

Munchel has been in federal custody since his arrest on Jan. 10 when he turned himself over to authorities.

In a memorandum in support of detention, prosecutors said Munchel traveled to Washington with his mother, Lisa Eisenhart, who has also been charged in the Capitol riot. The two participated in Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally in which the former president repeated his baseless claims of election fraud and exhorted the crowd to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell.”

Court documents allege Munchel went into the Senate chamber just minutes after the chamber had been evacuated.

Munchel “perceived himself to be a revolutionary, in the mold of those who overthrew the British government in the American Revolution,” according to court filings. He was “dressed for combat” with “combat boots, military fatigues, a tactical vest, gloves, and a gaiter that covered all of his face except for his eyes,” documents state. He also wore a stun gun on his hip and mounted a cellphone to his chest to record events.

by **admin** » Tue Jan 26, 2021 3:39 am

Morgan Lewis Drops Trump as Client as N.Y. Tax Probe Continues
by Bloomberg Law
Jan. 20, 2021, 5:00 PM

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Law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius is dropping former President Donald Trump and his businesses as clients in the midst of an ongoing probe over alleged tax fraud.

“We have had a limited representation of the Trump Organization and Donald Trump in tax-related matters,” a firm spokeswoman told Bloomberg Law Wednesday. “For those matters not already concluded, we are transitioning as appropriate to other counsel.”

Morgan Lewis tax lawyers Sheri Dillon and William Nelson have been among Trump’s key legal advisers on the former president’s refusal to release his tax returns, and on investigations regarding filings for various Trump businesses. Dillon reportedly was asked to testify in an ongoing probe by New York Attorney General Letitia James into allegations the Trump Organization falsely inflated its assets to get loans and obtain tax benefits.

The firm’s decision to walk away from Trump and his companies, first reported by The American Lawyer, follows a similar decision by global law firm Seyfarth Shaw in the wake of the Jan. 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol. Several businesses, including Deutsche Bank and property management firm Cushman & Wakefield, have also recently said they will stop working with Trump and his companies, citing the former president’s role in stoking the violent protests.

Morgan Lewis didn’t say why it decided to walk away from Trump or how quickly it will transition out of the Trump work. The Trump Organization didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The firm brings in nearly $2.3 billion in revenue per year and employs some 2,200 lawyers around the world, according to Am Law data. Its roster of attorneys includes a number of former officials from the Obama and Trump administrations.

by **admin** » Tue Jan 26, 2021 3:53 am

US Capitol riot: police have long history of aiding neo-Nazis and extremists: Experts were not surprised that officers were part of the mob, given the ties between some police and white supremacist groups in recent years
by Sam Levin in Los Angeles @SamTLevin
The Guardian
Sat 16 Jan 2021 06.00 EST

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

Police officers in riot gear line up near the Capitol building in Washington DC. Photograph: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

For years, domestic terrorism researchers have warned that there are police departments in every region of America counting white supremacist extremists and neo-Nazi sympathizers among their ranks.

To these experts, and the activists who have been targeted by law enforcement officers in past years, it came as no surprise that police officers were part of the mob that stormed the US Capitol on 6 January. In fact, the acceptance of far-right beliefs among law enforcement, they say, helped lay the groundwork for the extraordinary attacks in the American capital.

“I’ve been trying to ring the alarm since before Donald Trump was elected,” said Cedric O’Bannon, a journalist and activist who was stabbed at a 2016 neo-Nazi rally in Sacramento and was later targeted by the investigating officer. “It’s nothing new. We’ve seen it getting worse and worse. The law enforcement collusion with white nationalists is clear,” he said.

Cedric O’Bannon, a journalist and activist, was stabbed at a neo-Nazi rally in 2016. Photograph: Robert Gumpert/The Guardian

Last Wednesday, Trump encouraged his supporters and far-right groups to march to the Capitol where Congress was sitting. Soon, rioters and militants wearing “Make America Great Again” hats and white supremacist symbols toppled the flimsy barricades on the grounds, pushed past police and stormed the building.

In the days since the attack, which left five people dead and caused lawmakers to hide in fear for their lives, investigations have revealed that a wide range of US law enforcement personnel were represented in the crowd. News reports and other inquiries have identified roughly 30 sworn members of police agencies from more than 12 different states who were present at the Capitol, according to criminal justice news site, the Appeal.

So far, several on-duty Capitol police officers have been suspended for allegedly supporting rioters, and two off-duty Virginia officers were arrested after boasting on social media about breaching the Capitol. A Houston officer caught inside the building has since resigned, and the police departments of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, Philadelphia and other cities are investigating whether their employees attended.

“These are people who we give guns to, who get specialized training, who have access to sensitive information,” said Vida B Johnson, Georgetown University law professor and expert on policing, “and they took part in a plan to undo the votes for the democratically elected president.”

When police protect neo-Nazis

Extremism experts and survivors of far-right violence have for years cried foul about the close ties between some police and white supremacist groups. These links have escalated under the Trump era, they’ve warned, with numerous examples of police openly protecting far-right organizers, including armed and violent ones.

In June 2016 in Sacramento at least ten people were stabbed and injured at a rally of the Traditionalist Workers Party (TWP), a group that extremism experts have classified as neo-Nazis.

Sacramento mounted police keep watch over a protest in Sacramento in June 2016. Photograph: Jerry H. Yamashita/AP

The subsequent investigation, led by the California Highway Patrol (CHP), focused on the anti-fascist counter-protesters injured in the stabbings, with records showing that police worked with white supremacists to identify leftist activists and pursue criminal charges against the stabbing victims.

The lead CHP investigator, Donovan Ayres, repeatedly stated in police records that he viewed the neo-Nazis as victims and the anti-fascists as suspects. In court, he repeatedly called TWP the “permitted party”, since it had a permit for a rally, and in a phone call with a TWP leader, he said, “We’re looking at you as a victim.”

Records show that Ayres formally recommended Cedric O’Bannon, a Black journalist who was filming the events and was stabbed during the demonstration, face criminal charges for conspiracy, rioting, assault and unlawful assembly noting he was “among the protesters”. The officer did not recommend anyone face charges for the stabbing. O’Bannon ultimately was not charged.

Reflecting on the case now, O’Bannon said there should be accountability for the way the officer treated him. “I always think about, has he treated other people in the same way? Is he still doing it now?” Without consequences, officers who sympathize with neo-Nazis are emboldened, he said.

“People of color know this and we’ve been knowing this,” said Mike Williams, a 60-year-old indigenous activist in Sacramento. He was one of three counter-protesters who faced a criminal trial after Ayres pursued cases against them, alleging they violated the “free speech” rights of neo-Nazis.

The reports that Capitol officers may have enabled or supported the insurrectionists make clear that there are police across the country who are aligned with far-right views, he argued: “They feel like they are going to lose control. This is about keeping systemic racism in place.”

CHP declined to comment on the case, and said Ayres no longer works in the Sacramento region. Ayres did not respond to a request for comment.

In Berkeley, California, in 2017, police worked with a violent and armed pro-Trump demonstrator to prosecute leftist activists over an altercation during a protest. Activists saw the criminal trial as just one of many examples of US law enforcement aggressively targeting leftwing demonstrators and favoring members of the far-right after violent clashes.

Pepper spray is used during competing protests in Berkeley, California, in April 2017. Photograph: Anda Chu/AP

Police often tolerate pro-Trump violence, said Jeff Armstrong, one of the activists who faced charges but was ultimately acquitted: “We knew we didn’t do anything wrong ... but they were trying to put us in prison,” he said.

And in 2019, Rob Mathis, a Black resident of Muskegon, Michigan, exposed a white police officer who had a framed KKK application and Confederate flags in his home. Mathis, 54, discovered the items while touring the home with a real estate agent. The officer was eventually fired, but ultimately won his pension and retiree health insurance.

Mathis said when police initially brought him in to ask about his viral Facebook post showing the KKK form, it felt as if the department was “interrogating” him or treating him like a suspect. Officials told him he should’ve filed an internal complaint and not gone public, he recalled. “They got rid of him because of optics, because of social media.” The officer claimed he was not a KKK member and said he collected memorabilia.

It was happenstance that Mathis uncovered this officer, and he said he worries that police across the country don’t get caught and continue abusing people of color in their communities: “This system is made for white people and by white people. It is about protecting those people and their jobs.”

Muskegon and Berkeley officials did not respond to an inquiry.

‘White nationalists hide in plain sight’

The number of white supremacist extremists within US police forces is unknown, but even relying solely on cases that have been publicized shows the problem is widespread.

Johnson, the Georgetown expert, testified in Congress last year about white supremacist infiltration of police. She found that since 2009, more than 100 police departments in 49 states have faced scandals involving officers making overtly racist statements. In Florida, Alabama, Oklahoma, Louisiana and elsewhere, active police officers have been outed as members of organized hate groups, including the KKK, she found.

And this is likely the “tip of the iceberg”, she said, adding that polls showing that 10% of Americans believe it’s acceptable to hold neo-Nazi views, and that 12% supported the Capitol attack. Those rates are likely higher for police officers, she said, given that officers are disproportionately white and male.

Bandages and protest signs are left on the lawn of the California State Capitol after protests in 2016. Photograph: Max Whittaker/Reuters

Among the reasons behind the prevalence of white supremacy in police forces is that, according to the repeated warnings of the FBI since 2006, there are members of organized white supremacist groups who have worked to “infiltrate” police agencies. The FBI has said white supremacists are the greatest domestic terror threat, and that the groups often have “active links” to police.

Because of the way policing works in America, it also attracts people with explicitly racist views – giving them a professional license to patrol Black neighborhoods and allowing them to join a system that stops, searches, arrests and prosecutes people of color at disproportionately high rates, experts say.

“It’s very easy for people with white nationalist commitments to hide in policing, to find a place in policing,” said Nikki Jones, professor of African American studies at the University of California, Berkeley. American police departments, Jones said, have in many ways stayed true to their roots of protecting white people: “The way policing is structured, presented and performed allows white nationalists to hide in plain sight.”

Despite the clear evidence of explicit racism within policing, the US has not prioritized investigating white supremacists in law enforcement. This is particularly true under Trump, whose administration has focused its efforts to combat domestic terrorism on targeting Black activists and other leftist groups.

In addition to the federal government’s failures to proactively investigate and weed out white supremacist officers, local laws often make it very difficult to terminate officers, who are backed by powerful unions. Terminated officers are frequently rehired in other departments.

Michelle Monterrosa, a 25-year-old California resident whose brother was killed by police last year, said she was worried about the officers who traveled to the Capitol and who will likely face no consequences.

“These officers participated in this insurrection and participated in this hate,” said Monterrosa, who was recently arrested when she engaged in a peaceful protest. “It’s very scary to know they returned home and put their badge on.”

by **admin** » Tue Jan 26, 2021 4:32 am

The Trump insurrection was America’s Beer Hall Putsch: Op-Ed
by Benjamin Carter Hett
Los Angeles Times
JAN. 16, 20213:30 AM

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

Very soon after the nation watched in horror as a mob ransacked the U.S. Capitol, journalists and politicians began speaking of a coup.

The fallout from these events has been dramatic and will continue. But we need to understand a crucial point. The guy in the Viking hat and his friends could break windows. A member of the mob could kill a police officer. Rioters could plot to assault members of Congress. All of this is terrifying. But these people and their criminal actions are not the most dangerous threat to our democracy. The real threat comes from people in business suits or police uniforms who are inside the system — and that threat remains.

A historical example illustrates the point.

In November 1923, Adolf Hitler led a violent coup against the democratic system of Germany’s Weimar Republic. The coup started in an unlikely spot — a beer hall in Munich, the Bürgerbräukeller, very far from the capital city of Berlin and its parliament. But at this beer hall, the political, military, and police leaders of the state of Bavaria were meeting. Hitler wanted to enlist them in a “March on Berlin” to overturn the democratic government. He went to the beer hall to give a speech.

For five years, Hitler and others on the German right had been telling their followers a lie: that Germany had not really lost World War I. Instead, Germany had been “stabbed in the back,” betrayed by civilian politicians (democrats and socialists, controlled, Hitler said, by Jews). Bavaria became the center of a large network of right-wing militia groups who believed the lie and were ready to act on it.

Hitler knew the Bavarian leaders were reluctant to join his march on Berlin. His speech at the Bürgerbräukeller was designed to get the crowd to pressure them into joining the coup. At first it seemed to succeed. But the Bavarian leaders turned on Hitler as soon as he left them alone. Police and military units then speedily crushed the coup. Hitler and some of his followers were jailed.

Hitler learned his lesson: A sophisticated modern state could not be overturned by a violent coup led by outsiders, against the police and the army. He realized he would have to work within the system.

Over the following decade, this is exactly what he did. The Nazis ran in elections until they were the largest party in Germany’s parliament, gridlocking legislative business. Even more insidiously, the Nazis worked to infiltrate crucial institutions like the police and the army. In 1931, Berlin police responded incredibly sluggishly to a massive Nazi riot in the center of the city. It turned out senior police officials silently sympathized with the Nazis and had colluded in hobbling the police response.

Hitler grew steadily more attractive to business and military leaders who saw him and his movement as their only salvation from the growing Communist Party. Early in 1933 they opened the doors of power to him.

After the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol, 139 Republican members of the House and eight members of the Senate, led by Sens. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, came out of hiding to vote to object to the electoral college vote count. While a police officer lay dying, they supported Trump’s lie of a stolen election and embraced the insurrectionists’ cause.

Imagine the events of the past weeks and months if someone like Hawley had been the secretary of state in Georgia, or someone like retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn held a significant military command. Imagine what would have happened if the Republicans held majorities in both houses of Congress and could have overturned the electoral college results. Imagine if the courts had been more generously stocked with judges willing to entertain the Trump campaign’s ludicrous arguments.

Above all, imagine if the president had been a bit more competent, a bit more strategic, a bit more daring. Hitler, after all, was at least willing to be present at the violence his words inspired. He was also more persuasive in his dealings with important officials.

It is much more common for democracies to be undermined by seemingly legal actions taken from within than by violence from without. Hitler himself ultimately consolidated his power through legal instruments — for instance, the notorious Reichstag Fire Decree, which abolished the civil rights the democratic Weimar Constitution had granted.

In recent times, we have seen this happen in Hungary, Turkey and Russia. We need to think about legal safeguards for our institutions more than we need to think about barricades. We need to know that our police and military commanders will be loyal and do their jobs. And there must be real consequences for officials who try to profit from spreading sedition. There need to be motions of censure at the very least against Hawley and Cruz.

The majority of one of our two political parties is firmly committed to anti-democratic and insurrectionist politics. Normally the opposition party gains in midterm elections. It takes little imagination to see where this would put us in a close election in 2024. Democrats will have to work hard, using the Georgia model of mobilization to minimize midterm losses.

This month, Americans have seen what it means to have insurrectionists working inside our government. We will need to respond aggressively if our Beer Hall Putsch is not to be followed by more of the kinds of violence and terror we have seen in the past.

Benjamin Carter Hett is a professor of history at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY, and the author of “The Death of Democracy” and “The Nazi Menace.”

by **admin** » Tue Jan 26, 2021 4:46 am

‘He has an obligation to them’: Attorney for ‘QAnon shaman’ asks Trump to pardon rioters
by Quint Forgey
Politico
01/15/2021 08:52 AM EST

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

Jacob Chansley, a 33-year-old man from Phoenix, was one of the most recognizable perpetrators of the Capitol siege.

The lawyer for the “QAnon shaman” who was part of the deadly siege of the Capitol last week publicly petitioned President Donald Trump on Thursday to pardon his client.

In an interview on CNN, attorney Albert Watkins said his client, Jacob Chansley, “felt like he was answering the call of our president” when he stormed the nation’s seat of government last Wednesday during a riot that resulted in the deaths of at least five people.

Chansley, a 33-year-old man from Phoenix also known as Jake Angeli, was one of the most recognizable perpetrators of the Capitol siege. He carried a spear, wore a furry horned headdress and painted his face in shades of red, white and blue.

On Tuesday, Chansley became one of the first three people indicted by federal prosecutors in connection with the violence at the Capitol. He was charged with a felony violation of the Federal Anti-Riot Act, as well as obstruction of Congress and other offenses.

In a filing on Thursday, prosecutors said Chansley was as “an active participant in” and “the most prominent symbol of” what they described as a “violent insurrection.” Prosecutors also said Chansley had expressed his intention of returning to Washington, D.C., for President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration next week.

The language in the filing suggests more severe charges, such as sedition or insurrection, could be coming for those involved in the siege.

Watkins, Chansley’s attorney, said on Thursday that his client, “like a lot of other disenfranchised people in our country, felt very, very, very solidly in sync” with the president — suggesting Chansley was incited to storm the Capitol in Trump’s name.

“He felt like his voice was, for the first time, being heard,” Watkins said. “And what ended up happening, over the course of the lead-up to the election, over the course of the period from the election to Jan. 6 — it was a driving force by a man he hung his hat on, he hitched his wagon to. He loved Trump. Every word, he listens to him.”

Prior to the Capitol siege, the president, his family members and his political allies riled up his supporters at a rally on the White House Ellipse. When it was his turn to speak, Trump urged those in attendance to march on the Capitol amid Congress’ certification of Biden’s Electoral College victory.

“If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” Trump said. He also said that “you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.”

On Thursday, Trump became the only president in American history to be impeached twice — this time, in a bipartisan vote on a single count of “incitement of insurrection.”

“We all have to understand that the words that were spoken by the president meant something, not just to my client. They meant something to a lot of people,” Watkins said in his interview.

“They listened to those words. And those words meant something to them. And they had a right to rely on the words of their president that was strewed forth worldwide,” he said. “And they did. And now they’re turning around [and] they’re getting arrested, as well many should be.”

Nevertheless, Trump “needs to stand up and own these people,” Watkins argued. “He has an obligation to them. He has an obligation to our nation. It’s not going to happen.”

Pressed by host Chris Cuomo on what exactly he would like Trump to do, Watkins replied: “Oh, give a pardon.”

As Chansley’s attorney, “my role is not to judge somebody. My role is to be an advocate,” Watkins said. “If there’s one iota of a chance that the guy who’s the president of our country — who invited everybody down Pennsylvania [Avenue] — will give my client a pardon, you know what? I’m going to do it.”

Watkins acknowledged, however, that his plea was unlikely to succeed. “Am I holding my breath thinking that Donald Trump is going to be sitting around going, ‘You know what? … What’s the name of that guy with the horns? Yeah … let’s give him a pardon.’”

But “with Trump, you never know,” Watkins said. “He may say, ‘I want the guy with the horns.’ Next thing you know, maybe he’s represented by the shaman instead of Rudy Giuliani.”

Watkins went on to compare the president’s supporters who stormed the Capitol to the Jonestown cult members who committed mass suicide at their settlement in Guyana in 1978: “You know the only thing different here? There’s no Kool-Aid.”

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

Capitol rioter known as "QAnon Shaman" will be jailed until trial
by Erin Donaghue
CBS News
JANUARY 16, 2021 / 7:19 AM

A Capitol rioter known as the "QAnon Shaman" has been ordered detained until trial, after federal prosecutors in Arizona initially said his words and actions during the January 6 siege show that the intent of the rioters was to "capture and assassinate" lawmakers. Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Michael Sherwin later said there is no "direct evidence" of kill and capture teams, and a prosecutor later struck that line from the memorandum urging a judge to keep him detained, according to The Associated Press.

Jacob Chansley, 33, of Arizona was indicted January 11 by a federal grand jury on two felony charges of interfering with law enforcement during the commission of civil disorder and obstructing a Congressional proceeding, threatening Congressional officials and disorderly conduct. Chansley, who is also known as Jake Angeli, was also indicted on four misdemeanor counts.

Prosecutors say Chansley, a well-known fixture at Arizona pro-Trump rallies, is a "self-proclaimed leader" in the QAnon conspiracy theory movement. Images of a shirtless Chansley storming the Capitol wearing horns, a fur coyote tail headdress and face paint, carrying a bullhorn and a spear, quickly went viral on social media. He is being held in a federal detention facility in Arizona.

A Trump supporter, later identified as Jake Angeli of Arizona, screams "Freedom" inside the Senate Chamber after the U.S. Capitol was breached by a mob during a joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021.
GETTY IMAGES

In a detention memorandum filed Thursday, U.S. prosecutors in Arizona argue Chansley would pose an "ongoing danger to the community" and a flight risk were he to be released. While inside the Capitol, prosecutors argue, Chansley approached U.S. Capitol police officer Keith Robishaw and screamed that "this was their house, that they were there to get Senators, and that they were there to take the Capitol, to get Congressional leaders," the memorandum reads. "Chansley also used his bullhorn to communicate that they were there to take out several United States congressmen," the filing says.

The memorandum also says "while officer Robishaw was attempting to quell the crowd, Chansley was using his bullhorn to incite it."

Prosecutors originally argued in the memo that "Strong evidence, including Chansley's own words and actions at the Capitol, supports that the intent of the Capitol rioters was to capture and assassinate elected officials in the United States Government," The Associated Press reported. But at a Friday hearing for Chansley in Phoenix, another prosecutor struck that line.

The prosecutor said the statement may be fair at trial, but added that prosecutors did not want to mislead the court, according to the AP.

Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Michael Sherwin told reporters Friday that while there is no direct evidence of "kill or capture" teams, there are "bread crumbs" that suggest some level of coordination among some groups inside and outside the Capitol. Sherwin, whose office is leading the massive federal investigation into the riot, said understanding the rioter's motives and level of advance planning could take weeks or months.

In their filing, Arizona prosecutors say Chansley then entered the Senate chamber with a group of about 25 rioters, posed for pictures at the dais where Vice President Mike Pence had been minutes before, and left a note that read, "It's only a matter of time. Justice is coming."

The following day, prosecutors say Chansley called the FBI Washington field office, admitted his involvement and described Pence as a "child-trafficking traitor," but said he did not intend the note to be a threat. When asked about the meaning of the note, he launched into a "lengthy diatribe" describing current and past lawmakers including Pence, former president Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President-elect Joe Biden as "infiltrators involved in various types of wrongdoing."

"Although he stated his note was not a threat, the government strongly disagrees," the prosecution's court filing reads.

Chansley was arrested January 9, when unaware of a sealed warrant out for his arrest, prosecutors say he drove to an FBI office in Phoenix intending to "continue his interview." He brought with him the headdress, spear, horns, face paint and bullhorn in the trunk of his car, according to the memo.

Prosecutors describe Chansley as a "follower-turned-leader" in the QAnon ideology who has espoused dangerous conspiracy theories and described "hanging" lawmakers he called "traitors" in social media posts.

"He has repeatedly demonstrated dramatic, erratic behavior, an inability to conform to societal norms, and an unwillingness to appreciate the consequences of his actions," the filing read. "He abides by his own belief system, acts accordingly regardless of the criminal consequences, and brings others along with him."

They say Chansley also vowed to return to Washington, D.C. for President-elect Biden's inauguration.

"At this juncture in our Nation's history, it is hard to imagine a greater risk to our democracy and community than the armed revolution of which Chansley has made himself the symbol," prosecutors wrote.

Chansley's lawyer Albert Watkins, however, painted a starkly different picture in a statement Thursday. Watkins said Chansley was unarmed, non-violent, and surrendered peacefully to the FBI. The lawyer said Chansley and others who entered the Capitol did so at the instruction of President Donald Trump, and called on Mr. Trump to pardon Chansley and other "like-minded, peaceful individuals who accepted the president's invitation with honorable intention."

"Mr. Chansley is an American; he served honorably in the U.S. military," Watkins' statement said. "He has zero criminal history. He is a lover of nature, routinely practices meditation, is an active practicer of yoga and eats only organic food. He took seriously the countless messages of President Trump. He believed in President Trump. Like tens of millions of other Americans, Chansley felt -- for the first time in his life -- as though his voice was being heard."

So far, more than 200 people are the subject of investigations and more than 100 are facing local or federal charges in the Jan. 6 riot that left five people dead. Hundreds more charges are expected as federal investigators comb tips, video and social media to identify and arrest suspects across the country.

Those already charged face a variety of counts ranging from curfew violations, unlawful entry and disorderly conduct to theft, assault and weapons violations. A team of senior federal prosecutors are investigating more serious charges including sedition and conspiracy related to the "most heinous" acts at the Capitol, Sherwin said Tuesday.

Catherine Herridge contributed reporting.

by **admin** » Tue Jan 26, 2021 4:52 am

The Unlikely Connection Between Wellness Influencers and the Pro-Trump Rioters: Inside the dangerous plot to get conspiracy theories into the mainstream.
by Clio Chang
Cosmopolitan
JAN 12, 2021

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

When the pandemic hit last March, 27-year-old Jennifer*, a childcare worker from Virginia, was furloughed from her job, leaving her with little to do but curl up anxiously on her couch with her phone. She’d spend hours a day scrolling through Facebook and Instagram posts about self-healing, spirituality, and trauma, mostly by wellness types she followed after getting interested in natural medicine a few years back. (“We seemed to be on the same journey,” Jennifer says of her online community. “I’d built up almost a trust with them.”)

But then a new kind of post started appearing in her feed: graphics “in pretty fonts with pretty colors” encouraging her to “Trust the Plan” or to be prepared that “Light Is Coming to Dark.” They were accompanied by an increasing number of posts (all misleading or false) on how COVID-19 was overblown, a hoax, or part of a government scheme to microchip everyone with a vaccine.

To Jennifer, these posts raised “innocent questions”—the kind that the online wellness community had always posed about mainstream health and medical narratives. “They were always like, ‘Put on your critical-thinking hats; this doesn’t make sense,’” she says. “I was in this vulnerable mindset—out of work, at home all the time with nothing to do but scroll online. I wanted to feel like I had more control over the situation than I did.”

From the smaller accounts she followed, Jennifer discovered bigger influencers. She didn’t realize that a vast trail of internet crumbs was leading her straight into the jaws of QAnon, an outlandish far-right conspiracy theory. One that she slid deeper into every day. “I found myself talking more to people online who I didn’t know but who shared these same new beliefs as me,” she says. The validation was intoxicating. Soon she was researching Pizzagate, a bogus QAnon narrative linking Democratic politicians to a child sex ring run out of a pizzeria in Washington, D.C.

When Jennifer started hinting at what she’d discovered on her own account, a childhood friend reached out privately and encouraged her to make sure she was getting her news from legitimate sources. Jennifer brushed her off. “I felt like I had this powerful information,” she says. “Like I was better informed than everyone else. It gives you this feeling of superiority. When people would challenge me, I would just be like, You’re asleep. You’re not woke. You just don’t know.”

One of the stranger subplots in the long, weird story of 2020 is the millennial wellness community’s embrace of a radical, nonsensical, easily debunked QAnon conspiracy theory whose central belief is that high-level Democratic politicians (aka “Democratic elites,” aka the “deep state”) are running a global child sex-trafficking operation. As the theory has spread, QAnon followers have incorporated a tangle of other theories into the mix, among them that the government exaggerated the pandemic and that the 2020 presidential election was rigged.

QAnon dates back to 2017, when an anonymous 4chan user claiming to be a high-ranking government official started posting about a vast cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles in government and Hollywood that President Trump (aka “hero,” aka “savior”) was secretly working to bring down. The theory soon spread from the “cesspool of the internet”—as Annie Kelly, a correspondent for the podcast QAnon Anonymous and researcher specializing in the impact of digital culture on anti-feminism and far-right groups, puts it—to Reddit, then to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and even TikTok, although the original poster (known to followers as “Q”) now posts to the site 8kun.

On mainstream social platforms, QAnon mushroomed out from its initial audience of angry alt-righters to infect accounts previously dedicated to crystals, yoga, and manifesting, where it got a glow-up, as it were, from the more aesthetically minded set. Marc-André Argentino, a doctoral student at Concordia University who studies how extremist groups use technology, coined the term “pastel QAnon” to describe the watered-down, sound-bite-friendly version with much more mass appeal than the angry (and much more masculine) original. Suddenly, QAnon hashtags were tucked into selfie captions on perfectly curated feeds that also extolled the wonders of detox tea—the kinds of accounts Jennifer followed. Highlights like “Covid?” and “Trafficking” were sandwiched between “Workouts” and “Meditation”; other times, they were hidden in Linktrees amid brand sponsorships.

There were some obvious explanations: These were the early days of the pandemic, when everyone was online and everything felt like it was going to shit and all of us were seeking a clearer picture of what was happening than could be found in COVID-19 case numbers. “The pandemic gives people a reason to want to doubt the truth, because the truth is scary as hell,” Jennifer says. And then the wellness community, in particular, was full of trusted guides who championed doing your own “research” and questioning health information from official sources like the government, confirms Blyth Crawford, a research fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at King’s College London.

Influencer Krystal Tini (@KrystalTini), who has 147K followers and long blonde hair and often wears a gold crescent moon necklace, used to post mainly about yoga poses and health topics like alkaline supplements. But by April, she was sharing long viral video rants about how the government was falsifying the death certificates of COVID-19 patients, how it was all a fraud, sometimes adding a long list of QAnon hashtags: #Q #QAnon #QArmy #WWG1WGA #Truth #TruthSeeker.

“I’m not promoting QAnon theories,” Tini tells Cosmo in an email. “I support finding truth. I support saving children from violence and sexual abuse. If that makes me a Q supporter, then I guess I am on the right side of what is best for humanity.”

Yasmin Ibrahim (@MissYasminIbrahim), an intuitive guide and self-described “spiritual rebel” who offers “psychic circles and Zoom master classes,” first heard about Q last spring, and while she says she doesn’t support QAnon, she also says that “some of the things they were saying felt aligned to me.” She’d already started questioning news about the pandemic and forthcoming vaccine, which seemed to her like a setup. “Whether they’re elite, whether it’s a cabal or the deep state, I don’t know,” Ibrahim says. “All I know is that I feel from my intuitive connection and the research I’ve done that there are definitely people who control this.” (Ibrahim isn’t a “conspiritual” influencer, as they’ve been called, but she is vague about her sources, drawing not from actual Q drops—aka Q’s official communications—but “from all over the place,” she says. “I have some friends who work in politics—they send me information; there are some on the QAnon side who send me stuff; Instagram, Facebook, WikiLeaks, the internet, literally just researching.”)

Unfortunately, the mainstreaming of misinformation can lead to dangerous outcomes: In 2019, the FBI warned that QAnon was very likely to motivate people to behave violently. That same year, a 26-year-old man was charged with murdering someone he believed was part of the deep state. (The man has pleaded not guilty.) And just last week, QAnon supporters were among the pro-Trump mob that stormed the Capitol—it’s doubtful that you missed photos of the “Q Shaman” [Jacob Chansley/Jake Angeli] in his Viking hat and face paint or the men in “Q” shirts roaming the halls of Congress. Some of them even livestreamed the events to their followers. The hours-long siege resulted in the death of five people, including a Capitol police officer.

A major reason that QAnon messaging was so successful on social media is that many influencers didn’t know (at least at first) that the language they were slipping in between stories on meditation and essential oils was linked to a conspiracy theory whose main goal was to prop up Donald Trump.

Instead, these influencers were just doing what influencers do: following the metrics. “If something interests you, and every time you post about it, you get more followers or subscribers, that’s helping you a lot,” says Kelly. It’s not that they didn’t believe what they were posting. But, she adds, “we’re persuaded into what we believe a little more strongly by the response of those around us.”

During the pandemic, QAnon became, for some, an irresistible introduction to not just new audiences but also new sources of income via what is, essentially, a multilevel marketing campaign, according to Joan Donovan, PhD, research director of Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy. “They sell lessons, books, time with themselves. One person I’m aware of has a very diverse revenue stream around Q-related content.”

For other influencers, QAnon was a way to find community and participate politically during a summer of mass social unrest. Many began posting #SaveTheChildren, a hashtag QAnon followers co-opted sometime in July from an actual organization working to help children in order to further sanitize their message. Kelly guesses that this was less grand plan than trial and error. “QAnon people love their hashtags,” she says. “Quite often, it won’t be just 1 but 50. So it’s an organic process, narrowing it down to the ones that people remember.”

Regardless of how it started, this is how it was soon going: An unlikely menagerie of alt-right, wellness, and mom influencers started falsely accusing Wayfair, the furniture company, of trafficking children in a line of expensive industrial-grade storage cabinets with human names. (Disclosure: Wayfair is a distributor of Cosmo’s furniture line.) “It felt like the first time you saw mass QAnon detective work playing out over mainstream social media platforms,” Kelly says. “It had all the aspects of what has made QAnon so alluring to so many for so long. People who had never been involved in this before got a chance to feel like they were in a live, urgent research community.” Argentino found that QAnon-related Facebook groups grew by more than 3,000 percent from July 2020 to September 2020. “We all want to be part of a community,” says Nina Endrst (@NinaEndrst), an intuitive guide and Reiki master with almost 17K followers. “When these theories are presented, it’s like an invitation: Come in, we’re saving the children.”

Human-trafficking experts say that QAnon followers’ interest in their cause has done more harm than good. The idea that elite politicians and movie stars are trafficking children distracts from the actual problem, which is more local. Leigh Latimer, supervising attorney at the Legal Aid Society’s Exploitation Intervention Project, explains that “very few trafficking victims are kidnapped and held hostage in the way that these conspiracy theories like to describe.” Which also diverts resources from those in real need. As Robert Beiser of Polaris, the nonprofit that runs the National Human Trafficking Hotline, notes, the hotline can connect a surge in online conspiracy theories with a sudden spike in outreach—thousands of texts, calls, and emails from people who want to share something they’ve seen in a social media post without any firsthand information of an actual trafficking situation.

The hotline handles all outreach equally—which means that real survivors, or someone who directly knows a person in a trafficking situation, have to wait in line behind, as Beiser says, “a thousand people who read a story on the internet.” For Jennifer, who bought into the Wayfair narrative, #SaveTheChildren led not to actual activism on behalf of children but to somewhere darker. As she spent more and more time online, digging deeper into the theories she saw on her feeds, she joined a QAnon Facebook group that was not bathed in the flattering glow of the Paris filter but was instead “downright crazy,” she says. The guru women preaching love and light who drew her into the movement, who “groomed” her, had now been replaced with…angry men.

“I didn’t like how it felt,” Jennifer says now. “I started realizing that the QAnon movement is beyond just questioning things—they literally believe that Trump is a savior.” Suddenly alarmed by how “hoodwinked” she’d been, Jennifer unfollowed a slew of accounts and took a few months off from social media. “It’s slow and steady,” she says. “Then one day, you wake up and it’s like, Oh my god. You realize your entire view of the world has shifted. You don’t recognize the way you think anymore.”

“When you reached out, my whole body was like, Yes, I’ve been wanting to talk about this,” Endrst said over the phone in November. “But then I was like, Oh, shit, I don’t want to be literally burned at the stake.” She was referring to the blowback that has greeted wellness influencers daring to take a stand against Q. Seane Corn (@SeaneCorn), a yoga teacher with 110K followers who posted a statement raising the alarm about QAnon on her account in September, says she received sexually violent messages for her viral post. The algorithm also started delivering an insidious new crop of recruiters to her page. “They’ll say, ‘Wow, you seem scared. Can you tell me a little bit more about why this scares you?’ It’s a strategy to de-escalate to create a relationship. It’s a really cunning form of radicalization.”

Endrst became alarmed about QAnon when a client dealing with past trauma started parroting its talking points to her. She compares it to Stockholm syndrome or to being in a trance because facts—like the election results, which Q wrongly predicted, as they wrongly predict most things—cannot penetrate it. “There’s such a dedication to what these people have been called into,” says Endrst. “They refuse to break with it. Reality is just not a thing anymore.”

Wellness brands have also started to speak out. You wouldn’t think that Peloton, maker of bougie workout bikes, would need to ban far-right conspiracy theory hashtags from its platform, but in October, that’s exactly what it did. (Users of the virtual exercise platform had posted #Q and combined Peloton’s “One Peloton” motto with the QAnon slogan “Where we go one, we go all” to create the hashtag #WWGOnePelotonWGA.) Etsy, meanwhile, moved to ban QAnon-emblazoned merch like bead bracelets and rainbow tees. And Facebook announced what appeared to be its biggest crackdown on the movement, recently purging 18,700 Q-related Instagram accounts and 7,300 Facebook Groups and Pages. A spokesperson for Facebook tells Cosmo, “QAnon followers constantly adapt the words, phrases, and emoji they use to evade our enforcement, so our teams study them closely to stay ahead and continue removing accounts that break our rules.”

Some de-platformed influencers headed for Parler, a largely unregulated social media network populated by mostly far-righters. (After the attack on Capitol Hill, Apple and Google suspended Parler from their app stores, and Amazon announced it would no longer host it.) But others had backup accounts for their backup accounts and devised new, coded ways to discuss hot-button issues like “va((ines.”

In fact, many wellness influencers have survived the purge on mainstream platforms. “There have been takedowns of influencers who overtly brand themselves as QAnon, but a lot of people for whom Q is not their bread and butter are still up and have broad audiences,” says Crawford. “That’s dangerous because they have the potential to be someone’s first exposure to the conspiracy. They can lead to more people getting involved.”

Jennifer, for her part, now spends her time scrolling through a different kind of community: Reddit threads that function as recovery support groups for jilted ex-converts of QAnon. A place where people share advice, resources, and the feeling that they aren’t alone.

Still, the darkly cynical energy stirred up by QAnon is unlikely to just vanish now that Trump has been defeated and kicked off Twitter “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.” The conspiracy theory hive is in a rage about censorship, in some cases alluding to more violent acts. “It will likely get worse before it gets better,” says Rick Ross, a cult intervention specialist and executive director of the Cult Education Institute. In November, two congresswomen who have previously expressed support for QAnon were elected to Republican seats.

And several experts anticipate that Q followers will ramp up their messaging that casts doubt on the COVID-19 vaccine. “You’re going to see a lot of folks turn to that style of content because there’s going to be a demand for it,” Donovan predicts. She says it won’t really matter what public health officials do to counter this misinformation, since facts get far less engagement on social media. What rises to the top often isn’t what’s most truthful but what seems like it could be true.

And that’s what’s really behind the curtain of Q: not the all-knowing champion that followers imagine but a jumble of performance-based algorithms and the users who power them, eager to chase a fantastical alternate reality. One that doesn’t, and never did, exist.

*Name has been changed.

Clio Chang is a freelance politics writer based in Brooklyn, NY.

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