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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.

by **admin** » Tue Jan 26, 2021 5:28 am

I taught Sens. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz in law school. Clearly they didn't pay attention.: With their phony legal arguments and pandering to Trump's baseless claims, Cruz and Hawley's bad behavior sets a bad precedent.
by William N. Eskridge Jr.
Opinion contributor
USA Today
Published 8:00 a.m. ET Jan. 13, 2021 updated 1:02 p.m. ET Jan. 13, 2021

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

As Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said, accountability for the Jan. 6 invasion of the Capitol to disrupt Congress’s Electoral College count rests not only with President Donald Trump, but also with those who “object(ed) to the results of a legitimate, democratic election.” Romney was referring to, among others, Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas), both alumni of my Legislation classes at Yale and Harvard Law Schools.

The Ivy Leaguers irresponsibly magnified the president’s baseless claims of widespread voter fraud — but they tried to deepen that bogus indictment by pandering to those who "believe the election that just occurred, quote, was rigged," as Cruz put it, and with smart-sounding legal arguments criticizing judges and the legal process. They know the process worked normally because I taught them how the process works. Neither had a single constitutional or statutory point that had not been examined and rejected by a bipartisan bevy of judges and administrators.

Pennsylvania law under siege

The keystone state was Pennsylvania, where Hawley and Cruz were two of seven senators (along with 138 House members) voting to sustain objections to the lawfully chosen Electors. The congressional objectors largely avoided claims of fraud. Instead, they maintained that the rules followed in the Pennsylvania election were legally invalid. Their arguments disrespected the legal process established by the Constitution and statutes and interpreted responsibly by judges.

ONE TIME USE 1/7/2021 Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) gestures toward a crowd of supporters of President Donald Trump gathered outside the U.S. Capitol to protest the certification of President-elect Joe Biden's electoral college victory Jan. 6, 2021 at the US Capitol in Washington, DC. Some demonstrators later breached security and stormed the Capitol.

Sen. Hawley maintained that Congress was the proper forum for registering concerns about whether the Pennsylvania legislature’s 2019 law expanding mail-in voting violated the state constitution. Adopted by the GOP-dominated legislature, the law had never been challenged until after the 2020 election.

On Nov. 28, 2020, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Kelly v. Commonwealth that the post-election challenge came too late. Permitting the challenge would disenfranchise millions of voters who had relied on the law, a point also made by Trump-appointed Judge Stephanos Bibas in a related federal lawsuit. At no point in American history has a state or federal appellate court retroactively disenfranchised a state’s electorate in a presidential election for such a reason.

The Constitution does not vest Congress with authority to adjudicate state elections for compliance with state law. Article I, section 4 vests state legislatures with authority to prescribe the “Times, Places and Manner” for conducting congressional elections, with Congress only empowered to regulate by passing statutes. Article II, section 1 says that presidential electors in in each state are chosen “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct,” not as Congress would have preferred.

Phony legitimacy to fraud claims

Republican House members picked up where Hawley’s argument collapsed: They claimed that the Pennsylvania secretary of State and Supreme Court had “usurp(ed),” as Rep. Fred Keller (R-Pa.) put it, the role of the legislature when they interpreted the 2019 law to allow three days for mail-in ballots to arrive.

In Pennsylvania Democratic Party v. Boockvar, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court applied the statutory timetable for mail-in ballots to a COVID-saturated environment and in light of the Post Office’s announcement that mail deliveries would be delayed. Following legislatively enacted canons of statutory interpretation, including an admonition that courts should apply statutes to avoid constitutional problems, the Court found a “legislative intent” to allow flexibility under emergency circumstances.

As my former students Cruz and Hawley know, statutory interpretation following the established rules is not an example of “usurpation." Led by Chief Justice John Roberts, for whom Hawley clerked, the U.S. Supreme Court twice rebuffed Republicans in Boockvar.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas

What point was served by the congressional rehash of frequently litigated and universally unsuccessful legal objections to Pennsylvania’s process? Sens. Hawley and Cruz made virtually no constitutional or statutory arguments that had not been rejected by Republican as well as Democratic judges. Neither they nor the House objectors revealed any literacy in the state constitution or its statutory interpretation code. Their press releases and speeches lent phony legitimacy to the president’s incendiary claims — claims that resulted in bombs near Capitol Hill and a historic insurrection that may be connected to at least five deaths.

Their bad behavior set a bad precedent for Congress, which has never second-guessed state electoral procedures so thoroughly vetted by the judicial process.

Henceforth, sore losers in future elections may feel free to relitigate election-year lawsuits. Congress’s presidential vote-counting, which was once a ritual marking the peaceful transition of authority, might become another trench in hyperpartisan warfare or, worse, a quadrennial opportunity to delegitimize our democracy.

William N. Eskridge Jr. is the John A. Garver Professor of Law at the Yale Law School. His most recent book is "Marriage Equality: From Outlaws to In-Laws" (Yale Press 2020) (co-authored with Christopher Riano).

by **admin** » Tue Jan 26, 2021 5:40 am

GOP Rep. Paul Gosar's Siblings Call for His Removal, Citing Involvement in Capitol Riot
by Katherine Fung
Newsweek
1/13/21 AT 11:38 AM EST

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

As the House votes on the impeachment of President Donald Trump on Wednesday, some are also calling for the removal of the Congress members involved in the U.S. Capitol riot.

Among these are GOP Representative Paul Gosar's siblings, who are asking for their brother to be expelled from office.

"The message to my brother is that, you know, he must resign, if not be expelled, from Congress," Jennifer Gosar told CNN's Alisyn Camerota.

"The point in time to reach my brother, I think that's been past. I know that at this point, the most that we can do as citizens, as constituents, as the public, demand that the members of Congress involved be held accountable, and that includes expulsion," she added. "To my brother, I think the time is up. It's time to acknowledge the hurt and the hate."

Paul Gosar, a staunch Trump ally, has been one of the lawmakers identified by far-right activist Ali Alexander as being instrumental in helping plan the January 6 insurrection.

Alexander, who has identified himself as the individual who came up with the idea of storming of the Capitol, has told the press that he was regularly in contact with Paul Gosar, as well as Republican Representatives Andy Briggs and Mo Brooks.

Jennifer said she believes her brother was directly involved with the events that transpired at the U.S. Capitol from his regular contact with Alexander, his attendance and speech at the "Stop the Steal" rally that occurred before the riot and his contesting of the election results on the congressional floor.

She and her other brother, Tim Gosar, said they are not surprised by their sibling's involvement due to his "pretty right-wing to extremist" background.

"This has been a pattern of conduct, Alisyn, for as long as Paul has been a politician," Tim said on Wednesday.

"I would hearken people back to the start of his congressional career, where he was a birther, where he was saying that President Obama was an illegitimate president and not a U.S. citizen. He called the pope a leftist politician. In 2016, when President Trump won, he said elections have consequences. Get over it. 2017, he said that George Soros was a Nazi sympathizer and gave up his people to the Nazis," he elaborated to CNN.

Arizona GOP Rep. Paul Gosar questions Gregory Monahan during the House Natural Resources Committee hearing on "Unanswered Questions About the U.S. Park Police's June 1 Attack on Peaceful Protesters at Lafayette Square" on July 28, 2020 in Washington, D.C. Gosar's siblings are calling for his removal from office after a "Stop the Steal" organizer identified the congressman as being involved in the January 6 Capitol riot.
BILL CLARK/AFP

Tim, who said his brother "played a big role" in the Capitol riot, said that the congressman has "lost sight of what character and integrity mean."

"He peddles in rumor, he peddles in propaganda and he lies consistently to the American people and to his constituents," Tim added.

This is not the first time the representative's family has spoken out against him. In 2018, six of Paul's siblings put out a campaign against his re-election in Arizona's 4th congressional district.

Tim said he is inclined to push for further action because Paul has "become more extreme, more radical, more dangerous," especially in his response to the coronavirus pandemic.

"Even before the election, he was telling people that COVID was overblown. That it was going to go away by the election. Suggesting that it was a hoax. That's dangerous," Tim said.

Arizona emerged as a COVID-19 hot spot during the summer and the state is once again facing a surge in infections. As of January 13, Arizona's department of health has reported over 641,000 confirmed cases and more than 10,000 deaths.

Newsweek reached out to Paul Gosar for comment but did not hear back before publication.

by **admin** » Tue Jan 26, 2021 5:52 am

2 Virginia police officers face federal charges in Capitol riots [Sergeant Thomas Robertson and Officer Jacob Fracker]
by Erin Donaghue
CBS News
JANUARY 13, 2021 / 5:40 PM
© 2021 CBS Interactive Inc.

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

Two police officers in Rocky Mount, Virginia are facing federal charges in the January 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol. Sergeant Thomas Robertson and Officer Jacob Fracker have been charged with unlawful entry into a restricted area and violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds.

According to a criminal complaint, Robertson and Fracker were photographed inside the Capitol building in front of a statue, with one seen pointing and the other making an obscene gesture. At the time of the riot, the two were off-duty from their jobs as police officers with the Rocky Mount Police Department, the complaint says.

The photo was shared initially only with other members of the Rocky Mount Police Department, but Robertson re-posted it to his own Facebook account after others shared the photo on social media, according to the complaint. In a comment on social media, Robertson allegedly said he was "proud" of the photo because it showed he and Fracker were "willing to put skin in the game," the complaint said.

Sergeant Thomas Robertson, right, and Officer Jacob Fracker, left, posted this photograph of themselves inside the U.S. Capitol during the January 6 riots to social media.
U.S. ATTORNEY'S OFFICE FOR D.C.

A Facebook post by Fracker that has since been deleted allegedly read: "Lol to anyone who's possibly concerned about the picture of me going around... Sorry I hate freedom? …Not like I did anything illegal…y'all do what you feel you need to…"

Both officers have been placed on administrative leave as town officials investigate, according to CBS affiliate WDBJ. The police department notified federal authorities, the station said.

Robertson told the station he and Fracker were at the back of the Capitol building and did not see any rioting, violence or tear gas.

"We were allowed by Capitol police to be where we were and were given water bottles and told where we could go and where we couldn't," Robertson told the station.

The complaint makes note of Robertson's claims to the media that he did not engage in violence and was escorted by Capitol police, but it points to another social media post by Robertson that read: "CNN and the Left are just mad because we actually attacked the government who is the problem and not some random small business ... The right IN ONE DAY took the f***** U.S. Capitol. Keep poking us."

"Robertson made these claims notwithstanding his previous posts that he had "attacked the government" and "took the f**** Capitol," the complaint read. "Moreover, at that date and time, the United States Capitol was on lockdown and the defendants' presence inside was without lawful authority."

Also on Wednesday, a Houston police officer was relieved of duty pending a disciplinary hearing for allegedly participating in the Capitol riots, a senior law enforcement official told CBS News. Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo said the unnamed officer is an 18-year department veteran, according to CBS affiliate KHOU.

Acevedo said he expects that federal charges are forthcoming.

More than 70 people are already facing federal and local charges in the January 6 assault that left five 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 including unlawful entry, disorderly conduct, 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, acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Michael Sherwin said Tuesday.

Erin Donaghue reports and writes for CBSNews.com on topics including criminal justice, social justice and culture.

by **admin** » Tue Jan 26, 2021 6:14 am

Capitol Police Officers Said They Wouldn’t Be Surprised If Members Of Congress Helped Plan The Attack: “We are the buffer, so that Congress doesn’t have to deal with the mess that they create in their respective districts.”
by Emmanuel Felton
BuzzFeed News Reporter
Last updated on January 13, 2021, at 10:11 p.m. ET

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

Capitol Police officers in the Rotunda on Jan. 8, 2021. Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

After seeing one of their colleagues killed last Wednesday, Capitol Police officers are angry that Republican members of Congress refuse to submit to the security changes put in place since then, and say they wouldn’t even be surprised if some lawmakers helped organize the attack.

Officers told BuzzFeed News that members of Congress often see security as optional. Even after last week’s deadly attack, some Republican members refused to go through metal detectors, pushing their way past Capitol Police officers.

“Officers are fuming and there are mumbles of several walking off the job,” one officer with more than 10 years on the force told BuzzFeed News — just as Republicans took to the floor last night to rail against even basic security measures. At one point today, officers set up tables around the metal detectors in an effort to block Republicans from just walking by them.

One of the officers said it’s not unusual for members of Congress to bring dozens of people at once and insist that visitors be waved past security. Officers’ concerns were echoed by some Democrats who have been speaking out about the state of security at the Capitol, and the potential involvement of members in the planning of the insurrection.

Rep. Mikie Sherrill has alleged that some of her Republican colleagues led “reconnaissance” tours of the building ahead of the attack, though did not provide evidence to back up that claim. Rep. Val Demings, former chief of the Orlando Police Department, told CNN, “If any members of Congress participated, helped to organize, orchestrate … they need to be held accountable.”

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene spreads out her arms as she goes through security outside the House Chamber on Jan. 12, 2021. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / Getty Images

Two of the officers who spoke to BuzzFeed News said it wouldn’t surprise them if lawmakers had been involved. “There are definitely some members who need to be held to account once an investigation shows the totality of circumstances,” one said, in a sign of how betrayed some officers feel in the aftermath of the assault on the Capitol.

“Let’s be very clear, we are here for Congress,” a veteran officer said. “We are the buffer, so that Congress doesn’t have to deal with the mess that they create in their respective districts, so they don’t have to deal with the public. That’s primarily what our mission is — police work is kind of a second thought.”

Capitol Police officers also said they had lost faith in management following last week’s attack. Last weekend, two officers described scenes of chaos at the Capitol during Wednesday’s attack and the racism they faced. This prompted a third officer to open up about the dismal mood in the department, their lack of trust in leadership, and doubts that anything will really change.

“There would be a vote of no confidence in management right now if one took place,” said the officer, who has nearly two decades on the force. “There’s a collective anger right now, and there’s a ‘them and us’ mentality with management. It’s not good.” The Capitol Police did not respond to a series of requests from BuzzFeed News for comment.

The officers say the department seems better prepared for potential attacks between now and the inauguration of Joe Biden on Jan. 20. They said they have been told there will be at least 14,000 national guard members on hand to help keep the peace. Early this morning, management circulated a six-page intelligence assessment to officers outlining several events that they think have the potential to turn violent, they said.

But while officers say they hope to be better prepared for future attacks, they are still grappling with the toll that last week’s siege exacted on them and their colleagues. The third officer described how close they had been to opening fire on the mob: After nearly two decades on the force, the officer said, “I’ve never, ever, ever had physically or mentally been in a place where I’ve felt the need to use my weapon, and I was about five seconds from doing it on that day. I felt legitimate concern for my safety and the safety of the other few officers that were around me because to say we were outnumbered is a gross understatement.”

The three officers, who spoke with BuzzFeed News on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, lay ultimate blame for what happened on Jan. 6 at the feet of their managers, who they said appeared utterly blindsided by the attack, despite weeks of open planning by the conspirators online. All three officers said their managers put them in an impossible situation on that day.

“I’m raging. I was involved in the fray and thankfully I wasn’t too severely injured, but I have a coworker who was hit in the back with a pipe, he’s been out since Wednesday,” the third officer said. “I have another coworker that was knocked out cold. We just had an officer commit suicide, and [Officer Brian] Sicknick died. All of this stuff happened and if [management] would have taken appropriate actions, I think that it would have mitigated the situation exponentially.”

The veteran officer said they were so outnumbered and unprepared that at times he had to stand by helpless as colleagues were viciously attacked. “We came to this door and they were like five or six officers on the other side,” they said. “And it was very heart-wrenching for me because there was nothing that we could do for them. There were literally hundreds, thousands of people on the other side of this door and [the officers are] literally [pinned] against the wall, but we can’t open the door because if we opened the door, they’re going to get crushed and these people are going to pretty much take over.”

All three officers say that few provisions were made ahead of last Wednesday’s insurrection to prevent officers from being completely overrun. Usually, on a day when police leaders are expecting a big protest or riot, they’d organize a roll call, where they’d inform officers of the perceived threats and give them information about what to expect. The three officers said no such meeting occurred on Wednesday morning. Each of the officers separately pointed out that management didn’t even take “simple measures” ahead of the attack like building a temporary barrier around the Capitol ahead of time.

One officer talked about how infuriating it was to see workers putting up barriers only after the attack had taken place.

Workers install more robust fencing along the east side of the Capitol on Jan. 7, 2021 — the day after the attack. Bill Clark / CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

“At 3 in the morning, when we finally got a chance to leave after the demonstration, they had the people coming in to put up those 8 feet barriers that they have now,” one officer said. “Twelve to 14 hours later, they have most of this thing up — it took them 12 hours to get that shit up. And you couldn’t have done it beforehand from all the warnings that these people told them. They knew the group was coming. They knew the group was coming.”

Leadership was totally absent that day, they added.

“The people above, I have no respect for them,” they said. “I personally didn’t hear any radio calls from any [senior officials]. I mean, nothing.” Chief Steven Sund, the officers say, was not heard on the radio once that day.

With approximately 2,000 employees and a $515 million budget, the agency, the officers say, had tools at its disposal to prevent the attack on the Capitol — the money, the intelligence suggesting Trump’s supporters could get violent, and a chief with extensive expertise in policing protests and large events. Sund, who has since resigned, was previously a commander of the Washington, DC, Police Department’s Special Operations Division. Among his responsibilities was overseeing “civil disturbance units,” specialized units that respond to mass protests. As a commander, he also served as a lead planner for the 2009 and 2013 presidential inaugurations.

The agency is overseen by Congress itself. Its oversight board comprises the chief, the architect of the Capitol, and both sergeants at arms for the House and the Senate.

“We have a whole intel section,” one officer said. “There were plenty of indicators that this was going to be way more than the routine … this is a situation our intelligence apparatus either dropped the ball or [management] just said they didn’t care.”

Two of the officers, both of them Black, specifically compared last Wednesday’s attack with how management handled the Black Lives Matter protests this summer, and said that the contrast is stark.

“This summer, when we had the BLM protest, it was all hands on deck,” one officer said. “I mean we had an abundance of bodies and support … the amount of people that they had available was astounding. They were pretty much working us to the ground … on [Wednesday], there was none of that.”

“Let me just say this: If the same posture was taken Wednesday, that was taken the summer, with the BLM protests, it would have been totally different,” he added. “I think [last Wednesday] was the result of a mixture of arrogance and incompetence, but I also think a group of Black people and brown people are a lot scarier to [management] than a group of white people. I don’t want to say that, but that’s just me being as objective as I can be.”

According to one officer, the force is “male dominated” and “white dominated,” adding that “minority officers aren’t treated the same.”

The officers said the incompetence on display last Wednesday wasn’t an aberration, but instead the result of years of mismanagement by the agency’s leadership — and by extension their ultimate bosses, the 535 members of the Congress. Officers describe an environment where they are frequently disrespected by members of Congress and treated more like security guards or even personal security detail than as sworn police officers.

Each of the officers said the department needs a complete overhaul of its culture, but one predicted Congress would simply throw money at the problem rather than enact real change.

“I think that we will probably get a 20% increase in our budget, because it came to Congress’s doorstep and when things touch them, they pretty much just write a check and say whatever you need is what you get,” said one officer. “There has to be a complete and utter rehaul of the culture, but people are resistant to that in every shape or form.”

“You can’t throw money at culture,” he added. The veteran officer thinks that transparency, not money, is the answer.

Security personnel set up a metal detector in front of an entrance to the House chamber on Jan. 12, 2021. Joshua Roberts / Reuters

“We don’t have to comply with the Freedom of Information Act. How can you not be transparent? That’s just mind-boggling,” they said. Because the Capitol Police force reports to Congress, which is not subject to freedom of information laws, it is hard to know what is really going on. “[Transparency] would improve this department on every level. We’re paid by the taxpayers — they should be able to access anything that goes on within this department within reason.”

In addition to Sund, both the House and the Senate sergeants at arms quit. This is a welcome move among the officers who spoke to BuzzFeed News; one of them said, “The sergeant of arms is full of shit.”

Another said the only reason there has been any accountability for leadership is because the attack was such a national event.

“I think letting them resign is letting them off easy,” said the veteran who has been with the department for nearly 20 years. “A lot of people got hurt that didn’t have to be hurt. Simple measures could have been put in place to mitigate this.”

The officer said: “I have too many coworkers and friends that are out right now and it’s not right … It’s not a case of, OK, this was an unfortunate situation, people didn’t do their jobs and they put us in a situation where we were set up to fail. It’s not right. Sicknick was a good dude, and he didn’t deserve [to die].”

Kendall Taggart contributed reporting to this article.

by **admin** » Wed Jan 27, 2021 1:15 am

Pro-Trump Attorney Lin Wood Not of 'Sufficient Character' to Practice Law, Decides Judge
by Katherine Fung
1/12/21 AT 1:40 PM EST

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

A Delaware Superior Court judge slammed pro-Trump attorney Lin Wood in a Monday decision, revoking Wood's right to represent ex-Trump aide Carter Page in a defamation suit stemming from the Mueller investigation.

"The conduct of Mr. Wood, albeit not in my jurisdiction, exhibited a toxic stew of mendacity, prevarication and surprising incompetence," Judge Craig Karsnitz wrote.

Karsnitz said that he is required to "ensure that those practicing before me are of sufficient character, and conduct themselves with sufficient civility and truthfulness," particularly when out-of-state counsel is selected. Wood is based in Georgia.

Noting Wood's involvement in the Trump campaign's unsuccessful efforts to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election, the judge wrote that he became concerned after reviewing the decisions made in lawsuits Wood filed in Georgia and Wisconsin courts.

He noted that the case in Georgia was "textbook frivolous litigation," which included "an error-ridden affidavit," and that the complaint Wood filed in Wisconsin "would not survive a law school civil procedure class."

"What has been shown in Court decisions of our sister States satisfies me that it would be inappropriate and inadvisable to continue Mr. Wood's permission to practice before this court," Karsnitz said. "I acknowledge that I preside over a small part of the legal world in a small state. However, we take pride in our bar."

"Prior to the pandemic, I watched daily counsel practice before me in a civil, ethical way to tirelessly advance the interests of their clients," he added. "It would dishonor them were I to allow this pro hac vice order to stand."

Attorneys Lin Wood, center, and Mark Stephen, left, speak to the media about their client, British rescue diver Vernon Unsworth, rear, as they arrive at US District Court on December 3, 2019 in Los Angeles. Wood was removed from a Delaware lawsuit by the judge after the attorney was found to not be of "sufficient character" to practice law. APU GOMES/STRINGER

Karsnitz also made mention of Wood's tweets, specifically one calling for the arrest and execution of Vice President Mike Pence ...

and another against Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts "too disgusting and outrageous to repeat"—tweets which the judge said partly "incited" the January 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol.

Karsnitz said while he is "not here to litigate if Mr. Wood was ultimately the source of incitement," there is "no doubt these tweets, and many other things, incited these riots."

The decision comes three weeks after Karsnitz ordered Wood to explain why his involvement in the election lawsuits would not disqualify him from representing Page, who is accusing Oath Inc.'s subsidiary Yahoo! of "maliciously" publishing "false accusations" that Page was "secretly plotting with Russian leaders to sabotage the 2016 presidential election."

Page, a former foreign-policy adviser to Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign, was investigated by the Department of Justice but never charged in connection to the election interference.

In his response submitted last week, Wood focused on the fact that none of the conduct Karsnitz pointed too had taken place in his court.

Karsnitz wrote that Wood's response "was not helpful regarding the issue of the appropriateness and advisability" of allowing the attorney to represent Page in Delaware and revoked Wood's privilege to represent Page in the case.

Newsweek reached out to Wood for comment but did not hear back before publication.

by **admin** » Wed Jan 27, 2021 2:07 am

Capitol riot fueled by deep network of GOP statehouse support: Stolen election lie had backing from party’s governing class at every level, extending far beyond Congress and the White House.
by David Siders
Politico
01/13/2021 04:30 AM EST

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

West Virginia House of Delegates member Derrick Evans is given the oath of office Dec. 14, 2020, in Charleston, W.Va. He resigned after the Capitol riot. | Perry Bennett/West Virginia Legislature via AP

One month before the riot at the Capitol, more than 60 Republican state lawmakers from Pennsylvania signed onto a letter urging the state’s congressional delegation to object to results of the presidential election. Across the border in Maryland, a Republican state legislator helped organize buses to take people to the protest that preceded the riot. A West Virginia lawmaker went even further, donning a helmet as he filmed himself rushing the Capitol.

As the Republican Party begins to reckon with the fallout from the deadly insurrection, it’s being forced to confront a disquieting truth: the lie that ultimately led to the violence — that the election was stolen from President Donald Trump — drew far-reaching support from the party’s governing class at every level, extending far beyond Congress and reaching deep into America’s statehouses.

Lawmakers from more than a dozen states attended the Jan. 6 rally, while scores more cheered on the “Stop the Steal” movement from afar. And in the days since the insurrection, these Republicans continued to question the election while giving air to debunked claims that antifa or other leftist agitators — not pro-Trump rioters — were primarily responsible for the destruction that followed.

“I wouldn’t trust a word that comes out of the FBI’s mouth at this point,” Mark Finchem, a Republican state representative from Arizona, said when asked about an FBI briefing of House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy that suggested no reason to believe antifa was involved.

Like many other Republican state lawmakers elected by pro-Trump Republicans who remain distrustful of the election, Finchem, who attended the rally but did not storm the building, said his job is to represent his constituents, and “if that means I need to fight off the establishment types, I’m good with that.”

One week after the deadly insurrection and the certification of Joe Biden’s victory, institutionalist Republicans are desperate to move the party past the events of last week. But in statehouses across the country, the prospect of a clean break has never seemed more remote.

In Nevada, newly elected Assemblywoman Annie Black, facing calls to resign after attending the rally preceding the riot, told her supporters, “I’m not going anywhere,” defending her attendance at an event she said was “marred by some fringe elements.” In Florida, state Rep. Anthony Sabatini on Tuesday was tweeting lists of Republicans “WITH courage” and those without, the latter group including Republican Sens. Mitt Romney and Lisa Murkowski, who have been critical of Trump. He called Rep. Liz Cheney, the Wyoming Republican who plans to support Trump’s impeachment, a “national security threat.”

Pat Garofalo, a Republican state representative from Minnesota, said that in the riot last week “there was a political epiphany for most Republicans that this is over, this is ridiculous … this is banana republic s---, we don’t do that.”

But even if “no one is standing up and saying that this was justified,” as Garofalo said, the idea that Trump had been robbed of the election was not far from home. Several of his colleagues had participated in a reportedly peaceful “Storm the Capitol” rally in Minnesota the same day the national Capitol was desecrated.

For Republicans involved in promoting Trump’s claims about election fraud, the recriminations have been swift. Major corporate donors have announced they will withhold contributions from Republican lawmakers who objected to certifying the Electoral College votes last week. Facebook and Instagram permanently banned a top organizer of the “Stop the Steal” protest on Capitol Hill. One Republican group pledged to raise $50 million to help Republican lawmakers fend off potential primary challenges if they vote to impeach Trump, and as many as 10 Republican House members are reportedly considering doing just that.

But Trumpism was never primarily a feature of Washington, as state lawmakers who are attuned to their GOP constituencies know. A large majority of Republicans said after the election that they did not think it was free or fair, and fewer than one in five Republicans said after the riot last week that Trump should resign.

The physical violence represented a fringe element of the party. But the reason that Republicans were in Washington — loyalty to Trump, frustration with the election — is a fairly mainstream GOP position in many places. And so, too, is disbelief in the party’s culpability.

“I don’t know that widespread means it’s a majority opinion or a prevailing opinion, but there are certainly a significant number of Republicans who have fallen for the myth that this was some a antifa-instigated event, which it was not,” said Ron Nehring, a former California Republican Party chairman who served as Sen. Ted Cruz’s spokesman in the 2016 presidential campaign.

Nehring compared the moment for Republicans to one confronting the GOP in the 1960s, when William F. Buckley helped distance the party from racists and “kooks.” “Today, the same must be done again with adherents of QAnon and the Proud Boys and similar groups,” Nehring said.

Lamenting that “not enough Republican leaders have made clear that, ‘No, the election in fact was not stolen,'” he said, “I’ve spent 32 years in the Republican Party, and I’m not going to allow it to be defined by a bunch of racists and lunatics just because they put on a MAGA hat.”

There have been sanctions for elected officials present at the Capitol as the mob breached the building. Del. Derrick Evans, the West Virginia lawmaker who entered the Capitol, faces criminal charges and resigned. Maryland Del. Daniel L. Cox, who helped organize buses to the rally and who called Vice President Mike Pence a “traitor,” was rebuked by the state’s Republican governor, Larry Hogan. And Democrats in states across the country have appealed for Republicans who participated in any part of the rally to leave office, as well.

But Republicans are largely more accommodating of their ranks. In Arizona, Finchem said he’s been getting encouraging emails from around the country. He and other lawmakers who attended the rally are finding support in their own caucuses, as well.

In Alaska, where a Republican state lawmaker, David Eastman, has come under scrutiny for attending the rally and promoting claims about antifa, longtime state Sen. John Coghill regretted that rhetoric in American politics had reached a point where “people are accusing each other of inciting a riot.”

Like other Republicans, Coghill places blame for what he called a “revved up” political climate on Democrats as well as Republicans. Despite courts finding no evidence of widespread fraud, he said that in the absence of a more rigorous examination of the vote, “conspiracy theories, accusations, they can run rampant.”

Coghill, whose father was a signer of the state Constitution and who will leave the Senate next week after 22 years in elected office, said, “I think there’s enough blame to go on both sides.”

In the Republican Party’s base in the states, that view appears likely to have more currency than any interest in rooting out.

In Maryland, Del. Neil Parrott, called it “very unfortunate” that his colleague, Cox, was facing criticism for attending the rally.

“The vast majority of people were simply there to support fair elections,” said Parrott, who traveled to Pennsylvania to observe ballot counting after the election. “They had no idea that some people were going to try to take over the rally and make it violent.”

Parrott said that “party infighting is not going to help us now” and that, instead, “it’s time for Republicans to get back to the basics, like why do we care about less government, lower taxes, giving power back to the people.”

Likening the political options available to Republicans to sports, he said, “Sometimes your plays get too complicated, you need to go back to the basics.”

Matt Dixon contributed to this report.

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