Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

After staying quiet since last week’s violent insurrection, President Donald Trump signed a proclamation on Sunday to honor two United States Capitol police officers ― one of whom died at the hands of the mob he incited.

The president ordered that “the flag of the United States shall be flown at half-staff at the White House and upon all public buildings and grounds, at all military posts and naval stations, and on all naval vessels ...  until sunset, January 13, 2021.” The lowered flags are meant to be “a sign of respect for the service and sacrifice of United States Capitol Police Officers Brian D. Sicknick and Howard Liebengood.”

Sicknick died on Thursday after Trump-supporting rioters hit him in the head with a fire extinguisher during Wednesday’s siege of the Capitol, where lawmakers were tallying up electoral votes to certify President-elect Joe Biden’s victory. The officer later collapsed in his division office after “physically engaging” with the insurrectionist mob, according to law enforcement.

Right after the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, dozens of U.S. companies announced they would halt political donations to the 147 Republican lawmakers who voted to overturn Donald Trump’s presidential election loss. Two months later, there is little sign that the corporate revolt has done any real damage to Republican fundraising.

If anything, the biggest backers of Trump’s false election-fraud narrative - such as Missouri Senator Josh Hawley and Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene - have been rewarded with a flood of grassroots donations, more than offsetting the loss of corporate money. And contributions from both small donors and rich individuals looking to fight the Democratic agenda have poured into the party’s fundraising apparatus.

Interviews with Republican operatives, big-money donors and fundraisers revealed little apprehension that corporate outrage over the Jan. 6 Capitol riots would damage the party’s fundraising for the 2022 congressional elections.Dan Eberhart, a major Republican fundraiser, said he had predicted for years that Trump’s support would collapse. He believed the Capitol insurrection would be the tipping point.“The data is the opposite,” Eberhart said. “You are seeing a hardening of support for Trump … I think there will be no shortage of money.”

One in 10 people charged in the US Capitol insurrection are veterans or current servicemembers, according to a CNN review of court documents and Pentagon records.

A quarter of the defendants with military ties are also connected to right-wing extremist groups, like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys. These groups had a big presence at the January 6 riot, and they've attracted significant attention from federal prosecutors investigating the attack and from Pentagon officials who are coming to grips with the problem of extremism in the military.

This is perhaps the most comprehensive analysis to date of the outsized role that veterans played in the insurrection. They represent 10% of all defendants charged in the riot, but only make up about 6% of the US adult population, according to government statistics from recent years.

F.B.I. agents and federal prosecutors are investigating Stewart Rhodes, the founder and leader of the Oath Keepers militia, for any role he might have played in the storming of the Capitol two months ago, according to court documents and a law enforcement official with knowledge of the matter.

If he were ultimately charged, it could amount to a crippling blow to the militia.

In court papers filed on Monday night, prosecutors significantly raised the stakes against Mr. Rhodes, saying that they now have evidence that he was in direct communication with some of the plot suspects before, during and after the assault on the Capitol. Prosecutors said they have recovered messages — batched together under the title “DC OP: Jan 6 21” — from the encrypted chatting app Signal connecting Mr. Rhodes to regional Oath Keepers leaders from around the country, including two who have been charged in the conspiracy case: Jessica M. Watkins of Ohio and Kelly Meggs of Florida.

The Capitol Police in the coming days will begin scaling back and in some cases removing fencing erected around the Capitol after the Jan. 6 riot, a Democratic aide familiar with the plans confirmed on Sunday, a visible milestone as Congress tries to return to normal.

Imposing and impenetrable, the fence has become a charged political symbol in the two months since the attack, barring most Americans from the seat of government and causing headaches for the thousands of staff members, journalists and lawmakers who work inside the Capitol. In recent weeks, lawmakers in both parties, wary about the message it sent the country, had been agitating for its removal and a broader reconsideration of the security posture.

The extraordinary measures were put in place as a result of one of the most stunning security failures in the history of Congress. A mob of thousands, egged on by President Donald J. Trump, succeeded in overrunning officers and storming into the Capitol building in a last-ditch effort to stop lawmakers from certifying Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s electoral victory. Many of the invaders were armed and sent the vice president and members of the House and the Senate running for their lives. The attack left five people dead and more than 100 police officers injured.

When a Republican lawmaker approached Representative Veronica Escobar, a Democrat, on the House floor recently with a routine request that she sign on to a resolution he was introducing, she initially refused.

Ms. Escobar personally liked the man, a fellow Texan, and she supported his bill. But she held the Republican, who had voted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election just hours after rioters stormed the Capitol, partly responsible for the deadly attack and questioned whether she could work with him.

In the immediate aftermath of the assault on the Capitol that left five dead, irate Democrats vowed to punish Republicans for their roles in perpetuating or indulging former President Donald J. Trump’s fiction of a stolen election that motivated the mob that attacked the building.

A scathing report by the US Capitol Police watchdog obtained by CNN reveals that there were even more law enforcement failures prior to January 6 than previously known, including new details about expired ammunition, ineffective shields and a previously unreported warning more than two weeks ahead of the insurrection about a map of the Capitol's underground tunnels that was posted on a pro-Donald Trump website.

Further, the report points out Capitol Police leadership knew as far back as July 2020 the department needed to make significant changes, but inexplicably failed to do so.

On that day, "the Department of Homeland Security notified the Department of a blog referencing tunnels on U.S. Capitol grounds used by Members of Congress and research of the website identified four 'threads/blog topics containing comments of concern,'" the summary states.

Vice President Mike Pence received a memento from his aides the other day: the engraved chair set aside for him in the White House Cabinet Room, hauled over-the-shoulder from the West Wing and delivered to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building for one of his final staff meetings.

Instead of applause, many of Trump's aides -- even those who have stuck with him through myriad scandals and embarrassments -- were voicing shame and disappointment. His circle has shrunk. Many have resigned and others are still considering it.

On Monday, after an extended period of silence, Trump and Pence spoke for the first time after a deadly riot of Trump supporters broke out at the US Capitol with Pence inside, according to two administration officials.

Dozens of people in Washington on the day of the attack on the Capitol were said to be on a terrorism watch list.

Thousands of armed National Guard troops were on their way to Washington to bolster security for next week’s inaugural celebration as federal investigators turned their attention to the difficult question of how many military and police personnel took part in the violent attack on the Capitol, a law enforcement official said on Thursday.

Most were suspected white supremacists, according to The Washington Post, which earlier reported on their status on the list.

As Mr. Trump prepares to exit the White House and face a second impeachment trial in the Senate, his ideas continue to exert a gravitational pull in Republican circles across the country. The falsehoods, white nationalism and baseless conspiracy theories he peddled for four years have become ingrained at the grass-roots level of the party, embraced by activists, local leaders and elected officials even as a handful of Republicans in Congress break with the president in the final hour.

An Axios-Ipsos poll released Thursday showed that a majority of Republicans support the president’s recent behavior and say he should be the Republican nominee in 2024.

Already, some from the Trump wing are threatening primary challenges to Republicans deemed insufficiently loyal to the president and fierce opposition to any Republican who works with the new Biden administration

Four alleged leaders of the Proud Boys have been indicted in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol over allegedly conspiring, including in discussions on encrypted messaging apps, to obstruct the certification of President Biden's Electoral College victory.

The indictment unsealed Friday charges the defendants — Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zach Rehl and Charles Donohoe — with six counts, including obstruction of an official proceeding, obstruction of law enforcement, destruction of government property and conspiracy.

Nordean is the president of his local Proud Boy chapter in Washington state; Biggs is a Proud Boy member and organizer in Florida; Rehl is the president of a local chapter of the group in Philadelphia; and Donohoe is the president of his local Proud Boy chapter in North Carolina. Nordean and Biggs had previously been charged by complaint.

Law enforcement authorities are bracing for violence and attempts at disrupting the inauguration of our nation's 46th president, Joe Biden, on January 20. Online threats, which have become de rigueur in the current age of division and stoked partisan outrage, abound.

To anyone in America just waking up from a four-year slumber, what an odd and incongruous presidential declaration. We fight like hell during the campaign.

Our society acknowledges that as bitterly as we fought the election contest, we remain the United States of America.

Law enforcement officials concerned by the prospect for violence at a rally in the nation’s capital next week are planning to reinstall protective fencing that surrounded the U.S. Capitol for months after the Jan. 6 insurrection there, according to a person familiar with the discussions.

“We intend to have the integrity of the Capitol be intact.”

Police continue to track intelligence indicating far-right extremist groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers are planning to attend next week’s rally, which is designed to demand “justice” for the hundreds of people who have been charged in connection with January’s insurrection. Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, however, has said he doesn’t expect his membership to attend.

Local and federal security officials expect about 20,000 National Guard members to be involved in securing Washington, D.C., for President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration next week.

"I think you can expect to see somewhere upwards of beyond 20,000 members of the National Guard that will be here in the footprint of the District of Columbia,"

It represents an uptick in National Guard troops that will be deployed to the area. Army Times reported earlier this week that the Pentagon had authorized 15,000 National Guard members to be sent to the District for the inauguration.

Immediately after the attack on the U.S. Capitol, all corners of the political spectrum repudiated the mob of President Trump’s supporters. Yet within days, prominent Republicans, party officials, conservative media voices and rank-and-file voters began making a rhetorical shift to try to downplay the group’s violent actions.

“I heard that on antifa websites, people were invited to go to the rally and dress up like Trump supporters, but I’m not sure what to believe anymore,” she said. “There were people there only to wreak havoc. All I know is that there was a whole gamut of people there, but the rioters were not us. Maybe they were antifa. Maybe they were B.L.M. Maybe they were extreme right militants.”

But any window of reflection now seems to be closing as Republicans try to pass blame and to compare last summer’s lawlessness, which was condemned by Democrats, to an attack on Congress, which was inspired by Mr. Trump.

The mob of Trump supporters pressed through police barricades, broke windows and battered their way with metal poles through entrances to the Capitol.

Then, stunningly, they breached the “People’s House” itself, forcing masked police officers to draw their guns to keep the insurgents off the chamber floor.

“I thought we’d have to fight our way out,” said Representative Jason Crow, Democrat of Colorado and a former Army Ranger in Iraq, who found himself captive in the House chamber.

The CEO of a Chicago company said he was arrested after breaching the US Capitol during Wednesday's Trump-fueled insurrection in Washington, DC.

Brad Rukstales, CEO of the marketing technology firm Cogensia, apologized for what he called a "moment of extremely poor judgment."

Cogensia, based in the Chicago suburb of Schaumburg, sought to distance itself from its CEO, whom the company said has been placed on leave of absence.

The violence at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday was unprecedented in modern U.S. history — but some pro-Trump extremists are promising it was just a taste of things to come.

"Many of Us will return on January 19, 2021, carrying Our weapons, in support of Our nation's resolve, towhich [sic] the world will never forget!!!"

That post was one of dozens spotted by the Alethea Group, which tracks online threats and disinformation. Various virtual fliers circulating on social media promise an "armed march" on Capitol Hill and in every state capital a few days before the inauguration. Other posts promise violence on Inauguration Day itself. One post encourages supporters to meet in D.C. specifically to prevent President-elect Joe Biden from entering the White House.

Following signals from President Donald J. Trump — who had tweeted “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” after an earlier show of force in Lansing — Michigan’s Republican Party last year welcomed the support of newly emboldened paramilitary groups and other vigilantes. Prominent party members formed bonds with militias or gave tacit approval to armed activists using intimidation in a series of rallies and confrontations around the state. That intrusion into the Statehouse now looks like a portent of the assault halfway across the country months later at the United States Capitol.

“We knew there would be violence,” said Representative Elissa Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat, about the Jan. 6 assault. Endorsing tactics like militiamen with assault rifles frightening state lawmakers “normalizes violence,” she told journalists last week, “and Michigan, unfortunately, has seen quite a bit of that.”

The chief organizer of that protest, Meshawn Maddock, on Saturday was elected co-chair of the state Republican Party — one of four die-hard Trump loyalists who won top posts.

President Donald Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani has been working to bolster conspiratorial claims that left-wing agitators played a dominant role in the last week's Capitol riot.

Giuliani claimed in a tweet on Friday that has since been removed by Twitter that the Capitol siege was carried out "by groups like ANTIFA trained to riot."

He also claimed that the riot was something "that the President had nothing to do with."