- Florida politicians among 11 arrested, accused of trespassing near Florida Capitol during protest WKMG News 6 & ClickOrlando
- Florida Democratic Chair Nikki Fried, Sen. Lauren Book arrested during abortion bill protest CBS News
- Prominent Democratic leaders arrested during protest of 6-week abortion ban bill WFLA News Channel 8
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Tag Archives: Capitol
US Capitol riot tip-offs were ignored, government watchdog finds – BBC
- US Capitol riot tip-offs were ignored, government watchdog finds BBC
- Government watchdog report finds FBI, Capitol Police identified but didn’t share “credible threats” before Jan. 6 CBS News
- 2 federal law enforcement agencies found credible threats in the lead up to Jan. 6: Watchdog ABC News
- Capitol Attack: Federal Agencies Identified Some Threats, but Did Not Fully Process and Share Information Prior to January 6, 2021 Government Accountability Office
- Federal Agencies Didn’t Share Some Threat Insights Before Jan. 6 Attack, Report Says The Wall Street Journal
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January 6th Committee Members Blast Kevin McCarthy’s Move To Give Tucker Carlson Access To Capitol Surveillance Footage – Deadline
- January 6th Committee Members Blast Kevin McCarthy’s Move To Give Tucker Carlson Access To Capitol Surveillance Footage Deadline
- McCarthy gives Tucker Carlson access to January 6 Capitol security footage, sources say CNN
- What we know about McCarthy’s decision to grant Tucker Carlson exclusive access to Jan. 6 security camera footage Yahoo News
- What did Fox News bigwigs really think about Trump’s fraudulent election claims? Poynter
- McCarthy gives Tucker Carlson exclusive access to Jan. 6 riot video The Washington Post
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Rep. George Santos’s staff hires draw scrutiny on Capitol Hill
But perhaps no staff hirings this year are being more closely watched than those of Rep. George Santos, the New York Republican who since his election in November has been buried in an avalanche of revelations that point to him not being the person he once claimed to be. He did not, for instance, graduate from Baruch College (or play volleyball for its team). Nor did he work for Goldman Sachs or Citigroup. And his grandparents did not flee Jewish persecution in Ukraine.
There are also questions about where his money came from, how he funded his campaign, and his work for a Florida company that the SEC is suing and has alleged is a “classic Ponzi scheme.”
Even as he has had to answer — or not answer — those myriad questions, Santos has been assembling a staff for his Washington and district offices, the No. 1 priority for first-term representatives. That means interviewing job candidates, vetting résumés, running background checks and finding people willing to work for a member who appears allergic to truth-telling.
Taking a job for Santos could prove dicey for staffers. In conversations with more than a dozen former and current Republican and Democratic lawmakers and staff members, many wondered if those who go to work for Santos, particularly higher-level staffers, would ever be able to find another congressional office that would hire them.
So far, there is public information available for just five positions that Santos has filled, including chief of staff and communications director, according to LegiStorm, which tracks and posts congressional hiring. The initial makeup of Santos’s staff seems to lack the deep Capitol Hill experience that new members typically seek to help them get off to an effective start and quickly adjust to the rhythms and demands of Congress.
Santos hired Charles Lovett as his chief of staff. Lovett served as Santos’s campaign manager and worked for six months as a field organizer for the Ohio Republican Party, according to LegiStorm. He also served as political director for Ohio Republican Josh Mandel’s unsuccessful primary bid for Senate. He has not worked on the Hill previously. Viswanag Burra, Santos’s operations director, spent less than a year as special operations director for Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and recently worked as executive secretary for the New York Young Republican Club.
His communications director, Naysa Woomer, appears to have the most Hill experience. She worked for three Republican members between 2014 and 2018 before moving to Massachusetts to be the communications director for the state Republican Party and then as a communications specialist for the state Department of Revenue.
Rafaello Carone, Santos’s senior legislative assistant, worked for three GOP members, but his stints were short in each office. He spent six months as social media manager for Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.), two months as deputy communications director for Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) and a month as press secretary for Rep. Paul A. Gosar (R-Ariz.), according to LegiStorm. He also ran a consulting firm that mostly worked for long-shot Republican congressional candidates. Gabrielle Lipsky, who served as Santos’s campaign press secretary, will be his press secretary and office manager. She does not have Hill experience.
A Santos staff member familiar with the hiring process said that the LegiStorm site is not up to date and that the congressman’s D.C. and N.Y. offices are “fully staffed.” Each member of Congress is provided with 18 full-time staff positions to spread across their offices as they see fit.
Woomer, Santos’s communications director, said Thursday that the congressman would not be available for an interview for this story. His staff, she said, “all took this on because we have interest in serving the constituents of the 3rd Congressional District.” Santos’s staff members did not respond to emails seeking comment.
Fully staffed or not, Santos’s offices are already having to respond to the onslaught of requests from constituents and others that typically fill the inboxes of Congress members.
Jimmy Keady, a Virginia-based GOP strategist whose career as a Hill staffer included stints in senior staff for congressional freshmen, said it’s “imperative” that a freshman member of Congress surround themselves with Hill veterans who know what they’re doing — otherwise, they may find themselves underwater pretty quick.
“Capitol Hill is not a place where you can just, you know, walk in and understand what to do,” Keady said. “There are a lot of rules, there’s a lot of regulations, and there’s a lot of pitfalls that a lot of these freshmen members make because they don’t have staff around them who are experienced.”
If a new member isn’t focused on constituent services right away, Keady said, the voters are going to feel it.
“If you have members deciding, ‘I’m going to gut my constituents services, and I’m not going to have a [legislative director] — I’m just going to have six people on comms staff,’ you know, that’s fine — that might get you on Fox News,” Keady said. “But that constituent that has been waiting for their veteran benefits for six months, they’re not going to get service, because that is also a job of a member of Congress.”
At the top of the to-do list for a new member is leasing a district office or offices — and outfitting them with everything including internet, phones, desks, chairs and paper clips. And from Day One, they need to start responding to the unceasing inquiries from constituents needing help with Social Security checks, veterans’ issues and passports. And that’s all while the new member gets acquainted with the politics of Washington and the rules, official and otherwise, of Congress.
Jeff Jackson, a freshman Democrat from North Carolina, has been documenting his first weeks in Congress on Instagram with posts on everything including how new representatives choose their office space and explainers about financial disclosures. He said hiring people with experience on the Hill and in his district was a priority.
“Having people come in who are well-versed in how to do this gives me a lot of comfort,” Jackson said in an interview. “I’ve only been here a few weeks, but what I’ve learned is that there is a tidal wave of work hitting our office every day and it takes a whole team to stay afloat. If you’re just one man on a surfboard, you’re going to get crushed.”
It’s hard enough to get offices up and running in normal circumstances, but Santos is under intense media scrutiny. And he’s facing calls to give up his seat not just from Democrats, but from Republicans as well, including six GOP representatives from New York.
This month, Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, a Republican freshman whose district borders Santos’s, said Santos told “outright lies” and called on him to resign. And Nassau County Republican Committee Chairman Joseph G. Cairo Jr. said Santos no longer had the support of Republicans in the 3rd Congressional District. “George Santos’s campaign last year was a campaign of deceit, lies and fabrication,” Cairo said during a Jan. 11 news conference. “He’s disgraced the House of Representatives, and we do not consider him one of our congresspeople.”
Santos has said he will not resign his seat. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who needs Santos’s vote as he clings to a narrow majority in the House, has also rejected calls for Santos to resign and said this month that Santos was legally elected and seated without objection. House Republicans have assigned Santos to the House Small Business and the Science, Space and Technology committees.
Freshman Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-N.C.) is all too familiar with what can happen if members allow constituent services to be neglected: He is cleaning up the mess left behind by his predecessor, Madison Cawthorn.
Cawthorn, who took office in 2021 at age 25 and exited in scandal, prioritized publicity as a lawmaker. “I have built my staff around comms rather than legislation,” he wrote in an email to Republican colleagues published by Time magazine in 2021.
After losing in a GOP primary to Edwards, Cawthorn largely went MIA in some of his duties as a congressman. By October, calls to his district office were met by a voice mail noting that he was winding down the office and not accepting any new casework — even though outgoing members of Congress typically keep the office open and transfer all the files to the incoming member so that there is no interruption of service to residents in their district.
Instead, Edwards said Cawthorn did not leave him anything — “no files, no data, no anything.”
“We had to start from scratch,” he said.
He tried to get a head start while serving out the remainder of his term in the North Carolina Senate, encouraging constituents who had met with silence from Cawthorn to contact his state office. He recently heard from students who thought Cawthorn was going to nominate them to military academies and were getting anxious as the deadline approached.
In the state Senate, he said, “our office mantra was first in constituent services. We’ve already made that the office mantra of this congressional office.”
For staffers who have opted to work for Santos, a future on Capitol Hill could prove difficult to negotiate, said George McElwee, who served as chief of staff for former GOP congressman Charlie Dent from Pennsylvania and was also president of the House Chiefs of Staff Association.
“Particularly for staff in those senior roles, people are going to wonder why they’re there. Why are they continuing on?” said McElwee, who is now a lobbyist at a bipartisan firm he co-founded in Washington. “And it’s probably going to hurt them at some point in their job prospects.”
McElwee doesn’t expect Santos to be able to hang on to staffers who hope to have careers on the Hill.
“A lot of the folks in his office probably have an eye to the door and they’re trying to find the route to get out,” he said. “They know it’s not a stable environment for them in their political future.”
Jan. 6 rioter who assaulted Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick sentenced to over 6 years in jail
CNN
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A man who assaulted United States Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick with pepper spray on January 6, 2021, was sentenced on Friday to 80 months behind bars.
Julian Khater pleaded guilty in September to two counts of assaulting, resisting or impeding officers with a dangerous weapon. His co-defendant, George Tanios, pleaded guilty last summer to disorderly conduct and entering and remaining in a restricted building. Khater was also ordered to pay a $10,000 fine and $2,000 in restitution.
Tanios was sentenced to time served and one year of supervised release. He previously spent more than five months behind bars.
The day after the attack, Sicknick died after suffering several strokes. Washington, DC’s chief medical examiner, Francisco Diaz, determined that the officer died of natural causes and told The Washington Post that the riot and “all that transpired played a role in his condition.”
Sicknick’s family and partner were present for the sentencing and law enforcement officers dressed in uniform filled the courtroom.
According to the plea agreements, Tanios bought two cans of bear spray in preparation for his trip with Khater to Washington on January 6. During the Capitol attack, when the two men arrived near a line of police officers by the steps of the Capitol, Khater said to Tanios, “Give me that bear s**t,” according to the plea.
Khater took a white can of bear spray from Tanios’s backpack, walked up to the line of officers and, as rioters started pulling on the bike rack barrier separating them and the police, Khater sprayed multiple officers – including Sicknick – who had to retreat from the line.
One of those officers, Caroline Edwards, gave a witness impact statement before DC District Judge Thomas Hogan during the sentencing hearing.
“I felt like the absolute worst kind of officer, someone who didn’t help – couldn’t help – their friend,” she said of not being able to help Sicknick after being sprayed herself seconds later by Khater. “Sometimes when I close my eyes I can still see his face, white as a sheet.”
Hogan called Khater’s actions that day “inexcusable,” adding that “three officers (who) were doing their duty … are suddenly sprayed directly in the face.”
“I’m not going to give a lecture on the riot,” Hogan said, adding that “every time you see the video you’re shocked over again” and that “something has come out of this country that is very, very serious.”
After recovering from the bear spray attack, Sicknick continued to help protect the Capitol that day, according to court documents, remaining on duty until late into the evening.
“Just before approximately 10:00 p.m., Officer Sicknick began slurring his speech while talking to fellow officers,” court documents state. “He slumped backwards and lost consciousness, and emergency medical technicians were summoned for assistance. He was transported to the George Washington University Hospital where he remained on life support for nearly 24 hours and was pronounced dead at 8:51 p.m. the following day.”
Khater’s defense attorney said that Hogan should not sentence his client for the death of Sicknick, which the attorney noted was determined to be of natural causes. The judge agreed, noting he “can’t sentence Mr. Khater (for) causing officer Sicknick’s death.”
Calling his client “sheepish” and “sweet and gentle,” Khater’s attorney said his actions that day amounted to seconds of “emotionally charged conduct” from a man who suffered from anxiety.
In his statement to the judge, Khater began by highlighting how long he had already served behind bars and how it had “taken a huge toll” on him. “I wish I could take it all back,” he said. “It’s not who I am.”
Hogan pressed Khater on why he did not expressly apologize to the officers in the courtroom and Sicknick’s family. “Somewhere along the lines we lost the sense of responsibility,” the judge said.
“It’s the elephant in the room,” Khater said, adding that “there’s a civil thing going on” – in reference to a civil lawsuit from Sicknick’s estate – and that his lawyer had warned him about what to say in court Friday.
“You should be afraid,” Hogan said of the lawsuit.
Sicknick’s partner, Sandra Garza, had asked the judge to impose the maximum sentence for both men.
“I realize it will not bring back Brian, nor give him peace in his last moments on earth, but it will give some sense of justice in my universe,” Garza wrote to the judge.
“The only thing that surpasses my anger is my sadness,” Sicknick’s brother, Kenneth, wrote in his statement to the judge. “Sadness that the only time I can communicate with Brian is to speak into the nothingness and hope that he is listening.”
Kenneth continued, “Brian was never one for the spotlight. He preferred to go about his business, not bringing attention to himself. My family and I quietly smile at each other when we attend an event honoring and remembering Brian and the weather turns bad. We know it’s Brian telling us that it is OK, he is OK, please don’t make a big deal about me, take care of the others that need it. That’s what he would have done.”
This story has been updated with additional details.
Three Marines with intelligence jobs charged in Jan. 6 Capitol breach
The FBI said Abate admitted to entering the Capitol “with two ‘buddies’” during a June 2022 interview that was part of his security clearance process while assigned to the Marine Corps’s Cryptologic Support Battalion, which is partnered and headquartered with the NSA at Fort Meade. According to charging papers, Abate said they “walked around and tried not to get hit with tear gas,” and “admitted he heard how the event was being portrayed negatively and decided that he should not tell anybody about going into the U.S. Capitol Building.”
Each faces counts including trespassing, disorderly conduct and illegal parading or picketing in a restricted Capitol building or grounds, in connection with the riots that injured scores of police officers, left offices ransacked and forced lawmakers to evacuate the premises amid Congress’s meeting to confirm the results of the 2020 presidential election.
The sergeants’ occupations as special communications signals analysts and the corporal’s job as an intelligence surveillance reconnaissance system engineer were first reported by Military.com and were confirmed in their service records.
A Marine Corps spokesperson said, “We are aware of an investigation and the allegations. The Marine Corps is fully cooperating with appropriate authorities in support of the investigation.”
Abate’s attorney David Dischley declined to comment. Federal defenders for the other two men did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The men are the first active-duty military members to be charged in the Capitol attack since Maj. Christopher Warnagiris of the Marine Corps was arrested in May 2021. He is awaiting trial on felony counts including assaulting or impeding police and obstructing an official proceeding. About 120 of the roughly 940 people arrested in the Capitol breach served in the military, reserves or National Guard.
According to charging papers filed Tuesday and unsealed Thursday, Coomer posted photographs on Instagram taken from inside the Capitol during the breach captioned, “Glad to be apart of history.” Data provided by Facebook in connection with an August 2021 federal search warrant showed that in Jan. 31 direct message on Instagram, Coomer allegedly “stated his belief ‘that everything in this country is corrupt. We honestly need a fresh restart. I’m waiting for the boogaloo.’”
Coomer described the term as “Civil war 2,” according to an FBI arrest affidavit. U.S. prosecutors have described “boogaloo” as a term taken up by fringe groups referring to a racially or ethnically motivated civil war.
Capitol surveillance video recorded the three Marines entering the Capitol through the Senate Wing Door less than 10 minutes after it was first breached, according to the FBI. The trio was moving together and spent 52 minutes in the building, with Hellonen carrying a yellow Gadsden flag with a “Don’t Tread on Me” logo, according to the FBI. That included time in the Rotunda, where “they placed a red MAGA hat on one of the statues to take photos with it,” an FBI arrest affidavit said.
All three men had previously been awarded a Good Conduct Medal, which is given for every three years of discipline-free service, according to service records.
Separately, another Washington-area military reservist assigned to the U.S. intelligence community and facing a charge in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was convicted Wednesday on unrelated felony weapons offenses.
Hatchet M. Speed, a Navy Reserve petty officer first class assigned to the Naval Warfare Space Field Activity at the National Reconnaissance Office in Chantilly, Va., was found guilty of possessing three unregistered firearms silencers by a jury in Alexandria federal court.
Speed has pleaded not guilty to federal misdemeanor charges in Washington after being described by U.S. prosecutors as a heavily armed Nazi sympathizer with top-level U.S. government security clearance who breached the Capitol with members of the Proud Boys extremist group. A new indictment this month added a felony count of obstructing an official proceeding of Congress against Speed, who until recently worked with a U.S. defense and intelligence cyberoperations contractor based in nearby Vienna, Va.
Speed is not accused of violence, has no criminal history and retained a Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information clearance at time of his arrest. But prosecutors cited Speed’s alleged statements to an undercover FBI employee about using violence to further “anti-government and anti-Semitic ideologies,” including many “enemies” who live near Washington as the seat of the government, and his $50,000-worth of “panic” buying of firearms after the Capitol attack that included a dozen pistols, revolvers, shotguns and rifles.
Jan. 6 committee final report fallout continues on Capitol Hill: Live updates
“How do we plan to win in 2024 if you so boldly reject listening to the grassroots, our donors, and the biggest organizations and voices in the conservative movement?” he asked in the message, which was obtained by The Washington Post. “If ignored, we will have the most stunted and muted Republican Party in the history of the conservative movement, the likes of which we haven’t seen in generations.”
The extraordinary message came in the midst of a bitter GOP leadership contest, with incumbent RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel seeking to beat back a challenge from Harmeet Dhillon, an attorney and committee member from California who has been paid for legal consulting by former president Donald Trump’s political action committee, among numerous clients. Kirk and his allies have vigorously promoted Dhillon, hosting her on various media platforms and staging a straw poll at a recent Turning Point summit in Phoenix.
Capitol riot panel’s final report sets out case to try Trump
WASHINGTON, Dec 22 (Reuters) – The congressional panel probing the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol released its final report late on Thursday, outlining its case that former U.S. President Donald Trump should face criminal charges of inciting the deadly riot.
The House of Representatives Select Committee also made public the transcripts of a number of its interviews and witness testimonies earlier on Thursday and on Wednesday.
The report, which runs to more than 800 pages, is based on nearly 1,200 interviews over 18 months and hundreds of thousands of documents, as well as the rulings of more than 60 federal and state courts.
The report lists 17 specific findings, discusses the legal implications of actions by Trump and some of his associates and includes criminal referrals to the Justice Department of Trump and other individuals, according to an executive summary released earlier this week. It report also lists legislative recommendations to help avert another such attack.
On Monday, the committee asked federal prosecutors to charge the Republican former president with four crimes, including obstruction and insurrection, for what they said were efforts to overturn results of the November 2020 election and sparking the attack on the seat of government.
“Rather than honor his constitutional obligation to ‘take care that the laws be faithfully executed,’ President Trump instead plotted to overturn the election outcome,” the House panel had said earlier in a 160-page summary of its report.
In comments posted on his Truth Social network after the final report’s release, Trump called it “highly partisan” and a “witch hunt”. He said it failed to “study the reason for the (Jan. 6) protest, election fraud.”
The request by the Democratic-led panel to the Justice Department does not compel federal prosecutors to act, but marked the first time in history that Congress had referred a former president for criminal prosecution. Trump announced in November that he would run for president again.
Among the transcripts released on Wednesday and Thursday was one that showed a former lawyer for ex-White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson told her to “downplay” her knowledge of events leading to the Capitol riot, telling her “the less you remember, the better.”
Attorney Stefan Passantino advised Hutchinson in preparing for a February deposition before the panel to say that she could not recall certain events, she told the committee in September, according to the transcript of her testimony.
Trump gave a fiery speech to his supporters near the White House the morning of Jan. 6, and publicly chastised his vice president, Mike Pence, for not going along with his plan to reject ballots cast for Democrat Joe Biden.
The former president then waited hours to make a public statement as thousands of his supporters raged through the Capitol, assaulting police and threatening to hang Pence.
The 2020 election results were being certified by Pence and lawmakers when the Capitol was attacked after weeks of false claims by Trump that he had won that election.
Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
‘Poster boy’ of Capitol riot sentenced in Jan. 6 attack
“I wanted Q to get the attention,” Jensen told the FBI after his arrest. “I basically intended on being the poster boy.”
“You … put yourself at the forefront of the mob,” U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly told Jensen in court Friday. “There was nothing patriotic about it, no matter how much you might not have liked how the process of electing a president was perceived.”
Kelly noted that Jensen traveled to Washington with others carrying military-style rifles, was one of the first 10 people who breached the Capitol, and “waved on” and encouraged others to join him. The judge said America’s freedoms of speech, petition and protest carry the responsibility of doing so peacefully.
“What no one can do under any circumstances is become part of a mob using violence and the threat of violence to disrupt Congress’s ability to fulfill its role to process the certification of the electoral vote. That’s what you did,” Kelly said. “It’s a miracle that more people were not injured and did not lose their lives that day. … What would have happened if that group you led turned the other way into a chamber full of Senators, God only knows.”
Jensen, a QAnon conspiracy follower, was found guilty at trial in September of seven federal counts after coming to Washington believing that members of Congress and Vice President Mike Pence were going to be arrested for opposing President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the results.
Prosecutors asked for a 64-month sentence, at the midpoint of a 57- to 71-month federal guidelines range, calling Jensen “a ringleader during the attack on the U.S. Capitol.” Jensen was convicted of three felony offenses, including rioting, assaulting police and obstruction of a congressional proceeding, punishable by up to 20 years.
Jensen “came to Washington, D.C., prepared for violence, and when the day approached, he played a significant role leading the violent crowd past the police line, into the building and through the halls of the Capitol,” assistant U.S. attorneys Emily W. Allen and Hava Mirell wrote in sentencing papers.
U.S. Capitol Police Inspector Thomas Loyd told the court that Jensen had Goodman to thank for being able to leave the building on his own feet, crediting the officer’s “quick thinking” for helping prevent rioters from attempting to breach the Senate Lobby doors.
If they had, “there would have been tremendous bloodshed,” Loyd said, adding that several of his officers who were injured had to be carried out. He said 20 percent of 350 officers assigned to him have separated from the department.
Jensen’s defense asked for less than half that time, saying that despite Jensen’s “theatrical” role in the Capitol breach, he committed no violence and physically harmed no one. His defense also said he has freed himself of his seeming QAnon addiction, an outgrowth of sealed personal history that should categorize him as an “outlier” among Jan. 6 defendants.
“Mr. Jensen is a passionate man who became embroiled in conspiracy theories and conservative politics. However, he has no history of being a political activist. He is an uneducated union laborer who became overwhelmed by conspiracy theories disseminated on the internet,” defense attorney Christopher M. Davis wrote. “He was wrong. And now he remains incarcerated almost 2 years later, while his family suffers his absence.”
Jensen expressed no remorse in a statement to the court.
“I can’t change my past,” Jensen said. “I can only look to the future. I don’t intend to be involved in the justice system after this,” Jensen said. “I’d like to be involved in being a parent again and to go back to my normal life before I got involved in politics.”
Kelly said he would have given Jensen a longer sentence but for the extreme circumstances of his childhood.
Jensen’s lawyer argued, “I think he needs medical assistance to come to grips to what happened to him as a child … forces totally out of his control” related to his background, health and mental health.
Jensen was initially granted pretrial release but was returned to detention after two months in September 2021 for violating a federal judge’s order to stay off the internet, including by live-streaming an event hosted by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who has promoted conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.
The restriction meant to separate Jensen from the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory, which the FBI has warned could encourage violence among some believers of its false foundational claim that a cabal of Satan-worshipping “global elites” and “deep state” international child-sex traffickers were engaged in plots to conduct a coup against Trump.
The FBI in a June 2021 threat assessment noted that more than 20 self-identified QAnon adherents had been arrested in the storming of the Capitol, stating that some of its violent followers were likely to begin believing that they had an obligation to shift “towards engaging in real-world violence,” while others disengaged.
The assessment said their presence underscored how the current environment “likely will continue to act as a catalyst for some to begin accepting the legitimacy of violent action.”
Davis said there are no such concerns with Jensen, writing: “Deterrence is a nonissue. The isolation of the pandemic, the allegations of the former president, and QAnon drops are all a thing of the past.”
Taylor Greene says Jan. 6 Capitol attack ‘would’ve been armed’ if she planned it
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said Saturday that the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol “would’ve been armed” if she and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon had planned it.
Speaking at a gala for the New York Young Republicans Club, the far-right lawmaker appeared to hit back at claims that she was somehow involved in plotting the Capitol riot.
“Then Jan. 6 happened. And next thing you know, I organized the whole thing, along with Steve Bannon here. And I will tell you something, if Steve Bannon and I had organized that, we would have won. Not to mention, it would’ve been armed,” Taylor Greene told the audience.
“See that’s the whole joke, isn’t it. They say that whole thing was planned and I’m like, are you kidding me? A bunch of conservatives, second amendment supporters, went in the Capitol without guns, and they think that we organized that?” Taylor Greene added, per footage shared online.
Greene, an outspoken ally of former President Trump, has long espoused his false claims of fraud during the 2020 presidential election. She was questioned earlier this year by the House select committee investigating Jan. 6 over her role in efforts to stop the certification of President Biden’s win.
Many supporters of Trump who came to Washington on Jan. 6 did bring weapons, and leaders of the Oath Keepers militia group were found guilty last month for seditious conspiracy. Members of the group allegedly stockpiled suitcases full of weapons at a Virginia hotel as part of its planning around that day.
On the morning of Jan. 6, Trump reportedly complained that some of his armed supporters were unable to join the crowd at his speech at the Ellipse, and then called on those same supporters to march to the Capitol, according to former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson.
Gavin Wax, president of the New York Young Republicans Club, told the audience at Saturday’s gala that Republicans “want war” against the left.
“We want to cross the Rubicon. We want total war. We must be prepared to do battle in every arena. In the media. In the courtroom. At the ballot box. And in the streets,” Wax said, as reported by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
“This is the only language the left understands. The language of pure and unadulterated power,” Wax added.