The Secret Service had warnings earlier than previously known that supporters of President Donald Trump wereplotting an armed attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, according to records revealed in a congressional hearing Thursday.
Secret Service agents in charge of assessing the risks around the protests had been tracking online chats on pro-Trump websites and noted that rallygoers were vowing to bring firearms, target the Capitol for a siege and even kill Vice President Mike Pence.
As early as Dec. 26, Secret Service officials were sharing one tipster’s warnings about extremist groups coming to the Capitol with murderous plans. “They think they will have a large enough group to march into DC armed and will outnumber the police so they can’t be stopped,” the tip read.
“Their plan is to literally kill people,” the tipster wrote. “Please, please take this tip seriously and investigate further.”
The evidence presented at the hearing adds the Secret Service to a long list of national security agencies who received prescient warnings about the assault protesters planned for Jan. 6, yet failed to respond with urgency or cohesion to prevent the insurrection.
Jan. 6 committee member Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) said the new details — retrieved in internal emails from a trove of more than a 1 million records the Secret Service provided the House panel — raise questions about how the agency shared its intelligence and whether officials have been forthright about their knowledge of the warnings.
“As we have seen, the Secret Service and other agencies knew of the prospect of violence well in advance of the president’s speech at the Ellipse,” Schiff said during the hearing. “Despite this, certain White House and Secret Service witnesses previously testified that they had received no intelligence about violence that could have potentially threatened any of their protectees on January 6th, including the vice president. Evidence strongly suggests that this testimony is not credible.”
In a statement, Secret Service Deputy Director Faron K. Paramore noted that the agency is not a “member of the Intelligence Community” and said it had shared its information widely with others.
“In the weeks leading up to Jan. 6, Secret Service was in constant communication and sharing information with our law enforcement partners in the Washington, D.C. area regarding available protective intelligence and open-source information concerning potential violence,” said Paramore.
Much of the intelligence cited in Thursday’s hearing was alarming in its specificity. One Secret Service unit, Schiff said, flagged a social media account on a pro-Trump site that threatened to bring a sniper rifle to Washington.
“Intelligence about this risk was directly available to the U.S. Secret Service and others in the White House in advance of the speech, in advance of the march to the Capitol,” Schiff said.
In a Dec. 30 email, a Secret Service agent warned of Trump supporters’ online threats, noting the U.S. Marshals Service was “seeing a lot of violent rhetoric directed at government people, entities, in addition to our protected persons.” The protected person most targeted for attack: the vice president.
On the morning of the rally, Schiff noted, the Secret Service knew many of the protesters in the crowd on the Ellipse had weapons, but it’s unclear what steps the agency took as a result. It is a crime to carry a firearm on federal property. Trump was scheduled to speak a little after noon.
Secret Service units shared reports from police that morning that they had seen rallygoers with firearms, including a Glock, a pistol, and a rifle. They knew D.C. police had reportedly detained a person carrying an assault rifle.
At the same time, they were getting reports of death threats against Pence, who had just entered the U.S. Capitol that morning to perform his role in certifying the election.
“Alert at 1022 regarding VP being a dead man walking if he doesn’t do the right thing,” one Secret Service email warned at 10:39 a.m.
By 12:36, as Trump took the stage, one Secret Service employee emailed another about the barely hidden threat all around them.
“With so many weapons found so far, you wonder how many are unknown” one Secret Service employee wrote to a colleague. “Could be sporty after dark,” he wrote, referring to the chance for gun battles.
“No doubt,” his colleague wrote back. “The people at the Ellipse said they are moving to the Capitol after the POTUS speech.”
During a private meeting last summer, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy told two police officers who defended the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and the mother of a third who died after the riot, that former President Donald Trump had no idea his supporters were carrying out the attack, according to newly obtained audio of the conversation.
Testimony to the House Select Committee on January 6 revealed that Trump watched television for hours as the rioters engaged in a brutal fight with law enforcement.
But McCarthy maintained Trump was unaware of the violence inside the Capitol when he spoke with Trump by phone that afternoon. He also appeared to take credit for getting the then-President to make a late-afternoon public statement urging his supporters to “go home,” according to one of the meetings’ attendees, then-DC Metropolitan police officer Michael Fanone.
“I’m just telling you from my phone call, I don’t know that he did know that,” McCarthy said during the June 2021 meeting about Trump’s knowledge of the fighting, according to audio secretly recorded by Fanone at the time and detailed in his new book titled, “Hold the Line: The Insurrection and One Cop’s Battle for America’s Soul.”
The District is a single-party consent jurisdiction for recordings, meaning it is legal for one party to record another without permission. CNN has reached out to McCarthy’s office for comment.
The meeting came as a number of House Republicans were attempting to downplay or distort the facts of what took place on January 6, when Trump’s false claims of a stolen election triggered a deadly attack on the Capitol by a violent pro-Trump mob.
It also took place as McCarthy was “backing off on a pledge to appoint Republicans to the special January 6 Committee,” Fanone writes, adding: “The only reason McCarthy had agreed to meet with us was because he’d been getting heat for refusing to see me.”
Fanone said Monday morning that he wasn’t surprised by McCarthy’s comments in the meeting, arguing that he “saw how he had deviated from his original statements immediately after January 6 to seize upon the politics of the moment.”
“But I’m glad I recorded it. That’s why I recorded it, was because I didn’t expect Kevin McCarthy to, No. 1, tell the truth; No. 2, recount the conversation accurately; and No. 3, I wanted to show people how indifferent lawmakers are, not just Republican lawmakers, but all lawmakers, to the actual American people that they are representing,” he told CNN’s Brianna Keilar on “New Day.”
While some details of the meeting were reported on the day it occurred, the newly released audio underscores just how quickly Trump regained his grip on the Republican Party following the January 6 attack despite an initial groundswell of bipartisan outrage over his unwillingness to denounce the violence as it was happening.
McCarthy himself said he considered asking Trump to resign in the immediate aftermath of the attack, according to previously released audio of a private conversation between the House minority leader and other Republican lawmakers.
Fanone, who was stun-gunned several times and beaten with a flagpole during the riot, had previously made several attempts to meet with the California Republican to discuss the insurrection before McCarthy ultimately agreed, according to his new book.
Republicans, including McCarthy, had largely opposed efforts to examine the circumstances of the insurrection, drawing intense criticism from Fanone and several other police officers who were there.
US Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn, who also defended the Capitol during the insurrection, and the mother of late Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick also participated in the meeting with McCarthy and all three repeatedly pressed McCarthy to acknowledge Trump’s role in spurring on the attack, according to the recording. Sicknick suffered multiple strokes and died a day after the riot.
It was his mother, Gladys Sicknick, who first challenged McCarthy’s claim about what Trump knew and when he knew it.
“He already knew what was going on,” she said of Trump, according to the audio obtained by CNN. “People were fighting for hours and hours and hours. This doesn’t make any sense to me.”
Later in the meeting, Fanone also confronted McCarthy about his defense of Trump, telling the Republican leader: “While you were on the phone with him, I was getting the shit kicked out of me!”
“I asked McCarthy why he would take credit for Trump’s pathetic, half-hearted late-afternoon video address to his followers. I said, ‘Trump says to his people, ‘This is what happens when you steal an election. Go home. I love you.’ What the f–k is that? That came from the president of the United States,” Fanone writes in his book.
All three urged McCarthy to condemn 21 members of his own party who voted earlier that month against awarding the Congressional Gold Medal to officers who defended the Capitol and pushed him to commit to a serious “insurrection investigation,” Fanone writes in his memoir.
“I told McCarthy I felt betrayed by the way some Republicans were twisting a riotous assault on law enforcement officers into a fundraising grift,” Fanone writes in his book.
“‘It’s crap,’ I said. ‘It’s disgraceful,’” he adds, recalling his comments during the meeting and noting that “McCarthy offered no response.”
McCarthy said ahead of his meeting with Fanone that he has “no problem talking to anybody about” his conversation with Trump on January 6 when asked by CNN if he would speak to the committee about the call.
Fanone suffered a heart attack and a concussion during the insurrection and is dealing with a traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder.
This story has been updated with additional reaction.
The mostly low-income kids in the Eastern High School Marching Band are beloved by the mostly affluent D.C. homeowners who witness their practices
October 8, 2022 at 7:00 a.m. EDT
Eastern High School band director James Perry, right, gives direction to the students as they march through Capitol Hill neighborhood to prepare for homecoming and the 100th anniversary of the school. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
Rush hour traffic slammed to a halt as the high school band director walked backward into the busy Capitol Hill intersection, followed by a line of teens gripping trombones, trumpets, french horns and flutes. The thunk-thunk-thunk of bass drums reverberated in the damp October air.
“Straight ahead, band, you got to be lookin’ straight ahead,” James Perry, director of the Eastern High School Marching Band, shouted at the students through his megaphone.
“Hey, hey, hey, hey!” they chanted back.
Eastern High’s homecoming and a celebration of the school’s 100th anniversary were just days away, and the 65-member band — known as “The Blue and White Marching Machine” — was practicing for a performance Saturday that would draw hundreds of Eastern students, parents and alumni.
Now, they followed a familiar path, down A Street NE toward Lincoln Park, delighting neighbors and anyone else who stumbled upon them.
Practically everyone pulled out their cellphone to record the band as it passed. With four students across, they took up the entire road.
Eastern High School marching band practiced their performance ahead of their homecoming in Capitol Hill on Oct. 6. (Video: Lizzie Johnson/The Washington Post)
People cheered and shouted encouragement from their front stoops, car windows and the small tables set up outside the local coffee shop, Wine & Butter. Children chased the teens down the block. Sometimes passing patrol cars would flick on their lights and block oncoming traffic so the students could safely pass.
Only the dogs weren’t fans. They lunged at the ends of their leashes or cowered behind their owners, uncertain.
But Perry, 41, who also works as an attendance counselor at Eastern, didn’t take it personally. He chalked it up to the drums.
As the students high-stepped down the street, over wet leaves and under a sky of sagging rain clouds, the driver of a black Toyota Camry rolled down his window and peered out. A woman smoking a cigarette, blue handbag slung over one shoulder, stopped on the sidewalk, gawking.
“Hey band?” Perry shouted.
“E-H-S!” they yelled.
They passed million-dollar rowhouses decorated for Halloween, with pumpkins heaped on porch steps and ghosts of stiff gauze frozen on lawns. A toddler pressed against the front door of one home, his breath fogging the glass.
Nearby, Katie Telligman, 42, put on a warm jacket and stepped outside her home to better hear the music.
“This has been one of the greatest things we’ve discovered since moving to this street five years ago,” said Telligman, who works in communications and has lived on Capitol Hill since 2002.
For a while, the pandemic had disrupted these impromptu parades. Now the neighborhood valued them even more.
“We’ve watched some of the kids grow up,” Telligman said. “It’s so unique and brings joy to people’s lives. They don’t put this on the real estate listings for the street, but they should. Where else in D.C. can you find this?”
‘The Pride of Capitol Hill’
In Room W01, Perry aimed to give his students something they couldn’t always find elsewhere at Eastern High — a place to dream.
Eastern’s 735 students, nearly all Black and most from poor families, face obstacles the affluent residents surrounding the school rarely do. Eastern has long struggled with low test scores, high absenteeism and teacher burnout.
She and her twin were inseparable. Then a gunman tore the 15-year-olds apart.
But in the band room, the teens felt like they had a chance to aspire for more.
“The main thing is family and new opportunities,” explained Marckelle Hodge, 17, a senior trombonist. “It’s more than I would’ve had in other programs. I want to get good grades, go to college, and make it out of my neighborhood. I’m thinking Texas Southern.”
Perry, who played alto saxophone in Norfolk State University’s band, knows that such a thing is possible. Recent graduates of Eastern’s program have received full-ride scholarships to Columbia, Florida A&M, Mississippi State and other universities — places he tries to take the students for band competitions to show them what’s possible.
What isn’t covered by a student’s scholarship is augmented by care packages from their musical alma mater. The boxes from the band arrive stuffed with laundry detergent, socks and underwear, towels, deodorant and other college kid essentials.
Many of Perry’s students “come from tough backgrounds and deal with a lot at home,” he said. For 15 years, he’s directed the program, which includes younger students from nearby middle schools that lack music programs.
Perry raises money for the band program by charging booking fees for their performancesin the community. It costs $750 — plus transportation — for an appearance from the drum line. The entire band costs $1,500.
It takes about two performances to pay for a competition, he said, usually in the Washington region but sometimes as far away as Atlanta. The buses are the most expensive part.
In 2019, Perry said he donated his own money to the band by selling his car so the teens could travel and afford new warm-up uniforms. He now walks to work, he said.
The Capitol Hill Community Foundation also gave the band a $20,000 grant to repair and replace instruments and announced plans to raise $90,000 more.
The band kids have always been scrappy. They used to play at Metro stations to raise money. They washed their threadbare uniforms at the laundromat because they couldn’t afford dry-cleaning, hand mending them as needed. But the band’s motto — “The Pride of Capitol Hill” — has proved true time after time.
The community, Perry said, “has really just adopted them.” In 2008, when the band needed $3,000 for the bus ride to a performance in Ohio, neighbors raised the money. And in 2015, when the band needed another $4,000 to get to Virginia, the community stepped up again.
The students practice three times a day, before, during and after school, usually finishing at 7 p.m. Perry often reminds them that their reputation as “the city’s premiere band” means everything.
The band room reflects their success. The piano and lockers are topped with colorful trophies and other awards. They’ve performed in four NFL halftime shows, three presidential inauguration parades and the opening ceremony for the FIFA World Cup Games. When The Washington Post moved out of its old building in Northwest D.C., Eastern’s band marched through the newsroom.
Anything but excellence, Perry tells the kids, is “bad for the brand.” When students talk over each other or fail to listen, he makes them do push-ups, calling it “character building.” He doesn’t tolerate misbehavior.
“It’s Homecoming week!” Perry yelled into his megaphone Tuesday afternoon as they started practice.
The students were clustered on the football field — hoods cinched around their faces to wield off the rain — preparing for their foray around Capitol Hill.
“The performance is on Saturday, y’all,” he continued. “Do we give up? Or do we maintain our energy? Y’all understand?”
“Yes sir!” they shouted back.
Davon Richardson, a 15-year-old sophomore who plays the trumpet, peppered Perry with questions, eager to get going. He was in a thin shirt, despite the 53-degree weather, and jumped from foot to foot to stay warm.
He liked parading through the neighborhood, he said.
The residential streets they marched down reflected a different reality than their school — the homeowners were predominantly White — but the students loved it.
“People cheering out their houses and listening to and enjoying us,” Richardson said. “I like hearing them yell.”
“Yeah, it feels like I’m making people’s day,” added Tobias Johnson, 16, a junior who also plays the trumpet. “I see them smile, and it makes me so happy.”
Their instruments might be old and their uniforms worn. Their section might be short two trumpets. But they knew they had an unparalleled capacity to spark joy.
The strains of “Just Got Paid” by Johnny Kemp thundered down the street. It was one of the band’s favorites, along with “I Would Die For You” by Prince.
The teens continued high-stepping — all knobby knees and twirling drumsticks — as they ventured deeper into the neighborhood. In house after house, heads popped out front doors. The music was the only lure that could prompt them outside on a drizzling afternoon.
“Go band, go band!” yelled Adrianne Marsh, 44, a political consultant, who bobbed and swayed to the beat with her two young daughters.
On the sidewalk, a blonde girl in a school backpack shimmied her shoulders. Her younger brother leaned back in their mother’s arms to see better.
Just then, two girls in pink shoes darted past them, hand-in-hand, chasing after the band.
One of them was Bahman Koosha’s 6-year-old daughter, Nikki Koosha, who said her favorite instrument is the drum because it makes her “feel happy.”
“I like that the band is noisy,” she said.
“Almost every other day, we come and watch,” said Koosha, 41, an engineer.
“As soon as the kids hear them, we have to go out,” agreed Filip Medic, 42, a director at a nonprofit.
He paused, watching as his 3-year-old, Tessa Medic, took off running again with Nikki.
At the end of the block, the band paused.
Perry blew into his whistle. The teens quieted, and he gave a few pointers over the megaphone.
“My fingers are freezing,” a flutist whispered to her classmate. “They’re going to fall off.”
A few moments later, they turned and resumed marching. The trombonists went first, dancing as they stepped, followed by the rest of the band, in a cymbals-clashing, drumbeating, sousaphone-blaring ruckus.
“Eastern!” they shouted.
In their wake, the music slowly faded and the neighborhood was quiet again.
Republican senator and Trump ally Lindsey Graham told a police officer badly beaten during the Capitol attack that law enforcement should have shot rioting Trump supporters in the head, according to a new book.
“You guys should have shot them all in the head,” the now ex-cop, Michael Fanone, says the South Carolina Republican told him at a meeting in May 2021, four months after the deadly attack on Congress.
“We gave you guys guns, and you should have used them. I don’t understand why that didn’t happen.”
On January 6, Fanone was a Metropolitan police officer who came to the aid of Capitol police as Trump supporters attacked. He was severely beaten, suffering a heart attack and a traumatic brain injury.
He has since resigned from the police, testified to the House January 6 committee and become a CNN analyst. His book, Hold the Line, will be published next week.
Politico reported the remarks Fanone says were made by Graham. The site also said Fanone secretly recorded other prominent Republicans, among them Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader and possibly the next speaker, who has also stayed close to Trump.
Politico said Fanone told McCarthy efforts to minimize the Capitol insurrection were “not just shocking but disgraceful”. McCarthy reportedly offered no response.
Last week, Rolling Stone published an extraordinarily frank interview in which Fanone, a self-described lifelong Republican, called McCarthy a “fucking weasel bitch”. McCarthy did not comment.
According to Politico, Fanone told Graham he “appreciated the enthusiasm” the senator showed for shooting rioters “but noted the officers had rules governing the use of deadly force”.
Fanone says the meeting with Graham was also attended by Harry Dunn, a Capitol police officer who has also testified in Congress, and Gladys Sicknick and Sandra Garza, the mother and partner of Brian Sicknick, an officer who died after the riot.
Fanone says Graham snapped at Gladys Sicknick, telling the bereaved mother he would “end the meeting right now” if she said more negative things about Trump.
Nine deaths, including officer suicides, have been linked to the Capitol attack. The riot erupted after Trump told supporters to “fight like hell” to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden, which he maintains without evidence was the result of electoral fraud. Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s attorney, urged Trump’s supporters to stage “trial by combat”.
Testimony to the House January 6 committee has shown Trump knew elements of the crowd were armed but told them to march on the Capitol and tried to go with them.
Representatives for Graham did not comment to Politico. The senator was previously reported to have advocated the use of force against Capitol rioters on the day itself.
That same day, Graham seemed to abandon his closeness to Trump. In a Senate speech hours after the Capitol was cleared, he said: “Count me out.” Days later, he said he had “never been so humiliated and embarrassed for the country”.
But like most Republicans, McCarthy literally so, Graham returned to Trump’s side. Like all but seven Republican senators, Graham voted to acquit in Trump’s second impeachment trial, for inciting the Capitol attack.
He recently predicted “riots in the streets” if Trump is indicted for retaining classified documents after leaving the White House.
In their recent book, The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021, Peter Baker of the New York Times and Susan Glasser of the New Yorker quote Graham as calling Trump “a lying motherfucker” … but “a lot of fun to hang out with”.
A New Jersey man who was one of the first rioters to break into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, then testified under oath that he didn’t know Congress met there, was sentenced Thursday to four years in prison.
Prosecutors had sought more than six years for Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, but a federal judge ruled that his actions did not obstruct “the administration of justice,” though they did obstruct the official proceedings of Congress that day. A jury convicted him of that offensein May.
Also Thursday, the only Jan. 6 defendant to testify about his conduct in front of the House select committee investigating the riot was sentenced to two years of probation for disorderly conduct. Stephen Ayres, a 39-year-old Ohio carpenter, said he thinks about Jan. 6 “every single day” and prays for the injured officers and everyone who lost a loved one.
Hale-Cusanelli, 32, worked as a security guard at Naval Weapons Station Earle and lived on the base in Colts Neck, N.J. In addition to being a supporter of President Donald Trump, the man was a white supremacist who supported Nazi ideology and admired Adolf Hitler, even wearing a “Hitler mustache” to work, the government said in court filings. But U.S. District Judge Trevor N. McFadden ruled that Hale-Cusanelli’s racist preferences were too prejudicial to present to a jury, though he did allow the defendant’s comments that he wanted a civil war to come into evidence.
N.J. man found guilty of felony obstruction of Congress in Jan. 6 riot
Surveillance video showed Hale-Cusanelli climbing through a window on the Lower West Terrace at 2:13 p.m., moments after it was first smashed, wearing a gray suit and a red MAGA hat. Before entering, prosecutors said, he moved a bicycle rack barrier aside to enable crowds to get closer to the building, and then urged the mob forward by waving his arms and yelling, “Advance! Advance!”
Once inside, Hale-Cusanelli was part of a group that overwhelmed U.S. Capitol and D.C. police in the crypt. Photos and videos showed that he then attempted to pull a rioter away from a police officer who was arresting that person. Hale-Cusanelli claimed that he didn’t know the officer was an officer, and that he thought the electoral vote certification “was going to be in a building called ‘Congress.’ As stupid as it sounds, I did not realize that Congress sat in the Capitol building.”
On Thursday, McFadden called that “a risible lie,” and after the jury convicted Hale-Cusanelli in May, the judge suggested to prosecutors that he would consider a request for a longer sentence for “obstruction of justice.” And McFadden did, in fact, increase Hale-Cusanelli’s sentencing range for those sworn statements.
But prosecutors sought two even longer sentencing enhancements for obstructing and interfering with the “administration of justice” at the Capitol. Defense attorney Nicholas D. Smith said that while Congress’s act of certifying the electoral college vote might qualify as an “official proceeding,” and all but one D.C. federal judge has agreed, the certification did not qualify as administration of justice. Prosecutors argued in their sentencing brief that the “’administration of justice’ is synonymous with ‘official proceeding.’ ”
McFadden agreed with the defense. He said the electoral college count was “appreciably different” from the investigations and other justice-related actions of Congress. “I don’t think the administration of justice, as used in the sentencing enhancement, is a fair way to describe what is happening here.”
He then reduced the sentencing guidelines range of 70 to 87 months down to 21 to 27 months. The guidelines are advisory, but judges typically issue sentences within the range. The government had requested a sentence of 78 months for Hale-Cusanelli.
But McFadden then blasted Hale-Cusanelli for his racist, sexist and antisemitic remarks, some of which were captured on a recording made by his roommate when Hale-Cusanelli returned to New Jersey after the riot. The judge repeated a profane taunt that Hale-Cusanelli shouted at a female Capitol Police officer during the riot, and criticized his “decision to lie on the witness stand.”
“Neither the jury nor I believed your claim that you didn’t know Congress resides in the Capitol building … you participated in a national embarrassment,” the judge said.
Though he had lowered the sentencing range to 21 to 27 months, McFadden sentenced Hale-Cusanelli to 48 months, followed by three years of supervised release.
The judge credited Hale-Cusanelli for showingremorse.
“My behavior that day was unacceptable and I disgraced my uniform and I disgraced the country,” Hale-Cusanelli said. He claimed he was “operating under the advice of counsel” when he testified about his confusion on where Congress sits. “I was challenging the law as it applied in my case.”
Elsewhere in the courthouse, Ayres told U.S. District Judge John D. Bates that he’s embarrassed and concerned by the political rhetoric that once captivated him. “I wish everybody in this country could stop and see where it’s going,” he said, in comments similar to those he madeduring a nationally televised meeting of the House Jan. 6 committee, where he said he hoped like-minded people would “take the blinders off.”
Prosecutors asked for 60 days in jail, citing violent social media comments Ayres made before Jan. 6 and his “lukewarm” response on Capitol Hill when asked if he still thought the 2020 presidential election was stolen. But Bates said he believed Ayres’s remorse was “sincere” and placed him on probation.
Howard Richardson pleaded guilty earlier this year to assaulting police officers during the Jan. 6 attack.
He entered restricted areas of the Capitol grounds and beat an officer with a Trump flag.
On Friday, he was sentenced to 46 months in prison, a $2,000 fine, and three years of supervised release.
Howard C. Richardson, a 72-year-old from Pennsylvania, was sentenced Friday to nearly four years in prison for beating a police officer with a Trump flag during the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Richardson, who pleaded guilty in April to a charge of assaulting a law enforcement officer, made his way to restricted areas of the Capitol grounds during the riot that interrupted Congress as members were counting electoral votes related to the 2021 presidential election, according to a statement released by the Department of Justice.
The Pennsylvania native told the FBI he was at the Capitol because he was “pissed off” about the 2020 presidential election and angry about alleged voter fraud, NBC reported. He marched through the crowd carrying a Trump flag as he passed officers trying to keep the surge at bay.
“At about 1:38 p.m., Richardson was standing several feet away from the police line at the West Terrace with the flagpole,” the DOJ statement read. “He raised it and forcefully swung it downward to strike an officer with the Metropolitan Police Department who was standing behind a metal barricade. Richardson then struck the officer two more times, using enough force to break the flagpole. Then, moments later, he joined other rioters in pushing a large metal sign into a line of law enforcement officers.”
The government’s sentencing memo indicated Richardson downplayed his participation in the attack, provided false information about his actions, and wrongly insisted he’d carried a “Back the Blue” flag, not a Trump flag, during the riot.
“Apparently unphased [sic] by the irony of using a pro-police symbol to attack a police officer, Richardson made this assertion even though the video footage clearly shows his flag is a blue and red “Trump” flag,” the memo read.
At the sentencing, NBC reported, Richardson apologized for his actions, saying he “lost [his] temper” and that there is “no excuse” for what he did, but that he had expected a party and “celebration” because he thought that the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential win would be stopped.
“I have learned my lesson, your honor,” NBC reported Richardson said. “I was going down as a patriotic citizen to celebrate. … I just want to go back to my life.”
Richardson was ordered to serve 46 months in prison and pay $2,000 in restitution, according to the DOJ statement about the sentencing. Following his release, Richardson will be placed on three years of supervised release.
Richardson is one of more than 860 individuals who have been arrested for crimes related to the Jan. 6 breach of the US Capitol, including more than 260 individuals charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement.
Eleven Days Ago, Capitol Records, the 80-year-old music institution, announced that it had broken into the metaverse by becoming the first major label to “sign” a virtual rapper named FN Meka. Today, it has ended its partnership with the A.I. emcee after major online backlash against an act that many felt was an insulting caricature of Black and hip-hop culture.
In a statement to Rolling Stone, a representative of Capitol Music Group wrote:
“CMG has severed ties with the FN Meka project, effective immediately. We offer our deepest apologies to the Black community for our insensitivity in signing this project without asking enough questions about equity and the creative process behind it. We thank those who have reached out to us with constructive feedback in the past couple of days—your input was invaluable as we came to the decision to end our association with the project.”
Capitol marked their announcement of FN Meka’s “deal” with the release of a new single by the avatar featuring Gunna, who’s currently jailed as he awaits trial for allegedly conspiring to violate the RICO Act alongside Young Thug and affiliates of their Young Stoner Life record label.
Really, Gunna carries “Florida Water,” the song that had already racked up over 1.5 million streams on Spotify before becoming unavailable on the platform this evening. “Florida Water” is pretty benign, flexing fare that aligns with the outrageously materialistic character FN Meka has been crafted into for 10.3 million TikTok followers. “Tesla, Gucci Cybertruck, I wreck that shit, don’t give a fuck,” Meka raps in his one brief verse, referencing a TikTok of Meka with an animated vehicle like the one he describes. That over-two-year-old video embodies much of the controversy surrounding FN Meka – it’s soundtracked by his song “Moonwalkin,” in which he clearly uses the N-word, once in the clip and four times on the full track. In an “interview,” Meka says that TikTok is his favorite post.
The virtual rapper — who describes himself as a robot in the afromentioned “interview” and across his TikTok and Instagram pages — is pretty human-looking, save for a golden left hand and chin plate below his glowing green pupils. Though Meka is obviously not a person in storyline nor reality, he mostly looks it — and he doesn’t immediately look Black. This racial ambiguity, tied together with songs in which Meka raps the N-word, had drawn intense ire across the internet.
Though Twitter user @natenumbaeight’s diss song towards FN Meka is comical, it poignantly depicts one of several issues critics have with the virtual rapper: “We cannot let robots say n*gga in any form/If we let robots say n*gga, that’s how robotic racism’s born.” There’s even more concerning animated content across the avatar’s pages, like posts of him in jail, dressed in an orange, seemingly Off-White jumpsuit and being beaten by a guard because he “won’t snitch,” causing more outcry over FN Meka’s perceived mockery of Black music, Black people, and Black plight.
Just hours before Capitol announced that it had essentially dropped FN Meka, Industry Blackout — an online coalition elevating civil rights causes at the intersection of Blackness and music since the uprisings of summer 2020 — posted a condemnation of Capitol Records on Instagram, calling on the label to terminate its partnership with Meka, formally apologize, remove his content from all platforms, and allocate funds spent on FN Meka to charities supporting Black youth in the arts and marketing budgets for Capitol’s black artists. Calling FN Meka “an amalgamation of gross stereotypes and appropriative mannerisms,” Industry Blackout’s letter says, “This digital effigy is a careless abomination and disrespectful to real people who face real consequences in real life.” The group points to Gunna’s indictment as an example, which employed lyrics by the Atlanta rapper — “the same type of lyrics this robot mimics,” the letter continues.
In 2021, Genius uncovered that the creators of FN Meka are brothers Chris and Brandon Le. FN Meka was also championed by Anthony Martini, the co-founder of an enterprise called Factory New. Martini claimed FN Meka was the first signee to Factory New, which described itself as a music company specializing in propelling virtual characters.
According to Martini in a 2021 interview with Music Business Worldwide, FN Meka was “created using thousands of data points compiled from video games and social media” and his music is performed by a human, but structured by artificial intelligence: “We’ve developed a proprietary AI technology that analyzes certain popular songs of a specified genre and generates recommendations for the various elements of song construction: lyrical content, chords, melody, tempo, sounds, etc. We then combine these elements to create the song.”
“The 6-7 pound sleeve like object landed at a high velocity approximately 6-8 feet from Capitol Police Screener Craig Donahue who was walking outside the entrance,” the state’s public safety department said in a news release.
Two other people were in the area and saw the object fall around 12:30 p.m. near the capitol building in Augusta
Capitol Police notified the Augusta State Airport and the Federal Aviation Administration, according to the release.
“The FAA has launched an investigation while attempting to locate the source of the part which is likely from a large airliner on an international route,” the news release said.
The FAA issued awareness notifications to flights that were over the area at the time of the incident, officials said in the news release.
CNN reached out to the FAA for comment. No injuries were reported in the incident.
WASHINGTON, Aug 14 (Reuters) – A 29-year-old Delaware man died in an apparent suicide early on Sunday after crashing his car into a barricade near the U.S. Capitol and firing shots into the air, police said.
While the man was getting out of the crashed car, it became engulfed in flames just after 4 a.m. (0800 GMT) at East Capitol Street and Second Street, U.S. Capitol Police said.
Police said the man was identified as Richard A. York III of Delaware. “It is still not clear why he chose to drive to the Capitol Complex,” Capitol Police said in a statement.
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Earlier, police said “it does not appear the man was targeting any members of Congress, who are on recess, and it does not appear officers fired their weapons.”
Charred pavement is left behind in an area where a man crashed his car into a barricade near the U.S. Capitol and fired shots into the air before killing himself, in Washington, U.S. August 14, 2022. REUTERS/Greg Savoy
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Police said the man then fired several gunshots into the air along East Capitol Street. As police responded and approached, the man shot himself, police said. No one was else injured.
The death is being investigated by the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, which did not immediately identity or any details of his motives.
There are security barricades around the Capitol Complex checkpoints that are closely guarded.
In April 2021, 25-year-old motorist Noah Green rammed a car into U.S. Capitol police and brandished a knife, killing one officer and injuring another and forcing the Capitol complex to lock down. Police shot and killed Green.
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Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Aurora Ellis
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.