- A lawsuit seeks to bar Trump from the primary in Colorado, citing Constitution’s insurrection clause The Associated Press
- Watchdog group sues to block Trump from Colorado ballot, citing 14th Amendment’s disqualification clause CNN
- Lawsuit filed to remove Trump from ballot in CO under 14th Amendment – CREW Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington
- Opinion: Trump “engaged in insurrection or rebellion,” let us prove it in a Colorado court The Denver Post
- Opinion | Will Colorado Kick Trump Off the Ballot? The Wall Street Journal
Tag Archives: insurrection
Lula administration ousts Gen. Julio Cesar de Arruda, head of Brazil’s army after insurrection
The removal of Arruda came six days after The Washington Post reported that he had sought to protect rioters and supporters of defeated former president Jair Bolsonaro who were sheltering at a camp in front of army headquarters after storming and ransacking the presidential palace, the supreme court and congress.
In addressing Arruda’s firing on Saturday evening, Múcio suggested Arruda’s conduct on the night of Jan. 8 was one reason for Arruda’s dismissal.
“After these last episodes, the issue with the camps, the issue of January 8th, relations with the command of the Army suffered a fracture in the level of trust. And we needed to stop that right at the beginning,” Múcio told reporters in Brasília while standing next to Arruda’s replacement, Gen. Tomás Miguel Ribeiro Paiva.
Even after the night of the riots, however, Lula had sought to avoid a direct conflict with Arruda, said a senior judicial source who also spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to speak candidly.
The official said Lula acted after Arruda refused his order to fire a former senior Bolsonaro aid, Col. Mauro Cid, who was also in command of an army battalion in the city of Goiânia.
The decision now could further raise tensions between Lula and the military, which, along with Brazil’s police forces, is widely believed to harbor strong sympathies for Bolsonaro — a right-wing ideologue and former army captain who stacked the ranks of his cabinet and key civil posts with former members of the armed forces.
Lula’s administration has already fired or forced into retirement at least 40 other rank-and-file members of the military who were involved in security at the presidential palace on the day of the attacks by Bolsonaristas — as Bolsonaro’s backers are known.
Judicial authorities are now investigating alleged dereliction of duty and possible collusion with rioters by the military and security forces. The evidence being probed includes the actions of military officials on the night of the riots, a change in the security plan before the insurrectionists gathered outside the federal buildings on Jan. 8, police inaction and fraternization as rioters began entering the buildings, and the presence of a senior officer of the military police who had told superiors he was on vacation.
“The January 8 riots have exposed Lula’s vulnerability vis-a-vis the military,” said Guilherme Casarões, a political scientist at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo. “They have been complicit with the pro-Bolsonaro movements that were growing since election results came out. They also have been key players in spreading disinformation and conspiracy theories against the government they should be serving.”
The Jan. 8 attack in Brazil echoed the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection on the U.S. Capitol. Just as in the United States, the rioters in Brazil were driven by false allegations of electoral fraud. Like Trump — a close ally and political lodestar of the 67-year old former leader defeated on Oct. 30 — Bolsonaro has also refused to recognize defeat.
But the potential complicity of the military, or at least its sympathy for the rioters, has made the dynamic more dangerous for Lula. Many of the rioters are believed to have been residents of a protest camp that sprang up at army headquarters in Brasília on the night of the Oct. 30 election, when Bolsonaristas falsely claimed the defeated president had been robbed.
On the night of the riots, Lula administration officials say, the president’s chief of staff, his justice and defense ministers, and other senior officials arrived at the space age-style army headquarters to negotiate the detention of insurrectionists and others in the protest camp.
“‘You are not going to arrest people here,’” Arruda told Lula’s justice minister around 10:20 p.m., The Washington Post reported on Jan. 14.
After initially refusing, military commanders agreed to allow security officials under Lula’s control to raid — but not until 6 a.m. the following day. Administration officials say they believe that gave the military time to warn hundreds of relatives and friends to leave.
Brazil’s Supreme Court moved on Jan. 13 to open an investigation into Bolsonaro as part of its probe into the “instigators and intellectual authors” behind the Jan. 8 assaults. Bolsonaro, who is currently holed up in Florida, spent much of his four-year term trying to undermine faith in Brazil’s reliable election system, attempts which escalated as polls showed him trailing Lula. Bolsonaro has denied any links to the rioters and has condemned political violence.
Arruda will be replaced by Gen. Paiva, the military commander for the Southeast. In a speech this week, Paiva called on Brazilians to respect the result of the October election and affirmed that the army is a nonpolitical and nonpartisan institution.
Lula had publicly expressed distrust of the army after Jan. 8, but aides had said he would not fire the commander before investigations were completed to avoid worsening tensions between the executive and the armed forces.
On Friday, Lula met with Arruda and the commanders of the Navy, Marcos Sampaio Olsen, and the Air Force, Marcelo Kanitz Damasceno. The meeting was intended to reduce tensions at the beginning of his government.
Lula, observers say, now will have to balance the expectations of his backers for justice with the need to ensure he does not further alienate his senior brass.
“Lula’s supporters expect the president to go on a witch hunt against Bolsonaristas in the military, [but] anything that may further fuel bad blood between generals and the administration will have dramatic political consequences for a president whose main task is to bring the country together,” Casarões said.
Sen. Ron Johnson downplays Jan. 6 as ‘not what an armed insurrection would look like’
“The ‘armed insurrectionists’ stayed within the rope lines in the Rotunda,” Johnson added, making air-quote gestures with his fingers. “I’m sorry — that’s not what an armed insurrection would look like. I don’t think they’d be able to reopen Congress about six hours later and complete the counting of electoral votes if there literally had been an ‘armed insurrection.’ So again, I realize that term has been used to inflame the situation.”
Johnson did not mention that many rioters went beyond the rope lines, ransacking congressional offices, damaging sculptures and art, and causing about $1.5 million worth of damage. At the insistence of top lawmakers, Congress reconvened about six hours after the attack, despite there still being shattered glass, broken furniture and what a spokesperson for the Committee on House Administration called “corrosive gas agent residue.” Rep. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) said there was “garbage and debris everywhere.”
The attack on the Capitol also left five people dead, including a police officer and a woman shot by police. Two other officers who were on duty that day later died by suicide.
Johnson’s comments Tuesday were swiftly condemned by several Democratic lawmakers and at least one member of the Biden administration.
“Ron Johnson continues to downplay the violence of Jan 6, glossing over how the mob seriously wounded police officers,” tweeted Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.). “January 6 was a deadly attempt to overturn the election. To call it anything else is a disservice to the brave men & women who protected our democracy that day.”
“To call what happened on Jan. 6 an ‘armed insurrection,” I just think is inaccurate,” Sen. Ron Johnson says at Milwaukee Rotary Club just now.
Johnson argued few weapons were confiscated but protesters “did teach us how you can use a flag pole” pic.twitter.com/28E3W7G3eg
— Natasha Korecki (@natashakorecki) October 4, 2022
“It WAS an armed insurrection,” tweeted former Republican congressman Joe Walsh, who has since left the GOP. “@RonJohnsonWI is wrong. And in November, the people of Wisconsin should tell him he’s wrong.”
Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes (D), who is running for Senate against Johnson, tweeted that his opponent is “still covering for the Jan. 6 insurrectionists.”
“This is NOT who we are or what we stand for in Wisconsin,” Barnes tweeted. “It’s time to vote him out.”
Johnson also said Tuesday that “protesters did teach us all how you can use flagpoles, that kind of stuff, as weapons.” In video of the Jan. 6 attack, law enforcement officers outside the Capitol were shown being harassed, beaten and sprayed with gas substances by members of the mob. One of the Capitol Police officers who responded that day, Caroline Edwards, said she was struck in the head with a bike rack. She later described the scene as “carnage,” recalling how officers were on the ground, bleeding and throwing up. In one video from the attack, a rioter can be seen bashing a fallen police officer with a pole flying the American flag.
“You mean the January 6th attackers ‘did teach us how you can use a flag pole’ to brutally beat police officers, @SenRonJohnson?” deputy White House press secretary Andrew Bates tweeted Tuesday in response to Johnson’s remarks.
In a statement, Johnson’s office claimed that the senator had said “summer protesters,” not “some of the protesters,” and that he had been referring to people protesting the killing of George Floyd in the summer of 2020.
“This clip is completely and deceptively taken out of context to push a political narrative,” Johnson spokeswoman Alexa Henning said in an email. “He acknowledges the left-wing rioters know how to use flagpoles and other metal objects and water bottles as weapons. But there is a distinction between that and an armed insurrection.”
Johnson was “in no way condoning this action,” Henning added.
This is not the first time Johnson has downplayed the severity of the Jan. 6 attack. Several Democrats last year called on Johnson to step down after he said on a conservative radio show that the Capitol rioters hadn’t scared him — but that they might have had they been Black Lives Matter protesters. On Tuesday, Johnson reiterated part of those sentiments.
“I did say I was never afraid on Jan. 6 because it’s true,” Johnson said. “I was in the Senate chamber. They closed the doors. My assumption was that a couple of crazy people got by security. … About five, 10 minutes later they opened up the door and said go back to your office. And I went back to my office and then I saw the violence.”
Johnson’s comments came as a trial began this week for several members of the extremist Oath Keepers group who allegedly traveled to Washington and staged firearms near the Capitol before forcing entry through the Capitol Rotunda doors in combat and tactical gear in the Jan. 6 attack. Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes and four co-defendants face seditious conspiracy and other charges; they have pleaded not guilty to felony charges alleging that they conspired for weeks after the 2020 presidential election to unleash political violence to oppose the lawful transfer of power to Biden.
Spencer S. Hsu, Tom Jackman and Rachel Weiner contributed to this report.
Commanders coordinator Jack Del Rio calls Jan. 6 insurrection a ‘dust-up’
Del Rio, 59, has been outspoken on Twitter in each of the three offseasons he’s been a Commanders coach, often on conservative political issues.
The latest came Monday night in response to an article by the Brookings Institution think tank about the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. Del Rio wrote, “would love to understand ‘the whole story’ about why the summer of riots, looting, burning and the destruction of personal property is never discussed but this is ??? #CommonSense.”
His comments have drawn the ire of some fans and commentators, with former cornerback DeAngelo Hall tweeting a clown emoji at the veteran coach, and Brian Mitchell calling on Commanders head coach Ron Rivera to address the situation.
“How do [you] expect anybody on that team to be straightforward when you’ve got a guy like that in the defensive coordinator position?” Mitchell said on his 106.7 The Fan radio show Wednesday.
Del Rio said he’s not concerned that his players would take offense to his comments.
“Anything that I ever say or write, I’d be comfortable saying or writing in front of everybody that I work with, players and coaches,” Del Rio told reporters Wednesday. “I express myself as an American; we have that ability. I love this country, and I believe what I believe, and I’ve said what I want to say. Every now and then, there’s some people that get offended by it.”
After practice, Rivera declined to discuss Del Rio’s tweets and whether he’d discussed them with his defensive coordinator. Rivera said he does “not necessarily” worry Del Rio’s comments will affect the locker room, which is predominantly Black and includes many players who supported the Floyd protests with words and social media posts two years ago. If it does become an issue, Rivera said, he’ll deal with it.
“How I deal with it, I’m not going to share with you guys because it’s going to be a private matter,” he added.
Some of the defense’s most vocal leaders, including defensive tackle Jonathan Allen and defensive end Chase Young, were not available for comment Wednesday. Cornerback Kendall Fuller said he hadn’t seen Del Rio’s tweet, and after he was read it, said he had no reaction. If he changed his mind, he said, he’d bring it up with his coordinator.
Fuller was asked if the team has had ongoing discussions about race since the summer 2020 demonstrations.
“It’s definitely something that guys still have,” he said. “It might not be as broad as how that was when everything happened. But it’s something that you still see, conversations that guys still have. Just like everything in the locker room. I love NFL locker rooms because everybody’s so comfortable. We all know each other; we’re all comfortable with each other; everybody’s open to listening and hearing everybody. Everybody’s kind of just putting their opinion and their pride aside and just listening to everyone’s opinions. I think that’s how we grow.”
Marjorie Taylor Greene testimony live: MTG accused of using ‘codeword’ to direct Jan 6 insurrection
Marjorie Taylor Greene complains ‘nasty’ media won’t be barred from her trial
Marjorie Taylor Greene will face an administraive judge at a hearing Friday afternoon that could see the Georgia Republican banned from public office because of her alleged support for the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol.
The congresswoman will be questioned about the 2021 insurrection by lawyer Ron Fein, representing a group of voters who filed a challenge with the Georgia secretary of state’s office alleging that Ms Greene helped facilitate the attack that ultimately sought to upend Congress’ certification of Joe Biden’s presidential election victory.
They say that her behaviour violates a clause in the US Constitution’s 14th Amendment and makes her ineligible to run for reelection.
Among other things, the case against the congresswoman hinges on her repeated use of a “codeword” – specifically, repeated references to the year 1776 – which the laywers say encouraged the rioters who descended on the Capitol.
For her part, Ms Greene is appealing a federal judge’s ruling allowing a challenge to her eligibility to run for reelection to proceed and in the hour leading up to her hearing, the pro-Trump lawmaker took to Twitter to urge her fellow Republicans to “protect election integrity”.
The hearing is currently underway in Atlanta with Ms Greene giving testimony.
Rep Greene says that she was not asking them to actively engage in violence.
She was evasive when asked whether she wanted Congress to not certify Joe Biden as president, but said “yes” when asked if she believed that Mr Biden has not won the 2020 election.
Proceedings have been paused due to a technical issue.
Oliver O’Connell22 April 2022 16:40
Another tweet is brought up in which Rep Greene tells her followers to come to Washington DC to protest the election results. She uses the hashtag #FightforTrump.
Ms Greene confirms that is what it says in the tweet.
Oliver O’Connell22 April 2022 16:37
The objections and disruptions have annoyed the judge.
“This is not theatre. This is not an argument before the Supreme Court. This is an evidentiary hearing.”
Oliver O’Connell22 April 2022 16:33
Ms Greene is asked about her use of social media, how she uses it, and who reads it.
She is then asked about a specific tweet about election fraud from 3 December 2020 in which she was looking for a senator to join her and Mo Brooks in objecting to the election certification.
There are a series of objections from Rep Greene’s lawyer, Mr Bopp.
Oliver O’Connell22 April 2022 16:32
Rep Greene is asked whether if someone broke the law to interfere with counting the electoral votes, would that make someone an enemy of the Constitution.
She says she doesn’t know. But she says hundreds broke law during the 6 January 2021 Capitol riot.
Mr Fein keeps pressing on a hypothetical question: If she had advanced knowledge that someone sought to unlawfully interfere with the counting of electoral votes, would she be obliged to do something to stop that?
Mr Bopp objects and the objection is sustained.
Oliver O’Connell22 April 2022 16:26
McCarthy said Trump accepted ‘some responsibility’ for Jan 6, new audio reveals
As Kevin McCarthy reels from the leak of a conversation in which he described telling Donald Trump to resign over the 6 January Capitol riot, a new recording has emerged of the top House Republican telling members of his party that the then-president accepted “some responsibility” for the attack.
Andrew Naughtie has the latest.
Oliver O’Connell22 April 2022 16:20
Greene takes the stand
Marjorie Taylor Greene has taken the stand.
She is being questioned about her role as a congresswoman and what it means to her.
Marjorie Taylor Greene takes the stand in a hearing to decide if she is eligible to run for Congress again
(PBS)
Oliver O’Connell22 April 2022 16:17
Greene to be confronted in court with videos of her Jan 6 insurrection support
The attorney seeking to disqualify Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene from seeking reelection based on her support for the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol said he plans to present video evidence of her own words that will show her support for the pro-Trump insurrection.
Andrew Feinberg reports on the opening statements from the hearing.
Oliver O’Connell22 April 2022 16:02
‘This is not a show’
After a number of objections from Mr Bopp, the judge says what he has heard .so far he would have expected to have read in legal briefs prior to the hearing.
He announces the mid-morning break to applause from the audience, whom he quickly chastises: “This is not a show.”
Oliver O’Connell22 April 2022 15:53
Mr Magliocca provides a history of Shays’ Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion — two insurrections well-known to Americans in addition to the Civil War at the time of the writing of the 14th Amendment.
Both were protests by farmers regarding foreclosures and taxes respectively.
Oliver O’Connell22 April 2022 15:46
Donald Trump attacks Mitch McConnell after he criticizes RNC censure of two House Republicans probing Jan. 6 insurrection
Trump’s statement, in which he continued to repeat false claims about election fraud, came a day after McConnell became the highest-ranking Republican elected official to criticize the RNC for the resolution censuring Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) for serving on the House panel investigating attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.
Pushing back against language in the RNC resolution that described the committee’s work as “a persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse,” McConnell described the attack as a “violent insurrection for the purpose of trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power.”
“The issue is whether or not the RNC should be sort of singling out members of our party who may have different views from the majority. That’s not the job of the RNC,” he said.
In his statement, Trump attacked McConnell on several unrelated issues as well, saying he had not done enough to counter the Biden administration on “the invasion of our Borders,” “rising Inflation,” “Unconstitutional mandates” and the “incompentent (sic) Afghanistan withdrawal.”
Trump then took a shot at McConnell for not intervening to try to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
“If Mitch would have fought for the election, like the Democrats would have if in the same position, we would not be discussing any of the above today, and our Country would be STRONG and PROUD instead of weak and embarrassed,” Trump said.
The back-and-forth between Trump and McConnell underscored fissures between the two men as well as between factions of the Republican Party that they represent.
The broader divide was on display Wednesday as the Republican Governors Association unveiled a television ad, with a reported $500,000 buy, backing Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R).
The Republican incumbent faces a primary challenge from David Perdue, the former U.S. senator who was lured into the race by Trump. Trump is heavily featured in Perdue’s first television ad, in which Trump criticizes Kemp for not intervening to overturn the presidential election results in Georgia.
The RGA ad makes no mention of Perdue, instead promoting Kemp as a “conservative leader fighting back” against policies of the Biden administration.
“Kemp cut taxes, creating one of America’s fastest growing economies and good-paying jobs,” the narrator says.
Democrats, meanwhile, are reveling in the intraparty fighting between pro-Trump Republicans and the establishment wing of the GOP.
“Grab your popcorn and get ready,” Democratic National Committee spokesman Hyma Moore said in a statement in which he described the RGA as being “at war with Donald Trump.”
“Georgia Republicans know a little about messy intraparty fights and this primary is already a disaster,” Moore said. “Donald Trump’s stranglehold on the Republican Party ensures that regardless of which Republican survives this primary, Georgia Republicans are guaranteed to have a rough time.”
Biden set to deliver remarks on first Capitol insurrection anniversary
In Washington, DC, one year ago, Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building following the then-President’s rally on the Ellipse outside the White House, where he cast doubt on the results of the 2020 presidential election.
The events of the day led to Trump’s second impeachment by the House of Representatives. The insurrection launched the largest investigation in FBI history, with 700 people arrested and hundreds more offenders still at large. And a House select committee continues to investigate the events leading up to the riots. Two Trump allies — Mark Meadows and Steve Bannon — have been held in criminal contempt for declining to cooperate with committee investigators after being subpoenaed.
On Capitol Hill, a series of events organized by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will take place following Biden’s speech to mark the January 6 anniversary, including a moment of silence on the House floor and testimonials from lawmakers about the harrowing attack.
During his speech at Statuary Hall inside the Capitol building, Biden is expected to “lay out the significance of what happened at the Capitol and the singular responsibility President Trump has for the chaos and carnage that we saw,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said during Wednesday’s press briefing.
In a preview of the President’s remarks, Psaki said Biden will also “push back on the lie spread by the former President and attempt to mislead the American people and his own supporters as well as distract from his role and what happened.”
The events of the insurrection took place just two weeks before Biden’s inauguration, casting a shadow on the new President’s administration. And despite the slew of tossed out court cases, failed state election audits and countless debunked conspiracy claims, many Trump supporters have continued to doubt the legitimacy of Biden’s presidency.
Speaking about that violent day, which included five fatalities, the President is expected to discuss “the importance of history, of the peaceful transfer of power,” as well as what the United States needs “to do protect our own democracy and be forward looking.”
Biden will address “silence and complacency” among Republican lawmakers since January 6, as well as voting rights, Psaki said, noting that Trump “abused his office, undermined the Constitution and ignored his oath to the American people in an effort to amass more power for himself and his allies.”
Vice President Kamala Harris is also expected to deliver remarks on Thursday regarding the anniversary of the insurrection.
Harris expected to say “that the insurrection was not just an assault on our Capitol, but an assault on our freedom and values,” according to a White House official.
“The vice president will outline that the American experiment is being tested, and that we must work to secure voting rights, ensure free and fair elections, and safeguard our democracy for generations to come. She will also honor the brave men and women in law enforcement, who fought to uphold our democracy, protected the Capitol and saved the lives of the people who were there,” the official said in a statement.
While Trump was expected to hold a news conference scheduled for the anniversary of the insurrection, it was abruptly canceled. Allies had warned it would cause unnecessary problems for Republicans and himself.
Instead of his news conference on Thursday, Trump is expected to air his grievances at a campaign-style rally in Arizona next week.
Lawmakers and historians to commemorate anniversary
At the end of December, Pelosi announced a slate of events at the Capitol to mark the passage of a year since the deadly attack.
In a letter to Democrats, Pelosi wrote that the events “are intended as an observance of reflection, remembrance and recommitment, in a spirit of unity, patriotism and prayerfulness.”
At noon, there will be a prayer and a moment of silence on the House floor. Then a moderated conversation will take place featuring historians Doris Kearns Goodwin and Jon Meacham. Pelosi’s letter said that the discussion will serve “to establish and preserve the narrative of January 6.”
Afterward, lawmakers will have time to provide testimonials to “share their reflections of the day.” Colorado Democratic Rep. Jason Crow will preside over the testimonials. Crow was one of the lawmakers trapped inside the House chamber during the attack and was famously pictured crouched down in aid to a colleague who appeared to be in distress.
“Trauma, any trauma, impacts everybody,” Crow, a former Army Ranger, told CNN not long after the attack. “Nobody is immune to it and everybody responds to it differently.”
Later, a prayer vigil will be held on the center steps of the Capitol where House and Senate lawmakers can participate.
While congressional Democrats have put together a full day of events to bring attention to what happened during the insurrection, congressional Republicans, in contrast, have seemed reluctant to talk much about it and especially reluctant to address Trump’s role.
In a letter to House Republicans at the start of the new year, House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy briefly mentioned the January 6 anniversary, but did not include any mention of the former President.
“The actions of that day were lawless and as wrong as wrong can be. Our Capitol should never be compromised and those who broke the law deserve to face legal repercussions and full accountability,” he wrote.
McCarthy then pivoted to criticizing Democrats.
“Unfortunately, one year later, the majority party seems no closer to answering the central question of how the Capitol was left so unprepared and what must be done to ensure it never happens again. Instead, they are using it as a partisan political weapon to further divide our country,” he said.
GOP leaders won’t be in the Capitol on Thursday with the House out of session and a number of Republican senators heading to Georgia to attend a memorial service for the late Sen. Johnny Isakson.
CNN’s Phil Mattingly, Melanie Zanona and Nikki Carvajal contributed to this report.
Inside the DOJ investigation of the Jan. 6 insurrection
But the expansive investigation has yet to shed light on how vigorously the former President and political allies could be investigated for inciting rioters by spreading a lie that the election was stolen and asking them to march to the Capitol.
After opening aggressively, with prosecutors raising the prospect of using a rarely used seditious conspiracy law to charge some Capitol attackers, the Justice Department since Attorney General Merrick Garland took office in March 2021 has settled into a less headline-grabbing approach that Justice officials say is intended to keep the probe away from the political maelstrom.
Garland, a former appeals court judge, has made restoring institutional norms a top focus of his tenure, after a Trump era that regularly injected politics at the department. That includes a reminder to prosecutors that they should only speak in indictments and other court proceedings.
His quiet approach has not satisfied Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans who openly discuss their interest in identifying crimes they believe the Justice Department should prosecute. It’s also opened Garland to criticism that he hasn’t been as publicly dynamic or aggressive as the nation needs to counter a threat to democracy.
“I think Merrick Garland has been extremely weak and I think there should be a lot more of the organizers of January 6 that should be arrested by now,” Rep. Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat, said on CNN this week.
Justice Department spokesman Anthony Coley defended the agency’s efforts. “We are proud of the men and women of the Justice Department, who are undertaking the largest investigation in the department’s history,” Coley said in a statement. “They are following the facts and the law and the Constitution while working at impressive speed and scale to hold accountable all those responsible for the attack on the Capitol, and will continue to do so.”
For the FBI, which came under criticism for failing to do more to prevent the attack, the January 6 anniversary is also a moment to urge the public to help with more tips to solve notable unsolved crimes, including the police assaults and the pipe bombs found that day near the offices of the Democratic and Republican parties just steps from the Capitol.
Steven D’Antuono, assistant director for the FBI’s Washington field office, said those inquiries are priorities as part of the broader complex investigation.
“In this area where the bombs were placed, if they did go off they could have caused some serious harm or death,” D’Antuono said in an interview with CNN.
“On that day, over 100 police officers were assaulted that day multiple times,” D’Antuono said. “And we’re not just talking about one assault, multiple assaults and by multiple people. We’re still looking for about 250 people individuals that assaulted police officers that day.”
The FBI hired a contractor to help it process hundreds of thousands of hours of video in order to do the painstaking work to identify assailants. “We’re going to be at this as long as it takes,” he said.
Accountability beyond the rioters
The January 6 attack reframed the face of a domestic terrorism threat that the FBI, Homeland Security Department and other agencies say has grown rapidly. And the January 6 investigation has led to several arrests of what appear to be political extremists on the far right, and extensive investigations into militarized organizations that affiliated themselves with Trump and had members participating in the Capitol violence.
But in many ways, the role of the former President, whose rhetoric fueled the mob and continues to animate supporters, is the elephant in the room that Justice Department officials try to not talk about.
In one of the first moves under Garland, the Justice Department turned over thousands of pages of internal documents to congressional committees investigating the Capitol attack.
The move, which departed from precedent, was aimed at providing lawmakers with information that they could use more quickly to expose the conduct among people in the former administration who inspired the attack. That includes former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, who according to testimony by former Trump officials, sought to engineer a coup of department leadership before January 6 and wanted to use the department to support Trump’s false election fraud claims.
The tacit acknowledgment in the move, however, was an indication that it was unlikely that the former president and top officials would face criminal prosecution for actions that incited the attack.
Some Justice officials say that providing the documents to Congress will help provide Americans answers that the Justice Department perhaps may never expose, since the department can only provide a narrative of events when it brings charges.
Justice officials note that prosecutors generally have five years of statute of limitations for most crimes that occurred January 6 and they haven’t foreclosed on the possibility of targeting higher-level figures.
If the release of troves of records to Congress was intended to relieve pressure on the department, in some ways it has done the opposite. Members of the House select committee investigating the attack, have highlighted information they’ve uncovered so far to build a steady drumbeat of pressure for the department to make sure there’s accountability beyond the hundreds of people who illegally entered the Capitol.
Fast start to the largest investigation in FBI history
The investigation began with a burst of activity, with 70 people being charged in the first week and a hundred case files opened, prosecutors said in a briefing. The swiftness was motivated in part because of concerns that a repeat of violence could disrupt the inauguration of President Joe Biden just weeks later.
“No US attorney’s office has charged that many cases, executed this many subpoenas and search warrants in such a short period of time,” Michael Sherwin, the former acting District of Columbia US attorney who helped oversee the investigation, said in an interview. “Speed was critical. We had the Inauguration coming up. We had to instill in the public a sense of order and the rule of law, to mitigate the damage that happened that day.”
But those early news conferences from Sherwin and D’Antuono, who together presented a tough New York-style voice to the law enforcement work, quickly gave way as Garland ushered in a lower-profile style. Sherwin left the Justice Department after he was reprimanded for not getting permission to do an interview with CBS News’ 60 Minutes, in which he said, among other things, that he believed the Department could charge seditious conspiracy.
The crime scene at the Capitol was unusual and unprecedented in size, in many ways because of how surveillance and police cameras captured dozens of angles of the attack of the Capitol, and because the bragging online posts from the riot’s participants gave prosecutors multiple terabytes of evidence.
Early on, the FBI opened its tip lines and published photos of high profile attackers, immediately ushering a flood of tips from average citizens turning in family, friends and strangers. A loose group of online sleuths, nicknamed Sedition Hunters, organized themselves to cull through publicly released images to help identify dozens of suspected rioters. Their work, which sometimes has been faster than the FBI’s, has been hailed by prosecutors who credited their work in criminal charging documents.
Plodding pace of riot court
Garland’s approach to the January 6 probe appears to mimic the plodding pace of court — what may seem sensible to the long-time federal judge but what largely keeps the wider public from witnessing much of the investigative action outside of court proceedings and documents. So far, more than 160 federal defendants have pleaded guilty, with all but 20 so far pleading guilty to lower-level misdemeanor charges — leaving the bulk of the felony cases to move forward in court in 2022.
About 70 defendants have been sentenced, to either probation or stints in home confinement or jail. Many of the felony defendants are looking at potentially years in prison if found guilty.
The first January 6 criminal trials are set to begin in February. In those days-long proceedings, prosecutors will have to give more of a window into the breadth of communications data, video and other evidence they’ve collected in what has become the largest federal investigation in American history.
At times, the pursuits in court have already connected January 6 investigators to the phone logs of members of Congress and a vast web of MAGA celebrities, such as Roger Stone and Sidney Powell, in touch with people around Trump’s White House leading up to January 6.
But the Justice Department turning the screws on Trump’s closest contacts may be a long way off, if pursued at all. Prosecutors won’t take to trial for months major conspiracy indictments against alleged leaders of the right-wing Proud Boys that broke into the Capitol through a window, and participants in a group of Oath Keepers. In the latter case, with 17 defendants heading to trial, some are accused of stationing guns outside the city on January 6, others say they were acting as security for VIPs, and other defendants zoomed a golf cart to Capitol Hill while coordinating their group during the attack, prosecutors say.
So far, four Oath Keepers defendants have pleaded guilty and appear to be cooperating with prosecutors. And while the Proud Boys’ lawyers have murmured about cooperating witnesses for months and how prosecutors pressured some of them to cooperate, the first known Proud Boys member to be charged with conspiracy flipped only in the last weeks of 2021.
Fact check: 5 enduring lies about Capitol insurrection
They have falsely claimed all of the rioters were unarmed. They have falsely claimed the people at the Capitol merely held a “protest” against an election they falsely claimed was fraudulent. They have falsely claimed the rioters were welcomed into the Capitol by police officers.
They have falsely claimed the riot was orchestrated by left-wing groups or the FBI. And they have falsely claimed nonviolent rioters are being jailed as “political prisoners.”
Here is a fact check of five of the most enduring lies about January 6.
Lie: The rioters were completely unarmed
Trump and some of his allies continue to claim that all of the people at the Capitol on January 6 were unarmed.
In a December 21 statement, Trump called January 6 a “completely unarmed protest.” Similarly, in a tweet on December 17, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia wrote, “One of the biggest holes in the lie about J6 being a planned insurrection is that all the people there were unarmed. Anyone with half a brain knows that gun owners only leave their firearms at home when they don’t feel the need to carry a gun or are obeying the law.”
Facts First: It’s not even close to true that all of the people at the Capitol on January 6 were unarmed — and the claim is still false even if it is specifically about guns. People who illegally entered Capitol grounds during the insurrection were armed with a wide variety of weapons, including guns, stun guns, knives, batons, baseball bats, axes and chemical sprays. The Department of Justice said in an official update last week that so far “over 75” people charged in connection to the attack “have been charged with entering a restricted area with a dangerous or deadly weapon.”
We may never get a complete inventory of the concealed weapons the rioters possessed on January 6, since nearly all of the rioters were able to leave the Capitol without being detained and searched. But prosecutors have alleged that some of the people present at the Capitol were armed with guns, as were some other Trump supporters who traveled to Washington for January 6.
Mark Mazza of Indiana has been charged with crimes including possession of a firearm on Capitol grounds; he has pleaded not guilty. According to the Capitol Police, Mazza accidentally dropped his loaded revolver during a struggle with police on a Capitol terrace. He allegedly told investigators later that if he had visited House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that day, “you’d be here for another reason.”
Guy Reffitt of Texas has been charged with crimes including illegally carrying a semi-automatic handgun on Capitol grounds; he has pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors allege Reffitt “specifically targeted at least two lawmakers — the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, and then-Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell — whom he sought to physically remove or displace from the Capitol building.” And police allege Christopher Alberts of Maryland was arrested trying to flee Capitol grounds on January 6 with a loaded pistol; he has pleaded not guilty.
Mark Ibrahim, who was an off-duty special agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration at the time of the riot, has been charged with crimes including carrying a firearm on Capitol grounds. Ibrahim, who has said he was later fired by the DEA (the DEA would confirm to CNN only that he no longer works there), was photographed that day displaying what appeared to be a handgun. He has pleaded not guilty.
In addition, Lonnie Coffman of Alabama, who pleaded guilty to weapons charges in November, admitted that he had carried two loaded pistols in Washington on January 6 and that a truck he had parked blocks from the Capitol contained additional loaded guns, Molotov cocktails and other weapons. Cleveland Meredith Jr., who pleaded guilty to threatening to kill Pelosi and was sentenced to 28 months in prison, drove from Colorado to Washington with a rifle and handgun that were found in his trailer outside a Washington hotel. The FBI said Meredith had told agents he had tried to get to Washington on January 5 but ended up arriving late on January 6.
Lie: The rioters were merely protesting a ‘rigged’ election
Trump called on his supporters to come to Washington on January 6 for a “wild” protest against President Joe Biden’s victory, which Trump falsely claimed was fraudulent. During his rally speech on the morning of January 6, Trump pushed that election lie, directed supporters to march to the Capitol and urged them to “fight like hell.”
After the insurrection, Trump continued to repeat the election lie for months — and adapted it to minimize what had happened at the Capitol. In an October statement, he claimed that the “real insurrection” was the 2020 election and January 6 was simply a “day of protesting.” (He also made similar claims later in the year.)
Facts First: Both parts of Trump’s claim are obvious lies. The election wasn’t rigged and wasn’t fraudulent; Biden won fair and square; there was a tiny smattering of voter fraud that was nowhere near widespread enough to have changed the outcome in any state, let alone to have reversed Biden’s 306-232 victory in the Electoral College. And the insurrection of January 6 — in which approximately 140 police officers were assaulted and the peaceful transfer of power was violently interrupted — involved thousands of alleged crimes; it was, very clearly, no mere protest.
“This was not a peaceful protest. Hundreds of people came to Washington, DC, to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power,” Chief Judge Beryl Howell of the DC District Court said last January. Howell added in October: “The rioters attacking the US Capitol on January 6th, as part of a large mob, were not mere trespassers engaging in protected First Amendment protests; they were certainly not tourists. And I say that again and again because there still seems, in some areas, to be a debate about that issue.”
Lie: The rioters were invited into the Capitol by police
A common refrain from January 6 rioters, and some of their Republican defenders, is that they were welcomed into the Capitol by police officers.
Trump said in a book interview in March that “the Capitol Police were ushering people in” and “the Capitol Police were very friendly. You know, they were hugging and kissing.” The claim has been echoed by Trump supporters. For example, Trump-endorsed Republican Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake declared at a Trump rally in October that the people being held in jail over the Capitol attack “were invited in by Capitol Police.”
Facts First: The claim that the rioters were invited into the Capitol is false. Again, about 140 police officers were assaulted while trying to stop the mob from breaching the Capitol. There were hours-long battles between police and rioters near some entrances. CNN obtained footage from police body-worn cameras showing how dozens of officers engaged in hand-to-hand combat with rioters in a desperate effort to keep them out of the building.
There are plenty of instances where rioters waltzed into the Capitol without a fight, but only after they had stormed past barricades and, in some cases, even stepped through broken windows. In some areas, police were so outnumbered by the mob that they retreated, stood aside or tried to politely engage with rioters to de-escalate the situation rather than fighting or making arrests, but that is clearly not the same as welcoming rioters into the building.
Since we don’t have video of every single encounter between police and rioters, it’s theoretically possible that some tiny number of officers did invite rioters in. The Capitol Police announced in September that three officers were facing discipline for unspecified noncriminal “conduct unbecoming” that day, while three others were facing discipline for other policy violations.
But no evidence has publicly emerged to date of even one officer inviting a rioter into the Capitol. And even if a few isolated incidents emerge in the future, it’s clear that this was not a widespread or systemic occurrence as Trump and others suggested.
Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger said on CNN in September: “The officers that we have investigated and disciplined, the cases that we investigated, they run from minor infractions to officers making very poor judgments for more serious misconduct. But this notion that the Capitol Police were somehow allowing these folks into the Capitol, inviting them in, helping them, just simply not true.”
Lie: The jailed rioters are nonviolent political prisoners
One of the most prevalent counternarratives about January 6 is that a large number of nonviolent people who were present at the Capitol are being unfairly prosecuted by liberal zealots at the Justice Department, and that these nonviolent people have now become “political prisoners” while awaiting trial in jail. Such claims have emerged as a rallying cry among a small but vocal cohort of Trump loyalists in the House Republican conference.
Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar claimed in July that jailed rioters who had supposedly spent time in solitary confinement “are not unruly or dangerous, violent criminals” but are “political prisoners who are now being persecuted”; he suggested that there are “nearly 200” nonviolent Capitol participants behind bars. And the pro-Trump group behind September’s “Justice for J6” rally said its event was meant “to bring awareness and attention to the unjust and unethical treatment of nonviolent January 6 political prisoners.”
Facts First: This “political prisoners” narrative is false. The vast majority of the 700-plus people charged in the Capitol riot to date were released shortly after their arrests. Only a few dozen were ordered by judges to remain in jail before trial, and most of those defendants were charged with attacking police or conspiring with far-right militia groups.
It’s true that the conditions are poor at the Washington jail where incarcerated rioters are being held. And it’s obviously unpleasant for anyone to live behind bars. But the small subset of January 6 defendants who are currently in jail are there only because a federal judge ruled that they are either too dangerous to release or pose a flight risk. The decision to keep them incarcerated was not made by Biden’s political appointees or any other Justice Department officials.
A few rioters have claimed in court that they are the victims of politically motivated prosecution because they support Trump. Federal judges, including those appointed by Trump, have rejected these arguments.
Lie: January 6 was a false flag attack
Before the Capitol was even cleared of rioters on January 6, some prominent Trump supporters started to try to deflect blame — claiming that left-wing Antifa, a loose collection of self-described anti-fascists, was actually behind the violence.
Such “false flag” theories — that the violence was secretly orchestrated by Trump’s opponents in an attempt to make Trump look bad — never went away. And the theories have expanded to include claims that the violence was orchestrated by the Black Lives Matter movement or even by an arm of the federal government itself, the FBI.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson has promoted false flag theories, focusing on the FBI, both in his own remarks and in his revisionist documentary series on a Fox streaming service in November. Carlson has claimed on his show that government documents showed that “FBI operatives were organizing the attack on the Capitol on January 6.” Former Army Capt. Emily Rainey said in the documentary (and in a trailer Carlson tweeted out): “It is my opinion that false flags have happened in this country, one of which may have been January 6.”
And Trump himself has given oxygen to the theories, claiming in a December interview with ring-wing commentator Candace Owens, “You have BLM and you had Antifa people, I have very little doubt about that, and they were antagonizing and they were agitating.”
Facts First: The insurrection at the Capitol was not a false flag. Just as it looked on January 6, a mob of diehard Trump supporters stormed the building. They did so after Trump urged supporters to come to Washington and then, as we noted above, made a speech urging them to “fight like hell” and to march to the Capitol. The rioters’ allegiance to Trump has been exhaustively documented in court proceedings and in their social media posts and media interviews.
Though there are thousands of pages of court documents stemming from criminal cases against January 6 rioters, no Capitol riot defendant as of the end of 2021 had any confirmed involvement in Antifa or Black Lives Matter groups. (One defendant who filmed the riot had expressed support for Black Lives Matter but was disavowed in 2020 by BLM activists, some of whom suspected he was a provocateur connected to the political right.) By contrast, hundreds of Capitol riot defendants were confirmed to be Trump supporters — and some were members of far-right extremist groups. Members of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys have been charged with conspiracy regarding January 6; some have pleaded guilty.
Carlson wrongly described the court documents he inaccurately claimed were a smoking gun about FBI operatives organizing the attack; you can read more about that claim here. While it is entirely possible that some of the Capitol rioters were secretly serving as informants for the FBI — The New York Times reported in October that a member of the Proud Boys who had entered the Capitol on January 6 was an FBI informant — the presence of a few FBI informants among the estimated 2,000-plus people who illegally breached the Capitol would not make the entire mob assault an FBI-orchestrated “false flag” operation.
Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, vice chair of the House select committee investigating the insurrection, said on Fox News in November that there is no truth to claims that January 6 was a false flag perpetrated by “deep state” liberals trying to set up Trump supporters.
“It’s the same kind of thing that you hear from people who say that 9/11 was an inside job, for example. It’s un-American to be spreading those kinds of lies, and they are lies,” Cheney said.
CNN’s Holmes Lybrand and Hannah Rabinowitz contributed to this article.
January 6 committee chairman says panel has ‘significant testimony’ the White House ‘had been told to do something’ during insurrection
Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the vice chair of the committee and one of its two Republican members, told ABC News that the panel has “firsthand testimony” that during the attack, Trump’s daughter and then-senior adviser Ivanka Trump asked him to intervene. And Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, told CNN the panel has “significant testimony” that the White House “had been told to do something.”
“We know his daughter — we have firsthand testimony that his daughter Ivanka went in at least twice to ask him to ‘please stop this violence,'” Cheney told ABC News.
CNN previously reported on some of these interactions, described in the books “I Alone Can Fix It,” by Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, and “Peril,” by Post journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa. Ivanka Trump repeatedly tried to intervene, talking to her father three times. “Let this thing go,” she told him. “Let it go,” she said, according “Peril.”
Thompson told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union” Sunday: “We have significant testimony that leads us to believe that the White House had been told to do something. We want to verify all of it so that when we produce our report and when we have the hearings, the public will have an opportunity to see for themselves.”
He added: “Well, the only thing I can say, it’s highly unusual for anyone in charge of anything to watch what’s going on and do nothing.”
Asked whether he believes then-President Trump’s actions during the insurrection warrant criminal referral, Thompson replied: “We don’t know … If there’s anything we come upon as a committee that we think would warrant a referral to the Department of Justice, we’ll do that.”
The comments come days before the one-year anniversary of the attack, in which a pro-Trump mob temporarily overcame law enforcement officers and stormed the Capitol, attacking officers and destroying parts of the iconic building. The ensuing chaos led to the deaths of multiple people the day of the attack or shortly thereafter, while several officers who responded to the Capitol during the attack later died by suicide.
Thompson’s committee has been investigating the attack and the events leading up to it since earlier this year. Much of the committee’s work to this point has taken place behind closed doors, and an interim report on its findings is not expected until the summer.
The chairman said on Sunday that the panel has “some concerns” about potential financial fraud by Trump and his allies around the insurrection.
“It’s highly concerning on our part that people raise money for one activity and we can’t find the money being spent for that particular activity,” he said. “So we’ll continue to look at it and the financing is one of those things we will continue to look at very closely.
He also wouldn’t say if the panel is planning to subpoena members of Congress, such as Trump ally Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, to cooperate with the committee.
“I would hope that those individuals who took an oath of office as a member of Congress would come forward,” he said. “That’s why we’ve asked them to come voluntarily.”
Thompson said the panel is still working through testimony and documents from witnesses about the makeshift “war room” at DC’s Willard Hotel that was run by Trump allies Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon the day of the attack.
“Part of our work is to try to get access to the records on that day, who paid for it. Bernie Kerik is significant. He started cooperating with our committee, we look forward to that cooperation to continue,” he said. “The hotel has been asked to provide information for us, so we’re in the process of doing our investigation.”
CNN previously reported that Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner, made public emails that show him cutting off payments for a suite of rooms at the hotel, where Trump’s post-election “war room” operated, and directing Giuliani to pick up some of the tab.
During the ABC interview, Cheney reiterated her strong reservations about Trump’s fitness for future office.
“Any man who would not do so, any man who would provoke a violent assault on the Capitol to stop the counting of electoral votes, any man who would watch television as police officers were being beaten, as his supporters were invading the Capitol of the United States, is clearly unfit for future office,” Cheney said. “Clearly can never be anywhere near the Oval Office ever again.”
Asked if she believes the committee’s investigation and report can change minds, Cheney said she has hope because the work is being done on a bipartisan basis.
“It is very much one that brings together a group of us who have very different policy views, but who come together when the issues have to do with the defense of the Constitution, and so that does give me hope,” she said.