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    Four Proud Boys leaders charged over alleged roles in US Capitol attack

    Four men described as leaders of the far-right Proud Boys group have been charged in the US Capitol riot, as an indictment ordered unsealed on Friday presents fresh evidence of how federal officials believe members planned and carried out a coordinated attack to stop Congress certifying Joe Biden’s electoral victory.At least 19 leaders, members or associates of the neo-fascist Proud Boys have been charged in federal court with offenses related to the 6 January riot, which resulted in five deaths.The latest indictment suggests the Proud Boys deployed a much larger contingent in Washington, with more than 60 users “participating in” an encrypted messaging channel for group members created a day before.The Proud Boys abandoned an earlier channel and created the new Boots on the Ground channel after police arrested the group’s leader, Enrique Tarrio, in Washington. Tarrio was arrested on 4 January and charged with vandalizing a Black Lives Matter banner at a historic Black church during a protest in December. He was ordered to stay out of the District of Columbia.Tarrio has not been charged in connection with the riots but the latest indictment refers to him by his title as Proud Boys’ chairman.Ethan Nordean and Joseph Biggs, two of the four defendants charged in the latest indictment, were arrested several weeks ago on separate but related charges. The new indictment also charges Zachary Rehl and Charles Donohoe.All four defendants are charged with conspiring to impede certification of the electoral college vote. Other charges in the indictment include obstruction of an official proceeding, obstruction of law enforcement during civil disorder and disorderly conduct.Nordean, 30, of Auburn, Washington, was a Proud Boys chapter president and member of the group’s national Elders Council. Biggs, 37, of Ormond Beach, Florida, is a self-described Proud Boys organizer. Rehl, 35, of Philadelphia, and Donohoe, 33, of North Carolina, are presidents of local Proud Boys chapters, according to the indictment.A lawyer for Biggs declined to comment. Attorneys for the other three men didn’t immediately respond to messages.Proud Boys members, who describe themselves as a politically incorrect men’s club for “western chauvinists”, have engaged in street fights with antifascist activists at rallies and protests. Vice Media co-founder Gavin McInnes, who founded the Proud Boys in 2016, sued the Southern Poverty Law Center for labeling it as a hate group.The Proud Boys met at the Washington Monument around 10am on 6 January and marched to the Capitol before then president Donald Trump finished addressing thousands of supporters near the White House.Around two hours later, just before Congress convened a joint session to certify the election results, a group of Proud Boys followed a crowd who breached barriers at a pedestrian entrance to the Capitol grounds, the indictment says. Several Proud Boys entered the Capitol building after the mob smashed windows and forced open doors.At 3.38pm, Donohoe announced on the “Boots on the Ground” channel that he and others were “regrouping with a second force” as some rioters began to leave the Capitol, according to the indictment.“This was not simply a march. This was an incredible attack on our institutions of government,” assistant US attorney Jason McCullough said in a recent hearing for Nordean’s case.Prosecutors have said the Proud Boys arranged for members to communicate using Baofeng radios. The Chinese-made devices can be programmed for use on hundreds of frequencies, making them difficult for outsiders to eavesdrop.After Tarrio’s arrest, Donohoe expressed concern that encrypted communications could be “compromised” when police searched the group chairman’s phone, according to the new indictment. In a 4 January post on a newly created channel, Donohoe warned members that they could be “looking at Gang charges” and wrote, “Stop everything immediately,” the indictment says.“This comes from the top,” he added.A day before the riots, Biggs posted on the Boots on the Ground channel that the group had a “plan” for the night before and the day of the riots, according to the indictment.In Nordean’s case, a federal judge accused prosecutors of backtracking on their claims that he instructed Proud Boys members to split up into smaller groups and directed a “strategic plan” to breach the Capitol.“That’s a far cry from what I heard at the hearing today,” US district judge Beryl Howell said on 3 March.Howell concluded that Nordean was extensively involved in “pre-planning” for the events of 6 January and that he and other Proud Boys “were clearly prepared for a violent confrontation”. However, she said evidence that Nordean directed other Proud Boys members to break into the building is “weak to say the least” and ordered him freed from jail before trial.On Friday, Howell ordered Proud Boys member Christopher Worrell detained in federal custody pending trial on riot-related charges. Prosecutors say Worrell traveled to Washington and coordinated with Proud Boys leading up to the siege.“Wearing tactical gear and armed with a canister of pepper spray gel marketed as 67 times more powerful than hot sauce, Worrell advanced, shielded himself behind a wooden platform and other protestors and discharged the gel at the line of officers,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing.Defense attorney John Pierce argued his client wasn’t aiming at officers and was only there in the crowd to exercise his free speech rights.“He’s a veteran. He loves his country,” Pierce said. More

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    FBI releases new video in hunt for dangerous suspects from Capitol attack – video

    Warning: some viewers may find the following footage distressing
    The FBI has released new footage of the deadly 6 January US Capitol insurrection as it seeks to identify 10 suspects involved in what the agency says were ‘some of the most violent attacks on officers’. Law enforcement are still pursuing more than 100 suspects from the attack on Congress, which the then president, Donald Trump, was accused of inciting and led to his historic second impeachment.
    But the 10 suspects highlighted this week by the federal authorities are considered among the most dangerous still at large

    FBI releases new Capitol attack footage as it seeks to identify 10 suspects More

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    FBI releases new Capitol attack footage as it seeks to identify 10 suspects

    The FBI has released new footage of the deadly 6 January US Capitol insurrection as it seeks to identify 10 suspects involved in what the agency says were “some of the most violent attacks on officers”.Law enforcement are still pursuing more than 100 suspects from the attack on Congress, which Donald Trump was accused of inciting and led to his historic second impeachment. Hundreds have been arrested after the violent mob invaded the Capitol to try to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory.But the 10 suspects highlighted this week by the federal authorities are considered amongst the most dangerous still at large.Each of the clips posted to the FBI’s Washington field office website shows the suspects allegedly in the act of assaulting the officers, alongside closeups of their faces, several of them masked but many not.“The FBI is asking for the public’s help in identifying 10 individuals suspected of being involved in some of the most violent attacks on officers who were protecting the US Capitol and our democratic process on January 6,” Steven M D’Antuono, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Washington field office, said in a statement accompanying the footage.“These individuals are seen on video committing egregious crimes against those who have devoted their lives to protecting the American people.”The FBI said it had already received “hundreds of thousands of tips” following the riots that claimed five lives when a mob stormed the Capitol and invaded the US Senate and House of Representatives.At a rally earlier in the day, the former president incited his followers to march to the Capitol building and “fight like hell” in support of his false claims that the election was stolen from him.The massive investigation that ensued led to the arrest of more than 300 individuals, of whom 65 were arrested for assaulting law enforcement officers, the FBI said.The most recent came this week as the agency arrested and charged two men, Julian Elie Khater, 32, of Pennsylvania, and George Pierre Tanios, 39, from West Virginia, with assaulting Brian Sicknick, a US Capitol police officer who died in hospital after the attacks.Khater was seen in social media footage discharging a spray he referred to as “bear shit” into the 42-year-old officer’s face, court papers allege. The cause of death is not yet known, although investigators believe Sicknick may have ingested a chemical substance, possibly bear spray, that may have played a role.Earlier this month, Christopher Wray, the director of the FBI, called the riots “domestic terrorism” in congressional testimony.“That attack, that siege, was criminal behavior, plain and simple, and it’s behavior that we, the FBI, view as domestic terrorism,” Wray told the Senate judiciary committee.“The problem of domestic terrorism has been metastasizing across the country for a number of years now, and it’s not going away any time soon,” he added, although analysis has concluded that most of the 6 January rioters were unconnected to any extremist group.The alleged assaults captured in the new FBI footage take place in a variety of locations around the capitol. All the suspects are male, and several are wearing red “Make America Great Again” caps that became a signature of Trump’s supporters during his tumultuous presidency.“We’re grateful to the members of the public who have already been a tremendous help in these investigations,” D’Antuono said.“We know it can be a difficult decision to report information about family, friends, or co-workers, but it is the right thing to do.” More

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    'We are in pain': Asian American lawmaker Grace Meng makes powerful speech – video

    The Asian American lawmaker Grace Meng called out the violence and discrimination against her community at a hearing on Capitol Hill on Thursday. ‘Our community is bleeding. We are in pain. And for the last year, we’ve been screaming out for help,’ she  said. She told a panel the rising tide of anti-Asian bigotry was fuelled in part by rhetoric from Donald Trump and his allies, who have referred to Covid-19 as the ‘China virus’ and ‘kung flu’ 

    Asian American lawmakers say violence has reached ‘crisis point’
    ‘That hit home for me’: Atlanta reeling after spa shootings of Asian Americans More

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    12 Republicans vote against honoring Capitol police for protecting Congress

    A dozen Republicans voted against a resolution honoring US Capitol police for their efforts to protect members of Congress during the insurrection on 6 January.The House voted 413-12 on Wednesday to award congressional gold medals, Congress’s “highest expression of national appreciation”, to all members of the Capitol police force.The Republicans who opposed this honor included Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Matt Gaetz of Florida and Thomas Massie of Kentucky. They and other opposing members said they had problems with the text of the legislation.Massie told reporters he disagreed with the terms “insurrection” and “temple” in the legislation.The resolution said: “On January 6, 2021, a mob of insurrectionists forced its way into the US Capitol building and congressional office buildings and engaged in acts of vandalism, looting, and violently attacked Capitol police officers.”It also named the three officers who responded to the attack and died shortly after – Capitol police officers Brian Sicknick and Howard Liebengood and Metropolitan police department officer Jeffrey Smith – and said seven other people died and more than 140 law enforcement officers were injured.“The desecration of the US Capitol, which is the temple of our American democracy, and the violence targeting Congress are horrors that will forever stain our nation’s history,” the bill said.Louie Gohmert, a congressman from Texas, said in a statement that the text “does not honor anyone, but rather seeks to drive a narrative that isn’t substantiated by known facts”.Gohmert separately circulated a competing bill to honor Capitol police that did not mention the 6 January attack, according to a copy obtained by Politico. His text also named the officers who died after the insurrection but did not specify the circumstances of their deaths, writing instead that they: “All passed in January 2021.”The other Republicans who voted against the legislation were Andy Biggs of Arizona, Andy Harris of Maryland, Lance Gooden of Texas, Michael Cloud of Texas, Andrew Clyde of Georgia, Greg Steube of Florida, Bob Good of Virginia and John Rose of Tennessee.All of the bill’s opponents, except for Massie, voted to object to state’s electoral votes in the presidential election in the hours after the insurrection. More

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    Republican senator says he would’ve been afraid had Capitol rioters been BLM activists

    Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin faced charges of racism and calls for his resignation after he told a radio host that he did not feel threatened by the pro-Donald Trump mob that raided the Capitol in January, but he would have been concerned if the invaders were “antifa” or Black Lives Matter activists.“I never really felt threatened,” Johnson told Wisconsin radio host Jay Weber. He said the insurrectionists were mostly “people that love this country, that truly respect law enforcement, would never do anything to break a law”.“Had the tables been turned and President Donald Trump won the election and those were thousands of Black Lives Matter and antifa protesters I would have been concerned,” Johnson continued.Five people died in the 6 January riot at the Capitol, including one police officer, and dozens were injured. Prosecutors have charged more than 300 people with crimes and nearly that many had been arrested. Forty people have been arrested for assault on law enforcement officers.“This didn’t seem like an armed insurrection to me,” Johnson tole the radio host. “I mean ‘armed,’ when you hear ‘armed,’ don’t you think of firearms?The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel called on Johnson to resign in an editorial. “If he runs again, Johnson must be opposed in both the primary and general elections by people who care enough about democracy to support and defend it,” the paper said.“No, Senator Ron Johnson,” tweeted Noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, “the truth is that the January 6 insurrectionists did break the law, they hurt and killed law enforcement officers, and they were trying to overturn the elected government of the United States.“To say that the opposite is true about this group of insurrectionists, but that you would have been worried if they had been Black Lives Matters protesters, is racist, dangerous and unbecoming a United States senator.”Former Democratic senator Barbara Boxer agreed.“Everybody in the country and the world saw the insurrectionists beat up, injure and kill law-enforcement at the Capitol and they saw them break the law over and over as they smashed windows and soiled the citadel of democracy,” she tweeted. “Everybody except Sen. Ron Johnson. He needs to go.”A two-term senator, Johnson would be up for re-election in 2022. He was one of Donald Trump’s most vocal defenders through the former president’s two impeachment trials and supported Trump’s efforts to overthrow the 2020 election.Days before the Capitol invasion, Johnson spread lies about voter fraud on national TV and called for a “full investigatory and fact-finding authority” to audit the election. The Trump justice department found no evidence of election fraud and dozens of courts rejected allegations of fraud by Trump lawyers as groundless. More

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    'Help is on the way': Democrats cheer as US House passes $1.9tn Covid relief plan – video

    The House of Representatives gave final approval on Wednesday to one of the largest economic stimulus measures in US history, a sweeping $1.9tn Covid-19 relief bill that gives Joe Biden his first major victory in office. The measure provides $400bn for $1,400 direct payments to most Americans, $350bn in aid to state and local governments, an expansion of the child tax credit, and increased funding for vaccine distribution. ‘This is the most consequential legislation that many of us will ever be a party to,’ the House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said at a ceremony to sign the bill before it goes to the White House
    US House passes $1.9tn Covid relief plan in major legislative victory for Biden
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