Eliana Willis

A Washington DC police officer was arrested on Friday on charges that he lied about leaking confidential information to Proud Boys extremist group leader Enrique Tarrio and obstructed an investigation after group members destroyed a Black Lives Matter banner in the nation’s capital.An indictment alleges that Metropolitan police department lieutenant Shane Lamond, 47, of Stafford, Virginia, warned Tarrio, then national chairman of the far-right group, that law enforcement had an arrest warrant for him related to the banner’s destruction.Tarrio was arrested in Washington two days before Proud Boys members joined the mob in storming the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. Earlier this month, Tarrio and three other leaders were convicted of seditious conspiracy charges for what prosecutors said was a plot to keep the then president, Donald Trump, in the White House after he lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden.A federal grand jury in Washington indicted Lamond on one count of obstruction of justice and three counts of making false statements.The indictment accuses Lamond of lying to and misleading federal investigators.Lamond is expected in court on Friday and is on administrative leave.Lamond, who supervised the intelligence branch of the police department’s Homeland Security Bureau, was responsible for monitoring groups like the Proud Boys.His attorney, Mark Schamel, didn’t immediately respond to a phone message seeking comment.Schamel has previously said that Lamond’s job was to communicate with a variety of groups protesting in Washington, and his conduct with Tarrio was never inappropriate and said his client “doesn’t share any of the indefensible positions” of extremist groups.The Metropolitan police department said it would do an internal review after the federal case against Lamond is resolved.Lamond’s name repeatedly came up in the Capitol riot trial of Tarrio and other Proud Boys leaders.Messages introduced at Tarrio’s trial appeared to show a close rapport between the two men, with Lamond texting “hey brother”.Tarrio’s lawyers had wanted to call Lamond as a witness, but were stymied by the investigation into Lamond.Lamond used the Telegram messaging platform to give Tarrio information about law enforcement activity around July 2020, according to prosecutors.In December 2020, Lamond told Tarrio about where competing antifascist activists were expected to be.Jurors who convicted Tarrio heard testimony that Lamond frequently provided the Proud Boys leader with internal information about law enforcement operations before Proud Boys stormed the Capitol. More

The Fulton county district attorney investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the state of Georgia signalled Thursday that charging decisions in the case may come starting the final week of July, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.The indication from the prosecutor, Fani Willis, first came during a meeting with her full team where she told them to make preparations to work remotely during the final week of July and through the first weeks of August, the people said.Willis made no explicit mention of Trump during the meeting, but the specific timing is understood to reflect the expected window for indictments after previous indications suggested charging decisions would come during the court term that runs July to September.The district attorney’s office hours later told the county superior court chief judge Ural Glanville asking judges not to schedule trials and in-person hearings from 31 July to 18 August because most of her staff would be remote in a letter seen by the Guardian and first reported by the New York Times.A spokesperson for Willis did not respond to a request for comment.The district attorney’s office has spent more than two years investigating whether Trump and his allies interfered in the 2020 election in Georgia, while prosecutors at the federal level are scrutinizing Trump’s efforts to reverse his defeat that culminated in the January 6 Capitol attack.A special grand jury in Atlanta that heard evidence for roughly seven months recommended charges for more than a dozen people including the former president himself, its forewoman strongly suggested in interviews, though Willis will have to seek indictments from a regular grand jury.Willis originally suggested charging decisions were “imminent” in January, but the timetable has been repeatedly delayed after a number of Republicans who sought to help Trump stay in power as so-called fake electors accepted immunity deals as the investigation neared its end.Prosecutors then also spent several weeks on a potential conflict issue resulting from the fact that not all of the fake electors defended by lawyer Kimberly Debrow were offered immunity deals. The dispute resolved itself last week after the fake elector without a deal found a new lawyer.The meeting on Thursday afternoon appears to have been convened in part to give staff a more specific window for when indictments could arrive after Willis outlined her prosecutorial intentions in the case in a letter to the Fulton county sheriff Patrick Labat last month.“In the near future, I will announce charging decisions,” Willis wrote in the letter. “I am providing this letter to bring to your attention the need for heightened security and preparedness in coming months due to this pending announcement.”Trump is understood to have two main areas of legal jeopardy in Georgia: the calls he made to officials like the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, in an effort to reverse his election defeat in the weeks after the 2020 election, as well as his role in assembling the fake electors.But at the heart of the investigation are the steps that Trump and his campaign aides took – knowing it was probably illegal – in assembling 16 pro-Trump electors to surreptitiously gain entry to the Georgia state capitol and submit unauthorized electoral college votes for Trump to Congress. More

The US president has decided to cancel an upcoming visit to Australia and Papua New Guinea to focus on the debt limit standoff at home. Joe Biden had been due to address the Australian parliament and was also expected to meet with other leaders of the Quad. The US president said failure on debt negotiations would spark a recession and quoted Moody’s as saying 8 million Americans would lose their jobs More

A Capitol rioter from Alabama who was shot in the face by police but still invaded Congress with a knife on his hip and rummaged through Ted Cruz’s desk while the Texas senator hid in a closet, was sentenced on Tuesday to nearly two years in prison.On 6 January 2021, outside the Capitol in Washington, a police officer shot Joshua Matthew Black in his left cheek with a crowd-control munition. The resulting bloody hole in his face did not stop Black from occupying the Senate with other rioters after lawmakers ran.“Black was a notorious offender during the attack on the Capitol,” prosecutors said in a court filing.“The nation was shocked and appalled at the events of January 6, and perhaps no other incident sparked as much outrage and distress as Black and other rioters’ occupation of the Senate chamber.”Prosecutors recommended a five-year prison sentence for Black, 47 and from Leeds, a suburb of Birmingham.A US district judge, Amy Berman Jackson, sentenced Black to 22 months in prison followed by two years of supervised release.Black did not testify before being convicted in January of five charges, including three felonies, after trial testimony was given without a jury. Jackson acquitted Black of one count, obstructing a congressional proceeding.Black joined the mob that disrupted the joint session of Congress for certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory. But the judge concluded that prosecutors did not prove Black knowingly intended to obstruct or impede proceedings.A defense attorney, Clark Fleckinger, said Black was an evangelical Christian who believed God directed him to go to Washington so he could “plead the blood of Jesus” on the Senate floor “to foster congressional atonement for what he perceived to be the transgressions of [a] corrupt Democratic party and Republican party”.More than 1,000 people have been charged with Capitol riot-related crimes. Roughly 500 have been sentenced to imprisonment ranging from seven days to more than 14 years. Nineteen have received sentences of five years or longer.Black, who runs a lawn-mowing business, traveled alone to Washington to attend Donald Trump’s Stop the Steal rally. He then joined the crowd walking to the Capitol. Armed with a concealed knife, he was the first rioter to breach a barricade at the Capitol’s lower west terrace.“This brazen act no doubt encouraged other rioters, who soon after overran the entire Lower West Terrace,” prosecutors wrote.Black joined the mob on the west plaza, where police shot him with a “less-than-lethal” munition.“Rioters near Black became enraged that he was shot, and they harassed and assaulted officers,” prosecutors wrote.After entering the Capitol through the east rotunda, Black breached the Senate chamber and remained inside for more than 20 minutes.Black rummaged through a desk assigned to Cruz – who has described how he and other senators took refuge in a supply closet – and posed for photos on the Senate dais.Before leaving, Black joined other rioters in a “raucous demonstration styled as a prayer” and led by Jacob Chansley, the self-styled “QAnon Shaman”, prosecutors said.Black later told the FBI he had a hunting knife in a sheath beneath his coat while in the Senate chamber. Agents found the knife at Black’s home when they arrested him on 14 January 2021.He was jailed in Washington and remained detained until a judge ordered his release on 24 April. He will get credit for jail time served. More

The former US president consistently spread falsehoods, lies and misinformation throughout his town hall hosted by CNN on Wednesday night in front of a crowd of mostly Republican voters in New Hampshire. Trump made false and misleading claims about the 2020 election, the January 6 insurrection, immigration, his border wall, abortion, his sexual abuse trial, the investigation into his handling of classified documents and other subjects. The host, Kaitlan Collins, attempted to interject and fact-check his claims in real time, though many falsehoods got through, as Trump followed his long history of touting baseless conspiracy theories amid his mounting legal troubles More

The Republican congressman George Santos, exposed for lying extensively about his background and campaign finance disclosures, emerged from the federal courthouse in Long Island using Donald Trump-like rhetoric to attack the criminal case against him as a conspiracy to damage him politically. After pleading not guilty to charges of fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds and making false statements, Santos said he was ‘going to fight the witch-hunt’. ‘I am going to take care of clearing my name, and I look forward to doing that,’ he said More

The former House January 6 committee member Liz Cheney released an attack ad against Donald Trump in New Hampshire on the eve of his appearance there in a controversial CNN town hall.“There has never been a greater dereliction of duty by any president,” Cheney warns in the ad, which focuses on Trump’s incitement of the deadly Capitol attack on 6 January 2021.“Donald Trump has proven he is unfit for office. Donald Trump is a risk America can never take again.”Trump incited the attack by his supporters in an attempt to block certification of Joe Biden’s election win. Nine deaths have been linked to it. Thousands of arrests have been made and hundreds of convictions secured – some for seditious conspiracy.Trump was impeached for inciting an insurrection but acquitted by Senate Republicans.Cheney, the daughter of the former congressman, defense secretary and vice-president Dick Cheney, was vice-chair of the House committee which investigated the Capitol attack and, regarding Trump, made criminal referrals to the Department of Justice.Cheney lost her Wyoming seat to a Trump-backed challenger last year.Now working on a book – entitled Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning – she has not counted out running for the Republican nomination against Trump, or running for president as an independent conservative.Her new ad will run only on CNN in New Hampshire, where at St Anselm College on Wednesday night, CNN will host a Trump town hall with Republican voters.CNN has defended its decision to host Trump by pointing out that he is the clear Republican frontrunner. Cheney’s ad will run before and during the town hall.The same day Cheney’s ad came out, Trump was found liable for sexual assault and defamation in a case brought by E Jean Carroll, a writer who claims Trump raped her. Ordered to pay around $5m in damages, Trump responded angrily, denying wrongdoing and saying he would appeal.Trump faces legal jeopardy on a scale unprecedented for a presidential candidate, let alone the clear leader for a major party nomination.Investigators in Georgia are expected soon to announce indictments related to Trump’s attempted election subversion there.The federal investigation into his attempt to overturn his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden, and his incitement of the Capitol attack on 6 January 2021, goes on.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFederal authorities are also examining Trump’s retention of classified information after leaving office.Last month in New York, he pleaded not guilty to 34 criminal counts related to his hush money payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels, who claims an affair Trump denies.Trump also faces a New York state civil suit over his business and tax affairs.Nonetheless, Trump leads by wide margins in polling regarding the Republican nomination in 2024. Cheney barely features.Speaking to the New York Times, a spokesperson for Trump called Cheney “a stone-cold loser who is now trying to grift her way to relevance”.Conversely, the Guardian columnist Robert Reich has said Cheney “has displayed more courage and integrity than almost any other member of her party – indeed, given the pressure she was under, perhaps more than any lawmaker now alive”. More

A Kentucky man with a long criminal record has been sentenced to a record-setting 14 years in prison for attacking police officers with pepper spray and a chair as he stormed the US Capitol with his wife.Peter Schwartz’s prison sentence is the longest so far among hundreds of Capitol riot cases. The judge who sentenced Schwartz on Friday also handed down the previous longest sentence – 10 years – to a retired New York police department officer who assaulted a police officer outside the Capitol on 6 January.Prosecutors had recommended a prison sentence of 24 years and 6 months for Schwartz, a welder.US district Judge Amit Mehta sentenced Schwartz to 14 years and two months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release.Mehta said Schwartz was a “soldier against democracy” who participated in “the kind of mayhem, chaos that had never been seen in the country’s history.”“You are not a political prisoner,” the judge told hm. “You’re not somebody who is standing up against injustice or fighting against an autocratic regime.”Schwartz briefly addressed the judge before learning his sentence, saying, “I do sincerely regret the damage that January 6 has caused to so many people and their lives.”The judge said he didn’t believe Schwartz’s statement, noting his lack of remorse. “You took it upon yourself to try and injure multiple police officers that day,” Mehta said.Schwartz was armed with a wooden tire knocker when he and his then-wife, Shelly Stallings, joined other rioters in overwhelming a line of police officers on the Capitol’s Lower West Terrace, where he threw a folding chair at officers.“By throwing that chair, Schwartz directly contributed to the fall of the police line that enabled rioters to flood forward and take over the entire terrace,” prosecutor Jocelyn Bond wrote in a court filing.Schwartz, 49, also armed himself with a police-issued “super soaker” canister of pepper spray and sprayed it at retreating officers. Advancing to a tunnel entrance, Schwartz coordinated with two other rioters, Markus Maly and Jeffrey Brown, to spray an orange liquid toward officers clashing with the mob.“While the stream of liquid did not directly hit any officer, its effect was to heighten the danger to the officers in that tunnel,” Bond wrote.Before leaving, Schwartz joined a “heave ho” push against police in the tunnel.Stallings pleaded guilty last year to riot-related charges and was sentenced last month to two years of incarceration.Schwartz was tried with co-defendants Maly and Brown. In December, a jury convicted all three of assault charges and other felony offenses.Schwartz’s attorneys requested a prison sentence of four years and six months, saying his actions were motivated by a “misunderstanding” about the 2020 presidential election. Donald Trump and his allies spread baseless conspiracy theories that Democrats stole the election from the Republican incumbent.“There remain many grifters out there who remain free to continue propagating the ‘great lie’ that Trump won the election, Donald Trump being among the most prominent. Mr Schwartz is not one of these individuals; he knows he was wrong,” his defense lawyers wrote.Prosecutors said Schwartz has bragged about his participation in the riot, shown no remorse and claimed that his prosecution was politically motivated. He referred to the Capitol attack as the “opening of a war” in a Facebook post a day after the riot.Schwartz has raised more than $71,000 from an online campaign titled Patriot Pete Political Prisoner in DC. Prosecutors asked Mehta to order Schwartz to pay a fine equaling the amount raised by his campaign, arguing that he shouldn’t profit from participating in the riot.Schwartz was on probation when he joined the riot and his criminal record includes a “jaw-dropping” 38 prior convictions since 1991, “several of which involved assaulting or threatening officers or other authority figures”, Bond wrote.More than 1,000 people have been charged with federal crimes related to January 6. Nearly 500 of them have been sentenced, with over half getting terms of imprisonment. More