Babbitt, Ashli E (1985-2021)

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    Brian Bingham, a Veteran, Is Convicted of Assaulting Officer at Capitol Riot

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    Brian Glenn Bingham, of New Jersey, hit an officer in the face as the police tried to clear rioters from the building on Jan. 6, 2021, a jury found.On Monday, the eve of this year’s presidential election, a New Jersey man was convicted of assaulting a law enforcement officer as part of the mob of Donald J. Trump supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.A jury in Federal District Court in Washington, D.C., found the man, Brian Glenn Bingham, of Pennsville, N.J., guilty of the felony offenses of assaulting, resisting or impeding a police officer and civil disorder, and several misdemeanors, prosecutors said.As part of his defense, court records show, Mr. Bingham argued that his actions were colored by the fact that he had been nearby around the time that a Capitol Police lieutenant fatally shot a woman named Ashli Babbitt as she tried to vault through a window near the House Chamber at the Capitol.Mr. Bingham, a 36-year-old Army veteran, is scheduled to be sentenced in February. Kevin A. Tate, a federal public defender representing him, said Mr. Bingham was “disappointed by the verdict and intends to appeal.”Mr. Bingham is among more than 1,532 people who have been criminally charged in connection with the riot, and among more than 571 who have been charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement officers, according to the Justice Department. He and other supporters of Mr. Trump stormed the Capitol in a bid to prevent the certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr. as the winner of the 2020 presidential election. The investigation into the day’s events is continuing.Mr. Trump, the Republican nominee in this year’s presidential election, was charged with three conspiracy counts arising from the riot. He has pleaded not guilty, and a federal judge will ultimately determine which parts of the indictment should survive under a landmark Supreme Court ruling from July that gives presidents immunity from prosecution for certain official acts while in office.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Far Right Pushes a Through-the-Looking-Glass Narrative on Jan. 6

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      An ecosystem of true believers is promoting a tale of persecution rather than prosecution that has migrated to the heart of presidential politics.Six months since the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol completed its work, a far-right ecosystem of true believers has embraced “J6” as the animating force of their lives.They attend the criminal trials of the more prominent rioters charged in the attack. They gather to pray and sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” on the outer perimeter of the District of Columbia jail, where some two dozen defendants are held. Last week, dozens showed up at an unofficial House hearing convened by a handful of Republican lawmakers to challenge “the fake narrative that an insurrection had occurred on Jan. 6,” as set forth by Jeffrey Clark, a witness at the hearing and a former Justice Department official who worked to undo the results of the 2020 election.The 90-minute event was a through-the-looking-glass alternative to the damning case against former President Donald J. Trump presented last year by the Jan. 6 committee. In the version advanced by five House Republicans who attended the hearing — Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar, Ralph Norman, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Troy Nehls — as well as conservative lawyers and Capitol riot defendants, Jan. 6 was an elaborate setup to entrap peaceful Trump supporters, followed by a continuing Biden administration campaign to imprison and torment innocent conservatives.Writ large, their loudest-in-the-room tale of persecution rather than prosecution might be dismissed as fringe nonsense had it not migrated so swiftly to the heart of presidential politics. Mr. Trump has pledged to pardon some of the Jan. 6 defendants if he returns to the White House, and his chief challenger for the 2024 Republican nomination, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, has signaled he may do the same.Representatives Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert, both Republicans, were among the members of Congress who held a hearing criticizing the Jan. 6 prosecutions.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesMore than half, or 58 percent, of self-described conservatives say that Jan. 6 was an act of “legitimate political discourse” rather than a “violent insurrection,” according to a poll three months ago by The Economist/YouGov.The counternarrative is in part animated by a series of particularly stiff sentences for the Jan. 6 defendants, including one of more than 12 years in prison handed down on Wednesday for a rioter who savagely assaulted a D.C. police officer, Michael Fanone.The audience for the hearing in the Capitol Visitor Center included several of the most avid and successful promoters of the Jan. 6 counternarrative.Among them were Micki Witthoeft, the mother of Ashli Babbitt, the Air Force veteran and QAnon adherent who was fatally shot by a Capitol police officer during the riot and is now heralded as a martyr by the far right; Nicole Reffitt, whose husband, Guy Reffitt, was sentenced to more than seven years in prison for his role in the riot and who now helps organize nightly vigils at the D.C. jail; Tayler Hansen, who has claimed to possess videotaped evidence of antifa elements instigating the violence at the Capitol, but who did not respond to a request from The New York Times to view the footage; and Tommy Tatum of Mississippi, who describes himself as an independent journalist and has inferred from various unidentified characters who appear in his own footage that sophisticated teams of plainclothes federal agents orchestrated the breach of the Capitol.The Jan. 6 deniers range from true believers to flighty opportunists, with fevered arguments among them as to who is which. Mr. Tatum and William Shipley, a lawyer who has represented more than 30 Jan. 6 defendants, have for example accused each other on Twitter of cynical profiteering.Micki Witthoeft, whose daughter, Ashli Babbitt, was fatally shot during the riot, attended the hearing at the Capitol Visitor Center.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesOne generally admired within the group is Julie Kelly, a former Illinois Republican political consultant, cooking class teacher and pandemic lockdown critic who writes for the conservative website American Greatness. Ms. Kelly has asserted that the Biden administration is “on a destructive crusade to exact revenge against supporters of Donald Trump” and has accused Mr. Fanone, who was beaten unconscious by the rioters at the Capitol, of being a “crisis actor.” She was a frequent guest on Tucker Carlson’s prime-time show before Fox fired him in April.Last month, aides to Speaker Kevin McCarthy gave Ms. Kelly and two other conservative writers, John Solomon of Just the News and Joseph M. Hanneman of The Epoch Times, permission to ferret through the Capitol’s voluminous Jan. 6 security footage, the only journalists other than Mr. Carlson to obtain such access.In an interview the day before the House hearing, Ms. Kelly said she was scouring the video in hopes of learning the provenance of the infamous gallows that were seen on the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6. “Did Trump supporters go there and build that? I doubt it,” she said. Ms. Kelly also hopes to learn whether nefarious “agitators” were already inside the Capitol before the breach. She variously termed Jan. 6 “an inside job” and a “fed-surrection.”Ms. Kelly recounted a meeting she and a fellow supporter of Jan. 6 defendants, Cynthia Hughes, had last September with Mr. Trump at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J. She said she told the former president that the defendants felt abandoned by him: “They’re saying to me: ‘We were there for him. Why isn’t he here for us?’” Ms. Hughes informed Mr. Trump that the federal judges he appointed were “among the worst” when it came to the treatment of the riot defendants.Surprised, Mr. Trump replied, “Well, I got recommendations from the Federalist Society.” Ms. Kelly said he then asked, “What do you want me to do?” She replied that he could donate to Ms. Hughes’s organization, the Patriot Freedom Project, which offers financial support to the defendants. Mr. Trump’s Save America PAC subsequently gave $10,000 to the group.Former President Donald J. Trump has pledged to pardon some of the Jan. 6 defendants if he returns to the White House.Doug Mills/The New York TimesOthers in the ecosystem contend that Mr. Trump’s contribution to the cause is manifest by the slings and arrows he has himself suffered since that day. “I call him Jan. Sixth-er Number One,” said Joseph D. McBride, perhaps the most visible of the lawyers representing the defendants. “He’s under the gun. He’s being investigated and indicted.”Mr. McBride’s clients include Richard Barnett, who posed for a photograph with his foot on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s desk, as well as Ryan Nichols, who exhorted fellow protesters to target elected officials, yelling, “Cut their heads off!”Mr. McBride also represented two Stop the Steal rally organizers subpoenaed by the Jan. 6 committee, Ali Alexander and Alex Bruesewitz. It was Mr. Bruesewitz who introduced Mr. McBride to Donald Trump Jr., which led to several invitations to Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s club in Palm Beach, Fla.“I’ve lost count at this point,” Mr. McBride said, adding that the club “is a good place to network.”Mr. McBride was also a frequent guest on Mr. Carlson’s show, including the time he claimed that a mysterious man seen at the Capitol on Jan. 6 with his face obscured in red paint was “clearly a law enforcement officer.” Shown evidence later that week by a HuffPost reporter that the man was a well-known habitué of St. Louis Cardinals baseball games, Mr. McBride replied: “If I’m wrong, so be it, bro. I don’t care.”He did acknowledge a certain dubiousness to the claim that the mostly white male conservatives who showed up at the Capitol on Jan. 6 had the judicial deck stacked against them.“Pre-Jan. 6, anytime you heard the term ‘two-tier system of justice,’ it’s Blacks, it’s Latinos, it’s the infringed, it’s the poor, it’s the drug addicted, it’s the marginalized, it’s the L.G.B.T.Q. community,” he said. That coalition of victims, Mr. McBride insisted, now included the MAGA supporters he represented.Joseph McBride, left, and his client Richard Barnett, center, arriving for a court hearing in Washington.Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesInsha Rahman, the vice president for advocacy and partnerships at the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit focused on criminal justice reform, agrees, up to a point. Mr. McBride and the others are raising “unfortunately a fact of life for over two million Americans who are behind bars,” said Ms. Rahman, who has visited the D.C. jail several times and concurs that its conditions are inhumane, though no worse, she said, than detention facilities in Chicago, Los Angeles and Houston.Still, she said, the privileges afforded the Jan. 6 pretrial detainees in their particular wing — individual cells, a library, contact visits, the ability to participate in podcasts — “are not at all typical.”“But I don’t want to call that special treatment,” Ms. Rahman said. “That’s the floor for what every incarcerated person in America should have a right to expect.”For now, the protagonists of the alternative Jan. 6 narrative are not particularly focused on prison reform. Nor are they willing to give up.As Mr. McBride said: “Do I think we’ll ever get to the bottom of it? We still haven’t solved the J.F.K. assassination.” More

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      After Capitol Riot, Republican Ties to Extremist Groups Are Under Scrutiny

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Capitol Riot FalloutVisual TimelineInside the SiegeNotable ArrestsThe Global Far RightAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRepublican Ties to Extremist Groups Are Under ScrutinyA number of members of Congress have links to organizations and movements that played a role in the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol.Members of a Three Percenters group provided security for Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, right, during a campaign event last year in Ringgold, Ga.Credit…C.B. Schmelter/Chattanooga Times Free Press, via Associated PressLuke Broadwater and Jan. 29, 2021Updated 10:09 a.m. ETWASHINGTON — The video’s title was posed as a question, but it left little doubt about where the men who filmed it stood. They called it “The Coming Civil War?” and in its opening seconds, Jim Arroyo, who leads an Arizona chapter of Oath Keepers, a right-wing militia, declared that the conflict had already begun.To back up his claim, Mr. Arroyo cited Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona, one of the most far-right members of Congress. Mr. Gosar had paid a visit to the local Oath Keepers chapter a few years earlier, Mr. Arroyo recounted, and when asked if the United States was headed for a civil war, the congressman’s “response to the group was just flat out: ‘We’re in it. We just haven’t started shooting at each other yet.’”Less than two months after the video was posted, members of the Oath Keepers were among those with links to extremist groups from around the country who took part in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, prompting new scrutiny of the links between members of Congress and an array of organizations and movements that espouse far-right beliefs.Nearly 150 House Republicans supported President Donald J. Trump’s baseless claims that the election had been stolen from him. But Mr. Gosar and a handful of other Republican members of the House had deeper ties to extremist groups who pushed violent ideas and conspiracy theories and whose members were prominent among those who stormed the halls of Congress in an effort to stop certification of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.Their ranks include Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona, who like Mr. Gosar was linked to the “Stop the Steal” campaign backing Mr. Trump’s effort to overturn the election’s outcome.Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado has close connections to militia groups including the so-called Three Percenters, an extremist offshoot of the gun rights movement that had at least one member who entered the Capitol on Jan. 6.Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory, whose adherents were among the most visible of those who stormed the building, and she appeared at a rally with militia groups. Before being elected to Congress last year, Ms. Greene used social media in 2019 to endorse executing top Democrats and has suggested that the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., was a staged “false flag” attack. The liberal group Media Matters for America reported on Thursday that Ms. Greene also speculated on Facebook in 2018 that California wildfires might have been started by lasers from space, promoting a theory pushed by followers of QAnon.Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida appeared last year at an event also attended by members of the Proud Boys, another extremist organization whose role in the Jan. 6 assault, like those of the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters, is being investigated by the F.B.I.It is not clear whether any elected officials played a role in directly facilitating the attack on the Capitol, other than helping to incite violence through false statements about the election being stolen from Mr. Trump. Officials have said they are investigating reports from Democrats that a number of House Republicans provided tours of the Capitol and other information to people who might have gone on to be part of the mob on Jan. 6. So far, no evidence has surfaced publicly to back up those claims.Representative Paul Gosar, Republican of Arizona, speaking to protesters in November outside the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center in Phoenix.Credit…Jim Urquhart/ReutersMs. Boebert said in a statement that she had “never given a tour of the U.S. Capitol to anyone besides family members in town for my swearing-in,” and she called accusations from Democrats that she gave a “reconnaissance tour” to insurgents an “irresponsible lie.” After the riot at the Capitol, she said she did not support “unlawful acts of violence.”Mr. Biggs has denied associating with Stop the Steal organizers and condemned violence “of any kind.”“Were you aware of any planned demonstration or riot at the U.S. Capitol to take place after the rally on Jan. 6, 2021? No,” Mr. Biggs said in a statement.A spokesman for Ms. Greene said she now rejects QAnon, and he tried to distance her from militia members.“She doesn’t have anything to do with it,” her communications director, Nick Dyer, said of QAnon. “She thinks it’s disinformation.” As for the militia members, he said, “Those people were at one event independently of Congresswoman Greene.”Mr. Gosar did not respond to requests for comment.Mr. Gaetz, on his podcast, said the Proud Boys were at the event he attended to provide security, and that “just because you take a picture with someone,” it does not mean “you’re tied to every viewpoint they’ve ever had or that they will ever have in the future.”But in signaling either overt or tacit support, a small but vocal band of Republicans now serving in the House provided legitimacy and publicity to extremist groups and movements as they built toward their role in supporting Mr. Trump’s efforts to subvert the outcome of the 2020 election and the attack on Congress.Aitan D. Goelman, a former federal prosecutor who helped convict the Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, said that when elected officials — or even candidates for office — took actions like appearing with militia groups or other right-wing groups it “provides them with an added imprimatur of legitimacy.”An examination of many of the most prominent elected Republicans with links to right-wing groups also shows how various strands of extremism came together at the Capitol on Jan. 6.In July, Mr. Gosar, a dentist, posed for a picture with a member of the Proud Boys. Two years earlier, he spoke at a rally for a jailed leader of Britain’s anti-immigrant fringe in London, where he vilified Muslim immigrants as a “scourge.” And in 2014, he traveled to Nevada to support the armed standoff between law enforcement and supporters of the cattle rancher Cliven Bundy, who had refused to stop trespassing on federal lands.Mr. Biggs, the chairman of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, was seen by leaders of the Stop the Steal movement as an inspiration and has spoken at events hosted by extremists, including one at which a founder of the Oath Keepers called for hanging Senator John McCain.Ms. Boebert, elected to the House in November, said on Twitter that “Today is 1776” on the morning of Jan. 6, and she has connections to the Three Percenters, which shares her view that gun rights are under assault. At least one member of the group has been arrested in the breach of the Capitol.Ms. Greene has for years trafficked in conspiracy theories, expressed support for QAnon and made offensive remarks about Black people, Jews and Muslims. She also appeared at a campaign event alongside members of the Three Percenters.To some degree, the members of Congress have been reflecting signals sent by Mr. Trump.During a presidential debate in October, he made a nod toward the Proud Boys, telling them to “stand back and stand by.” Two months earlier, Mr. Trump described followers of QAnon — several of whom have been charged with murder, domestic terrorism, planned kidnapping and, most recently, storming the Capitol — as “people that love our country,” adding that “they do supposedly like me.”A Stop the Steal protest in November near the Arizona State Capitol in Phoenix.Credit…Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesStop the StealFew Republicans have been more linked to extremist groups than Mr. Gosar.“He’s been involved with anti-Muslim groups and hate groups,” said Mr. Gosar’s brother Dave Gosar, a lawyer in Wyoming. “He’s made anti-Semitic diatribes. He’s twisted up so tight with the Oath Keepers it’s not even funny.”Dave Gosar and other Gosar siblings ran ads denouncing their brother as a dangerous extremist when he ran for Congress in 2018. Now they are calling on Congress to expel him.“We warned everybody how dangerous he was,” Dave Gosar said.In the days after the 2020 election, Mr. Gosar and Mr. Biggs helped turn Arizona into a crucible for the Stop the Steal movement, finding common cause with hard-liners who until then had toiled in obscurity, like Ali Alexander. The two congressmen recorded a video, “This Election Is A Joke,” which was viewed more than a million times and spread disinformation about widespread voter fraud.Mr. Alexander has said he “schemed up” the Jan. 6 rally with Mr. Gosar, Mr. Biggs and another vocal proponent of Stop the Steal, Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama. Mr. Alexander’s characterization of the role of the members of Congress is exaggerated, Mr. Biggs said, but the lawmakers were part of a larger network of people who helped plan and promote the rally as part of Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the will of the voters.After the election, Mr. Alexander emerged as a vocal proponent of the president’s stolen election claims, setting up a Stop the Steal website on Nov. 4 and making incendiary statements. On Dec. 8, he tweeted that he was willing to give up his life to keep Mr. Trump in office.The Arizona Republican Party followed up, retweeting Mr. Alexander’s post and adding: “He is. Are you?” Mr. Alexander has since been barred from Twitter.Ten days later, Mr. Gosar was one of the headliners at a rally in Phoenix that Mr. Alexander helped organize. Mr. Gosar used the rally to deliver a call to action, telling the crowd that they planned to “conquer the Hill” to return Mr. Trump to the presidency.During his time onstage, Mr. Alexander called Mr. Gosar “my captain” and added, “One of the other heroes has been Congressman Andy Biggs.”Representative Andy Biggs, Republican of Arizona, was cited as an inspiration by one of the organizers of the Stop the Steal campaign.Credit…Al Drago for The New York TimesAlthough Mr. Biggs has played down his involvement with the Stop the Steal campaign, on Dec. 19, Mr. Alexander played a video message from Mr. Biggs to an angry crowd at an event where attendees shouted violent slogans against lawmakers. At the event, Mr. Biggs’s wife, Cindy Biggs, was seen hugging Mr. Alexander twice and speaking in his ear.In 2019, Mr. Biggs spoke at an event supported by the Patriot Movement AZ, AZ Patriots and the American Guard — all identified as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center, according to The Arizona Republic. In 2015, he sat silent at an event as a founder of the Oath Keepers called for the hanging ​of Senator McCain, calling him a traitor to the Constitution. Mr. Biggs told The Republic at the time that he did not feel it was his place to speak up and denounce the comments..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-c7gg1r{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:0.875rem;line-height:0.875rem;margin-bottom:15px;color:#121212 !important;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-c7gg1r{font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:1.25rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-rqynmc{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc strong{font-weight:600;}.css-rqynmc em{font-style:italic;}.css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1amoy78{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1amoy78{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-1amoy78:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-k9atqk{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-k9atqk strong{font-weight:700;}.css-k9atqk em{font-style:italic;}.css-k9atqk a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ccd9e3;}.css-k9atqk a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ddd;}.css-k9atqk a:hover{border-bottom:none;}Capitol Riot FalloutFrom Riot to ImpeachmentThe riot inside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 6, followed a rally at which President Trump made an inflammatory speech to his supporters, questioning the results of the election. Here’s a look at what happened and the ongoing fallout:As this video shows, poor planning and a restive crowd encouraged by President Trump set the stage for the riot.A two hour period was crucial to turning the rally into the riot.Several Trump administration officials, including cabinet members Betsy DeVos and Elaine Chao, announced that they were stepping down as a result of the riot.Federal prosecutors have charged more than 70 people, including some who appeared in viral photos and videos of the riot. Officials expect to eventually charge hundreds of others.The House voted to impeach the president on charges of “inciting an insurrection” that led to the rampage by his supporters.Mr. Arroyo, of the Oath Keepers in Arizona, said Mr. Gosar had attended two of their meetings, about a year apart. Mr. Arroyo said that his organization “does not advocate for breaking the law” and that he was “saddened to see the display of trespassing on the Capitol building by a few out-of-control individuals.”Just like Mr. Gosar’s family, Mr. Biggs’s two brothers have publicly denounced him, saying he was at least partly responsible for the violence on Jan. 6. In addition, a Democratic state representative in Arizona, Athena Salman, has called on the Justice Department to investigate the actions of Mr. Gosar and Mr. Biggs before the riot, saying they “encouraged, facilitated, participated and possibly helped plan this anti-democratic insurrection.”Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado tweeted, “Today is 1776,” on the morning of the Capitol riot.Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times‘I Am the Militia’In December 2019, hundreds of protesters descended on the Colorado Statehouse to oppose a new state law meant to take firearms out of the hands of emotionally disturbed people.Among those at the rally were members of the Three Percenters, which federal prosecutors describe as a “radical militia group,” and a congressional hopeful with a history of arrests named Lauren Boebert, who was courting their votes. Armed with her own handgun, she posed for photographs with militia members and defiantly pledged to oppose the law.In the months that followed, militia groups would emerge as one of Ms. Boebert’s crucial political allies. As her campaign got underway last year, she wrote on Twitter, “I am the militia.”Militia members provided security for her campaign events and frequented the restaurant she owns, Shooters Grill in Rifle, Colo. In a recently posted video, a member of the Three Percenters was filmed giving Ms. Boebert a Glock 22 handgun.Another member of the group, Robert Gieswein, who posed for a photograph in front of Ms. Boebert’s restaurant last year, is facing federal charges in the storming of the Capitol and attacking the police.Photographs from the attack show him clad in tactical gear, goggles and a helmet, wrestling with Capitol Police officers to remove metal barricades and brandishing a baseball bat. Prosecutors have also cited a video of Mr. Gieswein encouraging other rioters as they smashed a window at the Capitol.Once inside, Mr. Gieswein was photographed with another suspect, Dominic Pezzola, a former Marine and a member of the Proud Boys, who has also been charged in the Capitol attack.Ms. Boebert’s communications director, Benjamin Stout, said in an email that she “has always condemned all forms of political violence and has repeatedly made clear that those who stormed the U.S. Capitol should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”He added, “Simply because she takes a photo with someone that asks for one doesn’t mean she endorses every single belief they have or agrees with all other public statements or causes they support.”Robert Gieswein, in a helmet and tactical gear during the riot at the Capitol, is a member of the Three Percenters extremist group, which has supported Ms. Boebert.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesThe QAnon CaucusOne of the animating forces behind the attack on the Capitol was the movement known as QAnon, and QAnon has few more high-profile supporters than Ms. Greene.QAnon is a movement centered on the fantastical claim that Mr. Trump, secretly aided by the military, was elected to smash a cabal of Democrats, international financiers and “Deep State” bureaucrats who worship Satan and abuse children. It prophesied an apocalyptic showdown, known as “the Storm,” between Mr. Trump and his enemies. During the Storm, their enemies, including Mr. Biden and many Democratic and Republican members of Congress, would be arrested and executed.The mob that attacked the Capitol included many visible QAnon supporters wearing “Q” shirts and waving “Q” banners.Among them was Jake Angeli, a QAnon devotee who styled himself the “Q Shaman.” Mr. Angeli, whose real name is Jacob Chansley, stormed the Capitol in horns and animal furs, and left a note threatening Vice President Mike Pence.Also among them was Ashli Babbitt, a QAnon believer who was shot and killed by a Capitol Police officer as she tried to climb through a window in a barricaded door near the House chamber.Ms. Greene was an early adherent, calling QAnon “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles out.” Many of her Facebook posts in recent years reflected language used by the movement, talking about hanging prominent Democrats or executing F.B.I. agents.Ms. Greene has also displayed a fondness for some of the militia groups whose members were caught on video attacking the Capitol, including the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters. Speaking in 2018 at the Mother of All Rallies, a pro-Trump gathering in Washington, she praised militias as groups that can protect people against “a tyrannical government.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More