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      FBI chief calls Capitol attack domestic terrorism and rejects Trump’s fraud claims

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      The FBI director, Christopher Wray, has said that the bureau considers the 6 January Capitol attack an act of “domestic terrorism” and suggested that “serious charges” were still to come in its continuing criminal investigation.Testifying before Congress on Thursday, the director rubbished Donald Trump’s claims about a stolen presidential election. “We did not find evidence of fraud that could have changed the outcome of the election,” he told lawmakers on the House judiciary committee.Wray’s testimony came as federal prosecutors charged six members of a rightwing militia group with conspiring to storm the Capitol, the latest in a series of such charges arising from 6 January.Democratic lawmakers repeatedly grilled Wray, appointed by Trump in 2017, over what they said were intelligence failures that left law enforcement ill-prepared for the deadly attack.“The FBI’s inaction in the weeks leading up to January 6 is simply baffling,” said Jerry Nadler, the House judiciary committee chairman. “It is hard to tell whether FBI headquarters merely missed the evidence – which had been flagged by your field offices and was available online for all the world to see – or whether the bureau saw the intelligence, underestimated the threat, and simply failed to act.”A Senate report recently concluded that the deadly insurrection had been planned “in plain sight” but that warnings had gone unheeded due to a troubling mix of bad communications, poor planning, faulty equipment and lack of leadership.Wray said that “almost none” of the 500 people charged so far with participating in the attack had been under FBI investigation previously, suggesting it would have been difficult for the FBI to have monitored them in advance.“You can be darn sure that we are going to be looking hard at how we can do better, how we can do more, how we can do things differently in terms of collecting and disseminating” intelligence, Wray said.Thursday’s charges against six men, all from California, were disclosed in an indictment unsealed in federal court in Washington. Two of them, Alan Hostetter and Russell Taylor, were seen a day before the riot with Roger Stone, a friend and adviser to Trump, during a protest outside the US supreme court against the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.About 30 people – including members of two other rightwing groups, the Oath Keepers and Tte Proud Boys – have been accused of conspiracy, the most serious charges related to the riot. Those pending cases are the largest and most complex of the roughly 500 brought by the justice department since the attack.Asked whether the FBI was investigating Trump or Stone, Wray said he could neither confirm nor deny any FBI investigation.“I’m talking about Mr Big, No 1,” said the Tennessee Democrat Steve Cohen, referring to Trump. “Have you gone after the people who incited the riot?”Wray responded: “I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to be discussing whether or not we are or aren’t investigating specific individuals.”Wray also faced questions about the recent spate of ransomware attacks against major US companies. The FBI’s director told lawmakers that the bureau discouraged ransomware payments to hacking groups.“It is our policy, it is our guidance, from the FBI, that companies should not pay the ransom for a number of reasons,” Wray said.Still, recently hacked companies including Colonial Pipeline and JBS, the world’s largest meat processing company, have admitted paying millions to hackers in order to regain control of their computer systems.The justice department has said it was able to recover the majority of the ransomware payment made by Colonial Pipeline after locating the virtual wallet used by the hackers. More

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

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      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 chief calls Capitol attack 'domestic terrorism' and defends US intelligence

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      The FBI director, Chris Wray, has condemned the 6 January riot at the US Capitol as an instance of “domestic terrorism”, while defending the bureau’s handling of intelligence indicating that violence was likely.
      “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 on Tuesday. He also said the bureau was pursuing about 2,000 domestic terrorism investigations, up from 1,400 at end of 2020.
      Donald Trump incited the Capitol attack, telling supporters at a rally near the White House to “fight like hell” in an attempt to overturn his electoral defeat based on the lie, repeatedly thrown out of court, that Biden won thanks to electoral fraud.
      Five people including a Capitol police officer were killed. Trump was impeached on a charge of inciting an insurrection but acquitted when only seven Republican senators voted to convict.
      Wray told senators the attack had “no place in our democracy, and tolerating it would make a mockery of our nation’s rule of law”.
      The FBI was aggressively pursuing those who carried out the attack, he said, adding that investigations were under way in 55 of 56 FBI field offices. More than 200 people have been charged.
      His comments in his first appearance before Congress since the Capitol attack amounted to the FBI’s most vigorous defense against the suggestion it did not adequately communicate to police the distinct possibility of violence as lawmakers gathered to certify presidential election results.
      Wray told lawmakers information was properly shared before the riot, even though it was raw and unverified.
      A 5 January report from the FBI field office in Norfolk, Virginia, warned of online posts foreshadowing a “war” in Washington the following day. Capitol police leaders have said they were unaware of that report and received no intelligence from the FBI that would have led them to expect the sort of violence which ensued.
      Wray said the Norfolk report was shared though the FBI’s joint terrorism taskforce, discussed at a command post and posted on an internet portal. Ideally the FBI would have had more time to try to corroborate it, he said.
      “Our folks made the judgment to get that to the relevant people as quickly as possible,” Wray said.
      He was also pressed on how the FBI is confronting a national security threat from white nationalists and domestic violent extremists and whether it has adequate resources to address those issues. Wray described white supremacist extremism as a “persistent, evolving threat” that has grown since he took over the FBI in 2017.
      White supremacists make up “the biggest chunk of our domestic terrorism portfolio overall”, he said, adding that such people “have been responsible for the most lethal attacks over the last decade”.
      The violence at the Capitol made clear that a law enforcement agency that remade itself after the 11 September 2001, attacks to deal with international terrorism is now scrambling to address homegrown violence from white Americans. The Biden administration has asked its national intelligence director, Avril Haines, to work with the FBI and Department of Homeland Security to assess the threat.
      In his opening statement, Wray said: “6 January was not an isolated event. 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.”
      The committee chairman, Dick Durbin, asked if the FBI believed the insurrection was carried out by “fake Trump protesters”. The Illinois Democrat’s question came two weeks after the Republican Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson amplified baseless claims that leftwing provocateurs carried out the Capitol attack.
      “We have not seen evidence of that at this stage,” Wray said. In answer to Patrick Leahy of Vermont, another Democrat, he said: “We have not to date seen any evidence of anarchist violent extremists or people subscribing to antifa [antifascist groups] in connection with [6 January].”
      Wray has kept a low profile since the Capitol attack. Though he has briefed lawmakers and shared information with law enforcement, Tuesday’s hearing was his first public appearance before Congress since before the election.
      He was also likely to face questions about a massive Russian hack of corporations and US government agencies, which happened when elite hackers injected malicious code into a software update. More

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      FBI views Capitol insurrection as domestic terrorism, says Christopher Wray – video

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      FBI director Christopher Wray has said the bureau views the Capitol insurrection as a clear act of domestic terrorism. Speaking during a Senate hearing on the 6 January riots, Wray said: ‘That attack, that siege, was criminal behaviour, plain and simple, and it’s behaviour that we, the FBI, view as domestic terrorism’
      FBI director Christopher Wray testifies over Capitol insurrection – live More

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      Two Proud Boys arrested over Capitol attack, including one who smashed window

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      Federal law enforcement officials have arrested two members of the Proud Boys, a rightwing nationalist extremist group, for their role in the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January.The riot is now the subject of a second impeachment trial of Donald Trump, who is accused of inciting the rightwing mob at a rally that immediately preceded the assault. Federal authorities have charged more than 150 people in the onslaught.Federal prosecutors indicted Dominic Pezzola, 43, of Rochester, New York, and William Pepe, 31, of Beacon, New York on charges of conspiracy, civil disorder, unlawfully entering restricted buildings, and disorderly conduct in restricted buildings.Both men were identified as members of the Proud Boys, who, federal charging documents note, describe themselves as a “pro-Western fraternal organization for men who refuse to apologize for creating the modern world; aka Western Chauvinists”. The far-right group is known for using violent tactics against its opponents.Pezzola was the subject of one of the most widely distributed videos of the Capitol riots, in which he used a protective shield ripped away from a Capitol police officer to smash a window leading into the Capitol.Michael Sherwin, the acting US attorney for Washington, said in a court filing that Pezzola had “showed perseverance, determination, and coordination in being at the front lines every step along the way before breaking into the Capitol”, and that his actions in shattering the window and allowing an initial group of rioters to stream through “cannot be overstated”.Pezzola was later seen inside the Capitol building with a cigar, having what he described as a “victory smoke” and boasting that he “knew we could take this”. Pezzola’s lawyer described his client as a self-employed family man.In a search of Pezzola’s home in Rochester, New York, FBI agents found a computer thumb drive with hundreds of files detailing how to make firearms, poisons or explosives, Sherwin wrote in arguing that Pezzola should continue to be held without bail.Pepe was also photographed inside the Capitol. Federal authorities later identified him as a Metro-North Railroad train yard laborer who called in sick to attend the Trump rally that preceded the riot. Metro-North suspended Pepe without pay. He was also forced to surrender a shotgun and a hunting rifle, according to the Associated Press.In yet another arrest, federal authorities have charged Dawn Bancroft, a woman who entered the Capitol building and took a video of herself inside, with unlawful entry into a restricted building, disorderly conduct inside a restricted building, and violent entry into a restricted building.An affidavit from the FBI said Bancroft at first denied entering the building. When she was shown her own video of the event, the affidavit said she “stated that she lied”. Bancroft’s video showed her inside the Capitol with a friend and said she was searching for “Nancy”, believed to be Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, so they could shoot her “in the friggin’ brain”.Police are still searching for a suspect in the placement of pipe bombs in front of the Republican and Democratic party headquarters on 5 January.The FBI said it believed the suspect had placed the bombs in Washington DC between 7.30 and 8.30pm, and that the suspect was wearing Nike Air Max Turf shoes in yellow, black and gray. Authorities have increased the reward for information leading to the suspect’s arrest from $75,000 to $100,000. More

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      Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio was an FBI informant

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      Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys extremist group, has a past as an informer for federal and local law enforcement, repeatedly working undercover for investigators after he was arrested in 2012, according to a former prosecutor and a transcript of a 2014 federal court proceeding obtained by Reuters.In the Miami hearing, a federal prosecutor, a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent and Tarrio’s own lawyer described his undercover work and said he had helped authorities prosecute more than a dozen people in various cases involving drugs, gambling and human smuggling.Tarrio, in an interview with Reuters on Tuesday, denied working undercover or cooperating in cases against others. “I don’t know any of this,’” he said, when asked about the transcript. “I don’t recall any of this.”Law enforcement officials and the court transcript contradict Tarrio’s denial. In a statement to Reuters, the former federal prosecutor in Tarrio’s case, Vanessa Singh Johannes, confirmed that “he cooperated with local and federal law enforcement, to aid in the prosecution of those running other, separate criminal enterprises, ranging from running marijuana grow houses in Miami to operating pharmaceutical fraud schemes”.Tarrio, 36, is a high-profile figure who organizes and leads the rightwing Proud Boys in their confrontations with those they believe to be antifa, short for “anti-fascism”, an amorphous leftist movement. The Proud Boys were involved in the deadly insurrection at the Capitol on 6 January.The records uncovered by Reuters are startling because they show that a leader of a far-right group now under intense scrutiny by law enforcement was previously an active collaborator with criminal investigators.Washington police arrested Tarrio in early January when he arrived in the city two days before the Capitol Hill riot. He was charged with possessing two high-capacity rifle magazines, and burning a Black Lives Matter banner during a December demonstration by supporters of Donald Trump. The DC superior court ordered him to leave the city pending a court date in June.Though Tarrio did not take part in the Capitol insurrection, at least five Proud Boys members have been charged in the riot. The FBI previously said Tarrio’s earlier arrest was an effort to pre-empt the events of 6 January.The transcript from 2014 shines a new light on Tarrio’s past connections to law enforcement. During the hearing, the prosecutor and Tarrio’s defense attorney asked a judge to reduce the prison sentence of Tarrio and two co-defendants. They had pleaded guilty in a fraud case related to the relabeling and sale of stolen diabetes test kits.The prosecutor said Tarrio’s information had led to the prosecution of 13 people on federal charges in two separate cases, and had helped local authorities investigate a gambling ring.Tarrio’s then lawyer Jeffrey Feiler said in court that his client had worked undercover in numerous investigations, one involving the sale of anabolic steroids, another regarding “wholesale prescription narcotics” and a third targeting human smuggling. He said Tarrio helped police uncover three marijuana grow houses, and was a “prolific” cooperator.In the smuggling case, Tarrio, “at his own risk, in an undercover role met and negotiated to pay $11,000 to members of that ring to bring in fictitious family members of his from another country”, the lawyer said in court.In an interview, Feiler said he did not recall details about the case but added, “The information I provided to the court was based on information provided to me by law enforcement and the prosecutor.”An FBI agent at the hearing called Tarrio a “key component” in local police investigations involving marijuana, cocaine and MDMA, or ecstasy. The Miami FBI office declined comment.There is no evidence Tarrio has cooperated with authorities since then. In interviews with Reuters, however, he said that before rallies in various cities, he would let police departments know of the Proud Boys’ plans. It is unclear if this was actually the case. He said he stopped this coordination after 12 December because the DC police had cracked down on the group.Tarrio on Tuesday acknowledged that his fraud sentence was reduced, from 30 months to 16 months, but insisted that leniency was provided only because he and his co-defendants helped investigators “clear up” questions about his own case. He said he never helped investigate others.That comment contrasts with statements made in court by the prosecutor, his lawyer and the FBI. The judge in the case, Joan A Lenard, said Tarrio “provided substantial assistance in the investigation and prosecution of other persons involved in criminal conduct”.As Trump supporters challenged the Republican’s election loss in often violent demonstrations, Tarrio stood out for his swagger as he led crowds of mostly white Proud Boys in a series of confrontations and street brawls in Washington DC, Portland, Oregon and elsewhere.The Proud Boys, founded in 2016, began as a group protesting against political correctness and perceived constraints on masculinity. It grew into a group with distinctive colors of yellow and black that embraced street fighting. In September their profile soared when Trump called on them to “Stand back and stand by.”Tarrio, based in Miami, became the national chairman of the group in 2018.In November and December, Tarrio led the Proud Boys through the streets of DC after Trump’s loss. Video shows him on 11 December with a bullhorn in front of a large crowd. “To the parasites both in Congress, and in that stolen White House,’” he said. “You want a war, you got one!” The crowd roared. The next day Tarrio burned the BLM banner.Former prosecutor Johannes said she was surprised that the defendant she prosecuted for fraud is now a key player in the violent movement that sought to halt the certification of President Joe Biden.“I knew that he was a fraudster, but had no reason to know that he was also a domestic terrorist,” she said. More

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      Joe Biden hits the ground running by outlining national Covid strategy

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      Joe Biden began his first full day as president confronting a host of major crises facing his fledgling administration, starting with a flurry of actions to address his most pressing challenge: the raging Covid-19 pandemic.At a White House event on Thursday afternoon, Biden unveiled a new national strategy to combat the coronavirus, which has killed more than 404,000 Americans and infected more than 24 million since it first began spreading across the US one year ago, by far the highest totals in the world.“For the past year, we couldn’t rely on the federal government to act with the urgency and focus and coordination we needed,” Biden said, referring to the administration of Donald Trump, which ended at midday the day before.“And we have seen the tragic costs of that failure,” he said.Biden again braced the nation for continued hardship, saying “it’s going to get worse before it gets better” and predicting the death toll could rise to 500,000 by the end of next month.Outlining his approach, Biden told Americans: “Help is on the way.”The actions on Thursday included an order to require mask-wearing on federal property, in airports and on many flights, trains, ships and long-distance buses, and also a huge push to speed up vaccinations, which have fallen far behind the government’s own schedule.“Mask up,” he said, waving a face mask. “For the first 100 days.”Even as he charted an aggressive approach to gain control of the virus, he was met with more bad news about the economy as another 900,000 people filed for unemployment benefits last week and he inherited the worst jobs market of any modern-day president.Biden and Harris began their day joined by family at the White House, where they virtually attended an inaugural prayer service held by the Washington National Cathedral, a tradition that has been reshaped by the pandemic.The president, members of his family as well as his vice-president, Kamala Harris, and her husband sat physically distanced in the Blue Room of the White House to stream the interfaith service. Many of the speakers extended prayers and blessings to the new leaders.The Rev William Barber, a preacher from North Carolina and civil rights leader who leads an anti-poverty campaign, delivered the homily, calling on the new administration to address what he called the “five interlocking injustices of systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation/denial of healthcare, the war economy, and the false moral narrative of religious nationalism”.“No, America has never yet been all that she has hoped to be,” Barber said. “But right here, right now, a third reconstruction is possible if we choose.”And on Thursday morning John Kerry warned, in his first remarks as the US’s new climate envoy, that the world was lagging behind the required pace of change needed to avert catastrophic impacts from the climate crisis.Kerry, the former US secretary of state in the Obama-Biden administration, acknowledged that America had been absent from the international effort to contain dangerous global heating during Donald Trump’s presidency but added: “Today no country and no continent is getting the job done.”The FBI director, Christopher Wray, will remain in the role, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said on Thursday. During her first press briefing on Wednesday, Psaki raised speculation that his job was in jeopardy when she declined to publicly state whether Biden had confidence in him.“I caused an unintentional ripple yesterday, so wanted to state very clearly President Biden intends to keep FBI Director Wray on in his role and he has confidence in the job he is doing,” she said in a tweet on Thursday.Wray took the helm at the agency in 2017 after Trump fired his predecessor, James Comey, just four years into what is traditionally a 10-year term. Wray’s future had been in doubt for much of the past year, as Trump openly criticized the director and the agency.Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, Biden’s nominee for transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, appeared at his Senate confirmation hearing while the House prepared to initiate Trump’s second impeachment trial.In an opening statement, Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who ran against Biden for the Democratic nomination, said there was a “bipartisan appetite for a generational opportunity to transform and improve America’s infrastructure”.The Senate, which officially switched to Democratic control on Wednesday after the swearing-in of three new senators, two from Georgia, has never held an impeachment trial for a former president.Some Republicans have argued that it is not constitutional to try an official who has left office, but many scholars disagree. Democrats say they are ready to move forward as negotiations continue between the chambers over the scope and timing of a trial.After impeaching Trump for an unprecedented second time last week, the House has yet to transmit to the Senate the article charging Trump with “incitement of insurrection” over his role in encouraging a crowd of loyalists that attacked the US Capitol on 6 January in an effort to stop the certification of his defeat.At a press conference on Thursday, Pelosi refused to say when the House would send the article beyond that it “won’t be long”. More

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      US lawmakers ask FBI to investigate Parler app's role in Capitol attack

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      American lawmakers have asked the FBI to investigate the role of Parler, the social media website and app popular with the American far right, in the violence at the US Capitol on 6 January.Carolyn Maloney, chair of the House oversight and reform Committee, asked the FBI to review Parler’s role “as a potential facilitator of planning and incitement related to the violence, as a repository of key evidence posted by users on its site, and as a potential conduit for foreign governments who may be financing civil unrest in the United States”.Maloney asked the FBI to review Parler’s financing and its ties to Russia.Maloney cited press reports that detailed violent threats on Parler against state elected officials for their role in certifying the election results before the 6 January attack that left five dead. She also noted numerous Parler users have been arrested and charged with threatening violence against elected officials or for their roles in the attack.She cited justice department charges against a Texas man who used a Parler account to post threats that he would return to the Capitol on 19 January “carrying weapons and massing in numbers so large that no army could match them”.The justice department said the threats were viewed by other social media users tens of thousands of times.Parler was launched in 2018 and won more users in the last months of the Trump presidency as social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook cracked down more forcefully on falsehoods and misinformation.The social network, which resembles Twitter, fast became the hottest app among American conservatives, with high-profile proponents like Senator Ted Cruz recruiting new users.But following the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol, Google banned it from Google Play and Apple suspended it from the App Store.Amazon then suspended Parler from its web hosting service AWS, in effect taking the site offline unless it could find a new company to host its services.The website partially returned online this week, though only displaying a message from its chief executive, John Matze, saying he was working to restore functionality, with the help of a Russian-owned technology company.Reuters reported this week that Parler partially resumed online operations.The FBI and Parler did not immediately respond to requests for comment.More than 25,000 national guard troops and new fencing ringed with razor wire were among the unprecedented security steps put in place ahead of Wednesday’s inauguration of President Joe Biden. More