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      in Elections

      Another Far-Right Group Is Scrutinized in Effort to Aid Trump

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      The organization, called 1st Amendment Praetorian, is not as well known as the Oath Keepers or the Proud Boys, but it worked closely with pro-Trump forces in the months after the 2020 election.Days after a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 last year, federal law enforcement officials pursued two high-profile extremist groups: the far-right nationalist Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers militia. Members of both organizations were quickly arrested on attention-grabbing charges, accused of plotting to interfere with the certification of the 2020 vote count.Now congressional investigators are examining the role of another right-wing paramilitary group that was involved in a less publicly visible yet still expansive effort to keep President Donald J. Trump in power: the 1st Amendment Praetorian.Known in shorthand as 1AP, the group spent much of the postelection period working in the shadows with pro-Trump lawyers, activists, business executives and military veterans to undermine public confidence in the election and to bolster Mr. Trump’s hopes of remaining in the White House.By their own account, members of the 1st Amendment Praetorian helped to funnel data on purported election fraud to lawyers suing to overturn the vote count. They guarded celebrities like Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, at “Stop the Steal” rallies, where huge crowds gathered to demand that Mr. Trump remain in office. And they supported an explosive proposal to persuade the president to declare an emergency and seize the country’s voting machines in a bid to stay in power.None of 1AP’s top operatives have been arrested in connection with the Capitol riot, and it remains unclear how much influence they exerted or how seriously criminal investigators are focused on them. Still, the group had men on the ground outside the building on Jan. 6 and others at the Willard Hotel, near some of Mr. Trump’s chief allies. And in the days leading up to the assault, 1AP’s Twitter account posted messages suggesting that the group knew violence was imminent.“There may be some young National Guard captains facing some very, very tough choices in the next 48 hours,” read one message posted by the group on Jan. 4.Last month, citing some of these concerns, the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack issued a subpoena to Robert Patrick Lewis, the leader of 1AP. On the same day, it sent similar requests to Enrique Tarrio, the chairman of the Proud Boys, and Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers.Understand the U.S. Capitol RiotOn Jan. 6, 2021, a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol.What Happened: Here’s the most complete picture to date of what happened — and why.Timeline of Jan. 6: A presidential rally turned into a Capitol rampage in a critical two-hour time period. Here’s how.Key Takeaways: Here are some of the major revelations from The Times’s riot footage analysis.Death Toll: Five people died in the riot. Here’s what we know about them.Decoding the Riot Iconography: What do the symbols, slogans and images on display during the violence really mean?As part of their inquiry, congressional investigators have obtained numerous audio recordings of 1AP members and are trying to determine how they fit into the broader investigation. Mr. Lewis did not respond to multiple requests for comment, but in recent months he has told parts of his story in online videos and podcasts.Made up largely of Special Forces veterans and former intelligence officials, 1AP was founded in September 2020 to protect Trump supporters from harassment at rallies and to safeguard free speech rights from “tyrannical, Marxist subversive groups,” Mr. Lewis wrote in a thread of tweets announcing the creation of the group. In a video attached to the thread, he said it would be “a tactical mistake” to discuss how many members 1AP had, noting only that it was several times more than the dozen in a standard Special Forces operational unit.By the time he founded 1st Amendment Praetorian, Mr. Lewis, who once served as a medic for a Special Forces team, had been out of the Army for a decade and reinvented himself as an author and commentator with an interest in military issues and right-wing politics. Among his works were two action novels describing how the Green Berets saved the American homeland from a fictional invasion and a memoir depicting his rise from poverty and adoption to success in the 10th Special Forces Group, an elite unit stationed in Germany.1AP’s first “mission” — protecting conservative V.I.P.s — came in October 2020, when the group provided security at a march in Washington led by the Walk Away Foundation, an organization that seeks to persuade Democratic voters to leave the party, Mr. Lewis said in a YouTube video posted that December. The foundation’s leader, Brandon Straka, a former hairstylist in New York, was among those arrested in the Capitol attack. Court papers suggest that he recently began to cooperate with the government.At least one member of the 1st Amendment Praetorian was on the ground outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, while the group’s leader said he was at the Willard Hotel.Jason Andrew for The New York TimesAt that event and others, 1AP provided more than bodyguards, Mr. Lewis said. Its protective detail also included “low-viz operators” dressed in plainclothes moving in the crowd. “We had eyes and ears everywhere,” he added.As the presidential election drew closer, Mr. Lewis branched out beyond personal protection and started giving interviews, casting himself as a security expert, to right-wing news outlets, including those connected to the QAnon conspiracy theory. Among his claims — so far unsubstantiated — was that “professional analysts” working for 1AP had infiltrated “encrypted forums” visited by members of the loose left-wing collective known as antifa and had discovered plans for a nationwide attack.“Our intelligence shows that no matter who wins the election, they are planning a massive ‘antifa Tet offensive’ bent on destroying the global order,” he told Fox News two days before Election Day.Once the votes were cast, Mr. Lewis turned his attention back toward guarding pro-Trump luminaries at rallies in Washington, where throngs of people showed up in support of the lie that the election had been rigged. One of his clients was Ali Alexander, a prominent “Stop the Steal” organizer, who was a featured speaker at the so-called Million MAGA March on Nov. 14, 2020. (Mr. Alexander has since given testimony to the House select committee.)Around the same time, 1AP became involved in another project connected to challenging the election. Members of the group, as Mr. Lewis put it in his video in December, began to scour the internet for “OSINT” — or open source intelligence — about allegations of election fraud. Whatever evidence they found, he said, they sent to Sidney Powell, a Dallas-based lawyer who filed four federal lawsuits in late 2020 contesting the results of the presidential vote.The lawsuits, which ultimately failed and resulted in a federal judge imposing sanctions on Ms. Powell, described without any credible evidence a plot by a cabal of international powers to hack U.S. voting machines and flip the count away from Mr. Trump.Key Figures in the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 10The House investigation. More

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      in Elections

      Proud Boys Regroup Locally to Add to Ranks Before 2022 Midterms

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      The far-right nationalist group has become increasingly active at school board meetings and town council gatherings across the country.They showed up last month outside the school board building in Beloit, Wis., to protest school masking requirements.They turned up days later at a school board meeting in New Hanover County, N.C., before a vote on a mask mandate.They also attended a gathering in Downers Grove, Ill., where parents were trying to remove a nonbinary author’s graphic novel from public school libraries.Members of the Proud Boys, the far-right nationalist group, have increasingly appeared in recent months at town council gatherings, school board presentations and health department question-and-answer sessions across the country. Their presence at the events is part of a strategy shift by the militia organization toward a larger goal: to bring their brand of menacing politics to the local level.For years, the group was known for its national profile. The Proud Boys were prominent at the rallies of Donald J. Trump, at one point offering to serve as the former president’s private militia. On Jan. 6, some Proud Boys members filmed themselves storming the U.S. Capitol to protest what they falsely said was an election that had been stolen from Mr. Trump.But since federal authorities have cracked down on the group for the Jan. 6 attack, including arresting more than a dozen of its members, the organization has been more muted. Or at least that was how it appeared.Away from the national spotlight, the Proud Boys instead quietly shifted attention to local chapters, some members and researchers said. In small communities — usually suburbs or small towns with populations of tens of thousands — its followers have tried to expand membership by taking on local causes. That way, they said, the group can amass more supporters in time to influence next year’s midterm elections.“The plan of attack if you want to make change is to get involved at the local level,” said Jeremy Bertino, a prominent member of the Proud Boys from North Carolina.The group had dissolved its national leadership after Jan. 6 and was being run exclusively by its local chapters, Mr. Bertino said. It was deliberately involving its members in local issues, he added.That focus is reflected in the Proud Boys’ online activity. On the encrypted messaging app Telegram, the Proud Boys’ main group in the United States has barely budged in number — with about 31,000 followers — over the last year. But over a dozen new Telegram channels have emerged for local Proud Boys chapters in cities such as Seattle and Philadelphia over that same period, according to data collected by The New York Times. Those local Telegram groups have rapidly grown from dozens to hundreds of members.Other far-right groups that were active during Mr. Trump’s presidency, such as the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters, have followed the same pattern, researchers said. They have also expanded their local groups in states such as Pennsylvania, Texas and Michigan and are less visible nationally.“We’ve seen these groups adopt new tactics in the wake of Jan. 6, which have enabled them to regroup and reorganize themselves,” said Jared Holt, a resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab who researches domestic extremist groups. “One of the most successful tactics they’ve used is decentralizing.”Members of the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters did not respond to requests for comment.The Proud Boys were founded in 2016 by Gavin McInnes, a co-founder of Vice. Enrique Tarrio, an activist and Florida director of Latinos for Trump, later took over as leader. The group, which is exclusively male, has espoused misogynistic, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic views, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has designated it as a hate group.By the 2020 election, the Proud Boys — who often wear distinctive black-and-yellow uniforms — had become the largest and most public of the militias. Last year, Mr. Trump referred to them in a presidential debate when he was asked about white nationalist groups, replying, “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.”Enrique Tarrio during a Proud Boys rally last September. He was arrested in January.Mason Trinca for The New York TimesAfter the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, the group grew disillusioned with Mr. Trump. The president distanced himself from the riot and declined to offer immunity to those who were involved. The Proud Boys have also experienced a leadership vacuum, after Mr. Tarrio was arrested two days before the Capitol attack on charges of property destruction and illegally holding weapons.That was when the Proud Boys began concentrating on local issues, Mr. Holt said. But as local chapters flourished, he said, the group “increased their radical tendencies” because members felt more comfortable taking extreme positions in smaller circles.Many Proud Boys’ local chapters have now taken on causes tied to the coronavirus pandemic, with members showing up at protests over mask mandates and mandatory vaccination policies, according to researchers who study extremism.This year, members of the Proud Boys were recorded at 145 protests and demonstrations, up from 137 events in 2020, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, a nonprofit that monitors violence. But the data most likely understates the Proud Boys’ activities because it doesn’t include school board meetings and local health board meetings, said Shannon Hiller, the executive director of the Bridging Divides Initiative, a nonpartisan research group that tracks political violence.Ms. Hiller said the Proud Boys have shown consistently high levels of activity this year, unlike last year when there was a spike only around the election. She called the change “concerning,” adding that she expected to see the group’s appearances intensify before the midterms.On the Proud Boys’ local Telegram channels, members often share news articles and video reports about students who were barred from schools for refusing to wear a mask or employees who were fired over a vaccine requirement. Some make plans to appear at protests to act as “muscle,” with the goal of intimidating the other side and attracting new members with a show of force, according to the Telegram conversations viewed by The Times.The Coronavirus Pandemic: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 4U.S. nears 800,000 Covid deaths. More

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      Trump Acting Attorney General to Say No Widespread Fraud in 2020

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      The top Justice Department official at the time of the Jan 6. attack on the Capitol is expected to tell lawmakers on Wednesday that the department saw no evidence to undercut President Biden’s election win, even as Republicans continue to question the results and use those doubts to underpin restrictive voting laws.The Justice Department “had been presented with no evidence of widespread voter fraud at a scale sufficient to change the outcome of the 2020 election,” Jeffrey A. Rosen, who served as the acting attorney general for the final month of the Trump administration, said in a prepared statement to the House Oversight Committee.The department chose not to participate in legal challenges to the certification of the Electoral College results based on that assessment, his opening statement said, declining to appoint special prosecutors to look into election fraud or to ask state officials to overturn the results.Mr. Rosen agreed to participate in the hearing about the delayed law enforcement response to the mob at the Capitol.Former Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen during a press conference at the Department of Justice in September 2020.Pool photo by Olivier DoulieryThe Justice Department played a secondary role in security preparations for Congress’s Jan. 6 certification of the election results and expected protests, Mr. Rosen’s statement said. Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department led the planning.In preparation for the demonstrations, the Justice Department focused on gathering intelligence about potential threats and sharing it with the Homeland Security Department and local law enforcement, while the Metropolitan Police Department was primarily responsible for security. Mr. Rosen is expected to say that the number of protesters who gathered on Jan. 6 was on the low end of the department’s crowd size estimate.The day before the riot, the F.B.I. also set up a national coordination center at its headquarters in Washington to disseminate information. “Based on the updates I received, I was confident that very substantial efforts were undertaken by D.O.J. personnel in advance of Jan. 6 to understand and prepare for the potential threats, and share that information with law enforcement partners,” Mr. Rosen is expected to testify.He said in his opening remarks that his office took the additional step of pre-positioning tactical teams from the F.B.I., the A.T.F. and the U.S. Marshals Service near Washington, even though no other law enforcement agencies had requested them.Mr. Rosen is expected to say that soon after the crowd breached the Capitol, the Justice Department responded to requests for help from the Capitol Police, congressional leaders and White House staff. Some personnel were on the ground soon after the calls were made, and “sizable numbers” arrived by 2:40 that afternoon to help clear the building and ensure that the election was certified. More

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      in World Politics

      The Complex Role of Racism Within the Radical Right

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      Several political parties and governments around the world have centered their commitment to countering the radical right on tackling hate and racism. The most recent example was the announcement by the German cabinet in late 2020 to spend €1 billion ($1.2 billion) for a four-year program on combating “right-wing extremism, racism and antisemitism.”       

      There is no doubt that such political agendas are well intended, and most citizens would agree that racism is not consistent with their society’s democratic values. As US President Joe Biden put it in his inaugural speech, two weeks after the deadly storming of the US Capitol Building on January 6: “Our history has been a constant struggle between the American ideal that we are all created equal and the harsh, ugly reality that racism, nativism, fear, and demonization have long torn us apart. The battle is perennial.”

      How the Left and the Right Radicalize Each Other

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      Tackling racism deserves firm political commitment in its own right, and it certainly has a place within a multi-pronged strategy to countering violent extremism (CVE) on the radical right. But is there a tendency to overestimate the efficacy of anti-racism initiatives at the expense of other prevention and intervention measures within the CVE space?  

      Related to this, what role does racism play within the radical right? While it is widely acknowledged that there is no unanimously agreed definition of right-wing extremism or radicalism, most experts in the field consider racism to be a very common feature or, at the very least, one of the “accompanying characteristics” of right-wing extremism. This centrality of racism seems to have led many into thinking that tackling racist hate is a particularly effective way of countering right-wing extremism.

      What Kind of Racism?

      Decades of extensive scholarship — and the lived experiences of those affected — have emphasized that racism is systemic and interpersonal; it is attitudinal, behavioral and structural; and it can draw on biological social constructs and on cultural or religious markers, actual or perceived. At least one (or many) manifestation of racism is present across all radical–right groups. But what kind of racism?

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      The diversity of radical–right movements and groups is well understood in academia, and there have been numerous attempts to develop typologies that capture divergent groups under the umbrella of right-wing extremism. Exclusivist and anti-egalitarian beliefs are a common denominator, but articulations of racism differ across various radical right groups, movements and ideologies. These nuances are important but often overlooked in public and political debates.

      Some elements of the radical right, for example, mobilize in particular against Islam, expressing primarily anti-Muslim racism. This applies to what is often referred to as “counter-jihad” movements (a self-attributed and ideologized misnomer in many ways) and the anti-Islam protests that swept across Europe and Australia in the second half of 2010s. Non-white people are usually welcome there as long as they share anti-Islam sentiments. For example, in Australia, where most of my research has taken place, it was also not uncommon to see radical-right protesters at these rallies displaying Aboriginal flags and insisting they were reclaiming Australia from Islam also on behalf of indigenous Australians.

      These anti-Islam groups and movements differ from white supremacy organizations. For example, one Australian white supremacy group expressed its disagreement with those prominent anti-Islam movements as thus: “We do not believe in multiculturalism minus Islam.” Of course, these boundaries are blurry. There have been personal overlaps, and some radical–right groups with explicitly neo-Nazi convictions have strategically used the anti-Muslim movements to recruit more people to their white supremacy and antisemitic agenda.

      Another example that illustrates the complex, fluid and sometimes contested role that different forms of racism play within the radical right are the Proud Boys in the United States. Founded as a self-described Western chauvinistic boys club by Gavin McInnes in 2016 with an explicit, culturally racist and misogynistic profile, the group quickly adopted the markers of a white supremacist network, despite its chairman, Enrique Tarrio, being himself of Afro-Cuban descent. Infighting between Tarrio and another openly antisemitic and white supremacist leading figure (who reportedly referred to Tarrio as a “token negro”) in late 2020 revealed the internal fractions — all racist, yes, but racist in different ways.

      Racism as an Indicator of Radical-Right Ideology

      While people associated with or sympathetic to radical–right movements generally seem to hold racist views, the majority of those with such exclusionary or prejudiced attitudes toward certain ethnic, racial, cultural or religious minorities are not affiliated with right-wing extremism or radicalism. Attitude surveys across the Western world — from North America, the UK and Europe to Australia — have shown high rates of anti-Muslim sentiments and prejudice, expressed sometimes (depending on the country and the nature of the survey questions) by a majority of the surveyed population. Some surveys revealed that a substantial proportion of respondents also express biological racist views. According to the results of the European Social Survey a few years ago, 18% in the British sample agreed that “some races or ethnic groups are born less intelligent.” Considering the possibility of social desirability effects, we can only speculate as to whether this figure underestimates the true prevalence of biological racism.

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      It is impossible to determine how many of those who hold anti-Muslim or other racist views are affiliated or identify with the radical right — certainly not all of them and probably only a small portion. This is not to disregard the higher susceptibility among these segments of society to mobilization and recruitment efforts of radical–right groups. The path into the radical right is slippery. A former radical–right activist, Ivan Humble, recalled how he became a member of the English Defence League: “I didn’t identify as racist at the time, but I began to zero in on Muslim people in the belief that they were attacking the country I lived in, and that our society was being torn apart as a result. In hindsight, this was such a blinkered view but I couldn’t see it.”

      In our recent research in Australia, we identified several factors that may help analyze the questions as to where and when racism becomes an indicator for radical–right ideologies. We conducted in-depth interviews with people who were invited to speak with us about the concerns they had about diversity and immigration in Australia. We found that most of those we interviewed expressed anti-Muslim racism and other forms of cultural racism, but our analysis concluded that only some of them were affiliated with the radical right. In what way did their articulation of racism differ?

      1. Racism as Part of a Larger Meta-Narrative

      Our analysis suggests that it is important to understand if, and how, racism is functionally embedded in a larger meta-narrative. Among those on the radical right, racism was not “only” an exclusivist personal attitude but part of an ideological system, built on conspiratorial thinking about a secretive global elite seeking to destroy Australian society and culture. They agitated against ethnic or religious minorities, but they often did so with a bigger enemy in mind, which they accused of pushing immigration and multiculturalism to pursue an evil agenda.

      This is also illustrated in a speech by a central figure of Australia’s radical right addressing a public demonstration in early 2019, where he insisted that immigrants and blacks were not the main problem. The real enemies were, according to him, “those who bring these people into our country.”

      Another soon-to-be-published CRIS study by Victoria University and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue found that the radical right in Australia extensively used the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests for their online mobilization, but, notwithstanding prevalent expressions of racism, a salient argument was that black BLM activists both in the US and Australia were only “useful idiots,” controlled by an alleged communist or Jewish (or both) cabal for their sinister goals.  

      2. Racism and Political Activism

      The second factor that can help identify how racism spills over into radical–right ideologies is related to individuals’ willingness to act upon their attitudes. This addresses important aspects of the behavioral dimension of racism (and of radical–right movements).

      Some in our fieldwork who have displayed racist attitudes expressed no desire to make these feelings public or try to convince others. Rather the opposite was the case: They deliberately avoid conversations about these issues — at least with those they expect may disagree with — and they explicitly denied being politically active. In contrast, those we considered to be associated with the radical right stated they were on a mission to “educate” others — for example, on social media — and they had been actively involved in a range of public rallies. They proudly accepted the label of being a “political activist.” 

      3. Language and “Collective Identity”

      The third factor that may help assess to what extent someone’s racist expressions may be an indicator for a radical–right affiliation relates to the language and symbols used. Certain expressions such as “race traitor” or “white genocide,” and symbols such as 1488 or the use of (((triple brackets))) to indicate alleged Jewishness, are popular within segments of far-right discourses and point to what researchers Pete Simi and Steven Windisch call “identity talk”: “a discursive practice to demonstrate that an individual’s identity is consistent with the perceived collective identity of the movement.”

      The meaning and political message of symbols and terms can change over time: On the one hand, previously neutral symbols are coopted by parts of the radical right (e.g., Pepe the Frog or the “OK” hand signal reappropriated to represent white power), and on the other hand, terms that used to be characteristic for the radical right (e.g., New World Order, Social Justice Warrior) have become mainstream and lost their distinctiveness.

      Countering the Radical Right by Tackling Racism

      What does all this mean for countering the radical right? As mentioned above, measures aimed at tackling racism are important tools for promoting community cohesion, belonging and safety, and they can also play a role in reducing the pool of people who may be more susceptible to far-right mobilization. As such, anti-racism strategies form a vital part of what has come to be known as preventing violent extremism (PVE).

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      As an intervention tool within countering violent extremism (CVE) strategies, however, the potential efficacy of anti-racism approaches seems overrated. Racism may be a salient or “accompanying characteristic” of radical–right movements. While it may contribute to someone’s pathway toward becoming actively involved in the radical–right milieu, the relationship between racism and engagement with the radical right is often better described in terms of correlation than causation.

      If CVE programs intend to address the root causes of why people sympathize and engage with the radical right, they need to look further and beyond racism. Primarily focusing on ideological factors and trying to convince people that racism is “bad” is insufficient, even if complemented by legislative, security and law enforcement intervention. This is because such “corrections” can often lead to further negative backfire effects.

      It is therefore widely acknowledged among CVE scholars and practitioners that countering the radical right requires multifaceted and targeted programs tackling psychological, social and, ultimately, societal questions around personal grievances and people’s desire for purpose, respect and connectedness. When designing CVE interventions with the radical right in mind, it often requires holding back with moral judgments and showing empathy to those who have dehumanized others in order to further stem the harms posed by such activism. 

      *[Fair Observer is a media partner of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in Elections

      N.A.A.C.P. Sues Trump and Giuliani Over Election Fight and Jan. 6 Riot

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Campaign to Subvert the 2020 ElectionKey TakeawaysTrump’s RoleGeorgia InvestigationExtremist Wing of G.O.P.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyN.A.A.C.P. Sues Trump and Giuliani Over Election Fight and Jan. 6 RiotThe civil rights group brought the suit on behalf of Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, with other Democrats in Congress expected to join as plaintiffs.Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against former President Donald J. Trump and others over the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.Credit…Anna Moneymaker/The New York TimesFeb. 16, 2021, 10:00 a.m. ETWASHINGTON — The N.A.A.C.P. on Tuesday morning filed a federal lawsuit against former President Donald J. Trump and his personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, claiming that they violated a 19th century statute when they tried to prevent the certification of the election on Jan. 6.The civil rights organization brought the suit on behalf of Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi. Other Democrats in Congress — including Representatives Hank Johnson of Georgia and Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey — are expected to join as plaintiffs in the coming weeks, according to the N.A.A.C.P.The lawsuit contends that Mr. Trump and Mr. Giuliani violated the Ku Klux Klan Act, an 1871 statute that includes protections against violent conspiracies that interfered with Congress’s constitutional duties; the suit also names the Proud Boys, the far-right nationalist group, and the Oath Keepers militia group. The legal action accuses Mr. Trump, Mr. Giuliani and the two groups of conspiring to incite a violent riot at the Capitol, with the goal of preventing Congress from certifying the election.The suit is the latest legal problem for Mr. Trump: New York prosecutors are investigating his financial dealings; New York’s attorney general is pursuing a civil investigation into whether Mr. Trump’s company misstated assets to get bank loans and tax benefits; and a Georgia district attorney is examining his election interference effort there. In the lawsuit, Mr. Thompson said he was forced to wear a gas mask and hide on the floor of the House gallery for three hours while hearing “threats of physical violence against any member who attempted to proceed to approve the Electoral College ballot count.” Mr. Thompson also heard a gunshot, according to the suit, which he did not learn until later had killed Ashli Babbitt, one of the rioters in the Capitol lobby.Mr. Thompson is seeking compensatory and punitive damages in the lawsuit filed in Federal District Court in Washington. The suit does not include a specific financial amount.Mr. Thompson, 72, claims he was put at an increased health risk by later being required to shelter in place in a cramped area that did not allow for social distancing. The lawsuit notes that Mr. Thompson shared confined space with two members of Congress who tested positive for the coronavirus shortly after the attack at the Capitol.In an interview on Monday, Mr. Thompson said he would not have brought the suit against Mr. Trump if the Senate had voted to convict him in last week’s impeachment trial.“I feared for my life,” Mr. Thompson said. “Not a day passes that I don’t think about this incident. I was committed to seeing justice brought to this situation.”He added: “This is me, and hopefully others, having our day in court to address the atrocities of Jan. 6. I trust the better judgment of the courts because obviously Republican members of the Senate could not do what the evidence overwhelmingly presented.”Mr. Thompson said he had already received a second dose of a Covid vaccine by Jan. 6 and therefore did not quarantine after his close contacts with colleagues who tested positive. But he noted, “There were a number of members who were very concerned about being housed in those numbers with people refusing to wear masks.”Both Democratic and Republican members of Congress have recently raised the prospect of Mr. Trump being held accountable in the courts for the riot. Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, voted to acquit Mr. Trump in the impeachment trial but then appeared to encourage people to take their fight to the courts.“He didn’t get away with anything, yet,” Mr. McConnell said at the trial’s conclusion, noting: “We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation.”Derrick Johnson, president of the N.A.A.C.P., said the decision to seek compensatory and punitive damages was rooted in a history of tools that have worked to fight back against white supremacy.“The Southern Poverty Law Center filed a lawsuit against the Ku Klux Klan that bankrupted a chapter,” he said, referring to a 2008 judgment against a Kentucky-based Klan outfit that ordered the group to pay $2.5 million in damages. “This is very similar. If we do nothing, we can be ensured these groups will continue to spread and grow in their boldness. We must curb the spread of white supremacy.”While much of the focus of the impeachment trial rested on how the violent mob was threatening former Vice President Mike Pence as well as congressional leaders like the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, N.A.A.C.P. officials said the attack was deeply rooted in racial injustice.“Underlying this insurrection were the actions of folks who were challenging the voices of people of color,” said Janette McCarthy Louard, deputy general counsel of the N.A.A.C.P. “If you look at whose votes were being challenged, these came from largely urban areas. The votes of people of color were being challenged.”The suit, for instance, charges Mr. Giuliani with attempting to reject “the votes cast by voters in Detroit, the population of which is 78 percent African-American.” It also says Mr. Giuliani inaccurately claimed there was fraud in voting in Milwaukee and Madison, Wis., “both of which have large African-American populations.”Joseph M. Sellers, a partner at the civil rights law firm Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, which jointly filed the case, said the lawsuit named Mr. Trump in his personal capacity because his conduct challenging another branch of government to do its job falls outside the official duties of the president.“He was engaging in conduct that is so far outside any remotely legitimate scope of his presidential duties,” Mr. Sellers said. “He no longer has the immunity of the president.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      As Impeachment Ends, Federal Inquiry Looms as Reminder of Trump’s Role in Riot

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Trump ImpeachmentTrial HighlightsKey Takeaways From Day 5How Senators VotedTrump AcquittedAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAs Impeachment Ends, Federal Inquiry Looms as Reminder of Trump’s Role in RiotThe investigation is in its beginning stages, and it may ultimately provide a clear portrait of the former president’s part in the Capitol attack.Several supporters of former President Donald J. Trump who were arrested in connection with the Capitol riot have said they were answering his call on Jan. 6.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesAlan Feuer and Feb. 13, 2021Updated 3:51 p.m. ETThe acquittal of former President Donald J. Trump at his second impeachment trial will hardly be the last or decisive word on his level of culpability in the assault on the Capitol last month.While the Justice Department officials examining the rash of crimes committed during the riot have signaled that they do not plan to make Mr. Trump a focus of the investigation, the volumes of evidence they are compiling may eventually give a clearer — and possibly more damning — picture of his role in the attack.Case files in the investigation have offered signs that many of the rioters believed, as impeachment managers have said, that they were answering Mr. Trump’s call on Jan. 6. The inquiry has also offered evidence that some pro-Trump extremist groups, concerned about fraud in the election, may have conspired together to plan the insurrection.“If this was a conspiracy, Trump was the leader,” said Jonathan Zucker, the lawyer for Dominic Pezzola, a member of the far-right Proud Boys group who has been charged with obstructing police officers guarding the Capitol. “He was the one calling the shots.”As the sprawling investigation goes on — quite likely for months or even years — and newly unearthed evidence brings continual reminders of the riot, Mr. Trump may suffer further harm to his battered reputation, complicating any post-presidential ventures. Already, about a dozen suspects have explicitly blamed him for their part in the rampage — a number that will most likely rise as more arrests are made and legal strategies develop.Some defendants, court papers show, said they went to Washington because Mr. Trump encouraged them to do so, while others said they stormed the Capitol largely because of Mr. Trump’s appeal to “fight like hell” to overturn the election. One man — charged with assaulting the police — accused the former president of being his accomplice: In recent court papers, he described Mr. Trump as “a de facto unindicted co-conspirator” in his case.This week, prosecutors said that Jessica M. Watkins, a member of the Oath Keepers militia group, had been “awaiting direction” from Mr. Trump about how to handle the results of the election, only days after votes were cast. In court papers, the prosecutors quoted a text message the defendant, Ms. Watkins, sent to an associate on Nov. 9, saying that Mr. Trump had “the right to activate units.”“If Trump asks me to come,” Ms. Watkins cryptically wrote, “I will.”Legal scholars have questioned the viability of faulting Mr. Trump in cases connected to the Capitol attack, noting that defendants would have to prove not only that they believed he authorized their actions, but also that such a belief was reasonable.But even if trying to offload responsibility onto Mr. Trump may prove ineffective at a trial, legal experts have acknowledged it might ultimately help mitigate the punishment for some people convicted of a crime at the Capitol.More than 200 people altogether have been charged with federal crimes in the attack, most on relatively minor counts like disorderly conduct and unlawful entry. The one place where Mr. Trump might face charges connected to the election is Fulton County, Ga., where the local district attorney has announced an investigation into whether he interfered with state officials in charge of counting votes.The “Trump made me do it” defense made a cameo appearance in a remarkable split-screen moment on Wednesday: As House impeachment managers were describing Mr. Pezzola’s role in the Capitol attack (noting that he had used a plastic riot shield to smash a window at the building), at the exact same time, Mr. Pezzola himself was in court asking a judge to release him pending trial — in part because he had been following Mr. Trump’s orders.Mr. Pezzola, a former Marine, did not consider himself a violent criminal, but instead a “patriot” who responded to “the entreaties of the-then commander in chief, President Trump,” his lawyer, Mr. Zucker, had written in a court filing that morning. When Mr. Trump made baseless claims that the election had been stolen, Mr. Pezzola felt a duty to help, Mr. Zucker wrote, adding that his client thus became “one of millions of Americans who were misled by the president’s deceptions.”Dominic Pezzola, center right, responded to “the entreaties” of former President Donald Trump, according to his lawyer.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesMr. Trump’s impeachment lawyers argued in the Senate this week that his fiery speech before the riot was protected by the First Amendment, and was not an incitement to violence. And while Mr. Pezzola’s claims that he was acting “out of conscience” in storming the Capitol may be true, they are also — for a man facing serious time in prison — slightly self-serving.Still, other rioters charged in the Capitol attack have made similar claims in trying to stay out of jail, arguing, for example, that they cannot be considered a danger to the community given that Mr. Trump is out of office and thus, they say, unable to incite them further.A lawyer for Jorge Riley, who shared dozens of Facebook posts as he stormed into the Capitol, said at a hearing last month that his client had flown from his home in Sacramento, Calif., to join the mob in Washington — or, as he put it, people who were “called to a rally by the president of the United States.”Prosecutors have accused Mr. Riley, a former leader of the California Republican Assembly, a political activist group, of trying to find and harass Speaker Nancy Pelosi.“The person for whom it was done — the person who egged it on and encouraged it — is no longer in power and does not have a voice, so that is not likely to recur,” his lawyer, Timothy Zindel, said of Mr. Trump in court.In a separate case, a lawyer for Patrick McCaughey, accused of assaulting two police officers, wrote in a court filing this month that Mr. Trump was “somewhat of a de facto unindicted co-conspirator.”Mr. McCaughey, whose story was featured at the impeachment trial this week, pushed his way to the front of a mob fighting to break through police lines at the Capitol and pinned one officer against a door, nearly choking him, prosecutors have said.But his lawyer, Lindy R. Urso, argued in a court filing that Mr. McCaughey would, like others in the crowd, have protested peacefully had Mr. Trump not incited them to violence.The efforts to blame Mr. Trump are, of course, a calculated legal defense and may not work to exonerate them of crimes committed at the Capitol, even if they were inspired by Mr. Trump’s words.Ethan Nordean, a leader of the Proud Boys in Seattle, was “egged on” by Mr. Trump into believing the election was stolen, his lawyer wrote in a court filing this month. But prosecutors have said that Mr. Nordean’s online posts suggest that he and other Proud Boys were planning before Jan. 6 to breach police barricades at the Capitol.On Dec. 27, for instance, Mr. Nordean posted on the social media site Parler asking for donations to buy protective gear and communications equipment, according to a criminal complaint. Shortly before the riot, prosecutors said, he also spoke on a podcast about the Proud Boys’ plan to appear in Washington in disguise, not in their typical black-and-yellow colors.In a similar fashion, prosecutors have said there is evidence that Ms. Watkins and two other Oath Keepers charged with her, Thomas E. Caldwell and Donovan Crowl, premeditated the attack.Mr. Caldwell, 66, a former Navy officer, advised his fellow militia members to stay at a particular Comfort Inn in the Washington suburbs, noting that it offered a good base to “hunt at night” — an apparent reference to chasing left-wing activists. Ms. Watkins, 38, set up a communications system for use in the assault on the chatting app Zello, prosecutors said.In text messages obtained by the F.B.I., the three Oath Keepers appear to anticipate — even welcome — conflict in the postelection period. In one message, from Nov. 16, Mr. Crowl tells Mr. Caldwell, “War is on the horizon.” In another, just days later, Mr. Caldwell tells Ms. Watkins that he is “worried about the future of our country.” Then, court papers say, he adds, “I believe we will have to get violent to stop this.”On Dec. 29, Ms. Watkins wrote to Mr. Crowl about the Jan. 6 event in Washington.“Trump wants all able bodied Patriots to come,” she said, adding, “If Trump activates the Insurrection Act, I’d hate to miss it.”As for Mr. Pezzola, his lawyer said he felt betrayed.“He went to Washington because Trump asked him to save the country,” Mr. Zucker said. “Then he got arrested and Trump went to play golf.”Adam Goldman More

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      Senate Intelligence Committee to Examine Antigovernment Extremists

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Capitol Riot FalloutTracking the ArrestsVisual TimelineInside the SiegeMurder Charges?The Oath KeepersAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySenate Intelligence Committee to Examine Antigovernment ExtremistsSenator Mark Warner, the committee’s new chairman, said he hoped to lead a bipartisan investigation of the groups, their overseas ties and amplification of their message by foreign powers.Senator Mark Warner of Virginia said it was vitally important for the Senate Intelligence Committee to do a “significant dive” into antigovernment extremism in the United States.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesJulian E. Barnes and Feb. 4, 2021Updated 7:59 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — The Senate Intelligence Committee will examine the influence of Russia and other foreign powers on antigovernment extremist groups like the ones that helped mobilize the deadly attack on the Capitol last month, the panel’s new chairman said in an interview this week.As the executive branch undertakes a nationwide manhunt to hold members of the mob accountable, Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virgina, said it would be vitally important for the influential committee to do a “significant dive” into antigovernment extremism in the United States, the ties those groups have to organizations in Europe and Russia’s amplification of their message.With the power-sharing agreement between Democrats and Republicans in place, Mr. Warner took over this week as the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, after four years as its vice chairman. In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Warner outlined his priorities, such as the spread of disinformation, the rise of antigovernment extremist groups, Chinese domination of key technologies, Russia’s widespread hacking of government computer networks and strengthening watchdog protections in the intelligence agencies.The White House has ordered the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to work with the Department of Homeland Security and the F.B.I. on a new analysis of the threat from domestic extremist groups and the support they receive from foreign powers or overseas organizations.Those antigovernment extremists include QAnon, the conspiracy movement, and the Proud Boys, a far-right organization that Canada named as a terrorist group on Wednesday. Supporters of those groups and others were part of the attack on the Capitol building on Jan. 6, which aimed to stop the transfer of power to the Biden administration.The issue is a difficult one for the intelligence community. By law, the most influential agencies, including the C.I.A. and the National Security Agency, are not allowed to collect information domestically. But Avril D. Haines, the director of national intelligence, has some oversight of the intelligence arms of the F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security, which can collect information domestically. Other intelligence agencies look at foreign attempts to influence American groups.While preliminary work by Ms. Haines’s office is underway, administration officials said that analysis was unlikely to be completed before April. But there appears to be significant interest in moving quickly on the issue in the Senate. At Ms. Haines’s confirmation hearing last month, a number of lawmakers raised the subject of domestic extremist groups. The Senate Intelligence Committee will examine both white supremacist groups on the right, and antifascist, or antifa, groups on the left, though Mr. Warner was quick to say that the danger the groups posed was not the same. “I don’t want to make a false equivalency argument here,” he said, “because the vast preponderance of them are on the right.”Like the intelligence community, Mr. Warner’s panel could face its own jurisdictional challenges as a handful of other House and Senate groups jockey to play a role in studying the aftermath of the Capitol assault and congressional leaders contemplate setting up an independent commission.For the past four years, the committee has done extensive work on disinformation efforts. Mr. Warner said that experience could guide the panel as it looks at how extremists groups spread propaganda and how foreign powers amplify it.Unlike most corners of Capitol Hill, and unlike the House Intelligence Committee, Mr. Warner’s panel has managed to operate, for the most part, with bipartisan agreement. All but one senator on the committee backed its five-volume report on Russian interference. Completed last year, the Senate investigation was perhaps the definitive word on Moscow’s interference efforts and found that Russia had disrupted the 2016 election to help Donald J. Trump become president.Mr. Warner said on Wednesday that the bipartisan record of the committee was important for him to preserve, and that he intended to begin work with closed-door meetings to make the case to other committee members about the threat the groups represent and how they could be exploited by outside powers.Democrats and Republicans on the committee have expressed interest in examining antigovernment extremist groups, Mr. Warner said. But he acknowledged the political sensitivities after the Capitol attack and Mr. Trump’s support among far-right factions of those groups. Making the case that antigovernment groups are a problem not only in the United States but also in Europe is one way to build consensus on the issue. The committee, Mr. Warner said, will begin its discussions in private sessions so lawmakers can have a candid and less political conversation.Beyond an investigation of antigovernment extremism and foreign efforts to promote it, Mr. Warner said the committee would work on pushing for new protections for whistle-blowers and making it more difficult to dismiss inspectors general, government officials charged with finding waste, fraud and abuse..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. Trump last year fired Michael K. Atkinson, the inspector general of the intelligence community. It was Mr. Atkinson who investigated the whistle-blower complaint about Mr. Trump’s call with his Ukrainian counterpart in 2019 and ultimately delivered that report to Congress.At Ms. Haines’s confirmation hearing last month, Mr. Warner began his questioning by describing how his own views on the Chinese government had changed, thoughts he repeated in his interview. He said he was wrong to have believed that China would democratize the more it was brought into the world order.“I will astonish you and acknowledge that directionally, Trump was right,” Mr. Warner said on Wednesday.Mr. Warner said he disagreed with John Ratcliffe, Mr. Trump’s final director of national intelligence, who had argued that China was trying to interfere with the election. But Mr. Warner said he believed China had “a very, very sophisticated effort to influence American policy.”The Senate committee will also look at Chinese technological investments, building on the work members of Congress have done on Beijing’s dominance of 5G, the next generation of mobile phone networks, Mr. Warner said. He said the United States needed to carefully assess its technology compared with China’s on artificial intelligence, facial recognition and quantum computing.Having a government role in bringing some manufacturing back to the United States from China was an area of bipartisan agreement, Mr. Warner said, mentioning Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas and a member of the Intelligence Committee.“There is a coalition of the willing to take on the challenge of China,” Mr. Warner said. “China has taken the best lessons of British imperialism and American imperialism, and we find them in a kind of authoritarian capitalism model.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      How Trump’s Focus on Antifa Distracted Attention From the Far-Right Threat

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Capitol Riot FalloutVisual TimelineInside the SiegeTracking the Oath KeepersNotable ArrestsThe Global Far RightAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyHow Trump’s Focus on Antifa Distracted Attention From the Far-Right ThreatFederal law enforcement shifted resources last year in response to Donald Trump’s insistence that the radical left endangered the country. Meanwhile, right-wing extremism was building ominously.The outrage that President Donald J. Trump spent months stoking would later culminate in the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6 by loyalist supporters and right-wing extremists.Credit…Kenny Holston for The New York TimesAdam Goldman, Katie Benner and Jan. 30, 2021Updated 4:52 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — As racial justice protests erupted nationwide last year, President Donald J. Trump, struggling to find a winning campaign theme, hit on a message that he stressed over and over: The real domestic threat to the United States emanated from the radical left, even though law enforcement authorities had long since concluded it came from the far right.It was a message that was quickly embraced and amplified by his attorney general and his top homeland security officials, who translated it into a shift in criminal justice and national security priorities even as Mr. Trump was beginning to openly stoke the outrage that months later would culminate in the storming of the Capitol by right-wing extremists.Mr. Trump’s efforts to focus his administration on the antifa movement and leftist groups did not stop the Justice Department and the F.B.I. from pursuing cases of right-wing extremism. They broke up a kidnapping plot, for example, targeting Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, a Democrat.But the effect of his direction was nonetheless substantial, according to interviews with current and former officials, diverting key portions of the federal law enforcement and domestic security agencies at a time when the threat from the far right was building ominously.In late spring and early summer, as the racial justice demonstrations intensified, Justice Department officials began shifting federal prosecutors and F.B.I. agents from investigations into violent white supremacists to focus on cases involving rioters or anarchists, including those who might be associated with the antifa movement. One Justice Department prosecutor was sufficiently concerned about an excessive focus on antifa that the official went to the department’s independent inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, telling his office that politics might have played a part.Federal prosecutors and agents felt pressure to uncover a left-wing extremist criminal conspiracy that never materialized, according to two people who worked on Justice Department efforts to counter domestic terrorism. They were told to do so even though the F.B.I., in particular, had increasingly expressed concern about the threat from white supremacists, long the top domestic terrorism threat, and well-organized far-right extremist groups that had allied themselves with the president.White House and Justice Department officials stifled internal efforts to publicly promote concerns about the far-right threat, with aides to Mr. Trump seeking to suppress the phrase “domestic terrorism” in internal discussions, according to a former official at the Department of Homeland Security.Requests for funding to bolster the number of analysts who search social media posts for warnings of potential violent extremism were denied by top homeland security officials, limiting the department’s ability to spot developing threats like the post-Election Day anger among far-right groups over Mr. Trump’s loss.The scale and intensity of the threat developing on the right became stunningly clear on Jan. 6, when news broadcasts and social media were flooded with images of far-right militias, followers of the QAnon conspiracy movement and white supremacists storming the Capitol.Militias and other dangerous elements of the far right saw “an ally in the White House,” said Mary McCord, a former Justice Department official who teaches at Georgetown University and focuses on domestic terrorism. “That has, I think, allowed them to grow and recruit and try to mainstream their opinions, which is why I think you end up seeing what we saw” at the Capitol.Far-right and far-left groups clashing in Portland, Ore., in August. Dozens of F.B.I. employees and senior managers were sent on temporary assignments there, according to current and former law enforcement officials. Credit…David Ryder for The New York TimesA Focus on ‘Anarchists and Thugs’Mr. Trump’s focus on what he portrayed as a major threat from antifa was embraced in particular by Attorney General William P. Barr.Mr. Barr had long harbored concerns about protests and violence from the left. Soon after taking office in early 2019, he began a weekly national security briefing by asking the F.B.I. what it was doing to combat antifa, according to two people briefed on the meetings. Officials viewed his sense of the threat as exaggerated. They explained that it was not a terrorist organization, but rather a loose movement without an organization or hierarchy, and tried to correct what they described as misperceptions, according to one of the people.Still, in meetings last year with political appointees in Washington, department investigators felt pressured to find evidence that antifa adherents were conspiring to conduct coordinated terrorist attacks.When F.B.I. intelligence continued to deem white nationalists the leading domestic terrorism threats — part of what the bureau describes as racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists — prosecutors were asked to also consider information from the Department of Homeland Security that antifa and radical leftist anarchists were instead the leading threats, according to a person involved in the conversations.Mr. Barr said in a statement that “there was no ‘prioritization’” of the leftist threat, and that all violence should be condemned.“The F.B.I. already had a robust program to combat violence driven by white supremacy and nationalism,” Mr. Barr said. “I wanted there to be a comparable one for antifa and antifalike groups.”The pressure from Mr. Trump was unrelenting. After Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, testified to Congress in September that antifa was “more of an ideology or a movement than an organization,” Mr. Trump lashed out at him on Twitter, saying that the F.B.I. protected such “anarchists and thugs” and allowed them “to get away with ‘murder.’”Investigators at the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security moved quickly and forcefully to address the violence that erupted amid the summer’s racial justice protests.The demonstrations gave way to looting and rioting, including serious injuries and shootings. Over several chaotic nights in Minneapolis, rioters burned down a corridor of largely immigrant-owned businesses and set a police precinct on fire. Similar scenes played out in other cities.In late August, Michael Reinoehl, a self-professed antifa supporter, shot and killed a pro-Trump protester in Portland, Ore. The president cheered his death at the hands of the federal officers who later tried to apprehend him. “We got him,” he said.But while Mr. Trump and others saw the developments as evidence of a major assault from the left, the picture was actually more complicated.The shooting by Mr. Reinoehl, as the F.B.I. pointed out this month in an internal memo, was the first killing in more than 20 years by what the bureau classifies as an “anarchist violent extremist,” the type of threat Mr. Trump had emphasized.Over the late spring and summer, the F.B.I. opened more than 400 domestic terrorism investigations, including about 40 cases into possible antifa adherents and 40 into the boogaloo, a right-wing movement seeking to start a civil war, along with investigations into white supremacists suspected of menacing protesters, according to F.B.I. data and a former Justice Department official. Even among those movements, career prosecutors saw the boogaloo as the gravest threat.A group affiliated with the boogaloo, a loosely organized far-right movement preparing for a civil war, in Lansing, Mich., in October.Credit…Seth Herald/Getty ImagesMembers of violent militias began to go to protests as self-appointed police forces, sometimes saying that they had heeded Mr. Trump’s call. They attended Republican events as self-described security forces. Still, Justice Department leadership was adamant that terrorism investigators focus on antifa as the demonstrations spread, according to an official who worked on the inquiries.The small cadre of intelligence analysts inside the department’s counterterrorism section were pulled into the effort, writing twice daily reports. National security prosecutors staffed command posts at the F.B.I. to deal with the protests and associated violence and property crimes, and to help protect statues and monuments seen as potential targets.All of this was a strain on the counterterrorism section, which has only a few dozen prosecutors and like other parts of the department was reeling from the coronavirus. A top F.B.I. domestic terrorism chief also expressed concern to Justice Department officials over the summer about the diversion of resources.The counterterrorism section at the time was working with prosecutors and agents around the country on cases involving people affiliated with the Three Percenters, Oath Keepers, other militia members and violent white supremacists. In some parts of the country, agents who had been investigating violent white supremacists pivoted to investigate anarchists and others involved in the rioting, struggling in certain cases to find any conspiracy or other federal charges to bring against them.Around the same time, the F.B.I. was tracking worrisome threats emanating from the far right. Agents in Michigan monitoring members of a violent antigovernment militia called Wolverine Watchmen received intelligence in June that the men planned to recruit more members and kidnap state governors, according to court documents.After six members of the group were charged in October with plotting to abduct Ms. Whitmer, one of Mr. Trump’s most vocal opponents, the president insulted her and reiterated that the left posed the true threat. “She calls me a White Supremacist — while Biden and Democrats refuse to condemn Antifa, Anarchists, Looters and Mobs that burn down Democrat run cities,” Mr. Trump said on Twitter.Dozens of F.B.I. employees and senior managers were sent on temporary assignments to Portland — including the head of the Tampa field office, who was an expert in Islamic terrorism, according to current and former law enforcement officials — where left-leaning protests had intensified since tactical federal teams arrived. Some F.B.I. agents and Justice Department officials expressed concern that the Portland work was a drain on the bureau’s effort to combat what they viewed as the more lethal strains of domestic extremism. The bureau had about 1,000 domestic terrorism cases under investigation at the time, and only several hundred agents in the field assigned to them. The Homeland Security Department even sent agents to Portland who were usually assigned to investigate drug cartels at the border.Mr. Barr also formed a task force run by trusted U.S. attorneys in Texas and New Jersey to prosecute antigovernment extremists. Terrorism prosecutors working on the investigations arising from the summer’s violence were not told beforehand of Mr. Barr’s decision. They questioned the rationale behind the task force because it seemed to duplicate their work and could create confusion, according to two people familiar with their pushback.Ultimately, the federal response to last year’s protests elicited a mixed bag. Federal prosecutors nationwide charged more than 200 people with crimes, including some who self-identified with antifa.But the F.B.I. also charged adherents of the boogaloo, including an Air Force sergeant suspected of murdering a federal officer and trying to kill another in California. The sergeant had previously been charged with the shooting death of a sheriff’s deputy in Santa Cruz County during a gun battle on June 6 that led to his arrest.As attorney general, William P. Barr played up the threat from antifa, a loose collection of leftist agitators, even as Justice Department and F.B.I. officials saw a greater threat from the far right.Credit…for The New York TimesThe Homeland ThreatDomestic terrorism has long been a politically sensitive issue for the Department of Homeland Security.A warning in a 2009 homeland security report that military veterans returning from combat could be vulnerable for recruitment by terrorist groups or extremists prompted backlash from conservatives, forcing the homeland security secretary at the time, Janet Napolitano, to apologize and retract the report. An edited version was eventually issued, but the lesson about the political risks of highlighting far-right extremism lingered inside the department.“They overhype the threat of the far left at the expense of far-right extremism,” said Daryl Johnson, a former senior analyst at the department who wrote the 2009 report.Like Mr. Barr, Mr. Trump’s acting homeland security secretary, Chad F. Wolf, took his lead from the White House and emphasized the threat from antifa. At one point, Mr. Wolf formed a task force that deployed tactical agents to protect statues and monuments.Mr. Wolf denied that the administration’s response to the violence at racial justice protests came at the cost of efforts to combat far-right violence, noting that the agency affirmed the rising threat of white supremacy in an assessment in 2019..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.“You could argue the reverse. The fact we were focused on white supremacist extremists in late 2019, early ’20, we missed the antifa stuff coming up,” Mr. Wolf said. “One could always go back and say, ‘You focused on this at the expense of that.’ I would say we focused on things happening in real time.”Mr. Trump said in May that he intended to designate antifa a domestic terrorist organization. National Security Council staff members, including Andrew Veprek, an ally of Stephen Miller who is now at the State Department, asked homeland security officials for evidence to justify such a designation. They sought information about possible ties between antifa and foreign entities; federal law defines domestic terrorism but the statute does not carry any criminal penalties, and designations of terrorist organizations are limited to foreign groups.In fact, the F.B.I. had seen troubling evidence of white supremacists in the United States with foreign ties, including one group that agents believe was being directed by an American living in Russia. The group, called the Base, was such a severe threat that the F.B.I. briefed Mr. Barr about it.Homeland security officials balked at helping designate antifa as a terrorist organization, and the effort failed.Officials in the department’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis also expressed concern after Mr. Wolf questioned one of their reports that labeled the boogaloo as “far right” in describing the shooting death of the federal officer in which the suspect, an Air Force sergeant, was linked to the movement. Asked about his response, Mr. Wolf said he was only trying to gain information, not alter reports.Under the Trump administration, analysts in the intelligence and analysis office had even more incentive to produce reports on threats outside of right-wing extremism, said Elizabeth Neumann, the former assistant homeland security secretary for counterterrorism and threat prevention under Mr. Trump.Many viewed their performance reviews as tied to whether they produced reports that aligned with the Trump administration’s priorities, including Mexican cartel organizations, foreign terrorism and antifa, rather than reports on militias and white supremacists. The number of warnings about all types of extremists in the second half of last year eventually dwindled, according to current and former officials.“You can read the tea leaves and say domestic terrorism isn’t going to be our priority,” Ms. Neumann said.“The culture absorbs those messages they hear the president speak or tweet,” she said, adding that some White House officials even cautioned against using the phrase “domestic terrorism.”Last spring, Brian Murphy, then the homeland security intelligence chief, requested $14 million to bolster training and increase staff to analyze social media for extremist threats, given that online forums had become a prime recruiting and organizing ground. Mr. Wolf’s deputy, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, rejected the request, as well as an appeal for $8 million, officials said.Mr. Cuccinelli said in a statement that requests for additional funding would have come at the expense of other parts of the agency. He added that he had been working to shift resources from other parts of the department to expand training for the intelligence branch.Mr. Murphy had filed a whistle-blower complaint in September that prompted an outcry. He accused department leaders of ordering him to modify intelligence assessments to make the threat of white supremacy “appear less severe” and include information on violent “left-wing” groups and antifa. Mr. Wolf and Mr. Cuccinelli have denied the allegations, and after congressional backlash, they eventually released a report in October identifying white supremacy as the “most persistent and lethal threat” in the United States.As he campaigned for re-election, Mr. Trump focused relentlessly on antifa, which at one point he sought to designate as a terrorist organization.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesAntifa Until the EndCampaigning for re-election, Mr. Trump spent the summer blaming rioting and violence on Democratic governors and mayors and warning about a “left-wing cultural revolution.”Armed far-right militia groups started appearing at racial justice protests and demonstrations about the outcome of the election. Extremists groups like the Proud Boys marched in Washington in December, clashing with anti-Trump protesters in altercations that included stabbings. The Homeland Security Department’s intelligence branch issued an assessment on Dec. 30 highlighting the potential for white supremacists to carry out “mass casualty” attacks, according to a copy obtained by The New York Times.But there was no specific mention of armed groups targeting the Capitol, despite plenty of indicators online. The acting chief of the Capitol Police, Yogananda D. Pittman, later said that the department knew militias and white supremacists would be coming and “that there was a strong potential for violence and that Congress was the target.”In the days before Jan. 6, the Secret Service was told by homeland security officials to expect only an “elevated threat environment,” according to people familiar with the meeting.The doors to the House chamber after the attack on the Capitol. Trump administration officials did not foresee the extent of the threat from the far right.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesThe Trump administration, however, continued to play up the threat of antifa. The night before the assault on the Capitol, the White House issued a memo seeking to bar any foreigners affiliated with antifa from entering the country and, once again, try to determine if the movement could be classified as a terrorist organization.When the pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, some shouted explicit chants against antifa. Others were captured on video yelling, “We were invited by the president of the United States.”Mike Baker and John Eligon contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More