Storming of the US Capitol (Jan, 2021)

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      Donald Trump’s Insatiable Bloodlust

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      An earthquake. An eclipse. A bridge collapse. A freak blizzard. A biblical flood. Donald Trump leading in battleground states.Apocalyptic vibes are stirred by Trump’s violent rhetoric and talk of blood baths.If he’s not elected, he bellowed in Ohio, there will be a blood bath in the auto industry. At his Michigan rally on Tuesday, he said there would be a blood bath at the border, speaking from a podium with a banner reading, “Stop Biden’s border blood bath.” He has warned that, without him in the Oval, there will be an “Oppenheimer”-like doomsday; we will lose World War III and America will be devastated by “weapons, the likes of which nobody has ever seen before.”“And the only thing standing between you and its obliteration is me,” Trump has said.An unspoken Trump threat is that there will be a blood bath again in Washington, like Jan. 6, if he doesn’t win.That is why he calls the criminals who stormed the Capitol “hostages” and “unbelievable patriots.” He starts some rallies with a dystopian remix of the national anthem, sung by the “J6 Prison Choir,” and his own reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance.The bloody-minded Trump luxuriates in the language of tyrants.In “Macbeth,” Shakespeare uses blood imagery to chart the creation of a tyrant. Those words echo in Washington as Ralph Fiennes stars in a thrilling Simon Godwin production of “MacBeth” for the Shakespeare Theater Company, opening Tuesday.“The raw power grab that excites Lady Macbeth and incites her husband to regicide feels especially pertinent now, when the dangers of autocracy loom over political discussions,” Peter Marks wrote in The Washington Post about the production with Fiennes and Indira Varma (the lead sand snake in “Game of Thrones.”)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      If There’s One Thing Trump Is Right About, It’s Republicans

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      For the thousandth time, the Republican Party refused an off-ramp that would free itself from Donald Trump. As long as he’s around, it never will.In this year’s presidential primary campaign, the party had the chance to nominate Nikki Haley, a successful, conservative former two-term governor of South Carolina. Unlike Mr. Trump’s, her public career hasn’t been characterized by a lifetime of moral squalor. And many polls show she would be a more formidable candidate against President Biden than Mr. Trump. No matter. Mr. Trump decimated Ms. Haley, most recently on Super Tuesday. She suspended her campaign the next day. But she never had a chance.The Republican Party has grown more radical, unhinged and cultlike every year since Mr. Trump took control of it. In 2016, there was outrage among Republicans after the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape. On the tape, in words that shocked the nation, Mr. Trump said that when you’re a star, “You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”In 2023, Mr. Trump was found liable for sexual abuse. His “locker room talk” turned out to be more than just talk. Yet no Republican of significance said a critical word about it.The same was true earlier this year when Mr. Trump was found liable for civil fraud. The judge in the case, Arthur F. Engoron, said that the former president’s “complete lack of contrition” bordered on “pathological.” Yet Republicans were united in their outrage, not in response to Mr. Trump’s actions but at the judge for the size of the penalty.Today, many Republicans not only profess to believe that the election was stolen; prominent members of Congress like Representative Elise Stefanik and Senator J.D. Vance say they would not have certified the 2020 election results, as Vice President Mike Pence, to his credit, did. Mike Johnson, who played a leading role in trying to overturn the election, is speaker of the House.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Prosecutors Charge Man With Firing Shots Outside the Capitol on Jan. 6

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      The charges once again laid bare one of the most persistent myths about the attack promoted by pro-Trump politicians and media figures: that none of the rioters were armed.A Trump supporter who prosecutors say fired a pistol into the air on the grounds of the Capitol as a mob stormed the building on Jan. 6, 2021, was charged on Friday with firearm offenses, trespassing and interfering with law enforcement officers during a civil disorder.The man, John Banuelos, fired at least two shots into the air while standing above the crowd on scaffolding on the west side of the Capitol, according to a criminal complaint unsealed in Federal District Court in Washington. It does not appear that Mr. Banuelos entered the Capitol. But before the shots were fired, prosecutors say, he posed for a photo wearing a “Trump 2020” cowboy hat and showing off a pistol tucked into his waistband.One of the most persistent lies about the Capitol attack — often made by Republican politicians and right-wing media figures — is that none of the hundreds of rioters who stormed the building had guns. On Thursday night, former President Donald J. Trump repeated the false claim on social media while responding to remarks about Jan. 6 that President Biden had made during his State of the Union address.“The so-called ‘Insurrectionists’ that he talks about had no guns,” Mr. Trump wrote. “They only had a Rigged Election.”But the Justice Department’s sprawling investigation of Jan. 6 has revealed that several people at the Capitol were carrying firearms that day. Altogether, more than 1,300 rioters have been charged in connection with the attack and arrests continue almost daily.A photo used in a Justice Department criminal complaint, showing a Jan. 6 rioter prosecutors identified as John Banuelos with a gun in his waistband.Justice DepartmentGuy Wesley Reffitt, a militiaman from Texas, was wearing a pistol on his hip when he led a charge of rioters up a staircase on the west side of the Capitol, according to testimony at his trial — the first of dozens to have taken place in Washington connected to the events of Jan. 6. Mr. Reffitt was ultimately convicted of a gun charge and other felonies and was sentenced to more than seven years in prison.Among the other rioters who were carrying firearms on Jan. 6 are Christopher Alberts, a former Virginia National Guard member who charged the police outside the Capitol with a loaded 9-millimeter pistol, prosecutors say. Mr. Alberts was convicted of multiple felony charges and sentenced to seven years in prison.A rioter named Mark Mazza brought two guns to the Capitol — a .40-caliber semiautomatic pistol and a Taurus revolver loaded with shotgun shells and hollow-point bullets, prosecutors say. Mr. Mazza was sentenced to five years in prison.Prosecutors did not identify what type of pistol Mr. Banuelos was carrying on Jan. 6, but they said in their complaint that he was not licensed to have it. Among the charges he faces are carrying and discharging a firearm on the Capitol grounds.After firing the shots, prosecutors said, Mr. Banuelos slipped the weapon back into his waistband, climbed down from the scaffolding and rejoined the crowd. More

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      The Trauma of the Trump Years Is Being Rewritten

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      Americans rehabilitate ex-presidents all the time.It was fascinating to see the rebranding of George W. Bush — the man who took us into the disastrous Iraq war and horribly bungled the response to Hurricane Katrina — into a charming amateur artist who played buddies with and passed candy to Michelle Obama.And it didn’t just happen for him. The Monica Lewinsky scandal faded in our consideration of Bill Clinton. Barack Obama’s reliance on drone strikes and his moniker “deporter in chief” rarely receive mention now.This is because our political memories aren’t fixed, but are constantly being adjusted. Politicians’ negatives are often diminished and their positives inflated. As Gallup noted in 2013, “Americans tend to be more charitable in their evaluations of past presidents than they are when the presidents are in office.”Without a doubt, Donald Trump benefits from this phenomenon. The difference is that other presidents’ shortcomings pale in comparison to his and his benefit isn’t passive: He’s seeking the office again and, as part of that, working to rewrite the history of his presidency. His desperate attempts, first to cling to power, then to regain it, include denying the 2020 election results and embracing the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection that his denials helped fuel.His revisionism has worked remarkably well, particularly among Republicans. A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll conducted in December found that Republicans “are now less likely to believe that Jan. 6 participants were ‘mostly violent,’ less likely to believe Trump bears responsibility for the attack and are slightly less likely to view Joe Biden’s election as legitimate” than they were in 2021.This is one of the truly remarkable aspects of the current presidential cycle: the degree to which our collective memory of Trump’s litany of transgressions have become less of a political problem for him than might otherwise be expected. Even the multiple legal charges he now faces are almost all about things that happened years ago and, to many citizens, involve things that the country should put in the rearview mirror.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      No More Legal Games for Donald Trump

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      The most important words to issue from the federal appeals court in Washington on Tuesday were not in its unanimous 57-page opinion rejecting Donald Trump’s claim of absolute immunity from prosecution.That ruling, which denied the former president’s attempt to be absolved for his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, was never in doubt. His claim is that presidents don’t enjoy immunity in just some cases, but that they are effectively above the law in all cases. During oral arguments last month, his lawyer even contended that a sitting president could order the assassination of a political rival and face no legal consequences.Rejecting this claim was easy. This line of reasoning “would collapse our system of separated powers by placing the president beyond the reach of all three branches,” wrote the three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. “We cannot accept that the office of the presidency places its former occupants above the law for all time thereafter.”The key sentence appeared elsewhere, in the one-page formal judgment accompanying the court’s opinion. “The clerk is directed to withhold issuance of the mandate through Feb. 12, 2024,” the judges wrote. With those words, the court put a hard deadline on Mr. Trump’s delay games. He has until the end of this coming Monday to appeal his loss to the Supreme Court. If he doesn’t, the mandate will issue, meaning that the trial court will regain jurisdiction of the case, and the trial can move forward.It was a welcome acknowledgment and rebuke of Mr. Trump’s strategy in the Jan. 6 case, which is to delay any legal reckoning. He is trying to run out the clock in the hope that he can win re-election and then dissolve the prosecution.So far, it’s working. The trial stemming from Jan. 6 has already been on hold for two months while the immunity appeal has played out, forcing the trial judge, Tanya Chutkan, to cancel the original start date, March 4. As Election Day approaches, it may become increasingly difficult to hold a trial that can be completed before Americans vote in the general election.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Queens Man Who Pushed Officer Over Ledge on Jan. 6 Sentenced to 6 Years

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      The sentencing judge called Ralph Joseph Celentano III’s attack on the police officer amid the Capitol riot a “truly cowardly and despicable thing to do.”A Queens man who tackled a police officer and pushed him over a ledge during the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was sentenced this week to six and a half years in prison, court records show.The man, Ralph Joseph Celentano III, 56, of Broad Channel, was sentenced on Tuesday, according to court records. A jury convicted him last June on two felony counts — assaulting, resisting or impeding an officer, and interference with officers during a civil disorder — and several misdemeanor counts, court records show.In sentencing Mr. Celentano, the Justice Department said in a news release, Judge Timothy J. Kelly of Federal District Court in Washington called his actions during the riot “disgraceful” and his assault on the officer “a truly cowardly and despicable thing to do.”Mr. Celentano is among more than 1,265 people to be charged in connection with the Jan. 6 riot, according to the Justice Department. He and other supporters of former President Donald J. Trump stormed the Capitol in a bid to prevent the certification of Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election. A federal investigation into the day’s events is continuing.Mr. Trump, who is seeking the Republican nomination in this year’s presidential election, faces federal conspiracy and other charges arising from the riot. He has pleaded not guilty.A federal public defender representing Mr. Celentano did not immediately respond to a request for comment.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Ex-Top Editor of The Jewish Press Pleads Guilty to Jan. 6 Charge

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      Elliot Resnick, a longtime journalist at The Jewish Press, admitted that he impeded officers’ efforts to keep a mob from storming the U.S. Capitol.A onetime top editor of an Orthodox Jewish newspaper in Brooklyn pleaded guilty on Tuesday to obstructing police officers’ efforts to hold off the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.The editor, Elliot Resnick, entered the plea, to a felony count of obstructing law enforcement during a civil disorder, before Judge Rudolph Contreras of Federal District Court in Washington. Mr. Resnick, 40, of Manhattan, is scheduled to be sentenced in June.Clay Kaminski, a federal public defender who is representing Mr. Resnick, declined to comment.At the time of the riot, Mr. Resnick was the top editor of The Jewish Press, which began publishing in 1960 and describes itself on its website as “the largest independent weekly Jewish newspaper in the United States” and “politically incorrect long before the phrase was coined.”After Politico reported in April 2021 that Mr. Resnick, who began working at The Jewish Press in 2006, had been part of the Jan. 6 mob, the paper’s editorial board published a statement saying he had been in Washington to cover the day’s events as a journalist.“The Jewish Press does not see why Elliot’s personal views on former President Trump should make him any different from the dozens of other journalists covering the events, including many inside the Capitol building during the riots,” the editorial board wrote.Citing court records, Justice Department officials said on Tuesday that Mr. Resnick had not been acting as a journalist that day. Shlomo Greenwald, who replaced Mr. Resnick as the paper’s top editor in May 2021, did not respond to email and phone inquiries on Tuesday.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Illinois Hearing Officer, a Former Republican Judge, Says Trump Engaged in Insurrection

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      But the hearing officer said the State Board of Elections should let the courts decide whether Mr. Trump’s conduct disqualified him from the ballot.A former Republican judge appointed to hear arguments on whether to disqualify former President Donald J. Trump from the Illinois primary ballot said on Sunday that he believed Mr. Trump engaged in insurrection by attempting to remain in office after the 2020 election.But the former judge, Clark Erickson, whose nonbinding opinion will be considered by the State Board of Elections on Tuesday, added that he believed the board did not have the authority to disqualify Mr. Trump on those grounds and that the question should instead be left to the courts.The mixed decision was at least a symbolic setback for the former president, who has faced official challenges to his candidacy in 35 states and has been found ineligible for the primaries in Colorado and Maine. Mr. Trump, the leading Republican candidate for president, is still likely to appear on the primary ballots in both of those states as the U.S. Supreme Court considers an appeal of the Colorado ruling.In Illinois, at least five of the eight members of the Board of Elections would have to vote on Tuesday to remove Mr. Trump for him to be struck from the ballot. The appointed board is made up of four Democrats and four Republicans. Their decision can be appealed to the courts before the March 19 primary.The Illinois challenge, like those in other states, is based on a clause of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution that disqualifies government officials who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” from holding office.At a hearing on Friday in downtown Chicago, lawyers for residents objecting to Mr. Trump’s candidacy accused the former president of insurrection and played footage from the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Lawyers for Mr. Trump denied the allegation and argued that, in any case, the constitutional clause in question did not apply to the presidency. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More