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      Lawyer to appeal against former Proud Boys leader’s 22-year sentence – video

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      The former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio was sentenced to 22 years in prison on Tuesday for his part in the failed plot to keep Donald Trump in power after the 2020 election. Tarrio’s attorney, Nayib Hassan, said his team had been ‘taken a bit off guard’ with the sentence and they would file an appeal.

      The judge handed down the longest sentence yet in a case relating to the January 6 Capitol attack. Tarrio was a top target in one of the most important cases prosecuted by the US justice department More

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      Former Proud Boys leader sentenced to 22 years over US Capitol attack

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      The former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio was sentenced to 22 years in prison on Tuesday for his part in the failed plot to keep Donald Trump in power after the 2020 election.Prosecutors sought a 33-year term. The judge did not agree but nonetheless handed down the longest sentence yet in a case relating to 2020 and the January 6 Capitol attack. The longest sentence previously handed down was 18 years, to both Ethan Nordean, a member of the Proud Boys, and Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers militia.Tarrio was a top target in one of the most important cases prosecuted by the US justice department over the deadly attack on Congress on 6 January 2021.In May, Tarrio and three lieutenants were convicted of charges including seditious conspiracy, a civil-war-era offense previously rarely brought but now levied against members of far-right groups that took part in the January 6 attack.In remarks to the court in Washington, Tarrio said he was sorry for the events of January 6, and credited police officers for their bravery in resisting the attack.“What happened on January 6 was a national embarrassment,” Tarrio said, adding that he both now knew Trump lost to Joe Biden and blamed himself for actions that led to him losing his freedom.Becoming emotional, Tarrio said: “I do not think what happened that day was acceptable.”He pleaded with the judge, Timothy Kelly, for leniency. “Please show me mercy,” Tarrio said. “I ask you that you not take my 40s from me.”Kelly emphasised the damage done.“That day broke our previously unbroken tradition of peacefully transferring power,” he said. “That previously unbroken tradition is broken now, and it’s going to take time and effort to fix it.”Before handing down the sentence, the judge said he did not see any indication that Tarrio was remorseful for what he was convicted of, adding that there was a strong need to send a signal to others.“It can’t happen again,” Kelly said.The case was one of the most significant prosecutions in the federal investigation of the attack on Congress, which saw supporters of Trump shock the world with their attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s victory.The Proud Boys are a so-called “western chauvinist” group, often involved in street fighting with leftwing activists. Tarrio was involved in the run-up to the January 6 insurrection but did not take part in the violence. Before members of the Proud Boys joined thousands in storming the Capitol as lawmakers met to certify Biden’s victory, Tarrio was arrested and ordered to leave Washington. But prosecutors showed he organised and led from afar.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Using his powerful platform, Tarrio has repeatedly and publicly indicated that he has no regrets about what he helped make happen on January 6,” prosecutors said.Tarrio’s lawyers denied the Proud Boys had any plan to attack the Capitol, arguing that prosecutors used Tarrio as a scapegoat for Trump, who spoke at a “Stop the Steal” rally near the White House on January 6, urging supporters to “fight like hell”.The justice department has charged Trump with conspiring to subvert American democracy. But the Tarrio case and hundreds of others stand as vivid reminders of the chaos fueled by Trump’s lies, including the storming of the Capitol in an attempt to thwart the peaceful transfer of power, a riot now linked to nine deaths including suicides among law enforcement.Urging a lenient sentence, Tarrio’s lawyers noted that he has a history of cooperating with law enforcement. Court records uncovered in 2021 showed that Tarrio worked undercover and cooperated with investigators after he was accused of fraud in 2012.During the riot, however, Tarrio posted encouraging messages on social media, expressing pride and urging followers to stay at the Capitol. He posted a picture of rioters in the Senate chamber with the caption “1776”, the year of the Declaration of Independence.Several days before the riot, a girlfriend sent Tarrio a document entitled “1776 Returns”. It called for storming and occupying government buildings, “for the purpose of getting the government to overturn the election results”, prosecutors said.More than 1,100 people have been charged in relation to the Capitol attack. More than 600 have been sentenced, more than half receiving prison terms.The Associated Press contributed to this report More

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      The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy review: necessary chronicle of US racist history

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      Robert P Jones, founder and president of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), holds a divinity degree from Southwestern Baptist Seminary and a doctorate in religion from Emory University. He is a son of the south, pained by the nexus between Christianity and slavery. In White Too Long, published in 2020, he wrote of church stained-glass windows that paid homage to Confederate generals, Robert E Lee and Stonewall Jackson. The deadly shooting at a Dollar General in Florida last week was just one more reminder that the past is always with us.In his new book, Jones draws a straight line between religion and European migration to North America and slavery and the subjugation of Indigenous people. He identifies and repeatedly criticizes the “doctrine of discovery”, as prime culprit and enabler.Enunciated in 15th-century papal decrees, adopted in 1823 as part of US common law through the supreme court case Johnson v M’Intosh, the discovery doctrine offered theological and legal justification for conquest and its aftermath. Jones extensively quotes Robert Miller, a law professor at Arizona State University and a citizen of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe.“In essence, the doctrine provided that newly arrived Europeans immediately and automatically acquired legally recognized property rights over the inhabitants without knowledge or consent of the indigenous peoples,” Miller wrote, in 2012.Jones adds: “Despite its near-total absence from white educational curricula … Native American scholars have been highlighting the impact of the doctrine of discovery for at least half a century.”He meticulously details events that further scar US history. It is a first-rate chronicle of horror. Jones lays out the lynchings of three Black circus workers in Minnesota, in 1920, and of Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955. He recounts the Tulsa race massacre of 1921, the destruction of “Black Wall Street” and the deaths of 300 African Americans.He also delves in detail into the US government-sanctioned execution of 38 Dakota males in Mankato, Minnesota, in December 1862. It remains the single largest event of its kind in US history. Abraham Lincoln played a central role.On the page, Jones lays out his pathway to a “shared future”. He advocates “reparations” for the descendants of enslaved Black people and argues for “restitution” to Native Americans.“This is a tall order,” he acknowledges. But he remains undeterred, writing: “We cannot shrink before the difficulty of the task … the creativity of our solutions is directly proportional to, and a measure of, the strength of our convictions.”With a significant exception – support from three-quarters of African Americans – the public holds a negative view of reparations, according to a 2021 survey. Nearly 70% are opposed, including 80% of whites, 65% of Asians, 58% of Hispanics and 49% of Democrats and Democratic-leaners. That’s a lot of hearts and minds to persuade.This fall, the Democratic-dominated California legislature will consider a reparations plan. After the US supreme court rejection of race-based affirmative action, and a similar rejection by Californians in 2020, the legislature may want to tread lightly.Jones can be swept away by his convictions. In 2016, in The End of White Christian America, he wrote an “obituary” and recited a “benediction” for what he perceived as the passing of white Protestantism. To say the least, he jumped the gun.Donald Trump’s election showed that primacy lost is not the same as extinction. Even in its lessened state and amid the rise of religious “nones”, Christianity remains a force in American life. As mainstream Protestantism slides and younger evangelicals leave the fold, the landscape of Sunday morning is being reshaped.“American megachurches are thriving by poaching flocks,” an Economist headline blared. “Denominations are out. Brand identity and good vibes are in.” There is plenty to like about community and ice cream. Doctrinal orthodoxies have not fared well in the marketplace of US religion.Jones has refused to fully quit “defund the police”, the protest slogan that flourished after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis officer in May 2020 but which Republicans predictably seized on to depict Democrats as soft on crime. Jones has also tweaked James Carville, the veteran Democratic strategist, for emphasizing class over race.“We can’t continue to paper over racial injustice with economic policy,” Jones wrote in 2021, in the aftermath of the Republican Glenn Youngkin’s upset win in the Virginia governor’s race. Riffing off Carville’s famous 1992 campaign message for Bill Clinton, about the economy, Jones delivered his own: “‘It’s the culture, stupid’ – or less euphemistically, ‘It’s the white supremacy, stupid’ – must be the new mantra of political analysts today.”That’s a lousy bumper-sticker. Besides that, the data reflects that inflation, jobs, the economy and healthcare are the most pressing priorities for American voters. Only 6% place discrimination top of their list of concerns. By the numbers, it looks like Carville got it right.Jones also implicitly criticized Carville for calling the “defund the police” movement “lunacy”, writing: “I agree with Carville that ‘defund the police’ has been unhelpful. It’s neither a savvy political slogan nor an accurate depiction of what most police reform advocates actually want to do.”Not a “savvy political slogan” and “unhelpful” are understatements. Last year, after Republicans took back the US House, James Clyburn of South Carolina, a member of Democratic leadership, put it this way: “‘Defund the police’ is killing our party and we’ve got to stop it.”New York City and San Francisco have experienced major exoduses. Safe streets and thriving tax bases are necessities for vibrant urban centers. Heading for 2024, Joe Biden and Donald Trump are locked in polling dead heats. Despite his many indictments, Trump retains traction. Racial resentments helped propel him into the White House in 2016. They may do so again.
      The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy: And the Path to a Shared American Future is published in the US by Simon & Schuster More

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      in US Politics

      Two Proud Boys members get lengthy prison terms for Capitol attack

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      Two members of the far-right Proud Boys militia group who took part in the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol with the intention of keeping Donald Trump in the White House were sentenced to lengthy prison terms on Friday.Ethan Nordean, described by prosecutors as a leader of the extremist group, received an 18-year sentence for crimes that included seditious conspiracy, committed when thousands of Trump supporters overran the Capitol building.Dominic Pezzola, who attacked a police officer and was filmed using the officer’s shield to smash a window, got 10 years from the federal judge Timothy Kelly in Washington DC, following his conviction in May for assault and obstructing an official proceeding.Prosecutors had sought terms of 27 and 20 years, respectively, for Nordean and Pezzola.The pair, described by prosecutors as “foot soldiers of the right [who] aimed to keep their leader in power”, were part of a mob seeking to disrupt the certification by a joint session of Congress of Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election. Nine deaths have been linked to the riot, including law enforcement suicides.Kelly reportedly told Nordean that he wished there was an “alternative history” where he did something other than lead the Proud Boys, complimenting him as a smart and articulate man. Nordean – of Auburn, Washington – said: “I would like to apologize for my lack of leadership that day,” according to Jordan Fischer of the WUSA television news outlet.Sentencing Pezzola, Kelly said: “You were the one who smashed that window and let people begin to stream into that Capitol building and threaten the lives of our lawmakers. It’s not something I would have ever dreamed I would have seen in our country.”Pezzola told the court he was “a changed and humbled man”, his “sorrow and regret … unimaginable”.After Kelly left the courtroom and as US marshals led him away, Pezzola smiled, raised his hand and shouted: “Trump won,” according to a report from local news station WUSA.His sentence was among the lengthiest handed down to those convicted of offences linked to the Capitol attack, in which 140 police officers were injured.Pezzola, of Rochester, New York, posted to social media a profanity-laced video of himself inside the Capitol, smoking a cigar.On Thursday, Judge Kelly sentenced the former Proud Boys organizer Joseph Biggs, a former US army captain, to 17 years behind bars, and handed a 15-year sentence to Zachary Rehl, another leader.Like Nordean, both were convicted of seditious conspiracy, a civil war-era offense that is rarely brought. The sentences were the second- and third-longest stemming from the attack.Two other members of the group, including its former leader Enrique Tarrio, are scheduled to be sentenced next week, with prosecutors calling for a 33-year sentence.More than 1,100 people have been charged with federal crimes for their involvement in the riot and more than 600 have been convicted and sentenced. The most severe prison term yet given to a January 6 rioter, 18 years, was to the founder of the far-right Oath Keepers, Stewart Rhodes, in May, also for seditious conspiracy.In their original filing to the court, prosecutors claimed Pezzola and Nordean were “trusted lieutenants” of Tarrio, his “boots on the ground” on the day of the attack.“They unleashed a force on the Capitol that was calculated to exert their political will on elected officials by force and to undo the results of a democratic election,” they wrote. “The foot soldiers of the right aimed to keep their leader in power. They failed. They are not heroes; they are criminals.”Trump lost the 2020 election by more than 7m votes and conclusively in the electoral college but falsely claimed the election was stolen. Currently the leading candidate for the Republican nomination in 2024, he faces 17 federal and state criminal charges arising from his attempt to cling onto power. Trump also faces 74 criminal charges on other matters.They include allegations he incited the 6 January riot by summoning his extremist supporters to a rally at the Capitol in a tweet that read: “Be there, will be wild”.On Thursday, Rehl, a former US marine, sobbed as his sentence was handed down. He told Kelly: “For what it’s worth, I stand here today and say that I am done with all of it. I am done with politics; I am done peddling lies for other people who don’t care about me.”Norman Pattis, attorney for Rehl and Biggs, blamed Trump for the plight of his clients, whom he said were “given good reason by the highest official in the land” to question the legitimacy of Biden’s victory.“What they’re guilty of is believing the president who said the election was stolen from him,” he said. More

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      in Elections

      Two more Proud Boys face sentencing on US Capitol attack charges – live

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      From 2h agoHere’s more from Reuters on the two Proud Boys who are being sentenced today, and what they were found guilty of:
      The first Proud Boy to face sentencing on Friday morning, Dominic Pezzola, did not play a leadership role in the group and was the only defendant of five to be acquitted of seditious conspiracy. He was convicted of other felonies including obstructing an official proceeding and assaulting police.
      The second defendant, Ethan Nordean, was a leader of the group who was convicted of seditious conspiracy and other crimes.
      Thousands of Trump supporters attacked the Capitol following a speech in which the Republican falsely claimed that his November 2020 election defeat was the result of widespread fraud. Trump has continued to make those false claims even as he leads the Republican race for the 2024 nomination to challenge Democrat Biden.
      Five people including a police officer died during or shortly after the riot and more than 140 police officers were injured. The Capitol suffered millions of dollars in damage.
      The sentencing of Pezzola and Nordean follows U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly on Thursday ordering two other former Proud Boys leaders, Joseph Biggs and Zachary Rehl, to serve 17 years and 15 years in prison, respectively.
      Biggs’ term is just one year less than the 18 years former Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes received earlier this year.
      The sentences for Biggs and Rehl were far less than the 33-year and 30-year terms sought by federal prosecutors.
      The government is seeking a 20-year prison term for Pezzola and a 27-year term for Nordean.
      Although Pezzola was found not guilty of sedition, prosecutors said his assault on former Capitol Police Officer Mark Ode, in which he stole Ode’s riot shield and used it to smash at a window at the Capitol, helps to justify a lengthy prison term.
      “Pezzola’s actions and testimony leave no doubt that he intended to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memo. “He committed crimes of terrorism on January 6.”
      Pezzola’s attorneys are asking for their client to be sentenced to around five years in prison, and said in their sentencing memo that he has already served about three years in jail awaiting trial.
      Nordean’s attorney, Nick Smith, plans to argue for a lower sentence within the range of 15-21 months.
      “Nordean walked in and out of the Capitol like hundreds of Class B misdemeanants,” Smith wrote. “When the government does distinguish Nordean’s actions from any other January 6 defendant’s, it relies on characterization, not facts.”
      Security guards for Ron DeSantis followed and physically blocked 15-year-old politics enthusiast Quinn Mitchell from speaking with the Florida governor during campaign events in New Hampshire, the Daily Beast reports.Since 2019, Mitchell has shown up to presidential events in the Granite State to ask candidates questions, and has often received a positive response from politicians who admire his civic mindedness. But after asking DeSantis whether Donald Trump “violated the peaceful transfer of power” – and getting a nonresponse in return from the governor – Mitchell says his security singled him out at campaign events:
      Speaking about it for the first time in an interview with The Daily Beast, Mitchell says that he was grabbed and physically intimidated by DeSantis security at two subsequent campaign stops, where the candidate’s staffers also monitored him in a way he perceived as hostile.
      The experience, Mitchell said, was “horrifying” and amounted to “intimidation.”
      At a Fourth of July parade DeSantis attended, Mitchell was swarmed by security and physically restrained after a brief interaction with the governor—with his private security contractors even demanding Mitchell stay put until they said so.
      With his mother alarmed, the situation escalated to such a degree that the candidate’s wife, Casey, spoke directly with her—but to suggest her son was being dishonest about what happened, according to Mitchell.
      Then, at an August 19 event—where Mitchell was tailed closely by two security guards—an attendee told The Daily Beast they saw a staffer for DeSantis’ super PAC, Never Back Down, take a photo of the teenager on Snapchat before typing out an ominous caption: “Got our kid.”
      Seven other sources corroborated Mitchell’s version of events, either by sharing contemporaneous communications with the family or recounting what they witnessed in person at DeSantis events, including the Fourth of July parade. The teenager and his family say they have yet to receive any kind of apology from DeSantis.
      The DeSantis campaign and Never Back Down did not return multiple requests for comment from The Daily Beast.
      “Really stupid in a small state like New Hampshire,” Mitchell deadpanned about the guards’ behavior. Indeed, the story has the potential to create an avoidable headache for DeSantis, whose campaign for the Republican presidential nomination is going far worse than expected. Despite early momentum and strong fundraising, most polls in the state and nationwide show the Florida governor in a very distant second place to Trump among GOP voters.The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports that former allies are turning their backs on Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and Republican presidential candidate who was last week indicted in Georgia for trying to overturn its 2020 election result:As he attempts to meet mounting legal fees incurred in large part through his work for Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani will reportedly not get “a nickel” from one billionaire who backed his campaign for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination – or, apparently, much from many other previously big donors.“I wouldn’t give him a nickel,” the investor Leon Cooperman told CNBC. “I’m very negative on Donald Trump. It’s an American tragedy. [Rudy] was ‘America’s mayor’. He did a great job. And like everybody else who gets involved with Trump, it turns to shit.”Brian France, a former Nascar chief executive, was slightly more conciliatory. But he told the same outlet his wallet was staying shut: “I was a major supporter of Rudy in 2008 and at other times. I’m not sure what happen[ed] but I miss the old Rudy. I’m wishing him well.”Donald Trump happened to Rudy.Giuliani, now 79, was once a crusading US attorney who became New York mayor in 1993 and led the city on 9/11 and after. Capitalising on the resultant “America’s mayor” tag, he ran for the Republican nomination to succeed President George W Bush. Briefly leading the polls, he raised $60m but flamed out when the race got serious.When Giuliani struggled with drink and depression, his former wife has said, Trump gave him shelter. When Trump himself entered presidential politics, in 2016, Giuliani became a vociferous surrogate. When Trump entered the White House, Giuliani failed to be named secretary of state but did become the president’s aide and attorney.In that capacity his actions fueled Trump’s first impeachment, over attempts to find dirt on opponents in Ukraine, and he helped drive the hapless attempt to overturn Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden in 2020, which has spawned numerous criminal charges.Republican politicians have a long record of claiming to be the party that supports the police, but as NBC News reports, a man who told officers to “go hang yourself” on January 6 is currently working for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.“If you are a police officer and are going to abide by unconstitutional bulls—, I want you to do me a favor right now and go hang yourself, because you’re a piece of s—,” said Dylan Quattrucci, the deputy state director of Trump’s campaign in New Hampshire, in a video he recorded on January 6 near the Capitol. “Go f— yourself.”Quattrucci’s position makes him the number-two figure in Trump’s campaign in the state, which is the second to vote in the GOP’s nominating process. Trump is currently the frontrunner is most polls of Republican primary voters, both nationwide and in New Hampshire.The video was first posted on Twitter by “Sedition Hunters”, an online group focused on tracking down participants in the January 6 attack. NBC News reports there’s no evidence Quattrucci entered the Capitol itself, though on his Twitter account, he does have a picture of himself posing with Trump at a New Hampshire campaign office.The sentencing hearing for Dominic Pezzola, a member of the Proud Boys militia group convicted of serious charges related to the January 6 insurrection, has begun in Washington DC, Politico reports:Prosecutors are requesting a 20-year prison sentence for Pezzola, which, if granted, would be the longest handed out to any defendant related to the attack on the Capitol.There’s no telling how the state and federal cases against Donald Trump and others for trying to overturn the 2020 polls will end, but as the Associated Press reports, the environment for election workers nationwide has grown much more hostile in recent years:More than a dozen people nationally have been charged with threatening election workers by a justice department unit trying to stem the tide of violent and graphic threats against people who count and secure the vote.Government employees are being bombarded with threats even in normally quiet periods between elections, secretaries of state and experts warn. Some point to Donald Trump and his allies repeatedly and falsely claiming the 2020 election was stolen and spreading conspiracy theories about election workers. Experts fear the 2024 election could be worse and want the justice department to do more to protect election workers.The justice department had created the taskforce in 2021 led by its public integrity section, which investigates election crimes. John Keller, the unit’s second in command, said in an interview with the Associated Press the department hoped its prosecutions would deter others from threatening election workers.“This isn’t going to be taken lightly. It’s not going to be trivialized,” he said. “Federal judges, the courts are taking misconduct seriously and the punishments are going to be commensurate with the seriousness of the conduct.”More people are expected to plead guilty on Thursday to threatening election workers in Arizona and Georgia.Georgia’s Republican governor Brian Kemp yesterday rejected a call from a handful of rightwing lawmakers to convene a special session of the state legislature with the intention of removing Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney who indicted Donald Trump and 18 others for trying to overturn the state’s elections three years ago.But as the Guardian’s Jewel Wicker reports, Willis may not be out of the woods yet:
      Republicans at the state and federal levels are calling for multiple tactics to unseat Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, even if their legal standing is murky and they lack the support of Georgia’s Republican governor.
      Steve Gooch, the Georgia senate majority leader, and Clint Dixon, a state senator, have said they plan to use a commission designed to discipline and potentially remove rogue prosecutors to investigate Willis following her indictment of Donald Trump for attempting to reverse the results of the 2020 election.
      In May, Governor Brian Kemp signed a bill, SB92, that makes it easier to remove elected district attorneys. Under the law, a prosecuting attorneys qualifications commission has the power to investigate complaints and discipline or remove district attorneys whom the appointed commissioners believe are not properly enforcing the law.
      Kemp on Thursday dismissed talk of using the commission or the legislature to remove Willis from office, but said the decision was not his. “Up to this point, I have not seen any evidence that DA Willis’s actions or lack thereof warrant action by the prosecuting attorney oversight commission, but that will ultimately be a decision that the commission will make,” the governor said.
      The commission will begin receiving complaints on 1 October 2023, and earlier this month Burt Jones, the Republican lieutenant governor, announced three appointments to the eight-member group. Jones, who served as one of Georgia’s fake electors when he was a state senator in 2020, recently criticized Willis’s prosecution of Trump and said her treatment of the defendants like criminals is “very disturbing”.
      Here’s more from Reuters on the two Proud Boys who are being sentenced today, and what they were found guilty of:
      The first Proud Boy to face sentencing on Friday morning, Dominic Pezzola, did not play a leadership role in the group and was the only defendant of five to be acquitted of seditious conspiracy. He was convicted of other felonies including obstructing an official proceeding and assaulting police.
      The second defendant, Ethan Nordean, was a leader of the group who was convicted of seditious conspiracy and other crimes.
      Thousands of Trump supporters attacked the Capitol following a speech in which the Republican falsely claimed that his November 2020 election defeat was the result of widespread fraud. Trump has continued to make those false claims even as he leads the Republican race for the 2024 nomination to challenge Democrat Biden.
      Five people including a police officer died during or shortly after the riot and more than 140 police officers were injured. The Capitol suffered millions of dollars in damage.
      The sentencing of Pezzola and Nordean follows U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly on Thursday ordering two other former Proud Boys leaders, Joseph Biggs and Zachary Rehl, to serve 17 years and 15 years in prison, respectively.
      Biggs’ term is just one year less than the 18 years former Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes received earlier this year.
      The sentences for Biggs and Rehl were far less than the 33-year and 30-year terms sought by federal prosecutors.
      The government is seeking a 20-year prison term for Pezzola and a 27-year term for Nordean.
      Although Pezzola was found not guilty of sedition, prosecutors said his assault on former Capitol Police Officer Mark Ode, in which he stole Ode’s riot shield and used it to smash at a window at the Capitol, helps to justify a lengthy prison term.
      “Pezzola’s actions and testimony leave no doubt that he intended to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memo. “He committed crimes of terrorism on January 6.”
      Pezzola’s attorneys are asking for their client to be sentenced to around five years in prison, and said in their sentencing memo that he has already served about three years in jail awaiting trial.
      Nordean’s attorney, Nick Smith, plans to argue for a lower sentence within the range of 15-21 months.
      “Nordean walked in and out of the Capitol like hundreds of Class B misdemeanants,” Smith wrote. “When the government does distinguish Nordean’s actions from any other January 6 defendant’s, it relies on characterization, not facts.”
      Good morning, US politics blog readers. Today, two more members of the Proud Boys militia group will be sentenced by a federal judge on charges related to the January 6 insurrection. Prosecutors are requesting a 27-year prison sentence for Ethan Nordean, a chapter president in the group, after his conviction for seditious conspiracy and other crimes, and a 20-year sentence for Dominic Pezzola, who was acquitted of that charge but convicted of other offenses related to the violent attack on the Capitol.Yesterday, a judge sentenced former Proud Boys organizer Joseph Biggs to 17 years behind bars, and handed a 15-year sentence to Zachary Rehl, a leader of the group. Both men were convicted of seditious conspiracy, a civil war-era offense that is rarely brought. Their sentences were the second- and third-longest handed down from the attack on the Capitol, and two other members of the group, including its former leader, Enrique Tarrio, are scheduled to be sentenced next week.Here’s what else is happening today:
      Just-released government data shows better-than-expect hiring in August but the unemployment rate ticking up to 3.8%. Joe Biden will speak about the report at 11.15am eastern time.
      More defendants in the Georgia election subversion case may opt to skip next week’s in-person arraignment and enter their pleas in writing. Donald Trump did so yesterday, as did his former lawyer Jenna Ellis.
      The White House is asking Congress to allocate an additional $4b to the Federal Emergency Management Agency to pay for the response to recent disasters, including the wildfire that destroyed Lahaina in Maui and Hurricane Idalia in Florida and other southeastern states. More

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      ‘Warped history’: how the US supreme court justified gutting gay rights

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      The extreme religious right’s mission to roll back civil rights from abortion to public accommodations is being fueled by false facts and false history. Recent articles in the New Republic have documented the shaky factual foundation behind 303 Creative LLC v Elenis, the case in which the supreme court held that a website design business owned by an evangelical Christian, Lorie Smith, could refuse service to same-sex couples. Even more troubling, the history undergirding the majority’s reasoning is misleading and dangerous to the separation of church and state.Tragically, the religious right knows it has a friendly audience in the six conservative Catholic justices on the supreme court, who have been partners in shaking the foundations of fundamental rights. The justices’ new standard is whether a constitutional right is grounded in “history and tradition”, the latest byword for the bogus doctrine of “originalism”. So they need some history, and apparently any history will do.The legal end to reach a thunderous ruling justifies their debatable means. So the concept of “religious autonomy”, built on a foundation of misleading scholarship, “impact” litigation and, above all, false history, has become the method for restricting rights. Its logic of power rests on its illogic; its warping of the constitution depends on the distortion of history.Tossing aside established historySince the first religious free exercise case in 1878, the supreme court has held that the first amendment protects belief absolutely, but speech and conduct reflecting those beliefs can be regulated if the government’s interest is strong enough.According to the founders, the reason speech and conduct should be subject to the law is the potential for harm. For example, as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously remarked, it is illegal to shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater when there are no flames. It is also illegal to cover up child sex abuse or to let a child die from medical neglect despite religious motives. This foundational no-harm doctrine used to apply to all Americans. But now, with its recent decision, the conservative supreme court majority has carved out a gaping exception to the no-harm doctrine for the extremist Christian right, tossing aside established history.For the court to reach its holding that an evangelical website designer has a constitutional right to engage in invidious discrimination against same-sex couples, the majority fraudulently inflated the value of Smith’s speech from expressive conduct (regulatable) to highly valued “pure speech” (untouchable).Two conservative amicus groups, the Becket Fund and the Catholic League, provided the court with the necessary tools to assemble this phony argument by concocting fraudulent histories on the freedom of religious speech.Both the Becket Fund and the Catholic League rely heavily on a 1990 article by the conservative law professor Michael W McConnell that cherry-picks history to make the argument that the constitution mandates religious exemptions from the law. No legitimate scholar outside the realm of the religious right takes McConnell’s arguments seriously – they were thoroughly debunked by Philip Hamburger, Ellis West and myself 20 years ago. As I wrote in 2004, “the power to act outside the law–was not part of the framers’ intent, the framing generation’s understanding, or the vast majority–and the best–of the supreme court’s free exercise jurisprudence.”Unlike what the Becket Fund and the Catholic League wish the justices to believe, the historical truth is that the founders believed that obedience to the rule of law was necessary for true liberty. And it is the true history repeatedly stated in the sermons of the leading clergy of the late 18th-century United States. The most influential of them all, president of Presbyterian College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), the Rev John Witherspoon, who trained more framers than any other educator –including the architect of the constitution, James Madison – stated that the “true notion of liberty is the prevalence of law and order, and the security of individuals”. According to Israel Evans, chaplain of the American army in the Revolution and a friend of George Washington, when a believer “counteract[s] the peace and good order of society” and harms others, “he would be punished not for the exercise of a virtuous principle of conscience, but for violating that universal law of rectitude and benevolence which was intended to prevent one man from injuring another.”The founders believed churches should have the “power to make or ordain articles of faith, creeds, forms of worship or church government”, in the words of the congregational pastor, Rev Elisha Williams, rector of Yale University. Yet the ecclesiastical domain had to give way when others are hurt. As the founder Baptist Rev John Leland stated, the civil law is intended to constrain the actions that harm others and the public good: “[D]isturbers … ought to be punished.” Leland was close to Madison and Thomas Jefferson and influenced their views on separation of church and state. “Never promote men who seek after a state-established religion; it is spiritual tyranny – the worst of despotism,” Leland wrote.In short, the founders definitively rejected the notion that religious believers have special rights to avoid the duly enacted laws that apply to everyone else. The inconvenience of this deeply rooted historical fact must be glossed over by the Becket Fund and the Catholic League, because acknowledging it would undermine their entire argument.Exaltation of religious speech through revisionismThe argument for placing religious speech on a pedestal above all other speech is especially suspect. The Becket Fund argues that the freedom of religious speech has historically occupied a “preferred position” in the “constitutional order”, over other forms of speech. By “preferred” they mean untouchable by law. They even concoct a new label for valuable speech: “core religious speech”. The Fund’s so-called “history” argues that the freedom of speech started with the freedom of religious speech for churches, which then devolved to freedom of speech for legislators, and then finally individuals. The history they tick off is in fact a history of the suppression of religious dissenters’ speech, which was often brutal. From that bloody history, they conclude that at the founding, “the framers elected to follow a broad view of freedom of speech”.Yet their history is just spin. First, it’s not supported in the history of the first amendment itself. As they have to admit, “neither the debates in Congress nor the ratification debates within the several states shed light on the exact scope of the right protected, much less to what extent religious speech was covered.” Second, the first amendment’s free speech and press clauses were ratified in an era of vibrant political speech aired by a vital press. It is clear the founders believed that the press and political speech were highly valued, not ranked below that of religious speech in some recently invented imaginary hierarchy.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionToday, the first amendment holds that political and religious speech are highly valued (though not one over the other), but at the time of the framing, the framers knew that when they limited the first amendment to the federal government, the state anti-blasphemy laws would stand. They placed political speech above dissenters’ religious speech. Thus, the first amendment was consistent with putting in jail those who criticized Christianity. Indeed, there were prosecutions for blasphemous and sacrilegious speech until Burstyn v Wilson in 1952, which held such a law unconstitutional. Of course, that is religious speech suppression. So much, in the light of the founders, for religious speech’s “preferred position” by history. What they really mean, based on their twisted interpretation, is that Christian speech has a preferred position.The Catholic League in fact leans into the fantastical concept of exalting a subset of religious speech over all other religious speech when it bizarrely attributes to the framers their acceptance of what they claim as Madison’s supposed view “that the governor of the universe supersedes any earthly authority, religious convictions were understood to command greater deference than mere personal opinions”.Justice Neil Gorsuch’s majority opinion elevates certain religious speech exactly as the Becket Fund and Catholic League suggest, and achieves this feat by intentionally misapplying free speech doctrine at its most basic. As a matter of law prior to this court, 303 Creative’s website design would have been expressive conduct. 303 Creative’s commercial speech is not the traditional, highly protected speech the court has recognized again and again: it’s not speech in a public park or on a public sidewalk or a parade. The speech is by a commercial business, whose product has expressive elements to it, which means it is expressive conduct, on which the public accommodation laws impose merely incidental burdens. However, the majority pulls a proverbial rabbit out of its hat by saying that the parties “stipulated” the commercial speech is “pure speech” – and so it must be. But that’s not how free speech cases are decided. The courts decide whether expression is traditionally highly protected, lesser valued speech, expressive conduct, or unprotected altogether. Hiding behind the parties’ stipulation is in derogation of the court’s duties and constitutional nonsense.Having transformed commercial expressive conduct into highly protected speech, Gorsuch nudged the law closer to McConnell’s debunked thesis of mandatory exemptions, which downplays any government interest. Gorsuch takes 12 pages to even acknowledge Colorado’s interest in public accommodations law, granting it one full paragraph and a quick tip of the hat: “The vital role public accommodations laws play in realizing the civil rights of all Americans.” Then he segues to suggesting that newer rights in the public accommodations laws haven’t been fully examined in the law. It’s easy to read between the lines: the majority is suggesting that LGBTQ+ discrimination isn’t nearly as bad as race discrimination; it’s a second-order interest. This is exactly what the Institute for Faith and Family argued with some dubious 14th amendment assertions. The disgraced John Eastman, writing for the Claremont Institute Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, would have moved all the way to McConnell’s conclusion, arguing no state interest could possibly overcome the exalted speech of the wedding website. The court got very close.Dangerous movesThese are dangerous moves by the court that unleash biased and destructive religious speech and conduct. The founders would not recognize the lawless world this court is building.Let’s be frank. The extreme right Christian groups supporting 303 Creative are still burned up about the Obergefell decision, which enshrined gay marriage as constitutional. They have manufactured a fictional guarantee to so-called “pure speech” and trivialized the anti-discrimination laws to make up for the fact they lost the war on LGBTQ+ marriage.The majority’s decision in 303 Creative is, in fact, an expression of the Christian right’s constitutional sour grapes. The supreme court majority has deconstructed the first amendment to fit their Bibles.
      Marci A Hamilton is a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania More

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      ‘He’s an insider’: Ramaswamy’s deep ties to rightwing kingpins revealed

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      Vivek Ramaswamy has described himself as an “outsider”, accusing rivals for the Republican presidential nomination of being “bought and paid for” by donors and special interests.But the 38-year-old Ohio-based venture capitalist, whose sharp-elbowed and angry display stood out in the first Republican debate this week, has his own close ties to influential figures from both sides of the political aisle.Prominent among such connections are Peter Thiel, the co-founder of tech giants PayPal and Palantir and a rightwing mega-donor, and Leonard Leo, the activist who has marshaled unprecedented sums in his push to stock federal courts with conservative judges.Ramaswamy is a Yale Law School friend of JD Vance, the author of the bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy who enjoyed success in finance before entering politics. At Yale, Vance and Ramaswamy attended what the New Yorker called an “intimate lunch seminar for select students” that was hosted by Thiel. Last year, backed by Thiel and espousing hard-right Trumpist views, Vance won a US Senate seat in Ohio.Thiel has since said he has stepped back from political donations. But he has backed Ramaswamy’s business career, supporting what the New Yorker called “a venture helping senior citizens access Medicare” and, last year, backing Strive Asset Management, a fund launched by Ramaswamy to attack environmental, social and governance (ESG) policies among corporate investors. Vance was also a backer.Ramaswamy’s primary vehicle to success has been Roivant, an investment company focused on the pharmaceuticals industry founded in 2014.The Roivant advisory board includes figures from both the Republican and Democratic establishments: Kathleen Sebelius, US health secretary under Barack Obama; Tom Daschle of South Dakota, formerly Democratic leader in the US Senate; and Olympia Snowe, formerly a Republican senator from Maine.Ramaswamy’s links to Leo – recently the recipient of a $1.6bn donation from the industrialist Barre Seid, believed to be the biggest ever such gift, but now reportedly the subject an investigation by the attorney general of Washington DC – are many.As reported by ProPublica and Documented, Ramaswamy has spoken at retreats staged by Teneo, a group Leo chairs and which aims to connect high-powered conservatives, to “crush liberal dominance” in American life.Other Teneo speakers have reportedly included Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor polling ahead of Ramaswamy in the Republican primary, and the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, who trails Ramaswamy and clashed with him on stage in Milwaukee.ProPublica also linked Thiel to the genesis of the Teneo group. According to a document seen by the Guardian, Ramaswamy became a Teneo member in 2021.Elsewhere, Ramaswamy is a board member of the Philanthropy Roundtable, a group with ties to Leo, and a member of the Federalist Society, the Leo-driven group which works to stock the courts with conservatives.Ramaswamy has also spoken to and received an award from the State Financial Officers Foundation (SFOF), a group of Republican state treasurers.In June, in South Carolina, the Post and Courier newspaper reported that last year, before launching his presidential bid, Ramaswamy attempted “to leverage his [Republican] connections to gain access [for Strive] to lucrative contracts to manage pension funds … [with] total assets of $39.6bn”.Similar pushes were mounted in Missouri and Indiana, the paper said. Curtis Loftis, the South Carolina state treasurer, told the Post and Courier there was “nothing improper” about such approaches.Asked about Ramaswamy’s claims to be an outsider in light of his links to rightwing donors, activists and establishment figures, a campaign spokesperson told the Guardian: “Vivek has lived the American dream and has had tremendous success in business.“There’s a colossal difference between someone who has friendships and business relationships with wealthy individuals and politicians who change their policies and positions to please their Super Pac donors,” they added.In the Wisconsin debate, Ramaswamy flourished in the absence of Donald Trump, the former US president who faces 91 criminal charges but nonetheless leads Republican polling by huge margins.Amid speculation that Ramaswamy might end up Trump’s running mate, Reed Galen, a Republican operative turned co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, called Ramaswamy “a classic 2020s America tech bro bullshit artist … Trump for the 21st century”.Ramaswamy’s claim to be an outsider, Galen said, was part of his “fundamental understanding … that Maga [the pro-Trump Republican base] wants him to show that the rest of these people [in the primary] are politicians. He’s willing to be the showman … the outsider. Anti-establishment. ‘If anything is there, I dislike it because it’s there.’ You know, ‘I’m going to have fun with this. I’m not going to take it seriously because you’re a bunch of hacks and goons.’”But in another sense, regarding Ramaswamy’s ties to the likes of Leo and Thiel, Galen said: “I think that he’s an insider.“He walks into a room with Leonard Leo and says, ‘What do you need me to do?’ … And they’re like, ‘Here’s what we want you to do. Here’s what we need you to do.’ Right?“Do I think [Ramaswamy] cares about [issues like restricting] abortion? No, not particularly. I don’t think he has a firmly held belief on it. But if he thinks that it will help him, and in exchange for that Leonard Leo will throw a little chicken feed of the $1.6bn that old man gave him, to help him? Sure, what the hell?“He didn’t ever think he’d get this far. So now he’s just gonna push it as far as he can.”Ramaswamy, Galen said, was closely tied to a world of donors and non-profits in which Leo is “certainly at the center. And this movement only moves in one direction, and it’s toward the darkness. It’s towards authoritarianism. And it’s because it finds people like Ramaswamy. And the more that all these other candidates will now attack him, they will drive him further and further into the arms of those people.” More

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      US businessman is wannabe ‘warlord’ of secretive far-right men’s network

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      The founder and sponsor of a far-right network of secretive, men-only, invitation-only fraternal lodges in the US is a former industrialist who has frequently speculated about his future as a warlord after the collapse of America, a Guardian investigation has found.Federal and state tax and company filings show that the Society for American Civic Renewal (SACR) and its creator, Charles Haywood, also have financial ties with the far-right Claremont Institute.SACR’s most recent IRS filing names Haywood as the national organization’s principal officer. Other filings identify three lodges in Idaho – in Boise, Coeur d’Alene and Moscow – and another in Dallas, Texas.SACR’s public-facing presence is confined to a slick one-page website advertising the organization’s goal as “civilizational renaissance”, and a society “with strong leadership committed to family and culture”.The site claims SACR is “raising accountable leaders to help build thriving communities of free citizens” who will rebuild “the frontier-conquering spirit of America”. It condemns “those who rule today”, saying that they “corrupt the sinews of America”, “[alienate] men from family, community, and God” and promising to “counter and conquer this poison”.It also prominently features SACR’s cross-like insignia or “mark” which it describes variously as symbolizing “sword and shield” and the rejection of “Modernist philosophies and heresies”.Finally, the site advises that SACR membership “is organized primarily around local groups overseen by a national superstructure” and “is by invitation only”, offering an email address for those “interested in learning more”.The Guardian emailed the website contact address from a pseudonymous address but received no response.Heidi Beirich is co-founder of the Global Project on Hate and Extremism and an expert of the far right. She characterized the rhetoric on the website as “palingenetic ultranationalism”, a feature of fascism that proposes a revolution as a means of national rebirth.Haywood has become more active and prominent as a blogger and commentator on the far-right podcast circuit since selling his solely owned Indianapolis-based shampoo manufacturing company, Mansfield-King, to a competitor for an undisclosed price in September 2020.On his personal website, The Worthy House, where he styles himself “Maximum Leader”, Haywood has written that the sale made him “rich beyond the dreams of avarice and looking to cause trouble”. Mansfield-King was reportedly “on track to do $45m in revenue” in the year before its sale.He has featured on Claremont Institute podcasts like The American Mind and shows run by Claremont Institute staffers and alumni, like the New Founding podcast. He has also written for Claremont’s website, The American Mind.Indiana company records show that Haywood incorporated SACR as a domestic non-profit in Indiana on 22 July 2020, just ahead of the sale of his company. IRS records show that on SACR was approved as a non-profit fraternal organization – with provision to create subsidiary lodges – under section 501(c)(10) of the Internal Revenue code.The organization’s structure, aims and apparent secrecy are striking in the light of some of the ideas Haywood has promoted in articles on the Worthy House website.One idea he has repeatedly raised on the website is that he might serve as a “warlord” at the head of an “armed patronage network” or “APN”, defined as an “organizing device in conditions where central authority has broken down” in which the warlord’s responsibility is “the short- and long-term protection, military and otherwise, of those who recognize his authority and act, in part, at his behest”.The “possibilities involving violence” that APNs might face, Haywood writes include “more-or-less open warfare with the federal government, or some subset or remnant of it”.Further on, Haywood writes: “At this moment I preside over what amounts to a extended, quite sizeable, compound, which when complete I like to say, accurately, will be impervious to anything but direct organized military attack”, adding that “it requires a group of men to make it work … what I call ‘shooters’ – say fifteen able-bodied, and adequately trained, men.”These “shooters”, Haywood explains, “can operate my compound, both defensively and administratively”, meanwhile, “I have the personality, and skills, to lead such a group.”Haywood was one of the first on the right to try to rehabilitate the rioters who stormed the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. Just over two months after that incident, he praised it as an “electoral justice protest”, commenting that “the Protest was pretty awesome in every way. Its most precise analog in American history … is the Boston Tea Party.”The Guardian requested comment from Haywood via text message and email after attempting to contact him via telephone but received no response.Laura K Field is a political theorist and a senior fellow at the Washington DC-based thinktank the Niskanen Center who has written and spoken extensively about the “reactionary conservatism” of the Claremont Institute and those in its milieu.In a telephone conversation, Field said that “some of the Claremont Institute’s leaders have taken on an apocalyptic view of America and think we’re already in a situation where our society is more conflict-ridden than we were before the civil war”.Their fears of “unyielding technocratic tyranny” mean that some in Claremont circles have been “dabbling in talk of secession for years”, and “believe they need to use whatever they might need, including paramilitaries”.Haywood’s ideas have seen him characterized as an extremist even by others on the far right including the former American Conservative columnist Rod Dreher, who wrote last December that Haywood was “seriously, batshit crazy” and characterized him as writing from a “Midwestern Führerbunker”.State and federal tax filings, however, indicate that Haywood has succeeded in attracting men to help him build a network in line with his ideas. Although there is no public membership list available, federal and state filings from regional lodges identify their officers along with those who initially incorporated each lodge.In particular, Skyler Kressin of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, appears to serve a key role in SACR. Idaho and Texas company records show that Kressin incorporated lodges in Boise, Coeur d’Alene and Dallas; serves as a director of the Coeur d’Alene and Dallas lodges; and was named as the principal officer of the parent organization on its 2020-2021 tax return.Like other members revealed as officers in the filings, Kressin appears to be an affluent professional working as a tax accountant.The Guardian emailed a request for comment to Kressin but received no response.According to tax records Haywood has funded SACR through his Howdy Doody Good Times foundation, for which he and his wife, Alison Murphy, are both listed as directors. In the 2020-2021 tax year the foundation gave $30,000 to SACR, followed by $10,000 the following year, according to its 990 filings.Further funding for SACR was provided by the Claremont Institute, which gave $26,248 in 2021 in one of only two grants the organization distributed that year, per its own IRS filings.In another indication of what appears to be a mutually supportive relationship, Haywood’s foundation contributed $50,000 to the Claremont Institute in 2020-2021.The Guardian emailed a Claremont media spokesperson, David Bahr, inviting comment.On Haywood’s sponsorship of SACR and his Claremont ties, Field, the political theorist, said: “What’s creepy about the local-level stuff is that this country has a history of local autocracy … the way they’re acting undermines the rule of law.” More