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      With the end of Roe, the US edges closer and closer to civil war | Stephen Marche

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      With the end of Roe, the US edges closer and closer to civil warStephen MarcheThe question is no longer whether there will be a civil conflict in America. The question is how the sides will divide, and who will prevail The cracks in the foundations of the United States are widening, rapidly and on several fronts. The overturning of Roe v Wade has provoked a legitimacy crisis no matter what your politics.For the right, the leaking of the draft memo last month revealed the breakdown of bipartisanship and common purpose within the institution. For the left, it demonstrated the will of dubiously selected Republican justices to overturn established rights that have somewhere near 70% to 80% political support.Accelerating political violence, like the attack in Buffalo, increasingly blurs the line between the mainstream political conservative movement and outright murderous insanity. The question is no longer whether there will be a civil conflict in the United States. The question is how the sides will divide, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and how those strengths and weaknesses will determine the outcome.The right wing has been imagining a civil war, publicly, since at least the Obama administration. Back in 2016, when it looked like Hillary Clinton would win the election, then Kentucky governor Matt Bevin described the possibility in apocalyptic terms: “The roots of the tree of liberty are watered by what? The blood. Of who? The tyrants, to be sure. But who else? The patriots. Whose blood will be shed? It may be that of those in this room. It might be that of our children and grandchildren,” he told supporters at the Values Voter Summit.The possibility of civil war has long been a mainstay of rightwing talk radio. Needless to say, when the right conjures these fantasies of cleansing violence, they tend to fantasize their own victory. Steve King, while still a congressman from Iowa, tweeted an image of red and blue America at war, with the line: “Folks keep talking about another civil war. One side has about 8tn bullets, while the other side doesn’t know which bathroom to use.”Any time anyone acts on their violent rhetoric, the rightwing politicians and media elites are appalled that anyone would connect what they say to what others do. “We need to understand we’re under attack, and we need to understand this is 21st-century warfare and get on a war footing,” Alex Jones said in the lead-up to the Capitol riot.According to a New York Times series, Tucker Carlson has articulated the theory of white replacement more than 400 times on his show. Calls to violence are normal in rightwing media. Calls to resist white replacement are normal in rightwing media. The inevitable result is the violent promotion of resistance to white replacement. Republican politicians like Arizona state senator Wendy Rogers and New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik are outraged when their one plus one turns out to equal two, but their outrage is increasingly unbelievable, even to themselves. America is witnessing a technique used in political struggles all over the world. Movements devoted to the overthrow of elected governments tend to divide into armed and political wings, which gives multiple avenues to approach their goals as well as the cover of plausible deniability for their violence.The leftwing American political class, incredibly, continues to cling to its defunct institutional ideals. Democrats under Biden have wasted the past two years on fictions of bipartisanship and forlorn hopes of some kind of restoration of American trust. When violence like Buffalo hits, they can do little more than plead with the other side to reconsider the horror they’re unleashing, and offer obvious lectures about the poison of white supremacy. Since January 6 didn’t wake them up to exactly what they’re facing, it’s unclear what might ever wake them up. The left has not made the psychological adjustment to a conflict situation yet. But it won’t be able to maintain the fantasy of normalcy for much longer.The conflict, which on the surface seems so unequal, with an emboldened and violent right against a demoralized and disorganized left, is not as one-sided as it looks at first. It is unequal but it is also highly asymmetrical. The right has the weaponry and an electoral system weighted overwhelmingly in its favor. The left has money and tech.Steve King was, in a sense, absolutely correct about the armed status of the two sides. Half of Republicans own a gun, compared with 21% of Democrats. But that gap, though wide, is closing. In 2020, 40% of gun buyers were new buyers. There was a 58% rise in gun sales to African Americans in 2020 over 2019. In 2021, women were nearly half of new gun buyers, an astonishing statistic. The real structural advantage the right possesses is not military but electoral. By 2040, 30% of the country will control 70% of the Senate. The institutions of the US government distinctly favor those who want to destroy it. Every Democrat who fights to end the filibuster is fighting for their own future irrelevance, or rather for the acceleration of their own irrelevance.Two essential facts of the 2020 election should give leftwing partisans hope, however. Biden-voting counties amounted to 70% of GDP, while 60% of college-educated voters chose Biden. That is to say, the left-democratic wing of America is the productive and educated part of the country. One way of looking at the American political condition of the moment is that the leftwing part of the US has built the networks that have left behind the rightwing part. The networks are the left’s strength.The struggle over abortion has already revealed how the divide plays out. Anti-abortion factions control the pseudo-legitimate court system and the poorer states in the Union. Pro-choice factions have responded, first of all, with their superior financial resources. Oregon started the Oregon Reproductive Equity Fund with $15m. New York is establishing a fund to make the state a “safe haven”. California governor Gavin Newsom plans to add $57m to the state budget to deal with out-of-state patients.At the same time, pro-choice organizers are turning to technology. The Atlantic recently reported on networks using “encrypted, open-source Zoom alternatives” to provide women with support for their procedures. Already, anonymous web access to self-managed abortions is available, just as it has been for many years in some restrictive jurisdictions.This divide isn’t just American. As the forces of the world split between a liberal-democratic elite and authoritarian populists, the same asymmetry can be seen in the struggle everywhere. In Canada, the convoy that held the city of Ottawa hostage was defeated, in the end, not by force, but by money and technology. Other countries responded to similar convoys with direct assaults – the French teargassed their convoy immediately and the United States called in the national guard before they had even left for Washington. But in Canada, the government, not wanting to have the blood of children on its hands, weakened the convoy’s financial networks by simply turning off their fundraising accounts. A small band of anonymous hackers also tormented the convoy organizers by disrupting their communication lines. They infiltrated their Zello channels, blaring the hardcore gay pornography country anthem Ram Ranch. The “Ram Ranch Resistance” almost single-handedly undid the protests at the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor. This same divide has played out on an international level, in the struggle between Russia and Ukraine. Russia, overwhelmed by resentment because it cannot meaningfully compete in an integrated 21st-century economy, has devolved into a conservative authoritarianism with no other outlet than violence. But Ukraine had better access to the global financial and media networks. The reaction, from the forces of the democratic west, has been to cut Russia off from financial systems and to provide Ukraine with superior technology. Technology and financial networks have proven the match, at the very least, of brute force.Incipient civil conflict in the United States won’t be formal armies struggling for territory. The techniques of both sides are clarifying. Republican officials will use the supreme court, or whatever other political institutions they control, to push their agenda no matter how unpopular with the American people. Meanwhile, their calls for violence, while never direct, create a climate of rage that solidifies into regular physical assaults on their enemies. The technical term for this process is stochastic terrorism; the attack in Buffalo is a textbook example.The leftwing resistance is more nascent but is also taking shape: if you’re rich and you want to stay living in a democracy, the time has come to pony up. If you’re an engineer, the time has come to organize. The conclusion is not at all determined. Neither side has an absolute advantage. Neither side can win easily. But one fact is clear. The battle has been joined, and it will be fought everywhere.
      Stephen Marche is the author, most recently, of The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future
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      DoJ seeks delay in Proud Boys case as it collides with parallel January 6 inquiry

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      DoJ seeks delay in Proud Boys case as it collides with parallel January 6 inquiryTwo cases had managed to steer clear of each other as the justice department and House panel pursued the same ground The US justice department’s criminal investigation into the January 6 Capitol attack collided with the parallel congressional investigation, causing federal prosecutors to seek a delay in proceedings in the seditious conspiracy case against the far-right Proud Boys group.The two January 6 inquiries had largely managed to steer clear of each other even as both the justice department and a House select committee pursued the same ground. But it all came to head on Wednesday.At a hearing in federal court in Washington, federal prosecutors and defendants in the justice department’s seditious conspiracy case asked a federal judge to delay the August trial date of the former Proud Boys national chairman Henry Tarrio, AKA Enrique Tarrio, and other top members of the far-right group.January 6 panel to focus on Trump’s relentless pressure on justice departmentRead more“It is reasonably foreseeable that information relevant to the defendants’ guilt (or innocence) could soon be released,” assistant US attorney Erik Kenerson wrote on Tuesday. “Inability to prepare their respective cases … is potentially prejudicial – to all parties.”The request was granted “reluctantly” by US district judge Timothy Kelly, who said the trial will now start in December, agreeing that the select committee’s report and witness transcripts that are slated to be made public in September could upend preparations.The justice department has run into the issue that because it is conducting a criminal investigation, its federal prosecutors are bound by strict rules requiring high standards of proof before they start issuing subpoenas and collecting evidence.By contrast, the select committee, in conducting a congressional investigation examining the circumstances surrounding the Capitol attack, can issue subpoenas for documents and testimony whenever and however it likes, given the approval of a majority of its members.That has meant the panel has amassed more than 1,000 transcripts of closed-door depositions conducted with key witnesses related to the January 6 inquiries, some of which the justice department believes are relevant to its cases but the panel had declined to share.In a letter last week, Matthew Graves, the US attorney for the District of Columbia, and assistant attorneys general Kenneth Polite and Matthew Olsen complained their inability to access transcripts was hampering criminal investigations, including in the Proud Boys case.“The select committee’s failure to grant the department access to these transcripts complicates the department’s ability to investigate and prosecute those who engaged in criminal conduct in relation to the January 6 attack on the Capitol,” they wrote in the letter.The select committee relented and suggested it would not even wait until September but start making transcripts public as early as July. But lawyers for the Proud Boys took issue with both dates, saying the contents of the transcripts could bias a jury ahead of trial.Not all of the defendants sought a delay. Tarrio opposed the request because “an impartial jury will never be achieved in Washington DC whether the trial is in August, December, or next year”. Ethan Nordean, another prominent Proud Boys figure, opposed the request unless he was freed from pre-trial detention.The potential for the transcripts to influence a jury pool has been a recurring complaint for the Proud Boys lawyers, who argue the January 6 hearings – which started three days after Tarrio and others were charged with seditious conspiracy – will irreparably taint a jury.Federal prosecutors have pushed back, contending that people in Washington were no more likely to have seen the hearings than people in New York or Miami. Still, the government agreed for the need for breathing space between the trial and transcripts being made public.The justice department, meanwhile, has its own concerns with the transcripts’ release and would seemingly prefer to get the transcripts in private to compare what witnesses have told the select committee and what they have secretly told a grand jury.At least two members of the Proud Boys have testified before the select committee in closed-door depositions: Tarrio, who has been charged with seditious conspiracy and other crimes, and Jeremy Bertino, who has been mentioned in court filings but is currently not charged.Also on Wednesday, the justice department issued new subpoenas to at least three people connected to the Trump campaign’s potentially illegal plan to send fraudulent election certificates to Congress as part of the effort to overturn the 2020 election results.The confirmed recipients of the grand jury subpoenas were Brad Carver, a Georgia Republican party official who was a Trump elector, Thomas Lane, a Trump campaign official in Arizona and New Mexico, and Sean Flynn, a Trump campaign aide in Michigan, the New York Times reported.TopicsUS Capitol attackJanuary 6 hearingsThe far rightHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Feds seek delay in Proud Boys conspiracy case as it collides with parallel January 6 inquiry

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      Feds seek delay in Proud Boys conspiracy case as it collides with parallel January 6 inquiryThe two cases had managed to steer clear of each other as the justice department and House panel pursued the same ground The US justice department’s criminal investigation into the January 6 Capitol attack collided with the parallel congressional investigation, causing federal prosecutors to seek a delay in proceedings in the seditious conspiracy case against the far-right Proud Boys group.The two January 6 inquiries had largely managed to steer clear of each other even as both the justice department and a House select committee pursued the same ground. But it all came to head on Wednesday.At a hearing in federal court in Washington, federal prosecutors and defendants in justice department’s seditious conspiracy case asked a federal judge to delay the August trial date of former Proud Boys national chairman Henry Tarrio, AKA Enrique Tarrio and other top members of the far-right group.January 6 panel to focus on Trump’s relentless pressure on justice departmentRead more“It is reasonably foreseeable that information relevant to the defendants’ guilt (or innocence) could soon be released,” assistant US attorney Erik Kenerson wrote on Tuesday. “Inability to prepare their respective cases … is potentially prejudicial – to all parties.”The request was granted “reluctantly” by US district judge Timothy Kelly, who said the trial will now start in December, agreeing that the select committee’s report and witness transcripts that are slated to be made public in September could upend preparations.The justice department has run into the issue that because it is conducting a criminal investigation, its federal prosecutors are bound by strict rules requiring high standards of proof before they start issuing subpoenas and collecting evidence.By contrast, the select committee, in conducting a congressional investigation examining the circumstances surrounding the Capitol attack, can issue subpoenas for documents and testimony whenever and however it likes, given the approval of a majority of its members.That has meant the panel has amassed more than 1,000 transcripts of closed-door depositions conducted with key witnesses related to the January 6 inquiries, some of which the justice department believes are relevant to its cases but the panel had declined to share.In a letter last week, Matthew Graves, the US attorney for the District of Columbia, and assistant attorneys general Kenneth Polite and Matthew Olsen complained their inability to access transcripts was hampering criminal investigations, including in the Proud Boys case.“The select committee’s failure to grant the department access to these transcripts complicates the department’s ability to investigate and prosecute those who engaged in criminal conduct in relation to the January 6 attack on the Capitol,” they wrote in the letter.The select committee relented and suggested it would not even wait until September but start making transcripts public as early as July. But lawyers for the Proud Boys took issue with both dates, saying the contents of the transcripts could bias a jury ahead of trial.Not all of the defendants sought a delay. Tarrio opposed the request because “an impartial jury will never be achieved in Washington DC whether the trial is in August, December, or next year”. Ethan Nordean, another prominent Proud Boys figure, opposed the request unless he was freed from pre-trial detention.The potential for the transcripts to influence a jury pool has been a recurring complaint for the Proud Boys lawyers, who argue the January 6 hearings – which started three days after Tarrio and others were charged with seditious conspiracy – will irreparably taint a jury.Federal prosecutors have pushed back, contending that people in Washington were no more likely to have seen the hearings than people in New York or Miami. Still, the government agreed for the need for breathing space between the trial and transcripts being made public.The justice department, meanwhile, has its own concerns with the transcripts’ release and would seemingly prefer to get the transcripts in private to compare what witnesses have told the select committee and what they have secretly told a grand jury.At least two members of the Proud Boys have testified before the select committee in closed-door depositions: Tarrio, who has been charged with seditious conspiracy and other crimes, and Jeremy Bertino, who has been mentioned in court filings but is currently not charged.Also on Wednesday, the justice department issued new subpoenas to at least three people connected to the Trump campaign’s potentially illegal plan to send fraudulent election certificates to Congress as part of the effort to overturn the 2020 election results.The confirmed recipients of the grand jury subpoenas were Brad Carver, a Georgia Republican Party official who was a Trump elector, Thomas Lane, a Trump campaign official in Arizona and New Mexico, and Sean Flynn, a Trump campaign aide in Michigan, the New York Times reported.TopicsUS Capitol attackJanuary 6 hearingsThe far rightHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Proud Boys developed plans to take over government buildings in Washington DC

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      Proud Boys developed plans to take over government buildings in Washington DCDocument reveals plans for entering buildings and blocking traffic to prevent law enforcement access A document revealed in court on Wednesday has exposed a detailed plan by the Proud Boys to occupy government buildings in Washington DC, including the supreme court.The document, titled “1776 Returns”, laid out the plans for which buildings to target, the number of members required for each building, and tactics, including instructions to use the pandemic as an excuse for wearing masks and face shields without raising suspicion.It called for at least 50 members of the group to invade each building “or it’s a no go for that building”.​​“These are OUR building, they are just renting space,” read a part of the document, according to NBC. “We must show our politicians We the People are in charge.”Five members of the far-right Proud Boys, including leader Enrique Tarrio, were charged earlier this month with “seditious conspiracy”. Tarrio was slapped with the charge on top of already existing charges against him for, among other things, obstruction of an official proceeding and assaulting officers. Other charges include a felony charge against Louis Enrique Colon, who pleaded guilty in April.The document was submitted to court by the lawyer of a Proud Boys member, Zachary Rehl, while filing for a motion for his release from pre-trial detention.Rehl’s lawyer claimed, in an attempt to distance his client from allegations that he had a leadership role in the insurrection, that Rehl had no idea about the document.The detailed nine-page memo has directions for participants to “use Covid to your advantage” and to create a “fake appointment” for one member, identified as “Covert Sleeper”, to get inside the building and eventually let the others in.The “Sleeper” was tasked to spend the day as an “insider”.The plan also called on participants to create distractions for the guards by “causing trouble” at the gate.Another part directed participants to block traffic from as many angles as possible.“Traffic blocks have network effects,” read the document. “The Rerouting traffic will block other important areas, and also stop access to any law enforcement vehicle.”The buildings they targeted are the supreme court, three Senate office buildings, and three House office buildings. Another target is listed as “CNN”, possibly referring to the CNN office in Washington, which is about a six-minute drive from the Capitol.The demands made in the document called for a new election on 20 January, the day of President Biden’s inauguration, with requirements such as paper ballots only, no electronic or mail-in votes, and the use of national guards for monitoring.TopicsUS Capitol attackThe far rightWashington DCnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘It was a war scene’: Caroline Edwards describes Capitol attack violence

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      ‘It was a war scene’: Caroline Edwards describes Capitol attack violenceThe Capitol police officer, who was injured in the insurrection, said she saw colleagues ‘bleeding, on the ground, throwing up’ Caroline Edwards, a Capitol police officer who sustained a brain injury during the January 6 attack, gave a chilling recollection of the brutal violence of that day on Thursday, telling the committee investigating the attack it was a “war scene”.Her testimony offered key evidence for underscoring the stakes of the congressional hearing. It showed viewers at home that the attack on the Capitol in Washington DC was not an accident, but rather an intentional effort to inflict violence.“I can remember my breath catching in my throat because what I saw was a war scene,” she told the committee. “Officers on the ground. They were bleeding, on the ground, throwing up,” she said.January 6 hearing: Trump was at heart of plot that led to ‘attempted coup’Read more“I was slipping in people’s blood,” she added. “I was catching people as they fell. It was carnage. It was chaos. I can’t even describe what I saw.”Edwards is believed to have been one of the first officers injured during the attack, the New York Times reported last year. The committee played several clips of her being attacked.She described standing near a barricade as members of the Proud Boys, a far-right group that played a key role in the violence, escalated their attack. She described telling her sergeant they would need more people to defend the Capitol before a bike rack was thrown on top of her and she hit her head on nearby stairs, causing her to black out.But after regaining consciousness, Edwards, then 31, returned to defending the Capitol. “Adrenaline kicked in. I ran towards the west front, and I tried to hold the line at the Senate steps at the lower west terrace. More people kept coming at us.”In her testimony, she recalled seeing a fellow police officer, Brian Sicknick, after he had been pepper-sprayed and how he was pale. “He was ghostly pale, which I figured at that point that he had been sprayed and I was concerned,” she said.Sicknick died in the immediate aftermath of the attack but a medical examiner ultimately determined he died of a stroke. His mother and girlfriend attended the hearing on Thursday. After the hearing concluded, Edwards turned to his girlfriend, Sandra Garza, and said “I’m so sorry,” and hugged her, according to the Wall Street Journal.Edwards didn’t hesitate when she was asked to recall a memory that stuck out to her from that day.“It was something I’d seen out of the movies,” she said. “I saw friends with blood all over their faces,” she said. “Never in my wildest dreams did I think that as a police officer, as a law enforcement officer, I would find myself in the middle of a battle.”“I’m trained to detain a couple of subjects and handle a crowd, but I’m not combat trained,” She said. “That day, it was just hours of hand-to-hand combat.”TopicsUS Capitol attackUS policingThe far rightUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      How a documentary film-maker became the January 6 panel’s star witness

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      How a documentary film-maker became the January 6 panel’s star witnessNick Quested, who was embedded with the Proud Boys after the 2020 election, will supply first-hand knowledge of the riots When the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack on Thursday got to the witness testimony at its inaugural hearing, it heard from an individual with first-hand knowledge about how the far-right Proud Boys group came to storm the Capitol.The panel’s star witness, Nick Quested, is an Emmy award-winning British documentary film-maker who founded the indie film company Goldcrest and embedded with the Proud Boys in the weeks after Donald Trump lost the 2020 election as part of a project about division in America.“We chose the Proud Boys because they’ve been so vociferous in rallies and protests around America, and they’ve emerged as a political voice and force, particularly in the summer of 2020,” Quested told the Guardian. “We felt they were a group worth following.”January 6 hearings get under way as US braces for revelations – liveRead moreQuested spent much of the post-2020 election period following around the Proud Boys and is considered by the select committee as an accidental witness to the group’s activities and likely conversations about planning to storm the Capitol on January 6.The documentary film-maker shot footage of some of the most crucial moments connected to the attack, starting with rallies in November and December 2020 which the Proud Boys attended alongside other militia groups including the Oath Keepers and the 1st Amendment Praetorian.Quested then managed to capture on camera a late-night rendezvous between Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys and Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers, in an underground parking garage near the Capitol the day before January 6.The US justice department has referenced that encounter in indictments for seditious conspiracy against Rhodes and other militia group members, though Quested has told the select committee he does not believe that was a meeting to coordinate storming the Capitol.Quested also filmed the Proud Boys marching up the National Mall from the Save America rally at the Ellipse to the Peace Monument at the foot of Capitol Hill, where the group’s members found themselves stopped from moving further by the edge of the US Capitol police perimeter.Over several tense minutes, he photographed Joseph Biggs, one of the Proud Boys indicted for seditious conspiracy, having a brief exchange with another man in the crowd, who then confronted Capitol police in a moment widely seen as the tipping point of the riot.The confrontation sparked the crowd to overturn the police barricade – despite Quested holding on to the fencing to keep it upright – and Quested filmed the charge up Capitol Hill towards the inaugural platform on the west side of the Capitol building.“Why did I go over to the barriers in the first place? Look, there’s two types of people in this world. There’s people who walk to disturbances and people who walk away. I walk towards disturbances,” Quested said.Panel to connect Proud Boys and Oath Keepers in Capitol attack conspiracyRead more“I didn’t know there was a confrontation happening. I felt a disturbance in the crowd and I moved towards that confrontation. And that confrontation happened to be Ryan Samsel shaking the barriers. And then the weight of the crowd overwhelmed the officers at the barrier.”Late in the day on January 6, Quested filmed Tarrio’s reaction to news about the Capitol attack in real time, having gone to see Tarrio in Baltimore, Maryland, where he had retreated after being ordered out of Washington by a local judge the day before.Quested discussed his footage and more at the select committee’s inaugural hearing pursuant to a subpoena, having already testified on multiple occasions behind closed doors about his recollections and experiences around the Proud Boys on January 6.The documentary film-maker – originally from west London and educated at St Paul’s school in London – followed the Proud Boys in the post-election period after covering conflict zones including Afghanistan, Iraq, El Salvador, Mexico, Nicaragua and Syria.Among other works, Quested produced Restrepo, the 2010 Oscar-nominated film that followed a platoon in Afghanistan for a year, and directed the 2018 duPont-Columbia award-winning film Hell on Earth, as well as more than 100 hip-hop videos, including with Dr Dre.TopicsUS Capitol attackRepublicansUS politicsThe far rightHouse of RepresentativesnewsReuse this content More

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      Panel to connect Proud Boys and Oath Keepers in Capitol attack conspiracy

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      Panel to connect Proud Boys and Oath Keepers in Capitol attack conspiracySources say investigators intend to show far-right militias coordinated in effort to storm US Capitol on January 6 last year The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack is expected at its first hearing on Thursday evening to connect the far-right Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers militia groups in the same seditious conspiracy, according to two sources familiar with the matter.The move by the panel and chief investigative counsel Tim Heaphy could be one of the major revelations that comes from the hearing, which is expected to focus on the militia groups and how they made plans to storm the Capitol, the sources said.US braces for House committee’s primetime January 6 hearings – liveRead moreTop members of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers have been charged separately by the justice department with seditious conspiracy, but the select committee’s intention to show that their efforts were connected would escalate the gravity of the plans to attack the Capitol.The panel is understood to be able to connect the two groups in part as it got access to the Oath Keepers’ encrypted Signal messaging chats, while the first witness at the hearing, documentarian Nick Quested, who filmed the Proud Boys, overheard their planning.Text messages released by the justice department have also shown that the two groups were in touch before January 6. Meanwhile at least one person, Joshua James, appears to have simultaneously been both a member of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers.It could not be confirmed ahead of the hearing whether the select committee had the evidence to tie Donald Trump into the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers’ conspiracy. But the panel is not expected to tie Roger Stone to the conspiracy, having been unable to find any such evidence.The role of the militia groups in the story of January 6 is important because they specifically planned to storm the Capitol to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election win – what Trump wanted and needed after his other efforts to overturn the election failed.The panel is expected to make its case that there was coordination between the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers – something the panel has long believed – over the course of a hearing that will specifically zero in on the role of the Proud Boys in the Capitol attack.A member of the Proud Boys was the first person to breach the Capitol by using a police riot shield to break through a window on the Senate side of the Capitol, and another member of the Proud Boys appeared to precipitate the first breach of police lines on January 6.The inaugural hearing is expected to focus on Quested’s video footage of the moment that Joseph Biggs, a member of the Proud Boys indicted for seditious conspiracy on Monday, had a brief exchange with another man near the Peace Monument at the foot of Capitol Hill.Biggs’ exchange with that man, Ryan Samsel, is widely seen as the tipping point that precipitated the riot. Samsel, who has been charged with attacking police, then walks up alone to the barricade and confronts US Capitol police officers before pushing it over.The inaugural hearing is also expected to focus on Quested’s video of the Proud Boys charging up Capitol Hill towards the lower west plaza of the Capitol and the inaugural ceremony platform, where Proud Boys member Dominic Pezzola smashes the window with the shield.Also during the inaugural hearing, the select committee is expected to play previously unreleased video of Trump’s top aides and family members testifying before the panel. The panel intends to show Trump was at the center of a multi-step effort to overturn the election.TopicsUS Capitol attackRepublicansUS politicsThe far rightnewsReuse this content More

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      Proud Boys leaders charged with seditious conspiracy in 6 January riot

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      Proud Boys leaders charged with seditious conspiracy in 6 January riotEnrique Tarrio and four other members accused of plotting to attack the US Capitol Top leaders of the far-right Proud Boys group, including its national chairman, Enrique Tarrio, have been charged with seditious conspiracy for plotting to storm the US Capitol to obstruct the certification of Joe Biden’s election win over Donald Trump on 6 January 2021.Capitol attack panel to unveil new evidence against Trump at public hearingsRead moreThe move by federal prosecutors to charge Tarrio and four other Proud Boys leaders with seditious conspiracy – in addition to previous charges of obstructing a congressional proceeding – marks a major development in the criminal investigation into the Capitol attack.In the 33-page indictment unsealed in Washington DC on Monday, the justice department said Tarrio and his co-defendants Joseph Biggs, Ethan Nordean, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola for months used encrypted messaging apps to stop Biden’s certification by force.The new charges against the proud Boys leadership come days before the parallel congressional inquiry into the Capitol attack is scheduled to start televised hearings that are expected to examine, in part, Trump’s personal culpability in the events of January 6.Seditious conspiracy, which is challenging to prove, requires federal prosecutors to show beyond a reasonable doubt that at least two people agreed to use force to overthrow the government or to interfere with the execution of a US law.The new indictment is the latest involving seditious conspiracy, after the justice department filed identical charges earlier this year against top members of the far-right Oath Keepers militia group, including its founder Stewart Rhodes, over the Capitol attack.A bipartisan US Senate report linked seven deaths to the attack on the Capitol, which failed to stop certification of Biden’s win. Trump was impeached for inciting an insurrection but acquitted when enough Senate Republicans stayed loyal.In adding on the seditious conspiracy charges, the justice department appeared to indicate that it has learned new information in recent weeks about the Proud Boys’ plans ahead of 6 January as a result of several significant developments.One of the Proud Boys, who was originally charged with Tarrio and the other co-defendants for obstructing a congressional proceeding, Charles Donoghue pleaded guilty in April and accepted a plea deal to cooperate with the criminal investigation into the group.Meanwhile, though the indictment also identified unindicted co-conspirators – “Person 1” is understood to be Jeremy Bertino and “Person 2” is likely Aaron Whallon Wolkind – neither of those men have been charged. A third top Proud Boy leader, John Stewart, also remains uncharged.The government said in the indictment that on 20 December 2020, Tarrio created a chat called “MOSD Leaders Group” – described by Tarrio as a “national rally planning committee” – that included Nordean, Biggs, Rehl and other individuals who were not identified.Through the rest of December, the government said, Proud Boys leaders used additional MOSD group chats to plan a “DC trip” and communicate to group members that they should go to the capital not wearing their familiar black and yellow colours but travel “incognito” instead.The government said in the indictment that on 30 and 31 December 2020, Tarrio communicated with an individual – whose identity is known only to a grand jury – who sent him a nine-page document, called “1776 returns” in reference to the year of American independence from Britain. It laid out a plan to occupy “crucial buildings” on 6 January.The document broadly outlined a plan to reconnoiter and storm crucial government buildings in Washington DC on 6 January, though not the Capitol itself, the New York Times earlier reported.Tarrio is said to have received the “1776 returns” document from one of his girlfriends, who compared the plan to storming the Winter palace in St Petersburg that sparked the Russian Revolution in 1917, the New York Times reported.The indictment cited a reference to that moment in the new indictment, drawing upon what appeared to be newly-uncovered text messages. After the Capitol attack ended, Bertino messaged Tarrio, “1776,” to which Tarrio responded: “The Winter Palace.”Three days before the Capitol attack, a Proud Boy referred to only as “Person-3” posted a voice message in the MOSD Leaders Group that stated the “main operating theater should be out in front of the House of Representatives”, according to the indictment.“That’s where the vote is taking place with all of the objections,” the person said, according to the indictment. “Plan the operations based around the front entrance to the Capitol building. I strongly recommend you use the National Mall and not Pennsylvania Avenue.”The new pieces of evidence in the latest indictment were messages Bertino sent to Tarrio after the attack. “You know we made this happen,” Bertino said. Referring to the implications of obstructing Biden’s win, Bertino added: “They HAVE to certify today. Or it’s invalid.”Tarrio was not in Washington DC on 6 January 2021, having been ordered to leave the capital by a judge after being arrested the day before for burning a Black Lives Matter banner at a church during a pro-Trump rally in December.But the justice department has said that even though Tarrio was not accused of “physically taking part in the breach of the Capitol”, he “led the advance planning and remained in contact with other members of the Proud Boys during” the attack.Eleven members of the Oath Keepers militia are also charged with seditious conspiracy.Lawyers for Tarrio and the other four Proud Boys leaders have said there is no evidence they conspired to storm the Capitol, and that the MOSD group chats and the acquisition of tactical gear before 6 January were measures to protect themselves in case of potential altercations.TopicsUS Capitol attackThe far rightnewsReuse this content More