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      Enough review: Cassidy Hutchinson on Trump and the damage done

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      Cassidy Hutchinson may have done more to place Donald Trump in legal jeopardy than anyone other than Trump himself. By the time the twentysomething deputy to Mark Meadows (Trump’s last chief of staff) completed her first public appearance before the January 6 committee, in June last year, the US had received an up-close-and-personal view of the venom, wrath and malice of the 45th president.Hutchinson “isn’t crazy”, a Trump White House veteran confided to the Guardian before that first hearing. But she is a “time bomb”.When told that he would not be driven to the Capitol to join the rioters, Trump lunged for the steering wheel of his car. He said Mike Pence “deserved” to be hanged for his refusal to overturn the election. He broke dishes and splattered condiments. Hutchinson “grabbed a towel and started wiping the ketchup off of the wall to help the valet out”. Her testimony was extraordinary. It has also withstood scrutiny.The Capitol was defaced for the “sake of a lie”, Hutchinson declared, on camera. She placed Trump, Meadows and Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer, in the middle of it all.Fifteen months later, however, Trump is both a 91-times charged criminal defendant and the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, tied with, if not ahead of, Joe Biden in the polls. In Fulton county, Georgia, a grand jury indicted Meadows and Giuliani as well as Trump, for seeking to illegally overturn Biden’s win. As for Hutchinson, she is out with Enough, her memoir.She shares her life story, pointing a damning finger at the powerful, the guys she once worked for and her own father. She tries to exhale but doesn’t fully succeed. She can’t. She is likely to be a witness at Trump’s Washington trial on four election subversion charges, slated to kick off the day before Super Tuesday, the key point of the Republican primary next year.Hutchinson expresses gratitude for life’s opportunities and disgust for what she has seen and endured. Her nameless “dad”, her mother’s first husband, was all too often a no-show in clutch moments. She considers Paul, the man who followed, to be her “chosen father”. He was there when it counted. Meadows once asked if she had a happy childhood, she writes. She offers a detailed answer.Hutchinson’s disdain for Trump is on record. Now, too, is her deep disillusionment with Meadows and disgust for Giuliani.On January 6, “America’s mayor” allegedly preyed upon her. John Eastman, Trump’s legal adviser in his attempted coup, purportedly looked on and smiled.Over time, Meadows let Hutchinson down, then abandoned her entirely. When the subpoenas began to fly, he left her to fend for herself. He never offered to help, she says, in contrast to how he treated his male deputy, Ben Williamson. To Hutchinson, Meadows extended platitudes as if she were a mass shooting victim.“Tell her me and Debbie are thinking about her,” he told Williamson.In her own memoir, Kayleigh McEnany, Trump’s last White House press secretary, gushed at Hutchinson: “You were a constant reminder of faith. Thank you for being an inspiring leader for the entire West Wing.” The contrast in the two women’s post-White House lives is remarkable. McEnany is ensconced at Fox News. Hutchinson gives interviews at home with the shades drawn, worried for her safety.According to Hutchinson, Meadows ceaselessly sought to endear himself to Trump, a task impossible for anyone other than Ivanka, Trump’s oldest daughter. Early on, Meadows told Hutchinson he would take a bullet for his boss.“I would do anything … to get him re-elected,” he said.Months later, Meadows did something: he hid Trump’s Covid from Hutchinson and from the world at large. He knew Trump had fulfilled appearances and taken the debate stage against Biden after testing positive. He did not share that information. Later, when Hutchinson and Meadows were in a limo, she asked if Trump had Covid. Meadows did not answer.“His silence answered every question I had,” Hutchinson writes now.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionShe did not sicken and flirt with death, as Chris Christie did after helping prep Trump for the debate. But no apology was forthcoming. All were expected to take the bullet.Out of office, however, Meadows ratted Trump out, in his own memoir, The Chief’s Chief. Hutchinson cites his book in hers.“Stop the president from leaving,” Meadows says Sean Conley, the White House physician, told him. “He just tested positive for Covid.”“Mr President,” Meadows says he said, “I’ve got some bad news. You’ve tested positive for Covid-19.” Trump’s reply, the devout Christian writes, “rhyme[d] with ‘Oh spit, you’ve gotta be trucking lidding me”.When Meadows’s book came out, Trump trashed it as “fake news” and derided Meadows as “fucking stupid”. Meadows concurred. These days, though, he appears to be cooperating with Jack Smith, the special counsel. The prospect of prison can bring clarity. Ask Michael Cohen.Giuliani and Eastman deny Hutchinson’s description of how the former groped her as the latter smiled. They also threaten to sue but they have larger things to focus on, professions and freedom at risk.If anyone’s character can be judged by the identities of their enemies, Hutchinson is well placed. Starting with Trump, she has amassed an array of appalling detractors. But she has able folks in her corner. Liz Cheney, the January 6 vice-chair whose stand against Trump cost her so dearly, is there. Hutchinson’s roster of legal talent, meanwhile, includes Jody Hunt and Bill Jordan. A justice department veteran, Hunt was chief of staff to Jeff Sessions, Trump’s first attorney general.When news of Enough was breaking, another former Trump legal adviser, Ty Cobb, told the Guardian: “Hutchinson was a very devoted White House employee who worked very very hard. She was proud to serve her country. So sad she had to endure this.”
      Enough is published in the US by Simon & Schuster More

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      Revealed: far-right Oath Keepers kept up dues payments after Capitol attack

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      Oath Keepers members paid dues to the rightwing militia’s then vice-president for up to almost a year after the January 6 attack on the US Capitol and months after the organization and its founder, Stewart Rhodes, were named in court filings as participants in the assault, according to publicly accessible transaction records on the payment platform Venmo.Those who made payments to an Oath Keepers leader on Venmo include an engineer whose employer provides satellite technology to US government agencies including the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Department of Homeland Security, a former Department of Homeland Security employee whose tenure at the agency overlapped with his membership in the group, and a 2022 candidate for the Wyoming state senate.Others connected on Venmo to Rhodes or other organizational leaders include a US navy recruiting officer.The Guardian corroborated the identity of some of the individuals making payments using earlier hacks and leaks of Oath Keepers membership rolls, payment records and internal communications.Venmo transactions were public by default throughout most of the service’s history. Megan Squire is deputy director for Data Analytics and OSINT at the Southern Poverty Law Centre, and from 2017 she was one of the first to use Venmo transactions to understand the internal structure of groups like the Proud Boys.Squire said: “Venmo has had security issues since its inception. They have tried to fix them but only after high-profile privacy breaches involving people like Joe Biden.”The Oath Keepers transactions were recorded on the profile of Jason Ottersberg, a Cheyenne, Wyoming, man who has been publicly identified as a senior leader in the Oath Keepers.Ottersberg’s name, email address and a username – “seebeewyo” – were all revealed in a leak of information from the Oath Keepers website in 2021. Ottersberg is also named as the recipient on an Oath Keepers fundraising page on the extremist-friendly fundraising site Givesendgo.Ottersberg’s current username on Venmo is based on his name, but a scrape of his account with the open-source intelligence tool Venemy shows that his original user name was nationalokvp, indicating that he was presenting himself as the Oath Keepers national vice-president.The account’s transaction history shows payments to and from Ottersberg along with explanations of the payments.On 1 September 2021, an account carrying the name Michael Ray Williams made a payment to Jason Ottersberg on Venmo with the message “OK dues”. The account’s avatar is a promotional image for Williams’s political campaign bearing the slogans “Michael Ray Williams Wyoming Senate District 11” and “Giving the power back to the people”.In 2022, Michael Ray Williams ran for the Constitution party for the Wyoming state senate, but lost handily to the Republican Larry S Hicks. On the Constitution party’s website and Ballotpedia’s candidate survey he expressed anti-abortion, pro-gun and anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments.Williams told Buzzfeed News in October 2021 that he was an Oath Keeper, but his payment of dues the month before confirms his ongoing links to the group at the time of his election campaign.The Guardian contacted Williams for comment via email.Others identified by the Guardian hold sensitive positions in business, the military and government. One of those identified is a senior figure at Space Systems Engineering at Echostar Corporation, headquartered in Englewood, Colorado.Echostar is also a major government contractor in potentially sensitive areas. Last year, the company announced that its subsidiary Hughes won a contract to create a private 5G network at a US navy base on Whidbey Island in Washington state, and the previous year trumpeted its success in bidding for satellite services to the Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) Advanced Battle Management System project.Historically, the DoD has been Hughes’s biggest client, according to US government spending records. Current Hughes contracts include supplying satellite services to the Department of Homeland Security. The person identified by the Guardian was involved in developing satellite-related technologies, including a project to gain limited access to Nasa satellites.Another separate payment on 4 October 2021 came from an account of someone who was a DHS employee until June 2021, according to their LinkedIn profile. They had also recently applied for a job in a state department of corrections. A third person connected to Stewart Rhodes on Venmo and identified by the Guardian works in US navy recruitment in Texas.Venmo records show that other accounts are connected to Stewart Rhodes and Ottersberg. A Venmo “friend” connection does not necessarily indicate that the parties have exchanged money, but it does indicate that the parties have recorded one another as telephone contacts.Throughout 2021, at least nine people paid Ottersberg or were charged by him on Venmo with comments indicating that the payment was for dues, membership or a new membership.In turn, Ottersberg appeared to funnel money onwards to Rhodes. On 24, 25 and 26 October, payments from him all mention “Stewart”, including one to an account in the name of Chad Rogers.In January 2022, Rhodes was arrested in Plano, Texas, at the home of Chad Rogers, a licensed security officer. Later, during Rhodes’s trial, prosecutors detailed a 10 January 2021 meeting between Rhodes and Jason Alpers, a man who Rhodes believed could pass on his plea to Trump to retain the presidency by force if necessary. Alpers testified that Rogers was present at the meeting.Squire, the SPLC deputy director, said of the new Oath Keepers revelations that “it’s amazing to me that they’re still using open, non-privacy focused payment solutions”.She added: “They don’t seem to have institutional knowledge about previous things that have happened to other groups, so they repeat their mistakes.”Despite Ottersberg’s apparently senior role in the Oath Keepers, and his access to key players including Rhodes, he has faced no known legal consequences for his membership in the group. The last publicly visible payment from his Venmo account, however, is to his wife, and is simply captioned “Lawyer”. More

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      Cassidy Hutchinson says Republicans face ‘make-or-break’ moment on Trump

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      The former Donald Trump White House aide who became a crucial witness to the January 6 attack says she believes the Republican party is facing a “make-or-break moment” over whether to nominate him in the 2024 presidential race.“We’re talking about a man who at the very essence of his being almost destroyed democracy in one day, and he wants to do it again,” Cassidy Hutchinson said of Trump during an interview with MSNBC’s Rachael Maddow on Monday, a clear reference to the assault on the US Capitol that the ex-president’s supporters staged after his electoral defeat to his Democratic rival Joe Biden nearly three years ago.“He wants to run for president to do it again.”Alluding to the more than 90 charges pending against Trump across four separate criminal indictments, Hutchinson added: “He has been indicted four times since January 6. I would not have a clear conscience and be able to sleep at night if I were a Republican … that supported Donald Trump. And I think that if they’re not willing to split with that, then we’re in serious trouble.”In a separate notable portion of her interview with Maddow, Hutchinson addressed and summarily dismissed rumors that she had dated Matt Gaetz, the far-right Republican US congressman from Florida who helped spread the claims himself.“I will say on behalf of myself – I never dated Matt Gaetz,” said Hutchinson, who appeared on Maddow’s show to promote her memoir Enough, hitting bookshelves on Tuesday. Explaining that the pair had an “amicable working relationship” and “were good friends at points”, she added: “I have much higher standards in men.”Those remarks seemingly build on a cameo from Gaetz in Enough, in which the congressman is shown to unexpectedly take Hutchinson up on an offer to meet several Washington DC political aides out for drinks one night. Later that evening, according to Enough, Gaetz brushes his thumb across Hutchinson’s chin and tells her: “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a national treasure?”Despite the prominence of men like Trump and Gaetz in her party, Hutchinson reiterated that she still considered herself a Republican, though more in the mold of Senator Mitt Romney or the late president Ronald Reagan, whom some see as more moderate conservatives in retrospect.“I do not believe that Mr Trump is a strong Republican,” Hutchinson said. “In this election cycle, in my opinion, it’s a make-or-break moment for the Republican party. Now is the time if these politicians [in the party] … want to make the break and want to take the stand – they have to do it now.”Under subpoena, Hutchinson gave some of the most dramatic testimony about the Capitol attack during live congressional hearings in the summer of 2022. One key moment she described being told about was Trump’s accosting of a Secret Service agent and his lunging for the steering wheel of the car he was in when he was told he would not be driven to the Capitol on the day of the attack.That wasn’t all she endured that day. In Enough, Hutchinson recounts how on January 6 she was groped by Rudy Giuliani, the Trump lawyer and former New York City mayor.A short while after Trump told his supporters to “fight like hell”, they mounted the January 6 attack on the Capitol in a desperate but unsuccessful maneuver aimed at preventing Congress from certifying Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election weeks earlier.The uprising has been linked to nine deaths. More than 1,100 people have been charged in connection with the attack, and the majority of them have either pleaded guilty or been convicted by judges or juries at trial.Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges filed against him. The various charges collectively accuse him of retaining classified documents after his presidency, hush-money payments to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels, and efforts to subvert his 2020 defeat which led to the January 6 attack.Despite the legal peril, Trump maintains dominant polling leads over other candidates pursuing the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.Enough plots out the 27-year-old Hutchinson’s trek from being an earnest believer in Trump to disenchantment with him. She was working for Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, at the time of the January 6 attack.Martin Pengelly contributed reporting More

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      US Capitol rioter who attacked photographer sentenced to five years

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      A man who attacked an Associated Press photographer and threw a flagpole and smoke grenade at police officers guarding the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, was sentenced in a federal court on Friday to five years in prison.Rodney Milstreed, 56, of Finksburg, Maryland, “prepared himself for battle” on January 6 by injecting steroids and arming himself with a four-foot wooden club disguised as a flagpole, prosecutors said.“He began taking steroids in the weeks leading up to January 6, so that he would be ‘jacked’ and ready because, he said, someone needed to ‘hang for treason’ and the battle might come down to hand-to-hand combat,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing.A prosecutor showed US district judge James Boasberg videos of Milstreed’s attacks outside the Capitol, as supporters of Donald Trump marched on and later invaded the Capitol in the vain hopes of preventing Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in the 2020 election.“I know what I did that day was very wrong,” he said.Capitol police officer Devan Gowdy suffered a concussion when Milstreed hurled his wooded club at a line of officers.“January 6 is a day that will be burned into my brain and my nightmares for the rest of my life,” Gowdy told the judge. “The effects of this domestic terrorist attack will never leave me.”Gowdy told Milstreed that he “will always be looked at as a domestic terrorist and traitor” for his actions on January 6. The officer has since left the police.Milstreed was arrested in May 2022 in Colorado and pleaded guilty in April to assault charges and possessing an unregistered firearm.A cache of weapons and ammunition was found at Milstreed’s Maryland home and in his Colorado hotel room investigators found 94 vials of probably illegal steroids.Milstreed spewed violent, threatening rhetoric on social media in the weeks before the insurrection.He attended Trump’s rally near the White House earlier on January 6 and then, with the president urging his supporters to overturn the election result, followed the crowd of supporters of the Republican to the Capitol.Milstreed was “front and center” as rioters and police clashed outside the Capitol, prosecutors said. He tossed his wooden club at a police line and a video captured him retrieving a smoke grenade from the crowd and throwing it back at police across a barricade.Milstreed then joined other rioters in attacking an AP photographer, grabbing the photographer’s backpack and yanking him down some steps.Milstreed used Facebook to update his friends on the riot in real time.“Man I’ve never seen anything like this. I feel so alive,” he wrote, sharing photos of blood on a floor outside the Capitol, also writing it “felt good” to punch the photographer.More than 1,100 people have been charged with January 6-related federal crimes. More

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      Ex-Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson claims Rudy Giuliani groped her on January 6

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      Cassidy Hutchinson, the former Trump aide turned crucial January 6 witness, says in a new book that she was groped by Rudy Giuliani, who was “like a wolf closing in on its prey”, on the day of the attack on the Capitol.Describing meeting with Giuliani backstage at Donald Trump’s speech near the White House before his supporters marched on Congress in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election, Hutchinson says the former New York mayor turned Trump lawyer put his hand “under my blazer, then my skirt”.“I feel his frozen fingers trail up my thigh,” she writes. “He tilts his chin up. The whites of his eyes look jaundiced. My eyes dart to [Trump adviser] John Eastman, who flashes a leering grin.“I fight against the tension in my muscles and recoil from Rudy’s grip … filled with rage, I storm through the tent, on yet another quest for Mark.”Mark Meadows, Trump’s final chief of staff, was Hutchinson’s White House boss. Hutchinson’s memoir, Enough, describes her journey from Trump supporter to disenchantment, and her role as a key witness for the House January 6 committee. It will be published in the US next Tuesday. The Guardian obtained a copy.Since Trump left office, Giuliani has landed in extraordinary legal and financial trouble. Like Trump, Giuliani has pleaded not guilty to 13 criminal racketeering and conspiracy charges in Georgia, over attempted election subversion. Giuliani was also found liable for defamation of two Georgia election workers. The Washington DC Bar Association has recommended he be disbarred.Struggling to pay his legal expenses, his luxury New York apartment up for sale, and Giuliani also faces a $1.3m lawsuit from his own lawyer, seeking unpaid fees, and a $10m suit from a former personal assistant. In that suit, Giuliani is accused of offences including abuse of power, wage theft, sexual assault and harassment.A representative for Giuliani did not immediately respond to a Guardian request for comment about Hutchinson’s description of her interaction with the former mayor.Describing the events on January 6, the deadly culmination of Trump’s attempt to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden, Hutchinson writes that she “experience[d] anger, bewilderment, and a creeping sense of dread that something really horrible [was] going to happen”.“I find Rudy in the back of the tent with, among others, John Eastman,” she continues. “The corners of his mouth split into a Cheshire cat smile. Waving a stack of documents, he moves towards me, like a wolf closing in on its prey.“‘We have the evidence. It’s all here. We’re going to pull this off.’ Rudy wraps one arm around my body, closing the space that was separating us. I feel his stack of documents press into the small of my back. I lower my eyes and watch his free hand reach for the hem of my blazer.“‘By the way,’ he says, fingering the fabric, ‘I’m loving this leather jacket on you.’ His hand slips under my blazer, then my skirt,” Hutchinson writes.
      Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse is available from the following organizations. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html More

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      in US Politics

      Ray Epps, rioter at centre of conspiracy theory, charged over January 6

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      Ray Epps – a Donald Trump supporter, Oath Keepers militia member and January 6 participant who became the subject of rightwing conspiracy theories about the attack on Congress – has been charged with one criminal count related to the riot.In a court filing in US district court in Washington DC, dated Monday, federal prosecutors charged Epps with disorderly or disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds.The charge can carry a sentence of up to 10 years.A former US marine from Arizona, Epps went to Washington in January 2021 to join protesters seeking to block Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in the presidential election the previous November.On the night of 5 January, he was filmed in downtown Washington, telling other Trump supporters: “Tomorrow, we need to go into the Capitol … peacefully.”The next day, as Trump told supporters to “fight like hell” in his cause, the Capitol came under attack. The attack failed and Trump’s defeat was confirmed. Nine deaths have now been linked to the riot.The notion that Epps was a federal agent, acting as a provocateur, took root early. On the night of 5 January, some around him chanted: “Fed! Fed! Fed! Fed!” In footage of the attack, after a Capitol police officer went down, Epps was seen pulling a rioter aside.Rightwing media, prominently including the then Fox News prime-time host Tucker Carlson, eagerly took up the theory that Epps was linked to federal agents.In July, Epps filed a defamation suit against Fox News, which the rightwing network has sought to dismiss.Epps spoke to CBS in August.“I said some stupid things,” he said. “My thought process, we surround the Capitol, we get all the people there. I mean, I had problems with the election. It was my duty as an American to peacefully protest, along with anybody else that wanted to.”Of the moment involving the fallen officer, he said he told the rioter: “‘Dude, we’re not here for that. The police aren’t the enemy,’ or something like that.”He denied any links to police or federal agencies. There is no evidence he committed any acts of violence on January 6, or entered the Capitol.He told CBS that after he went to help an injured man, he “looked back at the Capitol, and there was people crawling up the Capitol walls. And it looked … terrible. I mean, I was kind of ashamed of what was going on at that point. So I started to walk out.”Asked about efforts to “paint you as this instigator”, citing his own actions and messages, Epps said: “There was an effort to make me a scapegoat.”Earlier this year, Dominic Pezzola, a member of the far-right Proud Boys group who was ultimately sentenced to 10 years in prison for his part in the riot, invoked the Epps conspiracy theory while testifying in court.Epps was charged by information, suggesting a plea deal may be likely.On Tuesday, lawyers for Epps did not immediately comment. More

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      in Elections

      Active-duty US marine sentenced for participation in January 6 Capitol attack

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      One of three active-duty US marines who stormed the nation’s Capitol together was sentenced on Monday to probation and 279 hours of community service – one hour for every marine who was killed or wounded fighting in the American civil war.The US district judge Ana Reyes said she could not fathom why Dodge Hellonen violated his oath to protect the constitution “against all enemies, foreign and domestic” – and risked his career – by joining the 6 January 2021 riot that disrupted Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.“I really urge you to think about why it happened so you can address it and ensure it never happens again,” Reyes said.Dodge Hellonen, now 24, was the first of the three marines to be punished for participating in the Capitol attack. Reyes also is scheduled to sentence his co-defendants Micah Coomer on Tuesday and Joshua Abate on Wednesday.The three marines – friends from the same unit – drove together from a military post in Virginia to Washington DC on 6 January, when then president Donald Trump spoke at his “Save America” rally near the White House. They joined the crowd that stormed the Capitol after Trump urged his supporters to “fight like hell”.Before imposing Hellonen’s sentence, Reyes described how marines fought and died in some of the fiercest battles in American history. She recited the number of casualties from some of the bloodiest wars.Prosecutors recommended short terms of incarceration – 30 days for Coomer and 21 days for Hellonen and Abate – along with 60 hours of community service.A prosecutor wrote in a court filing that their military service, while laudable, makes their conduct “all the more troubling”.Reyes said she agreed with prosecutors that Hellonen’s status as an active-duty marine did not weigh in favor of a more lenient sentence. But she ultimately decided to spare him from a prison term, sentencing him to four years of probation.Reyes said it “carried a great deal of weight” to learn that Hellonen maintained a positive attitude and stellar work ethic when he was effectively demoted after the January 6 attack. He went from working as a signals analyst to a job that few marines want, inventorying military gear.“The only person who can give you a second chance is yourself,” she told him.“I take full responsibility for my actions and I’ll carry this with me for the rest of my life,” Hellonen told the judge.Hellonen, Coomer and Abate pleaded guilty earlier this year to parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building, a misdemeanor punishable by a maximum of six months behind bars. Hundreds of Capitol rioters have pleaded guilty to the same charge, which is akin to trespassing.More than 600 people have been sentenced for Capitol riot-related federal crimes. Over 100 of them have served in the US military, according to an Associated Press review of court records. Only a few were active-duty military or law enforcement personnel on January 6.As of Friday, all three marines were still on active-duty status, according to the Marine Corps. But all three could be separated from the Marine Corps “on less than honorable conditions”, prosecutors said. More

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      Son of prominent conservative activist convicted on US Capitol attack charges

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      The son of a prominent conservative activist has been convicted of charges that he stormed the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, bashed in a window, chased a police officer, invaded the Senate floor and helped a mob disrupt the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential election victory.Leo Brent Bozell IV, 44, of Palmyra, Pennsylvania, was found guilty on Friday of 10 charges, including five felony offenses, after a trial decided by a federal judge, according to the federal justice department.Bozell’s father is Brent Bozell III, who founded the Media Research Center, Parents Television Council and other conservative media organizations.The US district judge John Bates heard testimony without a jury before convicting Bozell of charges including obstructing the January 6 joint session of Congress convened to certify the electoral college vote that Biden won over then president Donald Trump, a Republican.Bozell was “a major contributor to the chaos, the destruction and the obstruction at the Capitol on 6 January 2021”, prosecutors said in a pretrial court filing.The judge is scheduled to sentence Bozell on 9 January.Bozell’s lawyer, William Shipley Jr, did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on Saturday.Prosecutors said that before the riot, Bozell helped plan and coordinate events in Washington in support of Trump’s “Stop the Steal” movement. They said that after Trump’s rally near the White House on 6 January, Bozell marched to the Capitol and joined a mob in breaking through a police line. He smashed a window next to the Senate wing door, creating an entry point for hundreds of rioters, according to prosecutors.After climbing through the smashed window, Bozell joined other rioters in chasing a Capitol police officer, Eugene Goodman, up a staircase to an area where other officers confronted the group.Later, Bozell was captured on video entering the office of the then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat. He appeared to have something in his hand when he left, prosecutors said.Entering the Senate gallery, Bozell moved a C-Span camera to face the ground so it could not record rioters ransacking the chamber on a live video feed. He also spent several minutes on the Senate floor.Bozell roamed thorough the Capitol for nearly an hour, reaching more than a dozen different parts of the building and passing through at least seven police lines before officers escorted him out, prosecutors said.In a pretrial court filing, Bozell’s lawyer denied that Bozell helped overwhelm a police line or engaged in any violence against police.“In fact, video evidence will show that Mr Bozell assisted in some small way law enforcement officers that he thought could be helped by his assistance,” Shipley wrote.Shipley also argued that Bozell “was – for the most part – simply lost and wandering from place-to-place observing events as they transpired”.Bozell was arrested in February 2021. An FBI tipster who identified Bozell recognized him in part from the “Hershey Christian Academy” sweatshirt that he wore on January 6.More than 1,100 people have been charged with Capitol attack-related federal crimes. More than 650 of them have pleaded guilty. Approximately 140 others have been convicted by judges or juries after trials in Washington. More