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      Liz Cheney releases Trump January 6 attack ad aimed at CNN town hall

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      The former House January 6 committee member Liz Cheney released an attack ad against Donald Trump in New Hampshire on the eve of his appearance there in a controversial CNN town hall.“There has never been a greater dereliction of duty by any president,” Cheney warns in the ad, which focuses on Trump’s incitement of the deadly Capitol attack on 6 January 2021.“Donald Trump has proven he is unfit for office. Donald Trump is a risk America can never take again.”Trump incited the attack by his supporters in an attempt to block certification of Joe Biden’s election win. Nine deaths have been linked to it. Thousands of arrests have been made and hundreds of convictions secured – some for seditious conspiracy.Trump was impeached for inciting an insurrection but acquitted by Senate Republicans.Cheney, the daughter of the former congressman, defense secretary and vice-president Dick Cheney, was vice-chair of the House committee which investigated the Capitol attack and, regarding Trump, made criminal referrals to the Department of Justice.Cheney lost her Wyoming seat to a Trump-backed challenger last year.Now working on a book – entitled Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning – she has not counted out running for the Republican nomination against Trump, or running for president as an independent conservative.Her new ad will run only on CNN in New Hampshire, where at St Anselm College on Wednesday night, CNN will host a Trump town hall with Republican voters.CNN has defended its decision to host Trump by pointing out that he is the clear Republican frontrunner. Cheney’s ad will run before and during the town hall.The same day Cheney’s ad came out, Trump was found liable for sexual assault and defamation in a case brought by E Jean Carroll, a writer who claims Trump raped her. Ordered to pay around $5m in damages, Trump responded angrily, denying wrongdoing and saying he would appeal.Trump faces legal jeopardy on a scale unprecedented for a presidential candidate, let alone the clear leader for a major party nomination.Investigators in Georgia are expected soon to announce indictments related to Trump’s attempted election subversion there.The federal investigation into his attempt to overturn his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden, and his incitement of the Capitol attack on 6 January 2021, goes on.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFederal authorities are also examining Trump’s retention of classified information after leaving office.Last month in New York, he pleaded not guilty to 34 criminal counts related to his hush money payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels, who claims an affair Trump denies.Trump also faces a New York state civil suit over his business and tax affairs.Nonetheless, Trump leads by wide margins in polling regarding the Republican nomination in 2024. Cheney barely features.Speaking to the New York Times, a spokesperson for Trump called Cheney “a stone-cold loser who is now trying to grift her way to relevance”.Conversely, the Guardian columnist Robert Reich has said Cheney “has displayed more courage and integrity than almost any other member of her party – indeed, given the pressure she was under, perhaps more than any lawmaker now alive”. More

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      Kentucky man gets record-setting 14 year sentence for role in Capitol attack

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      A Kentucky man with a long criminal record has been sentenced to a record-setting 14 years in prison for attacking police officers with pepper spray and a chair as he stormed the US Capitol with his wife.Peter Schwartz’s prison sentence is the longest so far among hundreds of Capitol riot cases. The judge who sentenced Schwartz on Friday also handed down the previous longest sentence – 10 years – to a retired New York police department officer who assaulted a police officer outside the Capitol on 6 January.Prosecutors had recommended a prison sentence of 24 years and 6 months for Schwartz, a welder.US district Judge Amit Mehta sentenced Schwartz to 14 years and two months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release.Mehta said Schwartz was a “soldier against democracy” who participated in “the kind of mayhem, chaos that had never been seen in the country’s history.”“You are not a political prisoner,” the judge told hm. “You’re not somebody who is standing up against injustice or fighting against an autocratic regime.”Schwartz briefly addressed the judge before learning his sentence, saying, “I do sincerely regret the damage that January 6 has caused to so many people and their lives.”The judge said he didn’t believe Schwartz’s statement, noting his lack of remorse. “You took it upon yourself to try and injure multiple police officers that day,” Mehta said.Schwartz was armed with a wooden tire knocker when he and his then-wife, Shelly Stallings, joined other rioters in overwhelming a line of police officers on the Capitol’s Lower West Terrace, where he threw a folding chair at officers.“By throwing that chair, Schwartz directly contributed to the fall of the police line that enabled rioters to flood forward and take over the entire terrace,” prosecutor Jocelyn Bond wrote in a court filing.Schwartz, 49, also armed himself with a police-issued “super soaker” canister of pepper spray and sprayed it at retreating officers. Advancing to a tunnel entrance, Schwartz coordinated with two other rioters, Markus Maly and Jeffrey Brown, to spray an orange liquid toward officers clashing with the mob.“While the stream of liquid did not directly hit any officer, its effect was to heighten the danger to the officers in that tunnel,” Bond wrote.Before leaving, Schwartz joined a “heave ho” push against police in the tunnel.Stallings pleaded guilty last year to riot-related charges and was sentenced last month to two years of incarceration.Schwartz was tried with co-defendants Maly and Brown. In December, a jury convicted all three of assault charges and other felony offenses.Schwartz’s attorneys requested a prison sentence of four years and six months, saying his actions were motivated by a “misunderstanding” about the 2020 presidential election. Donald Trump and his allies spread baseless conspiracy theories that Democrats stole the election from the Republican incumbent.“There remain many grifters out there who remain free to continue propagating the ‘great lie’ that Trump won the election, Donald Trump being among the most prominent. Mr Schwartz is not one of these individuals; he knows he was wrong,” his defense lawyers wrote.Prosecutors said Schwartz has bragged about his participation in the riot, shown no remorse and claimed that his prosecution was politically motivated. He referred to the Capitol attack as the “opening of a war” in a Facebook post a day after the riot.Schwartz has raised more than $71,000 from an online campaign titled Patriot Pete Political Prisoner in DC. Prosecutors asked Mehta to order Schwartz to pay a fine equaling the amount raised by his campaign, arguing that he shouldn’t profit from participating in the riot.Schwartz was on probation when he joined the riot and his criminal record includes a “jaw-dropping” 38 prior convictions since 1991, “several of which involved assaulting or threatening officers or other authority figures”, Bond wrote.More than 1,000 people have been charged with federal crimes related to January 6. Nearly 500 of them have been sentenced, with over half getting terms of imprisonment. More

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      Proud Boys: four found guilty of seditious conspiracy over Capitol attack

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      Four members of the Proud Boys extremist group, including its former leader Enrique Tarrio, were on Thursday convicted of seditious conspiracy for their roles in planning and leading the January 6 Capitol attack, in a desperate effort to keep Donald Trump in power after his 2020 election defeat.The verdicts handed down in federal court in Washington marked a major victory for the US justice department in the last of its seditious conspiracy cases related to the January 6 attack. Prosecutors previously secured convictions against members of the Oath Keepers, another far-right group.Seditious conspiracy is rarely used but became the central charge against the Proud Boys defendants after the FBI identified them as playing crucial roles in helping storm the Capitol in an effort to interrupt and stop the congressional certification of electoral results.“Evidence presented at trial detailed the extent of the violence at the Capitol on January 6 and the central role these defendants played setting into motion the unlawful events of that day,” attorney general Merrick Garland later said at a news conference at justice department headquarters.“We have secured the convictions of leaders of both the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers for seditious conspiracy, specifically conspiring to oppose by force the lawful transfer of presidential power. Our work will continue,” Garland said.Those convicted now await sentencing. The verdicts were partial, and hours after the initial four were found guilty of seditious conspiracy, the jury found another Proud Boys member Dominic Pezzola, who smashed a window to gain entry to the Capitol, not guilty of seditious conspiracy.Tarrio, who was not in Washington for the Capitol attack, as well as Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs and Zachary Rehl were also convicted of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding. All five were convicted of obstructing an official proceeding.The trial, which lasted more than three months and tested the scope of the sedition law, was particularly fraught for the defense, the prosecution and the presiding US district court judge, Timothy Kelly. Clashes in court and motions for mistrial were frequent.Trump played an outsized role in the trial, given the reverence the Proud Boys accorded the former president. In closing arguments, the prosecution said they acted as “Donald Trump’s army” to “keep their preferred leader in power” after rejecting Joe Biden’s victory.The former president has long been considered the lynchpin for the involvement of the Proud Boys and others in the Capitol attack when he called for a “wild” protest on 6 January 2021 in an infamous December 2020 tweet and told supporters to “fight like hell” for his cause.More than a thousand arrests have been made in connection to the Capitol attack and hundreds of convictions secured. Trump was impeached a second time for inciting an insurrection but acquitted by Senate Republicans. He still faces state and federal investigations of his attempted election subversion.In court, prosecutors said Tarrio and his top lieutenants used Trump’s December tweet as a call to arms and started putting together a cadre that they called the “Ministry of Self-Defense” to travel to Washington for the protest, according to private group chats and recordings of discussions the FBI obtained.Around 20 December 2020, Tarrio created a chat called “MOSD Leaders Group” – described by Tarrio as a “national rally planning committee” – that included Nordean, Biggs and Rehl. The chat was used to plan a “DC trip” where all would dress in dark tones, to remain incognito.The prosecution argued that Tarrio’s text messages about “Seventeen seventy six”, in reference to the year of American independence from Britain, suggested the leadership of the Proud Boys saw their January 6 operation as a revolutionary force.Lacking evidence in the hundreds of thousands of texts about an explicit plan to storm or occupy the Capitol, the prosecution used two cooperating witnesses from the Proud Boys to make the case that the defendants worked together in a conspiracy to stop the peaceful transfer of power.The first witness, Jeremy Bertino, told the jury the Proud Boys had a penchant for violence and there was a tacit understanding that they needed to engage in an “all-out revolution” to stop Biden taking office, testimony meant to directly support a sedition charge.The second witness, Matthew Greene, told the jury he did not initially understand why the Proud Boys marched from the Washington monument to the Capitol to be among the first people at the barricades surrounding Congress, instead of going to Trump’s speech near the White House.Once the Proud Boys led the charge from the barricades to the west front of the Capitol, Pezzola using a police riot shield to smash a window, Greene said he realized there may have been a deliberate effort to lead the January 6 riot.The prosecution persuaded the judge to allow them to use a novel legal strategy: that though the Proud Boys leaders did not really engage in violence themselves – Tarrio was not even in Washington – they got other rioters to do so, using them as “tools” of their insurrection conspiracy.The defense protested the ruling allowing prosecutors to show the jury videos of other low-level Proud Boys and random rioters committing violence at the Capitol, saying that it amounted to making the five defendants guilty by association.Notwithstanding the other evidence, the defense’s complaint was that if the jury had to assess whether the defendants’ limited use of violence alone met the threshold to “destroy by force the government of the United States”, the outcome might have been affected. 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      Mike Pence interviewed by grand jury investigating Capitol attack – live

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      From 2h agoHere’s more from the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell about Mike Pence’s interview with federal investigators, and why his testimony may be so important to any case against Donald Trump:Mike Pence testified before a federal grand jury on Thursday in Washington about Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, according to a source familiar with the matter, a day after an appeals court rejected a last-ditch motion to block his appearance.The former vice-president’s testimony lasted for around seven hours and took place behind closed doors, meaning the details of what he told the prosecutors hearing evidence in the case remains uncertain.His appearance is a moment of constitutional consequence and potential legal peril for the former president. Pence is considered a major witness in the criminal investigation led by special counsel Jack Smith, since Trump pressured him to unlawfully reject electoral college votes for Joe Biden at the joint session of Congress, and was at the White House meeting with Republican lawmakers who discussed objections to Biden’s win.The Biden administration announced on Thursday a set of new initiatives to discourage immigrants from illegally crossing into the US via the US-Mexico border.The measures include harsher crackdowns on those who do come and new pathways that offer an alternative to the dangerous journey, the Associated Press reports.Such alternatives include setting up migration centers in other countries, increasing the amount of immigrants allowed in, and faster processing of migrants seeking asylum. Those not eligible for asylum who cross over will be penalized, AP further reports.The policies come as May 11 approaches, which will end the public health rule instituted amid the Covid-19 pandemic that allowed for many migrants to be quickly expelled.The Montana governor was lobbied by his non-binary child to reject several bills that would harm transgender people in the state, according to the Guardian’s Sam Levine.
      The son of the Republican governor of Montana, Greg Gianforte, met their father in his office to lobby him to reject several bills that would harm transgender people in the state, the Montana Free Press reported.
      David Gianforte told the paper they identify as non-binary and use he/they pronouns – the first time they disclosed their gender identity publicly. They told the outlet they felt an obligation to use their relationship with their father to stand up for LGBTQ+ people in the state.
      “There are a lot of important issues passing through the legislature right now,” they said in a statement. “For my own sake I’ve chosen to focus primarily on transgender rights, as that would significantly directly affect a number of my friends … I would like to make the argument that these bills are immoral, unjust, and frankly a violation of human rights.”
      Read the full article here.A Tennesee lawmaker who was previously outsted for calling for gun control after a Nashville mass shooting has spoken about Zephyr being silenced.In an interview with Democracy Now, Tennessee representative Justin Jones spoke with Zephyr about the need for continued solidarity.“An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us,” said Zephyr, after Jones said that several communities stood with Zephyr amid attempts to silence her.Earlier this week, Republicans in Montana barred the state’s sole transgender lawmaker, Democrat Zooey Zephyr, from the floor of the state House of Representatives.Their justification? That Zephyr’s interaction with protesters who were demonstrating against her earlier silencing by the House’s Republican majority amounted to “encouraging an insurrection.” The Associated Press reports that such claims have become increasingly common in recent months in state legislatures where Republicans rule. Case in point, the rhetoric used by GOP lawmakers to briefly expel two Democrats from the Tennessee state House of Representatives earlier this month.Here’s more from the AP:
      Silenced by her Republican colleagues, Montana state Rep. Zooey Zephyr looked up from the House floor to supporters in the gallery shouting “Let her speak!” and thrust her microphone into the air — amplifying the sentiment the Democratic transgender lawmaker was forbidden from expressing.
      While seven people were arrested for trespassing, the boisterous demonstration was free of violence or damage. Yet later that day, a group of Republican lawmakers described it in darker tones, saying Zephyr’s actions were responsible for “encouraging an insurrection.”
      It’s the third time in the last five weeks — and one of at least four times this year — that Republicans have attempted to compare disruptive but nonviolent protests at state capitols to insurrections.
      The tactic follows a pattern set over the past two years when the term has been misused to describe public demonstrations and even the 2020 election that put Democrat Joe Biden in the White House. It’s a move experts say dismisses legitimate speech and downplays the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump. Shortly after, the U.S. House voted to impeach him for “incitement of insurrection.”
      Ever since, many Republicans have attempted to turn the phrase on Democrats.
      “They want to ring alarm bells and they want to compare this to Jan. 6,” said Andy Nelson, the Democratic Party chair in Missoula County, which includes Zephyr’s district. “There’s absolutely no way you can compare what happened on Monday with the Jan. 6 insurrection. Violence occurred that day. No violence occurred in the gallery of the Montana House.”
      This week’s events in the Montana Legislature drew comparisons to a similar demonstration in Tennessee. Republican legislative leaders there used “insurrection” to describe a protest on the House floor by three Democratic lawmakers who were calling for gun control legislation in the aftermath of a Nashville school shooting that killed three students and three staff. Two of them chanted “Power to the people” through a megaphone and were expelled before local commissions reinstated them.
      The Guardian’s Sam Levine reports on the latest steps in Florida authorities’ march to tighten down on voting access, as the state’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis edges closer to announcing a presidential campaign:Florida Republicans are on the verge of passing new restrictions on groups that register voters, a move voting rights groups and experts say will make it harder for non-white Floridians to get on the rolls.The restrictions are part of a sweeping 96-page election bill the legislature is likely to send to Governor Ron DeSantis’s desk soon. The measure increases fines for third-party voter registration groups. It also shortens the amount of time the groups have to turn in any voter registration applications they collect from 14 days to 10. The bill makes it illegal for non-citizens and people convicted of certain felonies to “collect or handle” voter registration applications on behalf of third-party groups. Groups would also have to give each voter they register a receipt and be required to register themselves with the state ahead of each general election cycle. Under current law, they only have to register once and their registration remains effective indefinitely.Stephanie Kirchgaessner reports that a 2018 investigation that played a role in Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the supreme court was less thorough than it appeared. If you read one Guardian story today, make it this one:A 2018 Senate investigation that found there was “no evidence” to substantiate any of the claims of sexual assault against the US supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh contained serious omissions, according to new information obtained by the Guardian.The 28-page report was released by the Republican senator Chuck Grassley, the then chairman of the Senate judiciary committee. It prominently included an unfounded and unverified claim that one of Kavanaugh’s accusers – a fellow Yale graduate named Deborah Ramirez – was “likely” mistaken when she alleged that Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at a dormitory party because another Yale student was allegedly known for such acts.Here’s more from the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell about Mike Pence’s interview with federal investigators, and why his testimony may be so important to any case against Donald Trump:Mike Pence testified before a federal grand jury on Thursday in Washington about Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, according to a source familiar with the matter, a day after an appeals court rejected a last-ditch motion to block his appearance.The former vice-president’s testimony lasted for around seven hours and took place behind closed doors, meaning the details of what he told the prosecutors hearing evidence in the case remains uncertain.His appearance is a moment of constitutional consequence and potential legal peril for the former president. Pence is considered a major witness in the criminal investigation led by special counsel Jack Smith, since Trump pressured him to unlawfully reject electoral college votes for Joe Biden at the joint session of Congress, and was at the White House meeting with Republican lawmakers who discussed objections to Biden’s win.Good morning, US politics blog readers. On Thursday, former vice-president Mike Pence appeared before the grand jury empaneled by special counsel Jack Smith to consider charges against Donald Trump over the January 6 insurrection. The possibility that Trump could face a federal indictment over the attack, as well as his involvement in plots to stop Joe Biden from taking office and the classified materials found at Mar-a-Lago, is a major unknown in the presidential race, particularly since polls show Trump as the most popular Republican candidate. There’s no saying when Smith could make his charging recommendation, but Pence’s testimony is a reminder that the investigation remains a real threat to the former president.Here’s what’s going on today:
      House Democratic leadership will hold their weekly press conference at 10.30am eastern time. Expect plenty of railing against the debt limit proposal Republicans passed earlier this week.
      Joe Biden is keeping it low key, presenting the Commander-in-Chief’s trophy to the Air Force Falcons, champions of last year’s Armed Forces Bowl, at 2.30pm, then heading to a Democratic fundraiser in the evening.
      Joe Manchin, the conservative Democrat representing deep-red West Virginia, yesterday afternoon again called on Biden to negotiate with Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy on an agreement to raise the debt limit. The president has thus far refused to do so. More

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      Mike Pence testifies to grand jury about Donald Trump and January 6

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      Mike Pence testified before a federal grand jury on Thursday in Washington about Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, according to a source familiar with the matter, a day after an appeals court rejected a last-ditch motion to block his appearance.The former vice-president’s testimony lasted for around seven hours and took place behind closed doors, meaning the details of what he told the prosecutors hearing evidence in the case remains uncertain.His appearance is a moment of constitutional consequence and potential legal peril for the former president. Pence is considered a major witness in the criminal investigation led by special counsel Jack Smith, since Trump pressured him to unlawfully reject electoral college votes for Joe Biden at the joint session of Congress, and was at the White House meeting with Republican lawmakers who discussed objections to Biden’s win.The two interactions are of particular investigative interest to Smith as his office examines whether Trump sought to unlawfully obstruct the certification and defrauded the United States in seeking to overturn the 2020 election results.Pence had privately suggested to advisers that he would provide as complete an account as possible of what took place inside and outside the White House in the weeks leading up to the 6 January Capitol attack, as well as how Trump had been told his plans could violate the law.His appearance came the morning after the US court of appeals for the DC circuit rejected an emergency legal challenge seeking to block Pence’s testimony on executive privilege grounds, and Trump ran out of road to take the matter to the full DC circuit or the supreme court.The government has been trying to get Pence’s testimony for months, starting with requests from the justice department last year and then through a grand jury subpoena issued by Smith, who inherited the complicated criminal investigation into Trump’s efforts to stay in power.The subpoena came under immediate challenges from Trump’s lawyers, who invoked executive privilege to limit the scope of Pence’s testimony, as well as from Pence’s lawyer, who argued his role as president of the Senate on 6 January meant he was protected from legal scrutiny by the executive branch.Both requests to limit the scope of Pence’s testimony were largely denied by the new chief US judge for the court James Boasberg, who issued a clear-cut denial to Trump and a more nuanced ruling to Pence that upheld that he was protected in part by speech or debate protections.Still, Boasberg ruled that speech or debate protections did not shield him from testifying about any instances of potential criminality.The former vice-president’s team declined to challenge the ruling. But Trump’s legal team disagreed, and filed the emergency motion that was denied late on Wednesday by judges Gregory Katsas, Patricia Millett and Robert Wilkins.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionStarting weeks after the 2020 election, Trump tried to cajole Pence into helping him reverse his defeat by using his largely ceremonial role of the presiding officer of the Senate on 6 January to reject the legitimate Biden slates of electors and prevent his certification.The effort relied in large part on Pence accepting fake slates of electors for Trump – now a major part of the criminal investigation – to create a pretext for suggesting the results of the election were somehow in doubt and stop Biden from being pronounced president.The pressure campaign involved Trump, but it also came from a number of other officials inside and outside the government, including Trump’s lawyer John Eastman, other Trump campaign-affiliated lawyers such as Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, and dozens of Republican members of Congress.Pence was also unique in having one-on-one discussions with Trump the day before the Capitol attack and on the day of, which House January 6 select committee investigators last year came to believe was a conspiracy that the former president had at least some advance knowledge. More

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      Trump loses appeal to stop Pence from testifying in January 6 investigation

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      A federal appeals court has denied Donald Trump’s emergency motion to block Mike Pence from testifying in a criminal investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election, paving the way for the special counsel examining the matter to obtain potentially inculpatory accounts of Trump’s desperate bid to stay in power.The sealed ruling by the US appeals court for the DC circuit on Wednesday marks the end of Trump’s efforts to keep Pence from divulging information to federal prosecutors, unless his legal team takes the unlikely step of challenging the decision before the full DC circuit or the supreme court.Pence is considered a potentially consequential witness because Trump pressured him to unlawfully reject electoral college votes for Joe Biden at the joint session of Congress and was at a December 2021 meeting at the White House with Republican lawmakers who discussed objections to Biden’s win.The two interactions are of particular investigative interest to the special counsel Jack Smith as his office examines whether Trump sought to unlawfully obstruct the certification and defraud the United States in seeking to overturn the 2020 election results.Prosecutors have been trying to get Pence’s testimony for months, starting with requests from the justice department last year and then through a grand jury subpoena issued by Smith, who inherited the sprawling criminal investigation.The subpoena was challenged by Trump’s lawyers, who invoked executive privilege to limit the scope of Pence’s testimony, as well as by Pence’s lawyer, who argued his role as president of the Senate on January 6 meant he was protected from legal scrutiny by the executive branch.Both requests to limit the scope of Pence’s testimony were largely denied by the new chief US judge for the court James Boasberg, who issued a clear-cut denial to Trump and a more nuanced ruling to Pence that upheld that he was protected in part by “speech or debate” protections.As a result, the former vice-president’s team declined to challenge the ruling. But Trump’s legal team disagreed, and filed an emergency motion to the US appeals court for the DC circuit – which was denied late on Wednesday by judges Gregory Katsas, Patricia Millett and Robert Wilkins.A lawyer on the team representing Trump in the special counsel cases could not say whether they would appeal the ruling to a higher court, though such a move is not expected.In the wake of election day, Trump tried to pressure Pence into helping him reverse his defeat by using his largely ceremonial role as the presiding officer of the Senate on January 6 to reject legitimate slates of electors for Biden and prevent his certification.The effort relied in large part on Pence accepting fake slates of electors for Trump – a scheme that is also the subject of the criminal investigation – to create a pretext for casting doubt on the election results and stopping Biden from becoming president.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe pressure campaign stemmed from Trump alongsidefigures inside and outside the government, including Trump’s lawyer John Eastman, other Trump campaign-affiliated lawyers like Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani and dozens of Republican members of Congress.Pence was among the few people who had one-on-one discussions with Trump on the day of and the day before the Capitol attack, which House January 6 select committee investigators last year concluded was a conspiracy that the former president had some advance knowledge of.Since Pence is precluded from testifying about any preparations for his role as presiding officer of the Senate it remains unclear how illuminating his testimony might be for prosecutors.But Pence’s team has long maintained in private that he can testify about other efforts by Trump, the Trump campaign and outside individuals to overturn the 2020 election results that could speak to their state of mind in the weeks from November 2020 to Biden’s inauguration. More

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      Proud Boys leader a scapegoat for Trump, attorney tells January 6 trial

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      A defense attorney argued on Tuesday at the close of a landmark trial over the January 6 insurrection that the US justice department is making the Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio a scapegoat for Donald Trump, whose supporters stormed the US Capitol.Tarrio and four lieutenants are charged with seditious conspiracy for what prosecutors say was a plot to stop the transfer of presidential power from Trump to Joe Biden after the 2020 election.In his closing argument, the defense lawyer Nayib Hassan noted Tarrio was not in Washington on 6 January 2021, having been banned from the capital after being arrested for defacing a Black Lives Matter banner. Trump, Hassan argued, was the one to blame for extorting supporters to “fight like hell” in his cause.“It was Donald Trump’s words,” Hassan told jurors in Washington federal court. “It was his motivation. It was his anger that caused what occurred on January 6 in your beautiful and amazing city. It was not Enrique Tarrio. They want to use Enrique Tarrio as a scapegoat for Donald J Trump and those in power.”Seditious conspiracy, a rarely used charge, carries a prison term of up to 20 years.Tarrio is one of the top targets of the federal investigation of the riot, which temporarily halted certification of Biden’s win.Tarrio’s lawyers have accused prosecutors of using him as a scapegoat because charging Trump or powerful allies would be too difficult. But his attorney’s closing arguments were the most full-throated expression of that strategy since the trial started more than three months ago.Trump has denied inciting violence on January 6 and has argued that he was permitted by the first amendment to challenge his loss to Biden. The former president faces several civil lawsuits over the riot and a special counsel is overseeing investigations into efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the election.A prosecutor told jurors on Monday the Proud Boys were ready for “all-out war” and viewed themselves as foot soldiers for Trump.“These defendants saw themselves as Donald Trump’s army, fighting to keep their preferred leader in power no matter what the law or the courts had to say about it,” said Conor Mulroe.Tarrio, a Miami resident, is on trial with Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola. Nordean, of Auburn, Washington, was a Proud Boys chapter president. Biggs, of Ormond Beach, Florida, was a self-described organizer. Rehl was president of a chapter in Philadelphia. Pezzola was a member from Rochester, New York.Attorneys for Nordean and Rehl gave closing arguments on Monday.Tarrio is accused of orchestrating the attack from afar. Police arrested him two days before the riot on charges that he burned a church banner during an earlier march. A judge ordered him to leave Washington after his arrest.Defense attorneys have argued that there is no evidence of a conspiracy or a plan for the Proud Boys to attack the Capitol. Tarrio “had no plan, no objective and no understanding of an objective”, his attorney said.Pezzola testified he never spoke to any of his co-defendants before they sat in the same courtroom. The defense attorney Steven Metcalf said Pezzola never knew of any plan for January 6 or joined any conspiracy.“It’s not possible. It’s fairy dust. It doesn’t exist,” Metcalf said.Mulroe, the prosecutor, told jurors a conspiracy can be an unspoken and implicit “mutual understanding, reached with a wink and a nod”.The foundation of the government’s case is a cache of messages Proud Boys leaders and members privately exchanged in encrypted chats and publicly posted on social media before, during and after the deadly January 6 attack.Norm Pattis, one of Biggs’s attorneys, described the Capitol riot as an “aberration” and told jurors their verdict “means so much more than January 6 itself” because it will “speak to the future”.“Show the world with this verdict that the rule of law is alive and well in the United States,” he said.The justice department has secured seditious conspiracy convictions against the founder and members of another far-right group, the Oath Keepers. But this is the first major trial involving leaders of the Proud Boys, a neo-fascist group that remains a force in mainstream Republican circles. More

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      Closing arguments begin in trial of Proud Boys for January 6 Capitol attack

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      Ready for “all-out war”, leaders of the far-right Proud Boys viewed themselves as foot soldiers for Donald Trump as he clung to power after the 2020 election, a prosecutor said on Monday at the close of a historic trial over the January 6 Capitol attack.After more than three months of testimony, jurors began hearing closing arguments in the seditious conspiracy case accusing the former Proud Boys national chairman, Enrique Tarrio, and four lieutenants of plotting to forcibly stop the transfer of power.The Proud Boys were “lined up behind Donald Trump and willing to commit violence on his behalf”, prosecutor Conor Mulroe said. “These defendants saw themselves as Donald Trump’s army, fighting to keep their preferred leader in power no matter what the law or the courts had to say about it.”The justice department has worked to link the violence of 6 January 2021 to Trump. Prosecutors have repeatedly shown a video clip of Trump telling the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” during his first debate with Joe Biden.Tarrio is one of the top targets of the Capitol attack investigation. He wasn’t in Washington but is accused of orchestrating it from afar. Defense attorneys say there is no evidence of a conspiracy or a plan to attack the Capitol.Nicholas Smith, an attorney for the former Proud Boys chapter leader Ethan Nordean, said prosecutors built their case on “misdirection and innuendo”, accusing them of repeatedly playing the clip of Trump to manipulate jurors.“Does that prove some conspiracy by the men here?” Smith asked. “We all know it doesn’t.”Mulroe said a conspiracy can be an unspoken and implicit “mutual understanding, reached with a wink and a nod”.Seditious conspiracy, a civil war-era charge that can be difficult to prove, carries a sentence of up to 20 years. The Proud Boys face other charges too.The justice department has secured seditious conspiracy convictions against the founder and members of another far-right group, the Oath Keepers. But this is the first major trial involving the Proud Boys, a neo-fascist group that remains a force in Republican politics.The government’s case is founded on messages leaders and members exchanged in encrypted chats and posted on social media before, during and after the January 6 attack. The messages show Proud Boys celebrating when Trump told them to “stand back and stand by”. After the election, they raged online about baseless claims of a stolen election and what would happen when Biden took office.“If Biden steals this election, [the Proud Boys] will be political prisoners,” Tarrio posted. “We won’t go quietly … I promise.”Jurors also saw gleeful messages posted during the Capitol riot when a group marched to the Capitol and some of them entered the building after the mob overwhelmed police.“Make no mistake,” Tarrio wrote. “We did this.”Prosecutors showed videos during closing statements, including one that appeared to show defendant Zachary Rehl spraying police with pepper spray. Confronted with the images earlier in the trial, Rehl said he didn’t remember it and couldn’t tell if it was him. Mulroe said the images show “he did it and he lied under oath about it”.Tarrio, a Miami resident, Nordean and Rehl are on trial with Joseph Biggs and Dominic Pezzola. Nordean, of Auburn, Washington, was a chapter president. Biggs, of Ormond Beach, Florida, was a self-described organizer. Rehl was president of a chapter in Philadelphia. Pezzola was a member from Rochester, New York.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTarrio was arrested in Washington two days before the January 6 attack on charges that he burned a church’s Black Lives Matter banner. He followed a judge’s order to leave town.Defense attorneys called several current and former Proud Boys, trying to portray the group as a drinking club that only engaged in violence for self-defense.“If you don’t like what some of them say, that doesn’t make them guilty,” Rehl’s attorney, Carmen Hernandez, told jurors.Rehl said the group had “no objective” on 6 January. Pezzola testified that he got “caught up in the craziness” and acted alone when he used a riot shield to smash a Capitol window.The prosecutor told jurors the Proud Boys leaders wanted to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s victory “by any means necessary, including force”.“You want to call this a drinking club? You want to call this a men’s fraternal organization? Ladies and gentlemen, let’s call this what it is … a violent gang that came together to use force against its enemies,” Mulroe said.Key witnesses included two former Proud Boys who pleaded guilty to riot-related charges and are cooperating with the government in hope of lighter sentences.The first, Matthew Greene, testified that group members were expecting a “civil war”. The second, Jeremy Bertino, testified that he viewed the Proud Boys as leaders of the conservative movement and “the tip of the spear”.The Proud Boys’ defense mirrored arguments made by lawyers for members of the Oath Keepers: that there was no evidence of a plan to attack the Capitol.Prosecutors secured seditious conspiracy convictions against six Oath Keepers, while three were acquitted. Those three, however, were convicted of obstructing certification of Biden’s victory. More