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      ‘It’s good to think strategically’: Thomas E Ricks on civil rights and January 6

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      Interview‘It’s good to think strategically’: Thomas E Ricks on civil rights and January 6Martin Pengelly in Washington In his new book, the historian considers the work of Martin Luther King and others through the lens of military thoughtThere is a direct connection from Freedom Summer to the January 6 committee,” says Thomas E Ricks as he discusses his new book, Waging a Good War: A Military History of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968.‘Now is a continuation of then’: America’s civil rights era – in picturesRead moreFreedom Summer was a 1964 campaign to draw attention to violence faced by Black people in Mississippi when they tried to vote. The House January 6 committee will soon conclude its hearings on the Capitol riot of 2021, when supporters of Donald Trump attacked American democracy itself.But the committee is chaired by Bennie Thompson. In his opening statement, in June, the Democrat said: “I was born, raised, and still live in Bolton, Mississippi … I’m from a part of the country where people justify the actions of slavery, Ku Klux Klan and lynching. I’m reminded of that dark history as I hear voices today try and justify the actions of the insurrectionists of 6 January 2021.”Ricks is reminded of the insurrectionists as he retells that grim history. Watching the January 6 hearings, he says, he “was looking at Bennie Thompson. And I realised, his career follows right on.“Summer ’64, you start getting Black people registered in Mississippi. A tiny minority, about 7%, are able to vote in ’64 but it rises to I think 59% by ’68. Bennie Thompson gets elected alderman [of Bolton, in 1969], mayor [1973] and eventually to Congress [1993]. And then as a senior member of Congress, chairs this January 6 committee.“Well, there is a direct connection from Freedom Summer, and [civil rights leaders] Amzie Moore, Bob Moses, Fannie Lou Hamer and Dave Dennis, to the January 6 committee. And I think that’s a wonderful thing.”Under Thompson, Ricks says, the January 6 committee is acting strategically, “establishing an indisputable factual record of what happened”, a bulwark against attempts to rewrite history.“It’s always good to think strategically,” Ricks says. Which brings him back to his book.As a reporter for the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, Ricks was twice part of teams that won a Pulitzer prize. His bestselling books include Fiasco (2006) and The Gamble (2009), lacerating accounts of the Iraq disaster, and The Generals (2012), on the decline of US military leadership. In Waging a Good War, he applies the precepts of military strategy to the civil rights campaigns.He says: “This book, I wrote because I had to. I had to get it out of my head. The inspiration was I married a woman who had been active in civil rights.”Mary Kay Ricks is the author of Escape on the Pearl (2008), about slavery and the Underground Railroad. In the 1960s, she was “president of High School Friends of the SNCC [Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee], Washington DC chapter.“She would pick people up at Union Station and drive them wherever they needed to be. So her memory of [the late Georgia congressman] John Lewis is him arriving, saying, ‘I’m hungry, take me to McDonald’s.’ All our lives we would be driving along, and somebody would be on the radio, and she’d say, ‘Oh, I knew that guy’ or ‘I dated that guy. Oh, I thought he was crazy.’“So I was reading about the civil rights movement to understand my wife and the stories she told me. And the more I read, the more it struck me: ‘Wow. This is an area that can really be illuminated by military thinking.’ That a lot of what they were doing was what in military operations is called logistics, or a classic defensive operation, or a holding action, or a raid behind enemy lines. And the more I looked at it, the more I thought each of the major civil rights campaigns could be depicted in that light.”In 1961, campaigners launched the Freedom Rides, activists riding buses across the south, seeking to draw attention and thereby end illegal segregation onboard and in stations. It was dangerous work, daring and remote. Ricks compares the Freedom Rides to cavalry raids, most strikingly to civil war operations by the Confederate “Gray Ghost”, John Singleton Mosby.“The Freedom Rides as raids behind enemy lines. What does that mean? Well, it struck me again and again how military-like the civil rights movement was in careful preparation. What is the task at hand? How do we prepare? What sort of people do we need to carry out this mission? What kind of training do they need?“Before the Freedom Rides they sent a young man, Tom Gaither, on a reconnaissance trip, where he drew maps of each bus station so they would know where the segregated waiting rooms were. He reported back: ‘The two cities where you’re going to have trouble are Anniston, Alabama, and Montgomery, Alabama.’ There are real race tensions in those cities.”Activists faced horrendous violence. They met it with non-violence.“They did months of training. First of all, how to capture and prevent the impulse to fight or flee. Somebody slugs you, spits on you, puts out a cigarette on your back. They knew how to react: non-violent.“But this is a really militant form of non-violence. Gandhi denounced the term passive resistance. And these people, many of them followers of God, devoted readers of Gandhi, understood this was very confrontational.”In 1965, Selma, Alabama, was the scene of Bloody Sunday, when white authorities attacked a march on the Edmund Pettus Bridge and southern racism stood exposed.Ricks says: “A line I love comes from Selma. People said, ‘What are we doing when the sheriff comes after us?’ The organisers said, ‘No, you’re going after the sheriff.’ A good example: CT Vivian, one of my heroes, a stalwart of civil rights, is thrown down the steps of the county courthouse at Selma by Jim Clark, the county sheriff. And Vivian looks up and yells, ‘Who are you people? What do you tell your wives and children?’“It is such a human question. And in this confrontational form of non-violence, I think they flummoxed the existing system, of white supremacism, which the world saw was a system built on violence inherited from slavery.”Bloody Sunday remembered: civil rights marchers tell story of their iconic photosRead moreRicks has written about his time in Iraq and post-traumatic stress disorder. At the end of Waging a Good War, he considers how those who campaigned for civil rights, who were beaten, shot and imprisoned, struggled to cope with the toll.“If you want to understand the full cost, it’s important to write about the effect on the activists and their families, their children. Dave Dennis Jr, the son of one of the people who ran Freedom Summer, he and I have talked about this a bit. We believe the Veterans Administration should be open to veterans of the civil rights movement. There aren’t a lot of veterans still alive. Nonetheless, it would be a meaningful gesture that could help some people who have had a hard time in life.”In a passage that could fuel a whole book, Ricks considers how Martin Luther King Jr, the greatest civil rights leader, struggled in the years before his assassination, in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1968.Like many PTSD sufferers, King sought refuge in drink and sex. But for Ricks, “the moment that captures it for me is he’s sitting in a rocking chair in Atlanta, with his friend Dorothy Cotton. And he says, ‘I think I should take a sabbatical.’ This is about 1967. This guy had been under daily threat for 13 years. I compare him to [Dwight] Eisenhower and the pressures he was under as a top commander in world war two … yet King does this for well over a decade. The stress was enormous. I only wish he had been able to take that sabbatical.”The campaign took its toll on others, among them James Bevel, a “tactically innovative, strategically brilliant” activist who abused women and children, moved far right and died in disgrace.Ricks hopes his book might help make other activists better known, among them Pauli Murray, Diane Nash – a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom – and Fred Shuttlesworth, “a powerful character, a moonshiner turned minister”.Shuttlesworth lived in Birmingham, Alabama, scene of some of the worst attacks on the civil rights movement, most of all the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in 1963, in which four young girls were killed.To Ricks, “If there’s a real moment of despair in Martin Luther King’s life, it’s the Birmingham church bombing. He says, ‘At times, life is hard, as hard as crucible steel.’ That was the focal point for how I think about what King went through.”But there is light in Birmingham too. Ricks recounts the time “the white establishment calls Fred Shuttlesworth up and says, ‘We hear Martin Luther King might be coming to town. What can we do to stop that?’ And he leans back and smiles and says, ‘You know, I’ve been bombed twice in this town. Nobody called me then. But now you want to talk?’“Shuttlesworth threw himself into things. He believed in non-violence as an occasional tactic, not as a way of life. He sent a carloads of guys carrying shotguns to rescue the Freedom Riders from the KKK in Anniston.“Then there’s Amzie Moore. I wish I could have written more about him. He came home from world war two, worked at a federal post office so he would not be under control of local government. He starts his own gas station and refuses to have whites-only bathrooms. ‘Nope, not gonna do it.’ To me, he’s like a member of the French Resistance but he does it for 20 years. When Bob Moses and other civil rights workers go to Mississippi, he’s the guy they look up. ‘How do I survive in Mississippi?’ And he tells them and helps them.”Waging a Good War also considers how campaigners today might learn from those who went before. Ricks says: “Some of the people in the Black Lives Matter era have reached back. I talked to one person who went to James Lawson, the trainer of the Nashville sit-ins in 1960, and asked, ‘How do you go about this? How do you think about this? What about losses? Instructions?’“A demonstration is only the end product, the tip of an iceberg. There has to be careful preparation, consideration of, ‘What message are we trying to send? How are we going to send it? How are we going to follow up?’ So James Lawson conveys that message. Similarly, Bob Moses, who recently died, attended a Black Lives Matter meeting. There are roots by which today’s movements reach back down to the movements of the forefathers.”Democrats see hope in Stacey Abrams (again) in a crucial US election – if she can get voters to show upRead moreHe also sees echoes in two major strands of activism today.“Stacey Abrams’ work on voting rights is very similar to a lot of the work Martin Luther King did with the SCLC [Southern Christian Leadership Conference]. Fighting voter suppression, finding ways to encourage minorities to register and to vote, looking to expand the franchise.“Black Lives Matter reminds me of SNCC, if somewhat more radical, more focused not on gaining power through the vote but on abuses of power, especially police brutality.“It’s sad that the problems the movement tried to address in the 1950s and 60s still need to be addressed. We have moments of despair. Nonetheless, one of things about writing the book was to show people who went through difficult times, and usually found ways to succeed.“The more I learned, the more I enjoyed it. It was a real contrast. Writing about the Iraq war? It’s hard. This felt good. I was hauled to my writing desk every morning. I loved writing this book.”
      Waging a Good War: A Military History of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968 is published in the US by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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      The Breach review: ex-January 6 staffer on how Republicans lurched into madness

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      The Breach review: ex-January 6 staffer on how Republicans lurched into madness Denver Riggleman offers an inside track on the Capitol attack, the House committee and Donald Trump’s great GOP hijackDenver Riggleman is a US air force veteran who became a one-term Republican congressman from Virginia. In the House from 2019, he was a member of the hardline Freedom Caucus and voted with Donald Trump more than 90% of the time. Yet according to his new book, Riggleman “began to understand that some of my colleagues had fully bought into even the more unhinged conspiracy theories” he had witnessed while campaigning.Confidence Man review: Maggie Haberman takes down TrumpRead moreIn 2020, Riggleman lost his Republican nomination – after he officiated a same-sex wedding. In retaliation, someone tampered with the wheels of his truck, endangering the life of his daughter. “If I ever find the individual responsible, God help that person,” the former congressman writes now.Out of office, Riggleman became a senior staffer to the House January 6 committee. Last spring, he resigned. The Breach is an account of what he learned, his decision to publish reportedly angering some on the panel.The book is also a memoir, in which Riggleman describes growing up in a tumultuous home and his bouts with religion and his parents as well as the metamorphosis of the GOP into the party of Trump, and the events and people of January 6.“The rift between Trump’s wing of the Republican party and objective reality didn’t begin with the election,” Riggleman writes.He omits specific mention of birtherism, the Trump-fueled false contention that Barack Obama was not born a US citizen. He does acknowledge the “explosion of conspiracy theories during the Trump years”.As a former intelligence officer and contractor, Riggleman places the blame on social media, algorithms and the religious divide. Together, such factors took a toll on the nation, democracy and the lives of the Republican base.Hostility to Covid vaccines exacted an explosion in excess deaths among Republicans, 76% higher than for Democrats. In Florida, the Covid death rate eventually surpassed that of New York, to rank among the highest in the US. Owning the libs can kill you – literally. Tens of thousands died on Trump’s altar of Maga. For what?Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, actively encouraged vaccine skepticism. He refused to say whether he received the vaccine, and attempted to stop young children getting the shots. He is in the hunt for the Republican presidential nomination in two years’ time, second only to Trump.The divine injunction against bearing false witness? It has elasticity.Bob Good, a self-described “biblical conservative” who successfully challenged Riggleman for his Virginia seat, said Covid was a hoax. Jerry Falwell Jr, Good’s boss at Liberty University, left that fundamentalist powerhouse in August 2020, amid a scandal ensnaring him, his wife and a pool boy.Falwell was also one of Trump’s most prominent supporters. Riggleman laments: “It was stunning to see true born-again holy rollers lining up behind Trump, a man who shunned church and had already been caught on camera bragging about grabbing women” by the crotch.Likewise, he voices disgust for what has become of the party of Lincoln: “As a kid the people I knew respected a line between church and state. Trump’s party was veering more and more into Christian nationalism, where they demonized Democrats for having an unholy agenda.”Riggleman is also horrified by the involvement of ex-servicemen in the Capitol attack. “There’s no denying it,” he writes. “The political challenge to the election was, at least on some level, linked to a military operation.”He reserves some of his harshest criticism for those closest to Trump. Mark Meadows, his last chief of staff; Mike Flynn, his first national security adviser; Roger Stone, his longtime political aide. Each played a major role in the insurrection.As Riggleman recounts, Meadows defied the committee and refused to appear for deposition. But he did turn over 2,319 texts and messages, avoiding prosecution for contempt of Congress. Some of those texts came from 39 House Republicans and five senators.“Meadows gave us the keys to the kingdom,” Riggleman writes, also describing the Meadows texts as the committee’s “crown jewels”.As for Stone, the Republican dirty trickster was an apparent link between the brains and brawn of the Capitol attack.On 7 November 2020, hours after the networks called the election for Joe Biden, Stuart Rhodes, the founder of Oath Keepers militia, messaged: “What’s the plan … We need to roll.” Stone was part of the chat group. Rhodes now sits before a federal jury, charged with seditious conspiracy.The final chapter of The Breach is devoted to Ginni Thomas, the wife of the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas. Its title: “The Better Half”. Riggleman raises Thomas’s past membership in Lifespring, a personal development program and purported cult. He says he “found Thomas in Mark Meadows’ text messages after a hot tip and a case of mistaken identity”. She wrote of “watermarked ballots” and a “military whitehat sting operation”. She mentioned “TRUMP STING w CIA director Steve Pieczenik” [actually a former state department official and conspiracy theorist]. She condemned “the Biden crime family and ballot fraud conspirators”.Liz Cheney, the House committee vice-chair, asked Riggleman to pull back. The Wyoming Republican worried about exposing the Thomases as election deniers, QAnon followers, or both.We Are Proud Boys review: chilling exposé illuminates Republicans’ fascist turnRead more“I think we need to remove that briefing,” Cheney said, according to Riggleman’s telling. “It’s going to be a political sideshow.”Months later, Cheney and the committee reversed course. On 29 September 2022, Thomas testified for more than four hours behind closed doors. She continued to claim the election was stolen.In The Breach, Riggleman looks to the future.“We have a new enemy in this country,” he writes, “a domestic extremist movement that is growing online at fiber-optic speed. Is there a road back? To be honest, I’m not quite sure.”
      The Breach: The Untold Story of the Investigation Into January 6th is published in the US by Macmillan
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      Trump ally Lindsey Graham told ex-cop Capitol rioters should be shot in head

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      Trump ally Lindsey Graham told ex-cop Capitol rioters should be shot in headMichael Fanone recounts meeting with South Carolina Republican senator in book to be published next week02:36Republican senator and Trump ally Lindsey Graham told a police officer badly beaten during the Capitol attack that law enforcement should have shot rioting Trump supporters in the head, according to a new book.Capitol attack officer Fanone hits out at ‘weasel’ McCarthy in startling interviewRead more“You guys should have shot them all in the head,” the now ex-cop, Michael Fanone, says the South Carolina Republican told him at a meeting in May 2021, four months after the deadly attack on Congress.“We gave you guys guns, and you should have used them. I don’t understand why that didn’t happen.”On January 6, Fanone was a Metropolitan police officer who came to the aid of Capitol police as Trump supporters attacked. He was severely beaten, suffering a heart attack and a traumatic brain injury.He has since resigned from the police, testified to the House January 6 committee and become a CNN analyst. His book, Hold the Line, will be published next week.Politico reported the remarks Fanone says were made by Graham. The site also said Fanone secretly recorded other prominent Republicans, among them Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader and possibly the next speaker, who has also stayed close to Trump.Politico said Fanone told McCarthy efforts to minimize the Capitol insurrection were “not just shocking but disgraceful”. McCarthy reportedly offered no response.Last week, Rolling Stone published an extraordinarily frank interview in which Fanone, a self-described lifelong Republican, called McCarthy a “fucking weasel bitch”. McCarthy did not comment.According to Politico, Fanone told Graham he “appreciated the enthusiasm” the senator showed for shooting rioters “but noted the officers had rules governing the use of deadly force”.Fanone says the meeting with Graham was also attended by Harry Dunn, a Capitol police officer who has also testified in Congress, and Gladys Sicknick and Sandra Garza, the mother and partner of Brian Sicknick, an officer who died after the riot.Fanone says Graham snapped at Gladys Sicknick, telling the bereaved mother he would “end the meeting right now” if she said more negative things about Trump.Nine deaths, including officer suicides, have been linked to the Capitol attack. The riot erupted after Trump told supporters to “fight like hell” to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden, which he maintains without evidence was the result of electoral fraud. Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s attorney, urged Trump’s supporters to stage “trial by combat”.Testimony to the House January 6 committee has shown Trump knew elements of the crowd were armed but told them to march on the Capitol and tried to go with them.Representatives for Graham did not comment to Politico. The senator was previously reported to have advocated the use of force against Capitol rioters on the day itself.The Divider review: riveting narrative of Trump’s plot against AmericaRead moreThat same day, Graham seemed to abandon his closeness to Trump. In a Senate speech hours after the Capitol was cleared, he said: “Count me out.” Days later, he said he had “never been so humiliated and embarrassed for the country”.But like most Republicans, McCarthy literally so, Graham returned to Trump’s side. Like all but seven Republican senators, Graham voted to acquit in Trump’s second impeachment trial, for inciting the Capitol attack.He recently predicted “riots in the streets” if Trump is indicted for retaining classified documents after leaving the White House.In their recent book, The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021, Peter Baker of the New York Times and Susan Glasser of the New Yorker quote Graham as calling Trump “a lying motherfucker” … but “a lot of fun to hang out with”.TopicsBooksUS Capitol attackUS politicsRepublicansUS SenateUS CongressUS policingnewsReuse this content More

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      Capitol attack: Proud Boys leader pleads guilty to seditious conspiracy

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      Capitol attack: Proud Boys leader pleads guilty to seditious conspiracyJeremy Bertino, 43, enters guilty plea for his role in plot to stop transfer of presidential power from Trump to Biden on January 6 A North Carolina man pleaded guilty on Thursday to plotting with other members of the far-right Proud Boys to violently stop the transfer of presidential power after the 2020 election, making him the first member of the extremist group to plead guilty to a seditious conspiracy charge.Jeremy Bertino, 43, has agreed to cooperate with the justice department’s investigation of the role that Proud Boys leaders played in the mob’s attack on the Capitol on 6 January 2021, a federal prosecutor said. Judge Timothy Kelly agreed to release Bertino pending a sentencing hearing that was not immediately scheduled.Bertino also pleaded guilty to a charge of unlawfully possessing firearms in March in Belmont, North Carolina. Kelly accepted his guilty plea to both charges during a brief hearing after the case against Bertino was filed on Thursday.Prosecutor Erik Kenerson said estimated sentencing guidelines for Bertino’s case recommend a prison sentence ranging from four years and three months to five years and three months. The civil war-era seditious conspiracy charge carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.Former Proud Boys national chairman Henry “Enrique” Tarrio and four other group members also have been charged with seditious conspiracy for what prosecutors say was a coordinated attack on the Capitol to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory.A trial for Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola is scheduled to start in December.A trial started this week in Washington for the seditious conspiracy case against the founder of the Oath Keepers and other members of the anti-government militia group for their participation in the attack.More than three dozen people charged in the Capitol siege have been identified by federal authorities as leaders, members or associates of the Proud Boys.Two of them Matthew Greene and Charles Donohoe pleaded guilty to conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding, the January 6 joint session of Congress for certifying the electoral college vote.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsThe far rightnewsReuse this content More

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      Oath Keepers founder accused of ‘armed rebellion’ on January 6 at trial

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      Oath Keepers founder accused of ‘armed rebellion’ on January 6 at trialStewart Rhodes and four associates face the rare civil war-era charge of seditious conspiracy for attacking the US Capitol The founder of the Oath Keepers extremist group and four associates planned an “armed rebellion” to keep Donald Trump in power after he lost the election, a federal prosecutor contended on Monday as the most serious case yet went to trial involving the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.Stewart Rhodes and his band of far-right militants were prepared to go to war to stop Joe Biden from becoming president, assistant US attorney Jeffrey Nestler told jurors.The group celebrated the Capitol attack as a battle they had won and continued their plot even after Biden’s November 2020 electoral victory was certified by Congress in the early hours of 7 January, Nestler alleged.Capitol attack officer Fanone hits out at ‘weasel’ McCarthy in startling interviewRead more“Their goal was to stop, by whatever means necessary, the lawful transfer of presidential power, including by taking up arms against the United States government,” the prosecutor said during his opening statement. “They concocted a plan for armed rebellion to shatter a bedrock of American democracy.”Rhodes and the four others are the first January 6 defendants to stand trial on the charge of seditious conspiracy, a rare civil war-era charge that calls for up to 20 years behind bars, which they deny. The stakes are high for the US Department of Justice (DoJ), which last secured a seditious conspiracy conviction at trial nearly 30 years ago.Rhodes’ attorney painted a far different picture, describing the Oath Keepers as a “peacekeeping” force. He accused prosecutors of building their case on cherry-picked evidence from messages and videos and told jurors that the “true picture” would show that the Oath Keepers had merely been preparing for presidential orders they expected from Trump but never came.“Stewart Rhodes meant no harm to the Capitol that day. Stewart Rhodes did not have any violent intent that day,” Rhodes’ attorney, Phillip Linder, said. “The story the government is trying to tell you today is completely wrong.”On trial with Rhodes, of Granbury, Texas, are Kelly Meggs, leader of the Florida chapter of the Oath Keepers, Kenneth Harrelson, another Florida member of the group, Thomas Caldwell, a retired US navy intelligence officer from Virginia, and Jessica Watkins, who led an Ohio militia group. They face several other charges as well.About 900 people have been charged and hundreds convicted in the Capitol attack. Rioters stormed police barriers, fought with officers, smashed windows and temporarily halted the certification of Biden’s electoral victory.Prosecutors told jurors the insurrection was no spontaneous outpouring of election-fueled rage but part of a detailed, drawn-out plot to stop Biden from entering the White House.Rhodes began plotting to overturn Biden’s victory right after the election, Nestler said.He told his followers during the planning stage that “it will be torches and pitchforks time if they (Congress) don’t do the right thing”, according to an encrypted Signal message he sent to his followers that was shown to the jury by prosecutors.During a December media interview, Rhodes called senators “traitors” and warned that the Oath Keepers would have to “overthrow, abort or abolish Congress”.Before coming to Washington, they set up “quick reaction force” teams with “weapons of war” stashed at a Virginia hotel, the prosecutor said.As Oath Keepers stormed the Capitol, Rhodes stayed outside, like “a general surveying his troops on a battlefield”, Nestler said. After the attack, the Oath Keepers were “elated”, Nestler said.“These defendants were fighting a war and they won a battle on January 6 … but they planned to continue waging that war to stop the transfer of power prior to Inauguration Day. Thankfully their plans were foiled,” Nestler said.Defense attorneys say the Oath Keepers came to Washington only to provide security at events for figures such as Trump ally Roger Stone before the president’s big outdoor rally behind the White House. Rhodes has said there was no plan to attack the Capitol and that the members who did acted on their own.Rhodes’ lawyer told jurors that his client will take the stand to argue that he believed Trump was going to invoke the Insurrection Act and call up a militia. TopicsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpJoe BidenUS politicsLaw (US)newsReuse this content More

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      Capitol attack officer Fanone hits out at ‘weasel’ McCarthy in startling interview

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      Capitol attack officer Fanone hits out at ‘weasel’ McCarthy in startling interviewMichael Fanone makes candid and profane remarks about Republicans in Rolling Stone interview as he promotes memoir In an extraordinarily candid and profane interview with Rolling Stone, Michael Fanone – the former Washington police officer who was seriously hurt at the US Capitol during the January 6 attack – called the Republican House leader, potentially the next speaker, a “fucking weasel bitch”.Oath Keepers to stand trial on charges of seditious conspiracyRead moreFanone said past Republican giants would be unimpressed with Kevin McCarthy.“I think at night, when the lights are turned off, Abe Lincoln and Ronald Reagan have some pretty choice words to say about the fact that they have to hang on Kevin McCarthy’s wall,” Fanone said.“They did some fucking above-average things. And they’ve got to adorn the wall of this fucking weasel bitch named Kevin McCarthy, with his fake fucking spray-on tan, whose fucking claim to fame, at least in my eyes, is the fact that he amassed a collection of Donald Trump’s favorite-flavored Starburst, put them in a Mason jar, and presented them to fucking Donald Trump.“What the fuck, dude?”Fanone’s remarks came as he promoted his memoir, Hold the Line, which will be published next week.The title refers to Fanone’s actions on 6 January 2021, when he, a DC Metropolitan officer, answered calls from Capitol police and rushed to confront Trump supporters storming Congress in an attempt to stop certification of the outgoing president’s defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election.Fanone suffered a heart attack and a traumatic brain injury. He has since left the police and emerged, with other officers, as a key witness in hearings held by the House January 6 committee. The riot has been linked to nine deaths, including suicides among law enforcement officers. More than 900 rioters have been charged, some with seditious conspiracy.In his Rolling Stone interview, Fanone also had harsh words for far-right Republicans including Marjorie Taylor Greene (“Put her in the tinfoil-hat brigade”) and Josh Hawley.Of Hawley, the Missouri senator, Fanone said: “He comes down there, flashes the sign of solidarity, [and] riles up this fucking crowd.”Hawley was famously pictured raising a fist to protesters – a picture he has used for fundraising purposes.Fanone continued: “I would’ve had more respect for him if he said, ‘Charge,’ and fucking rushed the first fucking group of police officers that he could possibly fucking find. But he didn’t. He ran like a bitch as fast as he fucking could to the closest safe room in the fucking Capitol building.”Josh Hawley, senator who ran from Capitol mob, mocked by home paperRead moreAmong other startling footage from the Capitol on January 6, the House committee has shown security video in which Hawley is seen running through the Capitol as the mob breaks in.Fanone, now an analyst for CNN, said his new mission in life was to “wag[e] a one-man war against Donald Trump and the fucking people that refuse to accept reality”.Of Republicans under McCarthy and as high in the party as Trump who have sought to downplay the Capitol attack, he said: “You call [January 6] a ‘tourist day’, You say it was ‘hugs and kisses’. I’m going to be that fucking inconvenient motherfucker that pops his head up every time you say some stupid shit like that.”He also said he does not want to be thought of as an American hero, in part because “Motherfuckers think [former vice-president] Mike Pence is a goddamn hero” for resisting Trump’s scheme to stay in power, and “don’t lump me in with that fucking pathetic coward”.Discussing his work for CNN, Fanone described how he has had to moderate his language on air – and how he “did get in a lot of trouble for saying I thought history was going to shit on Mike Pence’s head”.“They thought that it was inciteful language,” Fanone also remarked. “I said, ‘Listen’ – this is an actual conversation I had – ‘if a person named History takes a shit on Mike Pence’s head, I will apologise for having incited that behavior. But until a person named History literally takes a shit on Mike Pence’s head, I’m not saying shit, nor do I regret what I said, because history is going to shit on Mike Pence’s head.’”He added: “History is going to be busy.”Fanone said he thought most of those who physically attacked the Capitol might eventually be brought to account but doubted that those who incited the riot, from Trump down, would face the consequences of their actions.Congressman Jamie Raskin: ‘I’ll never forget the terrible sound of them trying to barrel into the chamber’Read more“To me,” he said, “every last one of them should have been charged with sedition. These guys love 1776” – the year of the American revolution – “so much. They should be damned glad we’re not in 1776 because I’m pretty sure they would all end up on the fucking business end of a musket or the gallows.”Fanone did have kind words for one congressman: Jamie Raskin of Maryland, a Democrat on the January 6 committee. But Fanone said the professor of constitutional law, being a “super-intellectual type”, was “not designed for what lies ahead” in a divided America.Fanone also said he was publishing his memoir because he was going “broke” after resigning his job.“I’m pretty sure that’s why people do things like this,” he said. “I said the things that I said for free and fucking destroyed my career, made my job untenable, and then tried to make hard lemonade out of lemons.”TopicsBooksUS Capitol attackUS policingUS politicsPolitics booksRepublicansUS CongressnewsReuse this content More

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      Oath Keepers to stand trial on charges of seditious conspiracy

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      Oath Keepers to stand trial on charges of seditious conspiracyGroup allegedly discussed paramilitary training and ‘quick reaction force’ to get weapons to Capitol quickly on January 6 The highest-profile prosecution to stem from the January 6 attack on the US Capitol gets under way on Monday in Washington DC, where the founder and four members of the far-right Oath Keepers group will stand trial in federal court on civil war-era charges of seditious conspiracy.It’s a high-stakes trial for the US government, which will attempt to prove that Stewart Rhodes and his associates spent weeks marshaling members of the group to prepare to use violence to deny the certification of the 2016 election and keep Donald Trump in the White House.The five charged with seditious conspiracy – Rhodes, Kelly Meggs, Jessica Watkins, Kenneth Harrelson and Thomas Caldwell – face 20 years in prison if convicted. Two of the 11 people indicted in the case – Brian Ulrich and Joshua James – have pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy. The remaining four will be tried separately.Court documents show that the Oath Keepers – described by the government as “a large but loosely organized collection of individuals, some of whom are associated with militias” that “explicitly focus on recruiting current and former military, law enforcement and first-responder personnel” – were among the individuals and groups who forcibly entered the Capitol.Before the rally, the group had allegedly discussed paramilitary training and setting up a “quick reaction force” at a Virginia hotel that could get weapons into Washington quickly if required and had equipped themselves with thousands of dollars’ worth of guns and tactical gear, including a shotgun, scope, sights and night-vision devices.But while Rhodes, who established the Oath Keepers in 2009, is not accused of entering the Capitol, cellphone records allegedly show he was communicating with Oath Keepers who had and was seen with members of the group afterwards.The trial, which is expected to last about five weeks, comes as at least 919 people have been arrested and charged with crimes relating to what many, before and after the events of January 6, have called an attempted coup d’etat. More than 400 have pleaded guilty or been convicted at trial.But the trial comes with risks for the government, which has not invoked seditious conspiracy laws since failing to successfully prosecute members of the far-right Hutaree militia in Michigan in 2010 in a case that was ultimately dismissed for insufficient evidence.“Americans should be wary of government’s stretching ‘sedition’ charges in ways that might set troubling precedents for a US administration,” said Jim Sleeper, former professor of political science at Yale University.At the same time, he says, “the Oath Keepers’ and their leadership’s well-documented record of excess – and Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice record of discretion and indeed of caution – incline me to trust this use of the act.”According to attorney Bill Swor, who defended the Hutaree group, the circumstances are observably different. In that case, he says, there was no plan and no action was taken. In this, there appears to be evidence that several of the alleged conspirators broke into the Capitol and delayed Congress’s certification of the electoral college count.“Taking the government at their claim that these individuals were acting to disrupt or prevent Congress from discharging its constitutional duty is a significant difference,” he said.“In our case there was a vague assertion that our clients were planning a hostile, violent attack. But government witnesses testified that there was no specific plan and this was just talk and preparation, not against the government but against the forces of the antichrist who would be expressed in … an invading force of United Nations blue helmets.“There was no suggestion that our clients had undertaken any steps to do anything beyond ‘training’ in their immediate geographical area,” Swor adds.In the government’s case against the Oath Keepers, members traveled from across the US with a specific plan, accumulated firearms and brought them to suburban Washington and would have transported them to the seat of government if necessary. “Not only do you have the express purpose but acts taken in preparation to execute a plan,” Swor added.Rhodes’s attorneys have said their defense will focus on their client’s belief that Trump was going to invoke the Insurrection Act and call up a militia to support his attempt to stay in power. His actions, then, were not seditious because they were only designed in anticipation of what they believed would soon become lawful.“What the government contends was a conspiracy to oppose United States laws was actually lobbying and preparation for the President to utilize a United States law to take lawful action,” Rhodes’s attorneys, James Lee Bright and Phillip Linder, said in a court filing.Other defendants have argued that they traveled to Washington to provide security for VIPs or rally-goers from anti-fascist protesters, or antifa.According to the government, Rhodes sent a message to an Oath Keepers chat two days after the presidential election to reject the election results. “We aren’t getting through this without a civil war,” Rhodes allegedly wrote. “Too late for that. Prepare your mind, body, spirit.”Court documents further allege that Rhodes spearheaded an online meeting with members of the group in which he outlined a plan to stop the transfer of power to Joe Biden. After that, prosecutors say, members of the alleged conspiracy began recruiting, training and coordinating their activities.A month later, on 11 December, Rhodes allegedly posted on a group chat that if Biden were to take office, “it will be a bloody and desperate fight. We are going to have a fight. That can’t be avoided.”The day before certification on 5 January, the alleged conspirators transported their weapons to Washington. The following morning, Rhodes messaged: “We will have several well equipped QRFs outside DC. And there are many, many others, from other groups, who will be watching and waiting on the outside in case of worst case scenarios.”However the Oath Keepers trial is resolved, Swor says, the case may serve to set standards around where the individual rights to speak out and protest contravene laws protecting the functioning of government. In the case of the Sedition Act, the law was passed to curb the activities of the Ku Klux Klan, which opposed laws protecting African Americans and Catholics after the US civil war.If nothing else, the contrast between the Hutaree and Oath Keeper cases could establish “clear, bright lines and what is, and what is not, sedition,” Swor says. “In the Hutaree case, the goal was to be prepared to respond to an invasion or defend the government. In the Oath Keepers case, the government’s theory is that these people planned and took action, and that the purpose of their activity was to prevent the government from acting.”TopicsUS Capitol attackThe far rightnewsReuse this content More

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      Confidence Man review: Maggie Haberman takes down Trump

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      Confidence Man review: Maggie Haberman takes down Trump The New York Times reporter presents a forensic account of the damage he has done to AmericaMaggie Haberman, the New York Times’ Trump whisperer, delivers. Her latest book is much more than 600 pages of context, scoop and drama. It is a political epic, tracing Donald Trump’s journey from the streets of Queens to Manhattan’s Upper East Side, from the White House to Mar-a-Lago, his Elba. There, the 45th president holds court – and broods and plots his return.Kushner camping tale one of many bizarre scenes in latest Trump bookRead moreHaberman gives Trump and those close to him plenty of voice – and rope. The result is a cacophonous symphony. Confidence Man informs and entertains but is simultaneously absolutely not funny. Trumpworld presents a reptilian tableau – reality TV does Lord of the Flies.For just one example, Mark Meadows, Trump’s last White House chief of staff, is depicted as erratic and detestable. Then there’s the family. Haberman reports how, after the 2016 election, Melania Trump won a renegotiated pre-nuptial agreement. Haberman also describes Trump repeatedly dumping on his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. If only he looked like Tom Brady and spoke in a deeper register. If only Ivanka had not converted to Judaism.The abuse gets absurd – even a kind of baroque. According to Haberman, at one 2020 campaign strategy meeting Trump implied Kushner might be brutally attacked, even raped, if he ever went camping: “Can you imagine Jared and his skinny ass camping? It’d be like something out of Deliverance.”The reader, however, should not weep for Jared. In Haberman’s telling, he is the kid who was born on third base and mistakes his good fortune with hitting a triple. For his part, Kushner is shown trashing Steve Bannon, the far-right ideologue who was campaign chair and chief White House strategist but was forced out within months.Haberman catches Kushner gleefully asking a White House visitor: “Did you see I cut Bannon’s balls off?”To quote Peter Navarro, like Bannon now a former Trump official under indictment, “nepotism and excrement roll downhill”.As it happens, Bannon’s testicles grew back. Like Charlie Kushner, Jared’s father, he received a Trump pardon. Bannon also helped propagate the big lie that Trump won the election, stoking the Capitol attack.These days, Bannon awaits sentencing, convicted of contempt of Congress. He also faces felony fraud charges arising from an alleged border-wall charity scam. In Trump’s universe, there is always a grift.For Confidence Man, Haberman interviewed Trump three times. He confesses that he is drawn to her, like a moth to a flame.“I love being with her,” he says. “She’s like my psychiatrist”.The daughter of Clyde Haberman, a legendary New York Times reporter, is not flattered or amused. She sees through her subject.“The reality is that he treats everyone like they are his psychiatrists,” Haberman writes. “All present a chance for him to vent or test reactions or gauge how his statements are playing or discover how he is feeling.”Also, Trump and Haberman have not always had a rapport. When he was president, she would interview him and he would attack her. In April 2018, Trump tweeted that Haberman was a Clinton “flunkie” he didn’t know or speak with, a “third-rate reporter” at that. He called her “Maggot Haberman” and even contemplated obtaining her phone records to identify her sources.Trump is 76 but he remains the envious boy from a New York outer borough, face pressed against the Midtown glass. Haberman is not the only Manhattan reporter he has courted and attacked. In 2018, he threatened Michael Wolff for writing Fire and Fury, the Trump book that started it all. Later, he welcomed Wolff to Mar-a-Lago.Haberman vividly captures Trump’s lack of couth. For just one example, according to Haberman the president chose to enrich his first meeting with a foreign leader, Theresa May, by asking the British prime minister to “imagine if some animals with tattoos raped your daughter and she got pregnant”.Each of Trump’s three supreme court justices voted to overturn Roe v Wade. One might wonder how the young woman in Trump’s hypothetical would feel about that.Haberman also pierces Trump’s refusal to release his tax returns. All that talk about an “audit” was a simple dodge, birthed on a campaign plane.In the run-up to Super Tuesday, the crucial day of primaries in March 2016, aides confronted Trump about his taxes. The candidate, Haberman writes, “thought for a second about how to ‘get myself out of this’, as he said. He leaned back, before snapping up to a sudden thought.01:13“‘Well, you know my taxes are under audit. I always get audited … So what I mean is, well I could just say, ‘I’ll release them when I’m no longer under audit. ‘Cause I’ll never not be under audit.’”These days, the Trump Organization faces criminal tax fraud charges. Together with Ivanka, Don Jr and Eric, his children from his first marriage, Trump is also being sued for fraud by Letitia James, the New York attorney general.As a younger reporter, Haberman did two stints at the New York Post, Rupert Murdoch’s flagship US tabloid. Murdoch’s succession plans – it’s Lachlan, he told Trump – appear in Confidence Man. So does Tucker Carlson, the headline-making Fox News host and kindred spirit to Vladimir Putin.Trump made up audit excuse for not releasing tax returns on the fly, new book saysRead moreAccording to Haberman, Carlson met Kushner and demanded Trump commute Roger Stone’s conviction for perjury.“What happened to Roger Stone should never happen to anyone in this country of any political party,” Carlson reportedly thundered, threatening to go public.Stone has since emerged as a central figure in the January 6 insurrection. Apparently, he has a thing for violence. For some Republicans, a commitment to “law and order” is elastic.When it comes to the attempt to overturn the election and the Capitol attack it fueled, Trump’s fate rests with prosecutors in Washington DC and Fulton county, Georgia.That old campaign chant from 2016, “Lock her up”? It carries its own irony.
      Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America is published in the US by Penguin Random House
      TopicsBooksDonald TrumpTrump administrationUS politicsRepublicansUS elections 2016US elections 2020reviewsReuse this content More