US Capitol attack

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      White House switchboard called phone linked to January 6 rioter after attack

      by

      White House switchboard called phone linked to January 6 rioter after attackClaim of call at 4.34pm made in book by former Republican congressman and adviser to House select committee The White House switchboard dialled a phone associated with a January 6 rioter after it was clear the deadly Capitol attack had failed to prevent the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, according to a new book.The book from former Republican congressman and House January 6 select committee adviser Denver Riggleman says the connection was an outgoing call routed through the switchboard at 4.34pm, and it was answered by an unnamed rioter who allegedly has since been charged by the justice department with a role in the storming of the Capitol.The January 6 committee has its sights on Ginni Thomas. She should be worried | Kimberly WehleRead moreRiggleman’s book, titled The Breach, was reviewed by the Guardian in advance of its scheduled publication on Tuesday, and it has already become controversial after the select committee decried the work as an incomplete account that lacked information to which he was not privy once he left the panel’s inquiry in April.But in describing his work for the investigation and how he led a team analyzing call detail records, Riggleman offers previously unreported details about the White House calls around January 6 as well as the contacts around Trump’s political operatives, including Roger Stone and Alex Jones.The White House switchboard call was identified because call detail records give information about “seizure times” that indicates whether a call is answered, the book explains. In this case, the book says, there was a seizure time, indicating the call was completed.Riggleman also details other instances of connections between the White House and people connected to the Capitol attack, writing that before January 6, the president of an organization known as Latinos for Trump – closely connected to the Proud Boys group – also received a call from the White House.The Latinos for Trump president, Bianca Gracia, had a total of five connections with White House root numbers starting 202-881 or 202-456, the book said: she placed four outgoing calls and received one incoming call.The significance of the calls was not immediately clear. Sources close to the select committee have insisted that investigators chased down the leads uncovered by Riggleman and his team, but the panel could not conclusively determine the calls’ content or whether their nature was nefarious.Despite being close with the former Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio, and meeting with him in an underground parking garage near the Capitol the evening before the insurrection, Gracia was also chief of staff for Latinos for Trump. Therefore, Gracia’s calls may have been innocuous.Among other possible explanations, the sources said, was that she may have been in touch with a person on the Trump campaign or a person helping organize the Ellipse rally, or perhaps the White House may have reached Gracia when she had a tour of the complex around Christmas.The book also describes some of the sources and methods that Riggleman used to create phone link maps of “persons of interest” in the investigation, including the extensive effort to try to unravel who Stone was speaking with in the post-2020 election period.Stone was one of more than 20 “high-priority targets” but the panel faced an uphill battle identifying his contacts after he refused to voluntarily allow the select committee to obtain his call detail records, forcing investigators to work backwards through associates, the book says.The select committee was able to construct a detailed map of Stone’s contacts after obtaining the call detail records of Kristin Davis, also known as the Manhattan Madam, who was with Stone at the Willard hotel in Washington DC on the day before and the day of the Capitol attack.And after investigators identified Stone’s number, the book says, they compiled an intriguing map: Stone called Tarrio both before and after January 6, and he called the former Oath Keepers chief Stewart Rhodes nine days after the riot. Both have since been charged with seditious conspiracy.The number for Stone also connected to a number of prominent Republicans who each played different roles in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, including the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, and Arthur Schwartz, an aide to Donald Trump Jr, Trump’s eldest son.Riggleman, co-authoring the book with journalist Hunter Walker for the publisher Macmillan, also uses the book to characterize the former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows as being at the center of the efforts to stop the certification of Biden’s electoral college win through the thousands of texts he provided to the select committee.Though most of the texts sent to and from Meadows that the book includes have previously been reported by CNN and others, the book fills in some gaps about the effort to object to the certification as well as the additional role played by Republican members of Congress.TopicsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

    • 213 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      The January 6 committee has its sights on Ginni Thomas. She should be worried | Kimberly Wehle

      by

      The January 6 committee has its sights on Ginni Thomas. She should be worriedKimberly WehleThe spouse of a sitting supreme court justice allegedly tried to overturn the 2020 election. It’s hard to say which looks worse – the conflicts of interest, or the possibility that she aided a would-be insurrection After months of wrangling, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of US supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, has agreed to sit for an interview with the January 6 committee – thus avoiding a subpoena, at least for now.This development could open a vital inquiry into Thomas’s alleged role in seeking to thwart a peaceful transition of presidential power to Joe Biden. Just as importantly, this news renews attention on the question of whether Ginni Thomas’s radical rightwing activism influenced her husband, who weighed in on numerous 2020 election-related cases despite his conflicts of interest.Time for Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from election cases – his wife’s texts prove itRead moreSo far, congressional Democrats have sat on their hands on this issue, presumably in deference to the supreme court. But with the rightwing court taking an axe to constitutional precedent and public opinion, an investigation into the Thomases might be the only way to course-correct what’s happening to the US constitution.We know that Ginni Thomas texted Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, between November 2020 and January 2021 urging measures to undermine Biden’s win and keep Trump in power. After Congress certified the election for Biden, she criticized former vice-president Mike Pence in a message to Meadows for refusing to disrupt the counting of electoral college votes, writing, “We are living through what feels like the end of America.”The messages contain sly references to a “best friend”, which Ginni and Clarence Thomas have been known to call each other. In a viral Facebook post on 6 January 2020, now removed, she wrote, “LOVE MAGA people!!!!” Thomas attended the Capitol rally that day, though she has said she left before Trump’s speech at noon.We also now know that Thomas emailed Arizona lawmakers in November and December of 2020, pushing them to devise a slate of presidential electors in defiance of Arizona voters’ choice for Biden. In an email in November, she urged Arizona legislators to “stand strong in the face of political and media pressure”, claiming (wrongly) that the choice of electors was “yours and yours alone”.On 13 December, the day before the electors cast their votes for Biden, she circulated a second email stating: “Before you choose your state’s electors … consider what will happen to the nation we all love if you don’t stand up and lead,” and linking to a video of a man asking lawmakers not to “give in to cowardice”. On 14 December , a group of fake Trump electors met in Arizona to sign a document falsely declaring themselves the “duly elected and qualified electors” for the state.Thomas allegedly waged a similar pressure campaign in Wisconsin. “Please stand strong in the face of media and political pressure,” she emailed two Republican lawmakers on 9 November, shortly after news outlets called the election for Biden. “Please reflect on the awesome authority granted to you by our constitution. And then please take action to ensure that a clean slate of electors is chosen for our state.”Earlier this year, the New Yorker detailed Ginni Thomas’s deep connections to multiple rightwing groups that seek to influence the supreme court. Thomas, herself a lawyer who runs a small lobbying firm, Liberty Consulting, is on record as declaring America to be in danger due to a “deep state” and a “fascist left” peopled by “transexual fascists”. She posted about Trump’s loss on a private listserv, Thomas Clerk World, which includes approximately 120 former Clarence Thomas clerks. Artemus Ward, a political scientist at Northern Illinois University, has called the group “an elite rightwing commando movement”.Thomas is also a director of CNP Action, a dark-money group that the New Yorker described as “connect[ing] wealthy donors with some of the most radical rightwing figures in America”, and on the advisory board of Turning Point USA, a conservative non-profit that sent busloads of protesters to the Capitol on January 6. And in 2019, she announced her partnership in Crowdsourcers, along with James O’Keefe, the founder of Project Veritas, an outfit known for producing embarrassing videos of progressives.In 2020, Project Veritas petitioned the US supreme court to halt Massachusetts from enforcing a state law banning the secret taping of public officials. Another Crowdsourcers partner was Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who played a central role helping Trump in his failed efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, and now faces ethics charges. Mitchell was on the 2 January 2021 phone call in which Trump cajoled the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to “find” 11,780 votes to swing the state to Trump. That effort is being criminally investigated by a grand jury in Georgia.According to the New York Times, the January 6 committee is most interested in asking Thomas about her communications with John Eastman, a conservative lawyer who infamously penned a six-step scheme for Pence to block or delay the counting of electoral college votes. According to the committee’s leaders, Eastman also “worked to develop alternative slates of electors to stop the electoral count”.In a March opinion in Eastman v Thompson, a federal judge in California rejected Eastman’s attempt to keep his emails from the committee, identifying Eastman as probably having collaborated with Trump in multiple federal crimes, writing: “Based on the evidence … it is more likely than not that President Trump corruptly attempted to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021.”The Thomases’ conflicts of interest have prompted calls for a supreme court code of conduct, which would require justices to recuse themselves from cases that might otherwise give rise to even an appearance of partiality. But it is not at all clear that Ginni Thomas is beyond the sights of criminal liability, either.Of course, that sort of action would have to come through the justice department. Congress’s power is confined to making legislative changes. But the attorney general, Merrick Garland, has been resolute in his public commitment to enforce relevant federal laws, reiterating recently that “Rule of Law means that the law treats each of us alike: there is not one rule for friends, another for foes; one rule for the powerful, another for the powerless.” Ginni Thomas should be concerned.For his part, Clarence Thomas was the only dissenting vote in a January 2021 ruling on an emergency application from Trump asking the supreme court to block the release of White House records to the January 6 Committee regarding the attack on the Capitol – records that in theory could have included messages between his wife and Meadows. He gave no reasons for his dissent.Thomas also dissented, along with Justice Samuel Alito, from the court’s refusal to entertain a lawsuit by Texas asking that it toss out the election results in four other states – a legal “claim” that, to date, does not even exist as a matter of federal law.Perhaps most disturbing is the court’s agreement to hear Moore v Harper this term, a case that strikes at the heart of the January 6 committee’s work. It raises a novel constitutional argument which Trump lost repeatedly in 2020: that the constitution lodges power over elections exclusively in state legislatures. If the court rules that legislatures have full power and control, it could cement unfairness in the electoral system as a matter of constitutional law, as many states are already gerrymandered to lock in power for one political party, mostly Republican.Although Congress could legislatively add seats to the supreme court or impeach a justice, with evidence, to stave off further encroachments on individual rights and federal authority by this court, both measures would require a level of bipartisan support that is difficult to imagine.Yet it’s impossible to predict where the further unraveling of the Ginni Thomas conflicts might lead – and whether those facts could produce another unprecedented fissure in our system of government. For now, Congress must, at the very least, peer behind the Thomases’ curtain.
      Kimberly Wehle is a law professor at American University and a legal analyst for ABC News. Her latest book is How to Think Like a Lawyer and Why
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackUS supreme courtClarence ThomasLaw (US)commentReuse this content More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      January 6 panel to take up key unanswered questions in final hearing

      by

      January 6 panel to take up key unanswered questions in final hearingWednesday’s session is committee’s last chance to show potential culpability of Donald Trump before midterm elections The House January 6 select committee is expected to hold its final public hearing next Wednesday, with the congressional investigation into the US Capitol attack nearing its conclusion as staff counsel prepare to produce an interim report of its findings before the 2022 midterm elections.The specific topic of the final hearing that the panel’s chairman, Congressman Bennie Thompson, will convene starting at 1pm is unclear.But the select committee is expected to make headway on some of the most pressing questions about January 6 that remain unanswered since the panel last convened in July and made the case that Donald Trump violated the law by refusing to take action to call off the Capitol attack, sources said.Virginia Thomas agrees to interview with House January 6 panelRead moreThe principal issues at play include whether there was a concrete through-line from the former president to political operatives like Roger Stone and Michael Flynn, who were in close contact with the far-right extremist groups – including the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers – that stormed Congress.The select committee has found some circumstantial evidence about such ties and previously revealed that Trump directed his then White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to call both Stone and Flynn the night before January 6 as the extremist groups finalized their plans for the day.Another issue for House investigators is whether Trump’s ouster of former defense secretary Mark Esper was an effort to install in his place a loyalist who might have had no objection to using the national guard to seize voting machines or delay their deployment to stop the Capitol attack.The select committee has viewed the plot to seize voting machines – suggested by Flynn during a contentious White House meeting in December 2020, hours before Trump sent a tweet urging his supporters to attend a “wild protest” on January 6 – as a crucial moment in the overall timeline.House investigators have also spent time in recent weeks examining Microsoft Teams chats and emails sent between Secret Service agents on security details for Trump and former vice-president Mike Pence that day, as well as discussions about invoking martial law even after the Capitol attack.The hearing on Wednesday is likely to touch on some of those issues, the sources said, in the last opportunity for the select committee to show potential culpability by Trump and Republican members of Congress on national television before the midterm elections take place in early November.Trump’s attempts to delay Mar-a-Lago inquiry largely fail as legal woes mountRead moreWith their control of the House and Senate hanging in the balance, this hearing is also widely being seen on Capitol Hill as the final chance for Democrats to persuade voters that the midterms are a referendum on the Republican party’s role in January 6.Part of the reason the Wednesday hearing is expected to be the final one is because next week is the last that the House is in session until the midterms, and the panel was reluctant to schedule an event during campaign season, when committee members like Elaine Luria face uphill re-election battles.The select committee is also starting to shift its focus away from the made-for-television hearings – which have required time-consuming preparation and rehearsals – and towards putting together an interim report in the coming weeks as well as a final report by the end of the year.The panel remained undecided on the final direction of each of the reports, the sources said, as well as whether to make a criminal referral to the justice department against Trump and key aides, including his former lawyer John Eastman, who orchestrated the fake elector scheme.Once a major priority, the need for such a referral appears to have diminished in recent weeks. Subpoenas reviewed by the Guardian show the justice department is pursuing at least three investigations examining January 6 and issued more than 30 subpoenas to top Trump aides.TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackUS politicsUS elections 2020newsReuse this content More

    • 138 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      We Are Proud Boys review: chilling exposé illuminates Republicans’ fascist turn

      by

      We Are Proud Boys review: chilling exposé illuminates Republicans’ fascist turn Andy Campbell has delivered a smart, well-written and brilliantly reported book about the street gang allied to Donald Trump and the GOP he commandsAndy Campbell has produced a smart, well-written and brilliantly reported book about another loathsome progeny of the most dangerous union of our time, the horror couple responsible for so many of the burgeoning threats to American democracy: Donald Trump and the internet.Proud Boys memo reveals meticulous planning for ‘street-level violence’Read moreIts subject is the Proud Boys, racist, beer-addled and violence-addicted street fighters who have become best friends with many of Trump’s warmest supporters, from Ann Coulter to Roger Stone.Coulter and Stone have both bragged about using these modern Brown Shirts as bodyguards. Stone even allowed himself to be filmed for a video in which he took the Proud Boys oath: “I’m a western chauvinist. I refuse to apologize for creating the modern world.”Coulter credited the group with saving her life when “2,000 antifa”, leftwing protesters, tried to shut down a speech at UC Berkeley. If she hadn’t invited 20 Proud Boys, she said, she “might not have made it to the campus at all”.The Proud Boys are “brawny, tattooed brutes”, Coulter cooed.As Campbell puts it, the Proud Boys have “proven that you can make it as a fascist gang of hooligans in this country, as long as you make the right friends”.The organization’s father is Gavin McInnes, 52, a child of Scots who moved to Canada. In Montreal in the early 1990s McInnes founded a magazine called Pervert, which in 1999 he and two others rebranded as Vice. He moved the magazine to New York a couple of years later, then left in 2008.In spring 2016, on his own talkshow, he declared his main priority: “I want violence. I want punching in the face. I’m disappointed in Trump supporters for not punching enough.”Not long after that, he “announced that he’d turned his audience into a gang”. He called them the Proud Boys.McInnes’s alliance with the GOP warmed up after he was invited to speak at the headquarters of the New York state Republican party in October 2018.Members were undaunted when their intended guest announced on Instagram that he planned to reenact an “inspiring moment … the political assassination of Inejiro Asanuma, the former leader of the Japan Socialist party, who was killed during a debate on live TV when a far-right ultranationalist rushed the stage and pushed a sword between his ribs”.Then he photoshopped an image of himself “with the eyes and clothing of the Japanese assassin”.Republicans loved it. On Facebook, they responded: “This Godfather of the Hipster Movement has taken on and exposed the Deep State Socialists and stood up for Western Values. Join us for an unforgettable evening with one of Liberty’s Loudest Voices.”After his speech, McInnes left the club with his sword. But Proud Boys “and their skinhead pals” attacked a handful of antifascist protesters after one knocked a MAGA hat from one of their heads.“They turned it into a pummeling,” a Huffington Post reporter remembered. “This was three people on the ground and people just kicking the shit out of them.”The two most violent attackers were each sentenced to four years in prison. The judge didn’t hesitate to draw the appropriate parallel to 1930s Germany. Mark Dwyer, of the New York state supreme court, said he knew what had happened then, “when political street brawls were allowed to go ahead without any type of check from the criminal justice system. We don’t want that to happen in New York”.Regardless, the New York brawl became another opportunity for the Republican establishment to normalize fascist behavior. Immediately after the attack, Fox News quoted Ed Cox, the Republican state chairman (and son-in-law of Richard Nixon) as “calling on Democrats to cease inciting these attacks”.As Campbell writes, the event at the Republican club was “a jumping-off point for the GOP into what would eventually become a full embrace of domestic extremist violence”.Kelly Weill, a reporter who covers domestic extremism, explained, the Proud Boys “really embody the political violence the GOP needs just a little bit of a proxy for. They can’t personally be out there doing it, so they have the Proud Boys”.It only took two more years for the Proud Boys to get an official, nationally televised presidential imprimatur, after Joe Biden suggested during a 2020 debate that they were one of the groups Trump should have denounced long ago. Trump said: “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.”01:16Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, a former FBI informant and convicted felon who had become the Proud Boys chairman, described the effect of Trump’s declaration.“We got mentioned, and my life has not been the same since,” Tarrio told Campbell. “My phone started blowing up off the hook. I had 10 fucking news trucks at my house the next morning. I didn’t sleep for … two days.”The Divider review: riveting narrative of Trump’s plot against AmericaRead moreTrump’s longtime attorney, Michael Cohen, who turned on his former boss after pleading guilty to charges related to tax evasion and lying to Congress, was sure the president made his statement on purpose.“If you look at who the Proud Boys really are,” said Cohen, “they’re an army. This is Trump’s army … and when he loses he’s going to use them to try and keep control of power.”Which of course is what happened. Proud Boys were some of the most active players when Trump urged the crowd in front of him on 6 January 2021 to march on the US Capitol.Thirteen months after the deadly attack, the Republican endorsement of fascist violence became official: the Republican National Committee unanimously approved a resolution which memorialized the Capitol attack as nothing more than “legitimate political discourse.”Campbell’s book provides an indispensable account of exactly how the Grand Old Party reached that disgraceful destination.
      We Are Proud Boys: How a Right-Wing Street Gang Ushered in a New Era of American Extremism is published in the US by Hachette
      TopicsBooksThe far rightUS politicsRepublicansDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackPolitics booksreviewsReuse this content More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      QAnon follower who chased officer on January 6 convicted of felonies

      by

      QAnon follower who chased officer on January 6 convicted of feloniesDouglas Jensen could face more than 50 years in prison after federal jury found him guilty A QAnon conspiracy theorist who led a pack of Donald Trump supporters that chased a solitary police officer around the US Capitol on the day of the January 6 attack has been found guilty of several felonies.Douglas Jensen – the bearded 43-year-old Iowa man who appeared in several media photos of the attack while wearing a black T-shirt with a large “Q” – could in theory face more than 50 years in prison after a federal jury in Washington DC convicted him on Friday, US justice department prosecutors said in a statement.However, it is rare for convicts in US district court to receive the harshest available punishment, even if they chose to stand trial rather than plead guilty in advance. And the harshest sentence handed out so far to anyone found guilty of having a role in the deadly Capitol attack has been 10 years.Antisemitic army reservist gets four years for role in January 6 Capitol attackRead moreProsecutors alleged that Jensen formed part of the mob of Trump supporters who gathered at the Capitol on the day in early 2021 that Congress was meeting to certify Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in the previous year’s presidential election.Clad in a navy blue knit cap and the T-shirt paying homage to QAnon, the conspiracy myth that Trump is locked in secret combat against a cabal of leftist pedophiles and its deep state allies, Jensen scaled a wall at the Capitol, watched as fellow mob members broke the Senate wing entrance’s windows and doors, and was among the first 10 people to invade the facility, according to prosecutors.Jensen went around a few corners and joined a crowd that encountered a lone Capitol police officer near a stairwell, prosecutors said. Jensen squeezed his way to the front of the group, essentially came face to face with the officer, Eugene Goodman, and helped chase him up the stairs to a hallway just outside the Senate chamber.Prosecutors said that Jensen – carrying a knife with a three-inch blade in his pocket – barked at Goodman as well as other officers to “back up” and ordered them to arrest Trump’s vice-president, Mike Pence, whom the mob was threatening to hang if he didn’t halt the certification of Biden’s electoral college win.After 40 minutes, Jensen was made to exit, briefly re-entered another section of the Capitol and was forced out again, prosecutors said.Authorities arrested him two days later, after he returned to Iowa.At Jensen’s trial, concluding Friday, his defense attorney portrayed him as “a terribly confused man” whose mind was even more twisted by QAnon as well as Covid lockdowns. Jensen’s attorney also claimed his client had never physically hurt anyone during his time at the Capitol.But jurors needed just four hours to convict Jensen as charged of assaulting police, obstructing a congressional proceeding, interfering with law enforcement, entering a restricted building and disorderly conduct with a dangerous weapon, which are all felonies.Jensen was also found guilty of a pair of misdemeanors: picketing in the Capitol and disorderly conduct in that facility.Goodman testified during Jensen’s trial, describing how he had felt cornered and threatened by the mob. Prosecutors showed video of Goodman leading the mob away from the Senate floor while defensively holding up a baton with one of his hands.The Senate awarded Goodman a congressional Gold Medal, saying that the officer had led the violent mob away from lawmakers who ultimately did certify Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election.A bipartisan Senate report linked seven deaths to the Capitol attack and said it had left more than 140 police officers injured. As of this week, more than 870 people had been charged with roles in the insurrection.TopicsUS Capitol attackIowaWashington DCnewsReuse this content More

    • 163 Shares109 Views

      in US Politics

      Antisemitic army reservist gets four years for role in January 6 Capitol attack

      by

      Antisemitic army reservist gets four years for role in January 6 Capitol attackTimothy Hale-Cusanelli, 32, who wore a Hitler-style moustache, guilty of obstructing a congressional session and other crimes An American army reservist who was openly antisemitic, was an avowed antisemite and wore a moustache styled after Adolf Hitler was given a four-year prison sentence on Thursday after being found guilty of helping attack the US Capitol on January 6 2021.Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, 32, received his punishment at Washington DC’s federal courthouse about four months after a jury found him guilty of obstructing the congressional session held on the day of the Capitol siege to certify Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.New Mexico official first politician removed over January 6 attackRead moreJurors also convicted him of a series of misdemeanors, including breaking into a restricted federal building as well as disorderly and disruptive conduct, and at sentencing the judge presiding over his case determined that he obstructed justice during his trial by lying under oath, US justice department prosecutors said in a statement.Hale-Cusanelli’s sentence is on the harsher end of punishments handed out to people convicted in connection with the Capitol attack. The longest, at least so far, has been seven years and three months.Prosecutors wanted Hale-Cusanelli’s judge, Trevor McFadden, to sentence him to more than six years in prison.Many paid particular attention to the case against Hale-Cusanelli because – in addition to his role in the army – he was a navy contractor who posted antisemitic rants on YouTube, spoke enthusiastically of a coming “civil war” that would tear America apart, and carefully trimmed his moustache to resemble the one worn by Hitler, the Nazi leader who ordered the murders of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust.Prosecutors said Hale-Cusanelli joined the mob of Trump supporters who descended on the Capitol in a desperate attempt to prevent the congressional certification of Biden’s electoral college win. He was among the first rioters to enter the Capitol, ordered others to “advance” with him and harassed police officers trying to protect the facility, yelling to them about a “revolution” during his 40 minutes in the building.Authorities later arrested Hale-Cusanelli after he bragged to a friend about how “exhilarating” it was to be in the Capitol, outlined his vision of a “civil war” and declared that “the blood of patriots and tyrants” would refresh the metaphorical tree of liberty. He became one of dozens of former or active military members investigated or charged with the Capitol attack – which a bipartisan Senate report linked to seven deaths – and was banned from the naval weapons station where he worked and held a “secret” security clearance.As of this week, more than 870 other people had been charged with roles in the deadly assault on the Capitol, prosecutors said.Hale-Cusanelli apologized to Congress and law enforcement ahead of his sentencing, saying, “I disgraced my uniform and I disgraced my country,” according to NBC News.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Nick Clegg to decide on Trump’s 2023 return to Instagram and Facebook

      by

      Nick Clegg to decide on Trump’s 2023 return to Instagram and FacebookMeta’s president of global affairs said it would be a decision ‘I oversee’ after the ex-president’s accounts were suspended in 2021 Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, is charged with deciding whether Donald Trump will be allowed to return to Facebook and Instagram in 2023, Clegg said on Thursday.Speaking at an event held in Washington by news organization Semafor, Clegg said the company was seriously debating whether Trump’s accounts should be reinstated and said it was a decision that “I oversee and I drive”.Judge asks Trump’s team for proof that FBI planted documents at Mar-a-Lago Read moreClegg added that while he will be making the final call, he will consult the CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook board of directors and outside experts.“It’s not a capricious decision,” he said. “We will look at the signals related to real-world harm to make a decision whether at the two-year point – which is early January next year – whether Trump gets reinstated to the platform.”The former president was suspended from a number of online platforms, including those owned by Meta, following the 6 January 2021 Capitol riot during which Trump used his social media accounts to praise and perpetuate the violence.While Twitter banned Trump permanently, Meta suspended Trump’s accounts for two years, to be later re-evaluated. In May 2021, a temporary ban was upheld by Facebook’s oversight board – a group of appointed academics and former politicians meant to operate independently of Facebook’s corporate leadership.However, the board returned the final decision on Trump’s accounts to Meta, suggesting the company decide in six months whether to make the ban permanent. Clegg said that decision will be made by 7 January 2023.Clegg previously served as Britain’s deputy prime minister and joined Facebook as vice‑president for global affairs and communications in 2018. In February, he was promoted to the top company policy executive role.In the years since he began at Meta, Clegg has seen the company through a number of scandals, including scrutiny of its policies during the 2016 US presidential election, Facebook’s role in the persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar, and the revelations made by whistleblower Frances Haugen.TopicsDonald TrumpNick CleggMark ZuckerbergFacebookInstagramUS Capitol attackUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Virginia Thomas agrees to interview with House January 6 panel

      by

      Virginia Thomas agrees to interview with House January 6 panelHer lawyer said she is eager to ‘clear up any misconceptions’ in helping Donald Trump overturn the 2020 US election Conservative activist Virginia Thomas, the wife of supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, has agreed to participate in a voluntary interview with the House panel investigating the January 6 insurrection, her lawyer said Wednesday.Attorney Mark Paoletta said Thomas is “eager to answer the committee’s questions to clear up any misconceptions about her work relating to the 2020 election”.The committee has sought an interview with Thomas in an effort to know more about her role in trying to help former president Donald Trump overturn his election defeat. She texted with White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and contacted lawmakers in Arizona and Wisconsin in the weeks after the election and before the insurrection.Liz Cheney and Zoe Lofgren to propose bill to stop another January 6 attackRead moreThomas’s willingness to testify comes as the committee is preparing to wrap up its work before the end of the year and is writing a final report laying out its findings about the US Capitol insurrection. The panel announced Wednesday that it will reconvene for a hearing on 28 September, likely the last in a series of hearings that began this summer. The testimony from Thomas was one of the remaining items for the panel as its work comes to a close. The panel has already interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses and shown some of that video testimony in its eight hearings over the summer.The extent of Thomas’ involvement ahead of the Capitol attack is unknown. In the days after news organizations called the presidential election for Biden, Thomas emailed two lawmakers in Arizona to urge them to choose “a clean slate of electors” and “stand strong in the face of political and media pressure”. The Associated Press obtained the emails earlier this year under the state’s open records law.She has said in interviews that she attended the initial pro-Trump rally the morning of 6 January 2021 but left before Trump spoke and the crowds headed for the Capitol.Thomas, a Trump supporter long active in conservative causes, has repeatedly maintained that her political activities posed no conflict of interest with the work of her husband.“Like so many married couples, we share many of the same ideals, principles and aspirations for America. But we have our own separate careers, and our own ideas and opinions too. Clarence doesn’t discuss his work with me, and I don’t involve him in my work,” Thomas told the Washington Free Beacon in an interview published in March.Thomas has been openly critical of the committee’s work, including signing on to a letter to House Republicans calling for the expulsion of Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger from the GOP conference for joining the January 6 congressional committee.CNN first reported that Thomas agreed to the interview.Clarence Thomas was the lone dissenting voice when the supreme court ruled in January to allow a congressional committee access to presidential diaries, visitor logs, speech drafts and handwritten notes relating to the January 6 attack.It’s unclear if the hearing would provide a general overview of what the panel has learned or if it would be focused on new information and evidence, such as an interview with Thomas. The committee conducted several interviews at the end of July and into August with Trump’s cabinet secretaries, some of whom had discussed invoking the constitutional process in the 25th amendment to remove Trump from office after the insurrection. Liz Cheney, the Republican vice chairwoman, said the committee “has far more evidence to share with the American people and more to gather”.TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsClarence ThomasDonald TrumpUS elections 2020US Capitol attackUS politicsnewsReuse this content More