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      Republican party calls January 6 attack ‘legitimate political discourse’

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      Republican party calls January 6 attack ‘legitimate political discourse’Party censures Cheney and Kinzinger, the only Republicans on the Capitol attack House panel, as Pence says ‘Trump is wrong’ In an extraordinary move, the Republican party officially said Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn his 2020 election defeat and the deadly attack on the US Capitol were “legitimate political discourse”.Revealed: Trump reviewed draft order that authorized voting machines to be seizedRead moreA leading Democrat on the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection said historians would be “aghast”.The move by the Republican National Committee (RNC) came at its winter meetings in Salt Lake City on Friday, as part of the formal censure of Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, the only Republicans on the January 6 panel.A resolution approved unanimously said Cheney and Kinzinger were engaged in the “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse”.On January 6, 2021, two weeks before the inauguration of Joe Biden, the US Capitol in Washington was attacked by Trump supporters who the former president had told to “fight like hell” in service of his lie that his defeat was the result of electoral fraud.The Confederate battle flag was carried into the halls of Congress. Rioters smeared feces on walls. Property was stolen, windows smashed. Members of Congress were hurried to safety. Some rioters sought lawmakers to capture and possibly kill. Some chanted for the hanging of Mike Pence, Trump’s vice-president who resisted pressure to refuse to certify electoral college results.Seven people died. More than 100 police officers were hurt. More than 700 people have been charged. Eleven members of a far-right militia face charges of seditious conspiracy.Steve Bannon, a close Trump adviser, has pleaded not guilty to criminal contempt of Congress. Mark Meadows, Trump’s White House chief of staff, could face the same sanction.Trump was impeached for inciting an insurrection but acquitted by Republican senators. He has repeatedly promised pardons for January 6 rioters if he is president again. He has openly stated that his goal was to “overturn” the election.Revelations concerning his involvement in events prior to and on January 6 keep coming.On Friday, the Guardian revealed that Trump personally reviewed a draft executive order concerning the seizure of voting machines in key states and came close to approving the appointment of Sidney Powell, a lawyer and conspiracy theorist, as a special counsel to investigate electoral fraud.CNN, meanwhile, reported that Trump spoke to Jim Jordan of Ohio, a leading ally House ally, for 10 minutes on the morning of January 6.What did Jim Jordan know about the insurrection and when did he know it? | Sidney BlumenthalRead moreWhat Jordan knew about the Capitol attack and when he knew it remains a central part of the House investigation. Jordan has refused to co-operate. Many expect him to play a prominent role in moves for vengeance should Republicans retake the House in November’s midterm elections.Newt Gingrich, a former House speaker and candidate for the presidential nomination now advising Republican leaders, has said the party could seek to jail members of the January 6 committee.Some establishment Republicans have stood up to Trump. Pence, who faces a difficult balancing act ahead of a likely presidential run in 2024, spoke on Friday at a Florida event staged by the conservative Federalist Society.“President Trump is wrong,” he said. “I had no right to overturn the election.”Pence also said: “The truth is there’s more at stake than our party or our political fortunes. If we lose faith in the constitution, we won’t just lose elections – we’ll lose our country.”Mitt Romney, meanwhile, was one of seven Republican senators who voted to impeach Trump in 2021 over the Capitol attack – and the only one to vote to convict in Trump’s first impeachment in 2019, over approaches to Ukraine for dirt on Biden. On Friday, the Utah senator condemned the decision to censure Cheney and Kinzinger.“Shame falls on a party that would censure persons of conscience, who seek truth in the face of vitriol,” Romney wrote. “Honour attaches to Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for seeking truth even when doing so comes at great personal cost.”Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee for president, did not mention that the RNC chair, Ronna McDaniel, is his niece. McDaniel stopped using Romney in her name after Trump took power.Other Republicans in Congress, media reported, sought to avoid discussion of the RNC resolution. Democrats excoriated it. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, a member of the January 6 committee who led Trump’s second impeachment, told the New York Times: “The Republican party is so off the deep end now that they are describing an attempted coup and a deadly insurrection as political expression.“It is a scandal that historians will be aghast at.”Rick Wilson, a former Republican strategist now part of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, said the resolution showed his old party was now a “cult”. Republicans, he said, “don’t get to retcon 1/6”.The RNC seems determined to try, though it has not yet gone further and kicked Cheney and Kinzinger out of the party, a goal of many Trump supporters.Kinzinger will leave Congress in November, among Republicans who voted for impeachment who have said they will retire.He said he had been censured for upholding his oath of office by a party which had “allowed conspiracies and toxic tribalism to hinder their ability to see clear-eyed”.Cheney, the daughter of the former congressman, defense secretary and vice-president Dick Cheney, faces a Trump-backed challenger endorsed by her own state party.She said: “The leaders of the Republican party have made themselves willing hostages to a man who admits he tried to overturn a presidential election and suggests he would pardon January 6 defendants, some of whom have been charged with seditious conspiracy.“I’m a constitutional conservative and I do not recognise those in my party who have abandoned the constitution to embrace Donald Trump. History will be their judge. I will never stop fighting for our constitutional republic. No matter what.”McDaniel told the Washington Post: “We’ve had two members engage in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens who engaged in legitimate political discourse. This has gone beyond their original intent. They are not sticking up for hard-working Republicans.”TopicsRepublicansUS Capitol attackUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Revealed: Trump reviewed draft order that authorized voting machines to be seized

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      Revealed: Trump reviewed draft order that authorized voting machines to be seized Then president, during contentious December 2020 meeting, also agreed to appoint Sidney Powell as special counsel to investigate fraud

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      Weeks after the 2020 election, Donald Trump reviewed a draft executive order that authorized the national guard to seize voting machines and verbally agreed to appoint Sidney Powell, a campaign lawyer and conspiracy theorist, as special counsel to investigate election fraud.Trump considered blanket pardon for Capitol insurrectionists – reportRead moreThe two previously unreported actions of the former president – which is certain to interest the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack and Trump’s efforts to overturn his defeat – came during a contentious White House meeting on 18 December 2020.Trump never followed through with issuing a formal executive order authorizing the seizure of voting machines or appointing a special counsel. But four sources with detailed knowledge of what transpired during the 18 December meeting described to the Guardian how close he came to doing so.The draft executive order Trump reviewed was one of the final versions Powell had prepared. An early version of the document was published by Politico. Another version, obtained by CNN, empowered the Department of Homeland Security instead of the Department of Defense.But all versions included language that would have allowed Trump to appoint a special counsel to investigate claims of foreign interference in the 2020 election, which the Department of Justice had already determined were without foundation.The draft executive order seen by Trump was retained automatically by the White House as a presidential record. It was recently turned over to the select committee by the National Archives after the supreme court rejected Trump’s appeal to block its release.Trump was handed the document when he sat down with four informal advisers – Powell, Trump’s former national security advisor Michael Flynn, former Trump aide Emily Newman and former Overstock chief executive Patrick Byrne – who had arrived at the White House unannounced.The group had not scheduled an audience with Trump, but after Byrne messaged an acquaintance, they were cleared to enter the White House by Garrett Ziegler, a policy aide to former Trump advisor Peter Navarro, and Patrick Weaver, an aide with the National Security Council.It is understood that the four were not registered in the West Wing guest access system as meeting with the former president, which may have violated national security protocols.In a statement, Byrne said Trump had called the group into the Oval Office after he saw Flynn, his former national security adviser, with the rest of the group about 25ft from the room. Eric Herschmann, a White House senior adviser, slipped in behind them.Trump first reviewed the draft executive order and documents brought by Powell, including a physical copy of Trump’s executive order 13848 that authorized sweeping powers in the event of foreign election interference, as she ran through the supposed legality of suspending normal law.Powell and Newman told Trump that he could rely on that order and classified National Security Presidential Memoranda 13 and 21 – cyber-security memos referenced in Powell’s draft executive order – to have the national guard seize voting machines.That prompted pushback from the former White House counsel Patrick Cipollone, who had joined the meeting with former White House staff secretary, Derek Lyons, who supported Cipollone’s claim that Trump lacked the constitutional authority to take such measures.Byrne made another attempt to convince Trump to appoint Powell as special counsel and have Flynn act as “field marshal” to coordinate her efforts. The draft executive order said Flynn would be “direct liaison” to coordinate the “applicable US departments and agencies”.Byrne claimed Trump had a range of options. He could decide whether to investigate election fraud in six, 12 or 31 states; whether to “image” hard drives in voting machines or seize them; and whether to have that done by the national guard, DHS or the FBI.Trump appeared open to such advice. Late that Friday night, two of the sources said, he told Cipollone he would just make Powell special counsel. When Cipollone said Powell would need a security clearance, which he said was probably impossible, Trump said he would grant it.But after nearly all of Trump’s formal advisers shot down Powell’s suggestions, Trump did not sign the draft executive order. Instead, he instructed Powell to coordinate with his attorney, Rudy Giuliani, about seizing voting machines or appointing a special counsel.That posed a problem for Powell, who had been ejected from the Trump campaign’s legal team a few weeks beforehand at Giulaini’s behest.The group then tried again to cajole Trump into issuing some sort of executive order, since Trump still appeared intrigued. But when Trump summoned Giuliani, the former president’s attorney said the gambit would work only in the event of clear foreign interference.Powell, who had spent the previous weeks filing lawsuits alleging that Iran and China hacked into voting machines, sprang up and announced both to everyone in the room and a coterie of aides who had been dialled in on a conference call, that she had a file full of such evidence.Giuliani looked at the documents but told Trump that Powell’s evidence was worthless, accusing her of producing one witness who was willing to testify about foreign election interference and around 10 who had simply signed affidavits saying they agreed.Top advisers including Cipollone and Lyons have told associates they did not think the exchange about making Powell special counsel was serious. But Trump continued for days to mull the special counsel and voting machine ideas.A spokesperson for Trump and a spokesperson for Cipollone did not respond to requests for comment. Powell, Giuliani and Lyons did not respond either. A spokesman for the select committee declined to comment on how the meeting might feature in its investigation.Powell told associates she believed Trump made a decision to authorize her to be a special counsel of some nature. The following day, she called the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, saying she needed office space and a security clearance as the new special counsel.Meadows did not refute Powell’s claim but told her he was working on logistics, and then called Giuliani to tell him Powell was trying to secure another audience with Trump. Giuliani told Meadows that Trump had barred Powell from the White House.But while Meadows and other advisers had refused to grant Powell a “hard pass” that would have allowed her unfettered access to the complex, she returned to the White House on Sunday and Monday with documents on alleged Iranian threats to US election websites.Meadows had revoked Ziegler’s access to the system for permitting White House access but Powell was cleared on a temporary “appointment” pass by another aide. She was, however, blocked from meeting the former president.TopicsDonald TrumpRepublicansUS elections 2020US politicsUS Capitol attacknewsReuse this content More

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      Trump tore up records turned over to House Capitol attack committee

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      Trump tore up records turned over to House Capitol attack committeeNational Archives says it received ripped-up documents from White House before turning them over to Congress Some of the White House records turned over to the House committee investigating the January 6 attack were ripped up by Donald Trump.Quiet part loud: Trump says Pence ‘could have overturned the election’Read moreThe documents include diaries, schedules, handwritten notes, speeches and remarks. The supreme court rejected Trump’s attempt to stop the National Archives turning them over to Congress.In a statement, the Archives said: “Some of the Trump presidential records received by the National Archives and Records Administration included paper records that had been torn up by former president Trump.“These were turned over to the National Archives at the end of the Trump administration, along with a number of torn-up records that had not been reconstructed by the White House. The Presidential Records Act requires that all records created by presidents be turned over to the National Archives at the end of their administrations.”The Archives did not say how it knew Trump had torn the records but his habit of tearing up documents has been widely reported.In 2018, Politico spoke to Solomon Lartey, a records management analyst who spent time “armed with rolls of clear Scotch tape … sft[ing] through large piles of paper and put[ting] them back together … ‘like a jigsaw puzzle’.”Lartey and another staffer who taped records were fired by the White House that year, they said summarily.Lartey said: “They told [Trump] to stop doing it. He didn’t want to stop.”After a process that reached the supreme court, the Archives gave more than 700 documents concerning the Capitol attack to the House committee last month.More than 700 people have been charged over the riot, in which Trump supporters tried to stop certification of his election defeat. Eleven members of a far-right militia are charged with seditious conspiracy. More than 100 police officers were injured. Seven people died.The committee has recommended criminal charges for two Trump associates, former White House strategist Steve Bannon and chief of staff Mark Meadows. Bannon refused co-operation and pleaded not guilty to contempt of Congress. Meadows co-operated, then withdrew. He has not been charged.Speaking to the Washington Post, Stephen Gillers, a New York University law professor, said destroying White House documents “could be a crime under several statutes that make it a crime to destroy government property if that was the intent of the defendant.“A president does not own the records generated by his own administration. The definition of presidential records is broad. Trump’s own notes to himself could qualify and destroying them could be the criminal destruction of government property.”Trump did not comment. Nor did the House committee.It was also reported on Tuesday that text messages were turned over to the committee by Kayleigh McEnany, Trump’s last press secretary.ABC News reported that McEnany appeared before investigators on 13 January.Kamala Harris drove within yards of pipe bomb on January 6 – reportRead moreIt also said the texts were the source for conversations with the Fox News host Sean Hannity, which were quoted by the committee in a request for information from Ivanka Trump, the former president’s daughter and adviser.“1 – no more stolen election talk,” Hannity texted McEnany after the Capitol attack.Referring to possible attempts to remove Trump from power, he added: “2- Yes, impeachment and the 25th amendment are real and many people will quit.”McEnany replied: “Love that. Thank you. That is the playbook. I will help reinforce.”Trump was impeached but acquitted. The 25th amendment, which provides for the removal of a president incapable of fulfilling his or her duties, was not invoked. Trump continues to claim the election was stolen.McEnany is now a Fox News host. She and her employer did not comment. One former Trump White House insider told the Guardian: “She’s an honest woman.”TopicsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackTrump administrationUS politicsUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesnewsReuse this content More

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      Kamala Harris drove within yards of pipe bomb on January 6 – report

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      Kamala Harris drove within yards of pipe bomb on January 6 – reportThen vice-president elect remained inside DNC for nearly two hours before bomb was found, new details by CNN reveal Kamala Harris, then vice-president elect, drove within yards of a pipe bomb left outside the Democratic National Committee on January 6 2021 and remained inside for nearly two hours before the bomb was found, it was reported on Monday.Quiet part loud: Trump says Pence ‘could have overturned the election’Read moreHarris’s proximity to the bomb was known previously, but not how close or for how long. CNN reported the new details in the case, part of alarming events in Washington on the day Congress met to certify Joe Biden’s election victory over Donald Trump.A pipe bomb was also left near the Republican National Committee. More than a year later, no suspect has been named or apprehended.Citing “multiple sources”, CNN said Harris “pulled into DNC headquarters in Washington at around 11.30am ET with her motorcade through the garage leading to the parking deck near where law enforcement discovered the pipe bomb”.It also cited a US Capitol police document that showed “an unnamed ‘protectee’ was removed from the DNC building at approximately 1.14pm ET – seven minutes after Capitol Police began investigating the bomb”.That protectee was known to be Harris when Politico first reported the story, but it was not known how long she was in the building.More than 700 people have been charged in connection with the attack on the Capitol on January 6, including 11 members of a far-right militia who face charges of seditious conspiracy. One rioter pleaded guilty to bringing with him Molotov cocktails, guns and other weapons.The rioters attacked after Donald Trump told them to “fight like hell” in service of his lie that his defeat by Biden was the result of electoral fraud. Seven people died and more than 100 police officers were injured.Trump was impeached but acquitted. A House committee has recommended criminal charges. Steve Bannon, a former Trump adviser, has pleaded not guilty to contempt of Congress.The White House and Harris’s office did not comment on CNN’s pipe bomb report. A Secret Service spokesperson told CNN that “in order to maintain operational security”, it did not comment on protection arrangements.CNN said a “law enforcement source” said the Secret Service “swept the interior of the building, the driveway, parking deck and entrances and exits prior to [Harris’s] arrival” and Harris was “evacuated using an alternate route away from the bomb”.Earlier this month, Lis Wiehl, a former prosecutor and author of a book on the hunt for the Unabomber, told the Atlantic would-be bombers were usually “trying to send a message through killing people”.Of the Capitol Hill pipe bomber, she said: “Because it wasn’t successful and they weren’t apprehended, you can bet they’re thinking about doing it again – and doing it better.”TopicsKamala HarrisUS Capitol attackUS politicsJoe BidennewsReuse this content More

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      Trump pardon promise for Capitol rioters ‘stuff of dictators’ – Nixon aide

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      Trump pardon promise for Capitol rioters ‘stuff of dictators’ – Nixon aideTrump makes promise at rally in Texas on SaturdayJohn Dean: ‘Failure to confront tyrant encourages bad behavior’ Donald Trump’s promise to pardon supporters who attacked the US Capitol on January 6 2021 was “the stuff of dictators”, Richard Nixon’s White House counsel warned.Trump tours the country endorsing candidates to reinforce the ‘big lie’Read moreTrump made the promise at a rally in Conroe, Texas, on Saturday.“If I run and if I win,” he said, referring to the 2024 presidential election, “we will treat those people from January 6 fairly. We will treat them fairly. And if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons because they are being treated so unfairly.”More than 700 people have been charged in connection with the Capitol attack, around which seven people died as Trump supporters tried to stop certification of his election defeat, in service of his lie that it was caused by electoral fraud. More than 100 police officers were hurt.Eleven members of the far-right Oath Keepers militia have been charged with seditious conspiracy. Trump himself was impeached for inciting the riot. Ten House Republicans voted to impeach but Trump was acquitted when only seven Republican senators found him guilty. That left him free to run for office again.John Dean, 83, was White House counsel from 1970 to 1973 before being disbarred and detained as a result of the Watergate scandal, which led to Nixon’s resignation in 1974. Dean responded to Trump on Twitter.“This is beyond being a demagogue to the stuff of dictators,” he wrote. “He is defying the rule of law. Failure to confront a tyrant only encourages bad behaviour. If thinking Americans don’t understand what Trump is doing and what the criminal justice system must do we are all in big trouble!”Trump was generous with pardons in office, recipients including Steve Bannon and Michael Flynn, both now targets of the House committee investigating January 6 and with Trump in its sights. On Sunday morning, the New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu, widely seen as a relative moderate in Trump’s Republican party, was asked if pardons should be offered to Capitol rioters.“Of course not,” he told CNN’s State of the Union. “Oh, my goodness. No.”Even Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina senator and dogged Trump ally, said the former president was wrong.“I don’t want to send any signals that it was OK to defile the Capitol,” he told CBS’s Face the Nation. “I want to deter what people did on January 6, and those who did it, I hope they go to jail and get the book thrown at them because they deserve it.”But a moderate Republican, Susan Collins of Maine, indicated the hold Trump has on the party. Appearing on ABC’s This Week, the senator said Trump should not “have made that pledge to do pardons. We should let the judicial process proceed.”But Collins, who voted to convict Trump over the Capitol attack, would not say that she would not support him if he ran for president again.“Well certainly it’s not likely given the many other qualified candidates that we have, that have expressed interest in running,” she said. “So it’s very unlikely.”Trump dominates polling concerning potential Republican nominees for 2024.Others deplored Trump’s words in Texas. Richard Painter, a White House ethics counsel under George W Bush, said the promise of pardons should, constitutionally speaking, stop Trump running again.“This alone is giving aid or comfort to an insurrection within the meaning of the 14th amendment, section three,” Painter wrote. “Trump is DISQUALIFIED from public office.”Trump also complained about investigations of his business and political affairs which have landed him legal jeopardy. On Sunday, Graham, whose actions in support of Trump are being investigated in Georgia, said he would cooperate if asked.“Yeah,” he said. “Give me a call.”But he also complained about a supposed “effort here to use the law, I think inappropriately. So I don’t know what they’re going to do in Fulton county [Georgia]. I don’t know what the January 6 committee is going to do. I expect those who defile the Capitol to be prosecuted. But there’s a political movement using the law to try to knock Trump out of running. And I, particularly, don’t like it or appreciate it.”Lindsey Graham, reverse ferret: how John McCain’s spaniel became Trump’s poodleRead moreIn Texas, Trump urged supporters to protest.“If these radical, vicious, racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal,” he said, “I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protests we have ever had in Washington DC, in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere, because our country and our elections are corrupt.”Prosecutors, he said, were “trying to put me in jail. These prosecutors are vicious, horrible people. They’re racists and they’re very sick. They’re mentally sick. They’re going after me without any protection of my rights by the supreme court or most other courts.”Glenn Kirschner, a former federal prosecutor now a legal analyst for NBC, said: “Trump is not only encouraging his supporters to violence if he’s arrest[ed], he’s also signaling that he’ll pardon them, just as he’ll pardon the [January 6] insurrectionists.“Will this finally move prosecutors to hold him accountable for his crimes?”TopicsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackUS politicsUS elections 2024TexasnewsReuse this content More

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      January 6 panel subpoenas figures in scheme backing fake Trump electors

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      January 6 panel subpoenas figures in scheme backing fake Trump electorsHouse committee seeks to determine whether Trump White House was behind plan to send false certificates to Congress The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack on Friday issued subpoenas to lead participants in an audacious scheme to send fake Trump slates of electors to Congress.The development comes as the panel seeks to learn whether the plan was coordinated by the Trump White House.The fake certificates – which falsely declared Donald Trump the winner of the 2020 election, though the states had officially declared otherwise – are significant as they appear to have been a central tenet of the former president’s effort to return himself to power.Capitol attack committee has spoken to Trump AG William Barr, chairman saysRead moreThe fake slates of electors were sent to Congress from seven contested states that were in fact won by Joe Biden. Trump and his allies might have hoped to use them as justification for having Biden’s wins in those states rejected.Congressman Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the select committee, said that he had authorized subpoenas to 14 Republicans who were listed as the chairperson and the secretary of each group of “alternate electors” in order to learn how the scheme was coordinated.The move by the select committee comes days after the deputy attorney general, Lisa Monaco, confirmed that the justice department had opened an investigation into the scheme, raising the stakes for the fake electors and any Trump White House aides who may have been involved.Thompson issued subpoenas to the two most senior Republicans who signed onto the fake certificates in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, including several prominent current and former state Republican party leaders.The subpoena targets included: Nancy Cottle, Loraine Pellegrino, David Shafer, Shawn Still, Kathy Berden, Mayra Rodriguez, Jewll Powdrell, Deborah Maestas, Michael McDonald, James DeGraffenreid, Bill Bachenberg, Lisa Patton, Andrew Hitt and Kelly Ruh.Trump’s plan to return himself to office rested on two elements: the existence, or possible existence, of alternate slates, and then-vice president Mike Pence using the ambiguity of “dueling slates” for Trump and Biden to reject those results at Biden’s certification.The effort to subvert the results of the 2020 election at the joint session of Congress on 6 January fell apart after Pence refused to abuse his ceremonial role to certify the results, and it was clear the “alternate slates” were not legitimate certificates.But in some cases, top officials, such as Republican National Committee members Berden and DeGraffenreid and former state GOP chairs Hitt and Maestas, signed the fake certificates that used official state seals and sent them to the National Archives.“The phony electors were part of the plan to create chaos on Jan. 6,” said congressman Jamie Raskin, a member of the select committee. “The fake slates were an effort to create the illusion of contested state results,” as “a pretext for unilateral rejection of electors.”The panel is seeking to examine whether the effort was coordinated by the Trump White House and whether it amounted to a crime, according to a source familiar with the investigation. The subpoenas compel the production of documents and testimony through February.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsHouse of RepresentativesRepublicansDonald TrumpUS elections 2020newsReuse this content More

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      Seditious conspiracy is rarely proven. The Oath Keepers trial is a litmus test

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      Seditious conspiracy is rarely proven. The Oath Keepers trial is a litmus testExtensive planning and tangible action by the far-right militia group’s members provide ‘strong grounds’ for case, experts say Later this year the founder of the far-right Oath Keepers militia and nine alleged co-conspirators will be the first to face trial on seditious conspiracy charges related to the insurrection at the US Capitol.Outrage as Newt Gingrich says Capitol attack investigators could be jailedRead moreThe charges are significant because they allege that the January 6 attack went beyond disorderly conduct and assaults on law enforcement, instead constituting an organized and violent attempt to stop the democratic transfer of power.But because sedition charges so rarely go to trial, there isn’t a great deal of precedent for how such trials proceed, experts say. And US prosecutors have a checkered history in securing sedition convictions. “It’s been used in ways that have been absurd and has been used in ways that were slam dunks,” said Joshua Braver, an assistant professor of law at the University of Wisconsin.But unlike some previous uses of seditious conspiracy, many experts say the case against the Oath Keepers is strong. “This case is different. This case is a plan that was executed and the federal government is on much stronger grounds,” Braver said. “If anything is seditious conspiracy, this is it.”The checkered history of seditious conspiracy trialsSeditious conspiracy is a broad statute that concerns attempts to overthrow the government, levy war against it or prevent, hinder or delay the execution of any law. It also can be applied in cases where suspects seize any government property and carries up to 20 years in prison if convicted.Partly because seditious conspiracy allegations carry so much political weight, prosecutors have generally been hesitant to bring such charges in the past.“Seditious conspiracy charges are rarely used in American jurisprudence,” said Jeffrey Ian Ross, a criminologist and expert on political crime at the University of Baltimore. Prosecutors can be wary of issuing such charges, even in cases that may fall under its broad statute, he added.The last successfully prosecuted seditious conspiracy case came in the mid-1990s, when authorities charged Islamist extremist Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman and nine co-conspirators with seditious conspiracy. Prosecutors alleged that Abdel-Rahman and his followers plotted to bomb the United Nations, the FBI building and several other landmarks around New York City.During the trial, prosecutors presented the jury with speeches of Abdel-Rahman and a recording from an FBI informant in which Abdel-Rahman discussed attacking military installations. The defense, meanwhile, argued that Abdel-Rahman’s speech was constitutionally protected and that he never directly planned attacks. After a week of deliberation, jury members convicted the group of seditious conspiracy along with numerous other charges. Abdel-Rahman died in prison in 2017.Decades before the Abdel-Rahman trial, prosecutors secured a seditious conspiracy conviction against Puerto Rican nationalists who stormed the Capitol building. The Puerto Rican independence activist Lolita Lebrón and three accomplices entered the House floor and fired dozens of bullets around the chamber, wounding five legislators. The group, along with numerous people charged as co-conspirators, were convicted of seditious conspiracy and spent over two decades in jail until Jimmy Carter commuted their sentence in 1979.Other seditious conspiracy cases have fallen apart once they have gone to trial, including the most recent attempt at the charge in 2012. Prosecutors alleged that nine members of the Christian far-right Hutaree militia committed seditious conspiracy through a plot to kill a police officer and then attack their funeral in order to incite an uprising against the government. The defense successfully argued that militia members’ discussion of violent rebellion was essentially fantastical boasting, protected by the first amendment and that any specific plots were instigated by an FBI informant who had infiltrated the group. The militia members were ultimately acquitted of sedition, albeit with several pleading guilty to less severe weapons charges.A 1988 seditious conspiracy trial involving 13 white supremacists accused of plotting to overthrow the government and assassinate a federal judge provided an even more severe cautionary tale. Prosecutors in the case cut a plea deal with a white supremacist leader, Glenn Miller, who potentially faced decades in prison for other crimes, agreeing to reduce his charges in exchange for him testifying in the sedition trial. But Miller’s testimony turned out to be weak and unreliable, leading to an all-white jury acquitting all 13 white supremacists. The national chaplain of the Ku Klux Klan hugged several defendants following the verdict and touted it as a victory for white nationalism.In the years after the trial, Miller was released from prison and once again became active in the white supremacist movement despite being in the federal witness protection program. In 2014, he killed three people, including a 14-year-old boy, at a Jewish community center and retirement home in Kansas. He died in prison last May.The case against the Oath KeepersThe case against Rhodes and the Oath Keepers is more straightforward than past seditious conspiracy charges against the far right, experts say, both because there appears to be extensive evidence of planning before the Capitol attack and because numerous members took tangible actions to breach the Capitol.Even Rhodes, who is not believed to have actually stormed the building, is alleged to have plotted to bring weapons to the area and coordinate militia movements.In the weeks before the insurrection, Rhodes allegedly purchased tens of thousands of dollars worth of weapons and began communicating to other Oath Keepers in an encrypted group chat. “We aren’t getting through this without a civil war,” he messaged days after the presidential election. One Oath Keeper admitted as part of a plea deal last year that he brought an M4 rifle to a Comfort Inn hotel near the Capitol, while Rhodes and others allegedly discussed “quick reaction force” teams that could move into Washington DC with firearms. Once inside the Capitol, prosecutors state in their indictment that one group of Oath Keepers moved in a military “stack” formation and went in search of the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.The Oath Keepers “coordinated travel across the country to enter Washington, DC, equipped themselves with a variety of weapons, donned combat and tactical gear, and were prepared to answer Rhodes’s call to take up arms”, the charging documents against Rhodes state.Rhodes this week pleaded not guilty to the charges and has repeatedly denied that he has done anything wrong or broken any laws. After federal agents used a warrant to seize his phone in May last year, Rhodes stated that he sat for a nearly three-hour interview with authorities and claimed he had nothing to hide. He claims that Oath Keepers who entered the Capitol went “totally off mission” and that he was only there to prevent his militia members from getting into trouble. At a Texas rally in the months following the insurrection, he told a crowd that he may go to jail for “made-up crimes”.Rhodes was denied bail, in part because the federal judge overseeing his detention hearing stated that the militia leader had installed “elaborate escape tunnels” on his property and posed a flight risk.As one of the most prominent leaders in the far-right movement over the past decade, Rhodes’s trial is set to be the highest-profile case so far in the investigation and one of the most significant domestic extremism cases in years.More than 700 people are charged with crimes related to the insurrection, but the majority of those cases have involved less complex charges that don’t require proving the type of coordination and planning that seditious conspiracy indictments involve. Meanwhile, most of the more than 150 people who have so far pleaded guilty in the investigation have received relatively short sentences or no jail time at all.“They’ve gone for the low-hanging fruit first and things are going to get more interesting as the days go by,” Ross said.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsWashington DCLaw (US)featuresReuse this content More

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      Man who wore ‘Camp Auschwitz’ shirt admits joining US Capitol rioters

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      Man who wore ‘Camp Auschwitz’ shirt admits joining US Capitol rioters Robert Keith Packer of Virginia pleads guilty to parading, demonstrating or picketing in Capitol building A Virginia man who wore a “Camp Auschwitz” sweatshirt at the US Capitol during last year’s riot pleaded guilty on Wednesday to joining the mob of people who stormed the building. Photographs of Robert Keith Packer wearing the sweatshirt with the antisemitic message went viral after the 6 January 2021 insurrection. The words “Camp Auschwitz” were above an image of a human skull. Packer’s sweatshirt also bore the phrase “work brings freedom”, a rough translation of the German words above the entrance gate to Auschwitz, the concentration camp in Poland where Nazis killed more than 1 million men, women and children.Packer’s guilty plea came one day before Holocaust Memorial Day.Packer, 57, of Newport News, Virginia, pleaded guilty to parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building, a misdemeanor that carries a maximum sentence of six months imprisonment. The US district judge Carl Nichols is scheduled to sentence him on 7 April. FBI agents arrested Packer a week after the riot. He remains free pending his sentencing hearing. A witness who contacted law enforcement recognized Packer as a regular customer at a store near Newport News. A surveillance camera captured an image of him wearing the same sweatshirt in the store in December 2020. Packer’s sweatshirt “appears to be a symbol of Nazi hate ideology”, an FBI agent wrote in an affidavit. The assistant US attorney Mona Furst said Packer entered the Capitol despite seeing broken glass and police officers using teargas. Packer was in the area where a police officer shot a rioter, Ashli Babbitt, and he left the building after that fatal shooting, Furst said. A photograph of Packer inside the Capitol shows him near people holding a broken nameplate from the office of the House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi. More than 730 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the Capitol riot. About 200 of them have pleaded guilty, mostly to misdemeanors.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsThe far rightnewsReuse this content More