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      Nancy Pelosi says lawmakers who aided in Capitol attack may be prosecuted

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      House speaker Nancy Pelosi has said it is possible that members of Congress could face prosecution if found to have “aided and abetted” the violent attack on the Capitol earlier this month that left five people dead.“Justice is called for as we address insurrection perpetrated against the Capitol last week,” the Democratic speaker told reporters on Friday.“If, in fact, it is found that members of Congress were accomplices to this insurrection,” the Democratic speaker said on Friday. “If they aided and abetted the crime, there may have to be actions taken beyond the Congress in terms of prosecution for that.”Pelosi’s comments came after Mikie Sherrill, a Democratic congresswoman of New Jersey, said she saw colleagues leading groups on “reconnaissance” tours of the Capitol a day before the riot.More than 30 Democrats have signed on to a letter, spearheaded by Sherrill, seeking more information about the tours that took place at the Capitol on 5 January.At the press conference – her first since the House impeached Donald Trump for a second time over his role in encouraging the pro-Trump mob – Pelosi announced there would be a review of Capitol security.She said retired Lt Gen Russel Honoré was being tapped to lead a security review of the US Capitol in the wake of last week’s deadly insurrection.Honoré is perhaps best known for overseeing humanitarian aid efforts in Louisiana following Hurricane Katrina. Pelosi says Honoré will conduct an immediate review of security and inter-agency interaction and Capitol “command and control”.Pelosi would not provide specific details on when she would transmit the article of impeachment to the Senate.“They’re now working on taking this to trial,” the speaker said of the impeachment managers. “You’ll be the first to know when we announce that we’re going over there.”Once the Senate receives the article, the chamber must begin a trial to determine whether the president should be convicted and removed from office.Though the trial will probably conclude after president-elect Joe Biden has taken the oath of office on 20 January, a conviction would prevent Trump from running for president again. A handful of Republican senators have already criticized Trump and signaled that they have not decided whether to support conviction, but at least 17 would need to break ranks to convict.Meanwhile, the justice department inspector general announced on Friday that it was launching a review of the department’s role in the riot. The inspector general, Michael Horowitz, said his office would “assess whether there are any weaknesses in DoJ protocols, policies, or procedures that adversely affected the ability of DoJ or its components to prepare effectively for and respond to the events at the US Capitol on January 6”.The justice department has already opened 175 criminal investigations in connection to the Capitol riot, and that number is expected to surpass 300 by the end of Friday, a federal prosecutor said.Speaking at a press conference, Michael Sherwin, the acting US attorney for the District of Columbia, said his office is exploring “more significant felony charges” against those involved in the riot.Sherwin said there are also growing indications that law enforcement officers, both current and former, participated in the riot.“We don’t care what your profession is,” Sherwin said. “We will charge you, and you will be arrested.”Steven D’Antuono, the FBI assistant director who leads the Washington field office, said even friends and family of the rioters are providing tips to the bureau.D’Antuono said, “You might want to turn yourselves in instead of wondering when we’re going to knock on your door – because we will.” More

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      Washington and state capitols brace for violence from armed Trump supporters

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      Washington DC and capitols across the US are bracing for violence this weekend after law enforcement officials warned that armed pro-Trump insurrectionists are planning to swarm the cities in the days before President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration
      Security measures have been dramatically strengthened following the 6 January attack on the Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump and members of far-right groups that left five people dead, including a police officer.
      The planned demonstrations and threat of violence, which come as the country still battles the coronavirus pandemic, have had a chilling effect on plans for Biden and Kamala Harris’s inauguration on 20 January. Trump is expected to leave the White House for the final time that morning.
      An inauguration rehearsal ceremony that was set for Sunday was postponed until Monday over security concerns, Politico reported. The National Mall is expected to be closed to the public on inauguration day.
      Following a briefing from Secret Service and FBI authorities, Biden also canceled his plans to ride the Amtrak train from his home town of Wilmington, Delaware, to Washington for the inauguration.
      The House oversight committee sent letters to 27 prominent travel companies on Friday, urging them to use “screening measures” to prevent their services from being used to facilitate plots ahead of Biden’s inauguration. The companies included car rental giants Avis and Hertz and hotel chains Marriott and Hyatt.
      In an internal FBI memo first reported by ABC earlier this week, officials warned: “Armed protests are being planned at all 50 state capitols.”
      “The FBI received information about an identified armed group intending to travel to Washington, DC on [Saturday] 16 January … They have warned that if Congress attempts to remove Potus via the 25th amendment, a huge uprising will occur,” the document noted.
      The memo also said the group planned “to ‘storm’ government offices including in the District of Columbia and in every state” on 20 January.
      Efforts to remove the president from office faltered, but on Wednesday, Trump became the first US president to be impeached twice, after the House of Representatives condemned him for inciting a violent insurrection and encouraging a mob of his supporters to storm the US Capitol.
      Organizers of the planned unrest are believe to have moved their activities from mainstream social media websites to more secretive online forums to avoid detection, but some details about plans have emerged. In an online advert for a “Million Militia March” scheduled for inauguration day in Washington, a caption read: “The Trumpists will be keeping DC and the military busy on the 20th as you can see.”
      The FBI is also reported to be monitoring “various threats to harm President-Elect Biden ahead of the presidential inauguration” and “additional reports indicate threats against VP-Elect Harris and Speaker Pelosi”.
      Security measures to stave off violence in Washington and across the country have been extensive. Federal and local authorities have already set up a security zone downtown and 20,000 national guard members will deploy to Washington. Federal security authorities have also asked officials in Virginia to close all crossings into downtown Washington between 6am Saturday and 6am on 21 January, the Washington Post reported.
      State capitols, some of which have already seen the resumption of legislative sessions, started ramping up security this week. The New York police department is sending 200 officers to the state Capitol to assist with security, a top NYPD official said on Thursday. And national guard members were sent to Olympia, Washington, to support security efforts this week — arresting two protesters who tried to enter the capitol building without authorization, NPR reported.
      Safety concerns have spurred Michigan officials to erect a 6ft fence around the state’s capitol building. The last time authorities used fencing at the capital was in 1994 – when the Klu Klux Klan held a demonstration there, Mlive.com reported.
      Michigan capitol authorities have also banned the open carry of guns inside the building following an armed anti-lockdown protest this spring. Several participants in that demonstration were later accused of plotting to kidnap Michigan’s Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer.
      In Austin, Texas, national guard members and state troopers secured the capitol building when the legislature met on Tuesday. One man, a member of a group named Patriots for America, was removed from Capitol grounds for toting an AR-15 rifle.
      New details about the Capitol riot emerged on Friday, demonstrating just how close the violent mob got to the vice-president, who was overseeing the electoral vote certification of Biden’s victory when the building was breached.
      Pence was not evacuated from the Senate chamber for about 14 minutes after rioters entered the Capitol. Many shouted that Pence was a “traitor” as they made their way towards his location, according to the Washington Post. Pence was moved to a room off the chamber just moments before rioters entered the chamber.
      Federal prosecutors in Arizona this week described how the rioters involved in the 6 January attack on the Capitol had intended “to capture and assassinate elected officials”.
      The disclosure in a court filing came as prosecutors pushed for the detention of Jacob Chansley, the QAnon conspiracy theorist who was photographed wearing horns in the US Senate chamber and standing at Pence’s desk.
      “Strong evidence, including Chansley’s own words and actions at the Capitol, supports that the intent of the Capitol rioters was to capture and assassinate elected officials in the United States government,” prosecutors alleged.
      The charges against Chansley “involve active participation in an insurrection attempting to violently overthrow the United States government”; prosecutors also warned in their detention memo that “the insurrection is still in progress”. More

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      Trump impeachment risks bogging down early days of Biden presidency

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      The prospect of Donald Trump facing a bitter impeachment trial in the US Senate threatens to cast a shadow over the earliest days of Joe Biden’s presidency, as Washington on Thursday headed into a militarized virtual lockdown ahead of next week’s inauguration.With warnings of more violent protests being planned following the pro-Trump mob’s deadly attack on the US Capitol last week, some Republican members of Congress who voted for the unprecedented second impeachment of the president fear they are in personal danger.Peter Meijer, a Michigan Republican who voted along with the Democratic majority in the House on Wednesday to impeach Trump, on the charge of incitement of insurrection – after he encouraged the riot in a futile attempt to overturn his election defeat by force – said some of his colleagues were hiring armed escorts and acquiring body armor out of fear for their safety.“When it comes to my family’s safety, that’s something that we’ve been planning for, preparing for, taking appropriate measures,” Meijer told MSNBC.“Our expectation is that somebody may try to kill us,” he said.“Our expectation is that somebody may try to kill us.” — Rep. Peter Meijer (R-MI), who voted to impeach Trump, says he and other lawmakers believe their lives are in danger following yesterday’s impeachment.He also says they are altering their routines and buying body armor. pic.twitter.com/stOO00OKYD— The Recount (@therecount) January 14, 2021
      There is no schedule yet for when the House may present the article of impeachment – essentially the charge against Trump – to the Senate for trial.Trump was acquitted at his first impeachment trial in the Senate early last year after being charged with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, stemming from his request that Ukraine investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter ahead of the 2020 election.The Senate resumes full session on the eve of the inauguration events on 20 January to install Biden as the 46th US president and Kamala Harris as his vice-president.A swift impeachment trial would entangle Biden’s urgent efforts to have his cabinet choices confirmed by the Senate and fire up his agenda to tackle the raging coronavirus pandemic as well as the related economic crisis and vaccination chaos.There is no real prospect of Trump being ousted before Biden takes office next Wednesday, after the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, rejected Democratic calls for a quick trial in the Republican-led chamber, saying there was no way to finish it before Trump leaves office.Biden, meanwhile, has urged Senate leaders to avoid an all-consuming trial during his first days in the White House so that they can focus on the crises facing his incoming administration.“I hope that the Senate leadership will find a way to deal with their constitutional responsibilities on impeachment while also working on the other urgent business of this nation,” Biden said in a statement on Wednesday night.Biden’s inauguration events have already been scaled back due to security concerns and the risks of spreading infection during the Covid-19 pandemic.The west front of the Capitol building, where the swearing-in occurs and which was overrun by marauding rioters invading the US Congress last week, is now fortified by fencing, barriers and thousands of national guard troops. Soldiers have been sleeping sprawled in the marble corridors of the complex.Trump himself is increasingly isolated at the White House and “in self-pity mode”, according to several reports.Under the US constitution, a two-thirds majority is needed in the Senate to convict Trump, before or after he leaves office, meaning at least 17 Republicans in the 100-member chamber would have to join the Democrats.McConnell’s vote would be crucial. At Trump’s first impeachment, no House Republicans voted in favor of charging him and all Republicans in the Senate voted to acquit him except for Utah’s Mitt Romney.If McConnell signaled to his caucus that he would vote to convict Trump this time, that could give other senators the cover they needed to follow suit if they believed privately that Trump deserved it but feared a backlash from voters.On Wednesday, McConnell released a note to Republican senators in which he did not deny that he backed the impeachment push, the New York Times reported. The leader said that he had “not made a final decision on how I will vote, and I intend to listen to the legal arguments when they are presented to the Senate”.McConnell and some other senior Republicans may see conviction as a way to prevent Trump being a liability to the party in the future, and therefore an opportunity.If Trump is already out of office by the time of the trial, historical precedent suggests the Senate could disqualify him from holding office in the future with only a simple majority vote.But the legal details and what would happen, including if Trump attempted to pardon himself in his last days in the White House, are far from resolved.The Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, set to become majority leader when Biden takes office, said that no matter the timing, “there will be an impeachment trial in the United States Senate, there will be a vote on convicting the president for high crimes and misdemeanors, and if the president is convicted, there will be a vote on barring him from running again.”The Florida Republican senator Marco Rubio has warned, meanwhile, that the impeachment process risks making Trump a martyr to his diehard supporters.Rubio told NBC he thought Trump bore some responsibility for the attack on the Capitol, which happened on the day both chambers of Congress were meeting in order to certify Joe Biden’s victory, but that putting Trump on trial could make things worse.“It’s like pouring gasoline on fire,” he said, noting that some who were displeased with Trump “after seeing what happened last week, sort of reckoning with the last four years – now all of a sudden they’re circling the wagons and it threatens to make him a martyr.”No US president has ever been removed from office via impeachment. Three – Trump in 2019, Bill Clinton in 1998 and Andrew Johnson in 1868 – were impeached by the House but acquitted by the Senate. Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 rather than face impeachment. More

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      Donald Trump impeached a second time over mob attack on US Capitol

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      The House of Representatives on Wednesday impeached Donald Trump for inciting a violent insurrection against the government of the United States a week after he encouraged a mob of his supporters to storm the US Capitol, a historic condemnation that makes him the only American president to be charged twice with committing high crimes and misdemeanors.
      After an emotional day-long debate in the chamber where lawmakers cowered last week as rioters vandalized the Capitol, 10 House Republicans joined Democrats to embrace the constitution’s gravest remedy after vowing to hold Trump to account before he leaves office next week.
      The sole article of impeachment charges the defeated president with “inciting an insurrection” that led to what the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said would be immortalized as a “day of fire” on Capitol Hill.
      The president, Pelosi said, represented a “clear and present danger to the nation we all love”.
      The final count was 232 to 197, with 10 members of the president’s party supporting his unprecedented second impeachment, making it the most bipartisan impeachment vote in US history. Among them was Liz Cheney, the No 3 House Republican and daughter of Dick Cheney, George W Bush’s vice-president. Though she did not rise to speak on Wednesday, she issued a blistering statement announcing her decision, in which she said that there had “never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States” than Trump’s conduct on 6 January.

      “The president of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack,” said Cheney in a statement.
      Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, attempted to carve a middle path for his caucus. He said Trump “bears responsibility” for Wednesday’s attack, while warning that impeachment would “further fan the flames of partisan division”. As an alternative, he proposed a censure. More

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      Conspiracists peddle myths, not theories | Letter

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      I was pleased when the Guardian began to use the phrase “global heating” instead of “global warming”. In the same vein, I ask you to reconsider repeated use of the term “conspiracy theory” (Authorities on high alert across US as fears over far-right violence intensify, 12 January).It is misleading to suggest that elaborate lies are “theories”. Undergraduate students have occasionally responded to objections to unsupported claims as “that’s just your theory”. Theory is serious.It is crucial to name and analyse real conspiracies, through investigations by reporters. But conspiracies to promote lies, such as QAnon, are not “theories”. It is time to change the discourse.What to use instead? Charles Eisenstein uses “conspiracy myth”. Other terms such as “conspiracy fantasy” can work. “Myth” seems to capture the sense of a shared and comprehensive belief system, yet “myth” can be a positive term describing many things, from Jungian psychology to anthropological research. The myth of American goodness is invoked by politicians of all stripes, despite the long continuity of racist images, such as the Confederate flag, worn or carried by those who assaulted the US Congress. It is important to discuss what term to use, but please don’t use “theory”.Harriet Friedmann Toronto, Canada More

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      Jamie Raskin: grieving congressman leads push to impeach Trump

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      For Jamie Raskin, the Democratic congressman and constitutional law professor who is leading the push to impeach Donald Trump for a second time, the last fortnight has been tumultuous.He lost his son 25-year-old son, Tommy, who had struggled with depression, on New Year’s Eve.Seeing it as his duty, Raskin attended last week’s certification of Joe Biden’s presidential victory in Congress with members of his family, from whom he was separated as a mob of pro-Trump extremists stormed the Capitol building.Despite these profound emotional shocks, Raskin has spent the last week drafting the article of impeachment against Trump over his role in inciting the storming of Congress, which is likely to be voted on by the House of Representatives later on Wednesday.The day before the storming of the Capitol, Raskin had buried his son, who died after leaving his family a note. “Please forgive me,” he had written. “My illness won today. Please look after each other, the animals, and the global poor for me. All my love, Tommy.”As he stood to speak in the debate on the certification less than 24 hours later, Raskin – who had pinned a piece of black cloth to his lapel – received a standing ovation from fellow members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, who were aware of his recent loss and that he had still come to vote.Not long afterwards, the Trumpist mob broke in.Since then, Raskin has authored the House resolution that called on the vice-president, Mike Pence, to invoke the 25th amendment and declare Trump unable to complete his term, which expires next week. Pence ruled out doing that Tuesday night.The chamber quickly moved to the article of impeachment, which Raskin also helped draft. He has been clear about why he has needed to push through the difficult emotions he and his family have been confronting to hold Trump to account.“The president is a lethal danger to the American republic and the American people,” Raskin told the Atlantic magazine last week as he began drawing up the article of impeachment. “There has been nothing like this since the civil war.”And as Raskin told the Washington Post, he felt his son’s presence throughout the recent events. “I felt him in my heart and in my chest,” he said. “All the way through the counting of the electoral college votes and through the nightmare of the armed attack on the Capitol.”His son, a law student, as Raskin explained to the paper, had once asked him a question that had focused his mind.For a class about the first amendment issue of freedom of speech, Tommy Raskin had asked his father about “incitement to imminent lawless action”, and whether a government official who had sworn an oath to uphold the constitution should be held to a higher standard.“That ironically is going to be the critical issue for us talking about Donald Trump,” said Raskin. “Some people are saying: ‘Well, Donald Trump was just exercising his free speech.’ As president of the United States, he cannot be encouraging, counselling and inciting mobs that go and attack the Capitol of the United States.”Raskin is clear about what the US is confronting in the aftermath of the assault on Congress.“The president didn’t want to let go, and the fruit of his obsession with his big lie that he had actually won the election was this nightmarish assault on Congress,” Raskin said. “The president has become a clear and present danger to the republic.”“That is the groundwork for fascism, when you add racism, antisemitism, conspiracy theory and magical thinking. That is an absolute powder keg in terms of an assault on democracy,” Raskin said of the riot in an interview. “So we have to be very tough, and very strong right now in defending the constitution and democracy.”During the storming of Congress, Raskin’s thoughts were mostly on his 23-year-old daughter, Tabitha, and his son-in-law, who had accompanied him to the Capitol and were separated in the mayhem.When they were eventually reunited, Raskin assured his daughter that the next time she went to the Capitol, it would be calmer. “Dad, I don’t think there’s gonna be a next time,” she replied.Associated Press contributed to this reportIn the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or by emailing jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org. More

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      Liz Cheney, No 3 House Republican, will vote to impeach Trump

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      Powerful conservative joins growing number of Republicans seeking accountability for president after Capitol attackLiz Cheney, the third-highest-ranking Republican leader in the House, has said she will vote to impeach the president on Wednesday, as a growing cohort of Republicans back efforts to hold Donald Trump accountable for inciting the attack on the US Capitol last week.In a strongly worded statement released on Tuesday, Cheney, a representative from Wyoming and the daughter of the former vice-president Dick Cheney, said that Trump had “summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack”. Continue reading… More