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      Virginia home of mother of January 6 police officer swatted

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      The home of the mother of Michael Fanone, a Washington DC police officer who nearly died in the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol, was “swatted” on Tuesday night.An unnamed person who had written a manifesto seen by NBC falsely claimed they had killed Fanone’s mother and would go to Fanone’s old high school on Wednesday and shoot people. The manifesto listed Fanone’s mother’s address in Virginia.Fanone’s father was also targeted in the manifesto but was out of the country at the time. He called swatting calls like the one aimed at his parents “incredibly fucking dangerous”.Fanone told NBC News: “How dangerous is it to send law enforcement to an address in which you essentially are describing an active shooter, in which the only person present is a 78-year-old fucking woman.”Fanone spoke of how horrified his mother was that night to open the door and be met with Swat team officers while in her nightgown.Fairfax county police assisted in an investigation into the swatting call.Fanone said the swatting incident likely happened as a “direct result” of the public appearances he makes speaking out against Donald Trump.Speaking at a Biden campaign event earlier on Tuesday outside the courthouse where Trump’s hush-money trial was taking place alongside the Capitol police officer Harry Dunn and the actor Robert De Niro, Fanone said Trump was an “authoritarian who answers to and serves only himself”.Fanone voted for Trump in 2016 but has since thrown his support behind Biden, and blames the Capitol attack on “Trump’s lies”.At the Tuesday press conference, Fanone said: “These supporters were fueled by Trump’s lies and the lies of his surrogates, lies that the 2020 election was stolen. Those same lies have been spewed by Donald Trump and his surrogates about what happened to me and so many other police officers on January 6, 2021 – that day, I was brutally assaulted.”Recounting the attack on the Capitol during which he was on duty, Fanone said he was pulled by the “violent mob” and beaten, almost stripped of his firearm and tasered on his neck.He was assigned a desk job for his safety after leaving the Metropolitan police department later in 2021.The swatting incident involving Fanone’s mother is one of several targeted at high-profile individuals in politics. Others have been aimed at the former UN ambassador and South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, the House Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Florida senator Rick Scott, the Maine secretary of state Shenna Bellows, and the former House Republican from Wisconsin Mike Gallagher, who stepped down because of the threats against him and his family.Amid the spike in these types of threats, Merrick Garland, the US attorney general, said in January: “These threats of violence are unacceptable. They threaten the fabric of our democracy.” More

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      Trump Tells Libertarians to Nominate Him, and Mocks Them When They Boo

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      Former President Donald J. Trump’s appearance before the Libertarian Party on Saturday was without modern precedent: the presumptive nominee of one party addressing the convention of another.Early in his speech at the Libertarian Party’s national convention on Saturday, Donald J. Trump told the party’s delegates bluntly that they should nominate him as its candidate for president. He was vigorously booed.When the jeers died down, Mr. Trump, visibly frustrated with the rowdy reception he had received ever since taking the stage, dug in and went a step further, seeming to insult the very group that had invited him.“Only do that if you want to win,” he said of nominating him. “If you want to lose, don’t do that. Keep getting your three percent every four years.”The boos began anew, only louder.Mr. Trump’s speech was without modern precedent: the presumptive nominee of a major political party giving a prime-time address at another party’s convention.But as Mr. Trump tried to urge Libertarians to unite behind him in a shared effort to defeat President Biden, he was greeted with a hostility absent from the friendly crowds at his rallies, which overshadowed his appeals to their common cause.Mr. Trump’s speech was delivered to an audience that included supporters wearing red MAGA hats, as well as Libertarians who were resentful of his presence at the convention where they will select their own presidential nominee.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Sedition Panda,’ a Jan. 6 Rioter in a Costume Head, Is Convicted

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      Jesse James Rumson, known as Sedition Panda for the costume head he wore, was found guilty of eight charges related to his participation in the breach of the U.S. Capitol.A Florida man who breached the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, while wearing a costume panda head was convicted on Friday of assaulting a police officer and other charges related to the events of that day.The man, Jesse James Rumson, 38, who became known as Sedition Panda, was found guilty of eight total charges, two felonies and six misdemeanors, after a bench trial in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.He was convicted by Judge Carl J. Nichols, who has garnered his own headlines for challenging the Justice Department’s use of a federal obstruction law to prosecute Jan. 6. rioters.In a separate case, Judge Nichols, a Trump appointee, dismissed a charge against another Jan. 6 defendant, Joseph Fischer, for violating a federal law that makes it a crime to corruptly obstruct an official proceeding.The judge dismissed the charge in that case on the grounds that the law strictly concerns white-collar crime, saying that it required a defendant to take “some action with respect to a document, record or other object.” An appeals court reversed the judge’s ruling, and Mr. Fischer successfully brought the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which is expected to release a decision this summer.Prosecutors have invoked the obstruction law against hundreds of rioters, typically in the most serious cases. But prosecutors did not charge Mr. Rumson with violating that law, and Judge Nichols did not appear to have any reservations about the applicability of the charges prosecutors did bring.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      Republican National Committee HQ locked down as vials of blood received

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      The headquarters of the Republican National Committee in Washington DC was placed under lockdown on Wednesday morning reportedly after vials of blood were sent to the building.Eyewitnesses reported several hazmat trucks – equipped to deal with hazardous materials – outside the building, which is near the US Capitol, around 8am.NBC news reported that the substance was cleared, but the area around the building remained cordoned off, resulting in road closures on nearby streets. The Capitol South metro station was also affected, according to metro transit police.The all-clear was given shortly after 9am local time. CNN, citing a police source, reported that a suspicious package containing two vials of blood, a Korean Bible, and two ice packs, had been discovered.The lockdown notice came when House Republicans were due to meet in the building. It is unclear where any members of Congress were present when the incident was reported.According to social media, the RNC was alerted by email that the building had been put under lockdown.Early reports said it was unclear whether anyone was in police custody over the incident. More

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      House G.O.P. Moves to Crack Down on Noncitizen Voting, Sowing False Narrative

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      The bills under consideration have virtually no chance of becoming law, but Republicans are using them to amplify Donald Trump’s false claims of widespread illegal voting by noncitizens.Republicans are pushing legislation to crack down on voting by noncitizens, which happens rarely and is already illegal in federal elections, in a move that reinforces former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to delegitimize the 2024 results if he loses.This week, House Republicans plan to vote on a bill that would roll back a District of Columbia law allowing noncitizens to vote in local elections, which they contend is needed to prevent Democrats from expanding the practice to other jurisdictions. And they are advancing another measure that would require states to obtain proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate or passport, when registering a person to vote.The legislation has virtually no chance of becoming law, but it serves to amplify one of Mr. Trump’s favorite pre-emptive claims of election fraud. It also underscores Republicans’ embrace of a groundless narrative — one that echoes the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory — that Democrats are intentionally allowing migrants to stream into the United States illegally in order to dilute the voting power of American citizens and lock in electoral victories for themselves.Speaker Mike Johnson recently appeared alongside Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago, the former president’s Florida resort and residence, to announce a pledge to get tough on migrants flowing across the border, suggesting with no evidence that they were coming in unchecked as part of a plot to vote for President Biden.“There is currently an unprecedented and a clear and present danger to the integrity of our election system — and that is the threat of noncitizens and illegal aliens voting in our elections,” Mr. Johnson warned during a news conference on the steps of the Capitol this month.But he conceded that he had no evidence to support that assertion.“We all know, intuitively, that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections, but it’s not been something that is easily provable,” Mr. Johnson said. “We don’t have that number.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Review: ‘Problems Between Sisters’ Puts a Spin on the Berserk Boys Club

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      Julia May Jonas turns the menacing male siblings of Sam Shepard’s “True West” into squabbling pregnant sisters in Vermont.When we first see Rory (Annie Fox) she is flaunting a septum piercing, cutoff jeans girdled by a rubber band, and a level of hygiene seemingly designed to repel anyone within her smell radius. She has hitchhiked her way to her aunt’s cozy cabin in Vermont, where her older sister, Jess (Stephanie Janssen), has been temporarily staying. Jess is also pregnant. And there the similarities ostensibly begin and end.Whereas Rory takes pride in being a “transient outsider, raw and untrained,” in Julia May Jonas’s “Problems Between Sisters,” Jess is an emotionally Spanxed up, expensively shampooed and educated visual artist preparing for her first solo show.Jess’s art dealer (Maya Jackson), visiting the cabin, is taken with Rory’s unorthodox “look” and, on the strength of zero pieces of original art, commissions a video from her. Rory, a lapsed multimedia artist, tries to rope her sister into helping her create a video “de-sainting the idea of the pregnant woman,” a project that may or may not involve nudity.Cortisol-spiking chaos ensues.Jonas’s play, directed by Sivan Battat at Studio Theater in Washington, was conceived as a “response” to Sam Shepard’s “True West.” “Problems Between Sisters” is one of five projected works in Jonas’s “All Long True American Stories” cycle, which reimagines canonical dramas by white male playwrights for “other people (mostly women).” Shepard’s 1980 play made hay of the fraternal rivalry between Austin, an Ivy-League-educated screenwriter, and Lee, a rough-hewed petty thief. After a producer greenlights an underbaked movie idea of Lee’s, the brothers attempt to write a passable script, only to dance a pas de doom.The sneaky brilliance of “Problems Between Sisters” is that it doesn’t simply ask, “What if the brothers were sisters?” but rather the more complex question: “What if the sisters gave themselves permission to act as men do?” More precisely, what if women ceded control to their inner art monsters? The question has special resonance for Jess, who has toiled for 20 years to get that solo show.Rory has a leg up on Jess in the chutzpah department and, as in “True West,” much of her badassery rubs off on her starchy sister over the course of the play’s fleet 100 minutes. A keyboard gets smashed, tables and chairs are overturned, food is spilled, weed is smoked and verbal hand grenades are hurled.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      Clarence Thomas: Washington is a ‘hideous place’ of ‘nastiness and lies’

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      Clarence Thomas told attendees at a judicial conference Friday that he and his wife have faced “nastiness” and “lies” over the last several years and decried Washington DC as a “hideous place”.The US supreme court justice spoke at a conference attended by judges, attorneys and other court personnel in the 11th circuit judicial conference, which hears federal cases from Alabama, Florida and Georgia. He made the comments pushing back on his critics in response to a question about working in a world that seems mean-spirited.“I think there’s challenges to that,” Thomas said. “We’re in a world and we – certainly my wife and I the last two or three years it’s been – just the nastiness and the lies, it’s just incredible.“But you have some choices. You don’t get to prevent people from doing horrible things or saying horrible things. But one, you have to understand and accept the fact that they can’t change you, unless you permit that.”Thomas has faced criticisms about accepting luxury trips from a Republican donor without reporting them. Last year, he maintained that he didn’t have to report the trips paid for by one of “our dearest friends”.His wife, conservative activist Ginni Thomas, has faced criticism for using her Facebook page to amplify unsubstantiated claims of corruption by Joe Biden as the Democrat seeks a second term as president.He did not discuss the content of the criticisms directly, but said that “reckless” people in Washington will “bomb your reputation”.“They don’t bomb you necessarily, but they bomb your reputation or your good name or your honor,” Thomas said. “And that’s not a crime. But they can do as much harm that way.”During the appearance, Thomas was asked questions by US district judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, one of his former law clerks, who was later appointed to the federal bench. During his hour-long appearance, the longest-serving justice on the court discussed a wide range of topics including the lessons of his grandfather, his friendship with former colleagues, and his belief that court writings and discussions should be more accessible for “regular people”.Thomas, who has spent most of his working life in Washington DC, also discussed his dislike of it.“I think what you are going to find, and especially in Washington, people pride themselves on being awful. It is a hideous place as far as I’m concerned,” Thomas said.Thomas said that it is one of the reasons he and his wife enjoy traveling in their recreational vehicle.“You get to be around regular people who don’t pride themselves in doing harmful things, merely because they have the capacity to do it or because they disagree,” Thomas said.An RV used by Thomas has also become a source of controversy. Senate Democrats in October issued a report saying that most of the $267,000 loan obtained by Thomas to buy a high-end motorcoach appears to have been forgiven.Thomas did not discuss the court’s high-profile caseload.The justice said he believed it is important to use language in court rulings so the law is accessible to the average person.“The regular people I think are being disenfranchised sometimes by the way that we talk about cases,” Thomas said.He wasn’t the only justice making a speaking appearance on Friday.Brett Kavanaugh said on Friday that US history shows court decisions unpopular in their time later can become part of the “fabric of American constitutional law”.The justice was speaking at a conference attended by judges, attorneys and other court personnel in the fifth US circuit court of appeals, which covers Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi and is one of the most conservative circuits. More

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      Court upholds Steve Bannon’s January 6 contempt of Congress conviction

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      Steve Bannon, the controversial hard-right strategist who has been influential in the thinking of Donald Trump, has lost his appeal against his conviction for contempt of Congress relating to the investigation into the January 6 insurrection.A unanimous ruling from a three-judge panel of the District of Columbia circuit court of appeals upheld Bannon’s conviction on Friday. The decision brings him closer to a four-month sentence behind bars meted out to Bannon for having resisted the terms of Congress’s subpoena against him.He has one last hope left to avoid a prison term – he could appeal to the full bench of the circuit court.Bannon was convicted of contempt charges at trial in July 2022, having been charged with two federal counts. He was accused of refusing to appear for a deposition and of refusing to provide documents to the committee in response to a subpoena.He was sentenced later that year to four months in prison. The punishment was put on hold after Bannon appealed.Bannon’s lawyers claimed in the appeal that he had not ignored the committee’s subpoena, but was acting out of concern that he might violate executive privilege objections raised by Trump.Bannon worked as Trump’s chief strategist in the White House during the first seven months of his presidency. He left the White House in August 2017 following controversy over Trump’s response to the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and now runs a popular podcast called the War Room.The January 6 committee was led by Democrats in the House of Representatives with the participation of some Republican Congress members. It concluded that Trump had engaged in a conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and had not prevented a mob of his supporters attacking the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. More