Tag: Trump insurrection

Capitol rioter gets 8 months in prison in first Jan. 6 felony sentence

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38-year-old Paul Hodgkins of Tampa was sentenced to eight months in prison Monday after pleading guilty to obstruction of an official proceeding, a felony charge stemming from his participation in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

Why it matters: Hodgkins is the first Jan. 6 rioter to be sentenced for a felony, setting a benchmark for hundreds of other cases that prosecutors have brought against individuals involved in the Capitol attack.

What they’re saying: As he prepared to announce the sentence, Judge Randolph Moss said that Hodgkins “actively participated” in an event that threatened not only Capitol security, but “democracy itself.” Continue reading.

Current, former police officers charged in new Proud Boys indictment in Capitol riot

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A father and son, who are current and former Florida police officers, and a North Carolina man have been charged with joining alleged Proud Boys members in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, according to a new, five-co-defendant indictment unsealed in Washington on Friday.

Kevin “Tito” Tuck, 51, and Nathaniel A. Tuck, 29, of central Florida were arrested and released on $25,000 unsecured bond Thursday by a U.S. magistrate judge in Tampa, court records show.

Edward George Jr. was also arrested Thursday and was scheduled to appear in federal court Friday in Raleigh, according to court records. Continue reading.

Trump says Gen. Mark Milley should be ‘court-martialed’ if he thought the former president potentially sought a coup

Former President Donald Trump on Friday said that General Mark Milley should be “court-martialed and tried” if he believed that the former president sought to carry out a coup, referencing an excerpt from a forthcoming book by Washington Post reporters Carol D. Leonnig and Philip Rucker.

Trump has pushed back against the excerpt from “I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year,” which said that Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, discussed the possibility of a coup with friends, legislators, and colleagues.

“The writings within these third-rate books are Fake News, and ‘General’ Milley (who [former Defense Secretary James] Mattis wanted to send to Europe in order to get rid of him), if he said what was reported, perhaps should be impeached, or court-martialed and tried,” the former president said in a statement. “He tries to be a tough guy, which he is not, but he choked beyond belief as soon as a microphone was stuffed in front of his face or, at the mere sight of the Fake News Media.”

Capitol rioter Proud Boy being ‘threatened’ in jail by fellow inmates: attorney

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On Thursday, The Daytona Beach News-Journal reported that a key high-ranking member of the Proud Boys being held in a jail in Seminole County, Florida is alleging to have been “threatened” by other inmates in the facility while awaiting trial for his involvement in planning the attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“Joseph R. Biggs, 37, was a leader among the Proud Boys in planning ‘an organized and violent attack’ upon the country’s democracy and its Capitol building on Jan. 6, according to federal prosecutors,” the paper reported. “And word that Biggs is locked up in a subsection of the Seminole County Jail, which holds about 150 federal inmates in other cases, has been getting around, according to J. Daniel Hull, who represents Biggs. ‘I do worry about somebody wanting to test Joe Biggs’ mettle,’ Hull said. ‘I think that’s going to be coming up more and more.'”

Biggs has been charged as part of a conspiracy — videos taken of the incident shows his fellow Proud Boys violently stampeding into the Capitol. Continue reading.

Anatomy of an insurrection: How military veterans and other rioters carried out the Jan. 6 assault on democracy

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More than six months after the storming of the US Capitol, more than 550 people have been arrested, with an estimated 800 people surging into the building during the hours-long assault. Members of the Oath Keepers, a loosely organized right-wing paramilitary, and Proud Boys street fighters galvanized by then-President Trump’s call to “stand back and stand by” have been indicted on conspiracy to disrupt Congress, which delayed the certification of Joe Biden as president by almost six hours.

“Every single person charged, at the very least, contributed to the inability of Congress to carry out the certification of our presidential election,” prosecutors wrote in memorandum filed with the court on Tuesday.

The slow-moving tedium of prosecutorial legal machinery and the GOP campaign to deflect responsibility can make it easy to lose sight of the big picture of what transpired on Jan. 6. But based on an aggregate review of individuals cases, along with other sources, a Raw Story analysis of the critical events in the Jan. 6 siege reveals a striking degree of coordination, sustained and intentional violence, planning and preparation, and determined effort to disable the United States’ critical governance apparatus by participants, including many with recent military experience. Many of the rioters who played critical roles in breaching the Capitol came away from the experience vowing to wage war against the United States. Few among those who are being prosecuted have expressed any remorse for their actions. Continue reading.

Judge loses patience with MAGA rioter: ‘I can no longer give the defendant the benefit of the doubt’

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A federal judge on Thursday lost patience with an accused Capitol rioter who expressed “no regrets” about his involvement in the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Brandon Fellows, a former grocery store worker from Schenectady, New York, was ordered back to jail while awaiting trial after a federal judge ruled he had violatedthe terms of his pretrial release by calling his probation officer’s mother.

“I can no longer give the defendant the benefit of the doubt,” said District Court Judge Trevor McFadden. “I’ve tried, but we are where we are.” Continue reading.

Man who dangled from Senate balcony pleads guilty in Capitol riots, will cooperate against others

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An Idaho man photographed hanging from the Senate balcony and sitting in the presiding officer’s chair in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot pleaded guilty Wednesday to felony obstruction of Congress, admitting to joining a group who came to Washington armed with firearms, knives and body armor to support President Donald Trump.

Josiah B. Colt, 34, became the latest defendant to agree to cooperate in the breach investigation, seeking to pare down a possible recommended five-year prison sentence.

Though Colt is not accused of being part of a larger militia-like group, he admitted in plea papers to joining at least two men from Nevada and Tennessee who arranged travel, raised funds, bought paramilitary gear and recorded themselves before breaking in to the building and rushing to the Senate just evacuated by lawmakers. Continue reading.

Joint Chiefs chairman feared potential ‘Reichstag moment’ aimed at keeping Trump in power

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In the waning weeks of Donald Trump’s term, the country’s top military leader repeatedly worried about what the president might do to maintain power after losing reelection, comparing his rhetoric to Adolf Hitler’s during the rise of Nazi Germany and asking confidants whether a coup was forthcoming, according to a new book by two Washington Post reporters.

As Trump ceaselessly pushed false claims about the 2020 presidential election, Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, grew more and more nervous, telling aides he feared that the president and his acolytes might attempt to use the military to stay in office, Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker report in “I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year.”

Milley described “a stomach-churning” feeling as he listened to Trump’s untrue complaints of election fraud, drawing a comparison to the 1933 attack on Germany’s parliament building that Hitler used as a pretext to establish a Nazi dictatorship. Continue reading.

Select committee on Capitol attack to hear police testimony July 27

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The special congressional committee investigating the Capitol attack of Jan. 6 will hold its first hearing on July 27, Democratic leaders announced Wednesday.

The much-anticipated public hearing will feature testimony from police officers who defended the Capitol complex from the pro-Trump mob attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

The extraordinary episode prompted House Democrats, joined by 10 Republicans, to impeach Trump just a week later for inciting the violence. And last month, the House created the select committee to investigate the causes and security lapses surrounding the rampage. Continue reading.

Mike Lindell pushes election fantasies at CPAC — and accuses reporter of destroying the country

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MyPillow CEO turned 2020 election truther Mike Lindell, whom I have interviewed many times by phone, got his first chance to meet me in person on Sunday at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) gathering here. He did not waste the opportunity, accusing me of being “evil” and “destroying the country” 

While taking in the carnivalesque sights and of CPAC early on Sunday afternoon, I noticed Lindell by his booth on the conference floor. I approached and introduced myself, beginning to ask some of the questions he has avoided answering during our multiple phone conversations.

Much of the following exchange was captured on video and later posted by Raw Story. “I’m going to tell you something, and I’m going to tell everybody,” Lindell began. “In our country’s history, every single election official, if there’s fraud involved, there’s not a statute of limitations. They take the guy that won, and they put him back in office, and it’s just never happened at the presidential level.” (In fact, cases of courts overturning certified elections at any level are vanishingly rare. At the federal level, it is likely a legal and constitutional impossibility.) Continue reading.