Tag: Trump insurrection

How one man went from attending Obama’s inauguration to dying in the mob protesting Trump’s election loss

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In 2009, Kevin Greeson traveled from Alabama to witness the inauguration of President Barack Obama, at the time one of his political heroes. Twelve years later, a stone’s throw from where Obama had been sworn in, Greeson died of a heart attack while demonstrating in support of President Donald Trump during the Jan. 6 siege of the Capitol.

Greeson had undergone a stark political transformation in those intervening years. A longtime Democrat who once championed unions and supported progressive politicians, Greeson had become a staunch Trump supporter by the time he died outside the Capitol at the age of 55.

In the weeks leading up to his death, he gave up Fox News for less mainstream right-wing news sources and wrote a series of posts on the conservative-leaning social media site Parler advocating political violence in response to what he saw as Democrats’ efforts to “steal” the 2020 election from the president. Continue reading.

Republicans call for unity but won’t acknowledge Biden won fairly

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The call for unity came from one of President Trump’s most loyal supporters in Congress, nearly a week after a pro-Trump mob rampaged the U.S. Capitol in a riot that left five people dead.

“What happened at the Capitol on January 6 was as wrong as wrong can be,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) told colleagues during a virtual committee meeting about Democrats’ demands that Trump be removed from office. Now was the time for “healing,” and in Jordan’s opinion, that meant allowing the president to finish out his term.

The committee chairman, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), pressed him on one point. Hadn’t Jordan and more than 140 other Republicans given oxygen to the false conspiracy theory pushed by Trump that motivated the Capitol rioters — that the election had somehow been stolen — when they had voted to object to certifying the electoral college results? Continue reading.

FBI probing if foreign governments, groups funded extremists who helped execute Capitol attack

As part of the investigation, the FBI is examining payments of $500,000 in bitcoin to key figures and groups in the alt-right before the Jan. 6 riot.

WASHINGTON — The FBI is investigating whether foreign governments, organizations or individuals provided financial support to extremists who helped plan and execute the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, one current and one former FBI official told NBC News.

As part of the investigation, the bureau is examining payments of $500,000 in bitcoin, apparently by a French national, to key figures and groups in the alt-right before the riot, the sources said. Those payments were documented and posted on the web this week by a company that analyzes cryptocurrency transfers. Payments of bitcoin, a cryptocurrency, can be traced because they are documented on a public ledger.

Separately, a joint threat assessment issued this week by the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and various other federal and D.C.-area police agencies noted that since the Jan. 6 riot, “Russian, Iranian, and Chinese influence actors have seized the opportunity to amplify narratives in furtherance of their policy interest amid the presidential transition.” Continue reading.

Trump Launched A Civil War — Now We Must Defeat His ‘Army’

The second American Civil War is here.

No official announced Trump’s civil car. That’s why our major news organizations dance around the awful truth, using confusing language.

But we don’t need a press release to recognize that Trump directed his white supremacist followers to attack a branch of our national government on Jan. 6. The treasonous assault capped years of undermining the judiciary and the executive branch’s intelligence, law enforcement and health agencies. Continue reading.

Uncovering The #MAGA Plot Against America

Investigations of the terrible crimes committed against the United States at the Capitol last week had scarcely begun when the usual suspects launched a right-wing cover-up. Rather than blame the motley swarm of #MAGA fanatics, white nationalists and habitual criminals whom we all witnessed storming into the citadel of democracy to stop certification of the 2020 election, they pointed the finger to the antifa and Black Lives Matter movements.

But such a preposterous political alibi, premised on nonexistent evidence, won’t stand up to the kind of scrutiny that must now be brought to bear on these momentous events. Long after President Donald Trump’s impeachment is over and done, and regardless of whether he is convicted or not, the myriad investigations and trials of the perpetrators of the Capitol insurrection will go on for years. Justice will be done; the truth will be revealed; and the breadth of the assault on our constitutional democracy will stun even the jaded and cynical.

Combining vanity and stupidity, the shock troops who carried out the assault recorded themselves in the process of the attack. Perhaps they believed that they would be pardoned by Donald Trump. Knock, knock. Now the FBI is sweeping them up across the country to face federal prosecution. Continue reading.

McConnell: Trump ‘provoked’ crowd that stormed Capitol

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Outgoing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday accused President Trump of provoking the violent crowd that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

“The last time the Senate convened, we had just reclaimed the Capitol from violent criminals who tried to stop Congress from doing our duty. The mob was fed lies. They were provoked by the president and other powerful people,” McConnell said on the Senate floor, marking the first convening of the full Senate since the attack.

McConnell’s statements carry significance ahead of an anticipated Senate impeachment trial. The GOP leader has told colleagues he hasn’t yet decided how he would vote on a House-passed article of impeachment against Trump. Continue reading.

A First for an American President, and a First for Donald Trump

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In the final moments of his presidency, Mr. Trump is confronting an unfamiliar fate: He is being held to account as never before for things he has said.

When President Trump faced (and overcame) the gravest crisis of his first campaign, he defended his boasts of sexual assault on the “Access Hollywood” tape as ultimately harmless gabbing. “Locker room talk,” he said, nothing to dwell on.

When the president faced (and overcame) impeachment in 2019 after pressing the Ukrainian president to investigate Joseph R. Biden Jr., he insisted it was merely an innocuous case of two guys talking. “A perfect call,” he said, not a high crime.

And when Mr. Trump leaves the White House no later than Wednesday — amid the impeachment sequel and uncommon comeuppance he has encountered since inciting a riotous mob in Washington on Jan. 6 — he will surrender a valued perk: an executive phone system, he once enthused, that made it feel as though his words would self-destruct before they became self-destructive. Continue reading.

Before the Capitol Riot, Calls for Cash and Talk of Revolution

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A network of far-right agitators across the country spent weeks organizing and raising money for a mass action to overturn President Trump’s election loss.

eith Lee, an Air Force veteran and former police detective, spent the morning of Jan. 6 casing the entrances to the Capitol.

In online videos, the 41-year-old Texan pointed out the flimsiness of the fencing. He cheered the arrival, long before President Trump’s rally at the other end of the mall, of far-right militiamen encircling the building. Then, armed with a bullhorn, Mr. Lee called out for the mob to rush in, until his voice echoed from the dome of the Rotunda.

Yet even in the heat of the event, Mr. Lee paused for some impromptu fund-raising. “If you couldn’t make the trip, give five to 10 bucks,” he told his viewers, seeking donations for the legal costs of two jailed “patriots,” a leader of the far-right Proud Boys and an ally who had clashed with the police during an armed incursion at Oregon’s statehouse. Continue reading.

Payment processor Stripe cuts ties with Trump campaign

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Payment processing company Stripe cut ties with President Trump’s campaign after his supporters rioted at the Capitol last week, a person familiar with the matter confirmed to The Hill on Sunday. 

Stripe, a San Francisco-based company that manages online card payments for several businesses, will stop processing payments to the campaign, saying the campaign violated its policies against encouraging violence after a pro-Trump mob stormed and vandalized the Capitol. 

The company requests that users not collect payments for “high-risk” activities, including for any business or organization that “engages in, encourages, promotes or celebrates unlawful violence or physical harm to persons or property,” according to its website.  Continue reading.

Trump Zealots Can’t Hide Behind Economic Anxiety Any Longer

“They’re not expressing economic anxiety. They’re expressing a desire to dominate.”

The mythology that the force compelling Americans to support Donald Trump was their economic anxiety — a fragile myth already called into doubt repeatedly over the last four years — was irrevocably shattered by last week’s raid on the Capitol as Trump beckoned his followers to march.

Rioters chanted, “Hang Mike Pence.” They built nooses. They graffitied “Murder the media.” They repeatedly called Black officers the n-word. One held as his banner the Confederate flag. One man allegedly threatened to kill Nancy Pelosi. The less extreme said they were there as patriots who “bleed red, white, and blue,” fighting to take back what was stolen from them.

These are not the cries of people hungry for economic opportunity. These are furious cries of vengeance against phantom enemies imagined by the president. Continue reading.