Tag: Trump insurrectionists raided the Capitol

Trump lawyers decline impeachment managers’ request for him to testify

Axios logo

Former President Trump’s lawyers on Thursday declinedlead House impeachment manager Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.)’s request that he testify under oath before or during his Senate trial next week, calling the invitation a “public relations stunt.” 

Why it matters: Trump has been charged by the House with inciting the insurrection at the Capitol, but has disputed “many factual allegations set forth in the article of impeachment,” Raskin notes. Testimony under oath would allow the former president to clarify “critical facts” about his role in the events of Jan. 6.

Details: “We would propose that you provide your testimony (of course including cross-examination) as early as Monday, February 8, 2021, and not later than Thursday, February 11, 2021. We would be pleased to arrange such testimony at a mutually convenient time and place,” Raskin wrote in the letter. Continue reading.

Congress risks losing ‘bridle’ on the executive in Trump impeachment trial

An acquittal on the grounds Trump is no longer president could weaken a uniquely congressional power

Senators will determine not only the political fate of Donald Trump during the former president’s second impeachment trial next week but also whether or not to weaken their own congressional power to rein in presidential misconduct.

If that happens, it could undermine the reason the founders gave Congress the impeachment power in the first place: as one of the checks and balances in the Constitution to keep a president from becoming a tyrant, members of Congress, historians and constitutional scholars say.

“The fact that we can’t come together, both as a political body and as a nation, around the notion that an incumbent commander in chief cannot stage a coup against his own government in order to overturn the will of the people speaks to how far we have strayed from our ideals as a nation, without question,” said Mark Updegrove, a presidential historian for ABC News who is president and CEO of the LBJ Foundation. Continue reading.

Harvard Law Professor Explains Why Donald Trump’s Free Speech Defense May Not Stick

Laurence Tribe likened the former president to a fire chief “urging a mob to burn the theater down.”

Harvard constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe has poured cold water on the free speech defense being put forward by former President Donald Trump’s legal team ahead of his Senate impeachment trial for inciting the deadly U.S. Capitol riot.

Trump impeachment counsel David Schoen argued in an interview with The New York Times on Tuesday that the former president’s provocative comments to his supporters before they ransacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, for which the House impeached Trump for a second time last month, was actually protected by the First Amendment.

“We can’t control the reaction of the audience,” Schoen was quoted as saying. Continue reading.

Capitol Rioters Blamed Antifa For The Insurrection. You’ll Never Guess What Happened Next.

They got arrested, not antifa.

Peter Stager was at the Jan. 6 “Save America” protest rally that descended into an insurrection after then-President Donald Trump told attendees to march on the U.S. Capitol and “show strength” as part of a plot to stop the counting of electoral votes taking place at that time.

“Death is the only remedy for what’s in that building,” Stager is heard saying in a video posted to social media that was recorded as the rioters approached the Capitol building.

Soon afterward, Stager could be seen using a wooden pole bearing an American flag to beat a Metropolitan police officer who had been dragged down the west-facing steps of the Capitol. Stager later told an acquaintance — who then reported him to federal investigators — “that he thought the person he was striking was ANTIFA,” the left-wing anti-fascist group that often clashes with the far-right, according to charging documents. The words “Metropolitan Police,” were clearly visible on the fallen officer’s clothing as Stager beat him. Stager was arrested in Arkansas on charges of civil disorder on Jan. 14.

This is white supremacist domestic terrorism. We’ve been here before.

Washington Post logo

When domestic terrorists fueled by outlandish conspiracy theories spun by a white supremacist president of the United States stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 to overthrow the government, I was shocked. But not surprised. Our history is filled with eruptions of violence when our nation’s entrenched system of white supremacy feels that its place at the center of American life is threatened.

David Blight, Ron Chernow and Nikole Hannah-Jones, three chroniclers of our fraught racial history, were the perfect people to put the Capitol insurrection into greater perspective.

“We have plenty of precedents for what happened on January 6, not at the federal level, but in white-on-black violence in the South during Reconstruction,” Chernow told me in a primer he emailed to me before appearing on my Sunday show on MSNBC. “During this dreadful period, we had numerous cases of rampaging whites invading legislatures.” Chernow is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of a biography of President Ulysses S. Grant. Continue reading.

Russian media outlets push false claims about who’s to blame for the Capitol riot

AlterNet logo

It’s no secret that President Donald Trump’s angry supporters were seen storming the U.S. Capitol but the president’s Kremlin-controlled Russian state broadcasts are still circulating lies the series of events that erupted on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6. According to Russian media, members of Antifa were seen storming the Capitol—not Trump supporters. 

According to The Daily Beast, Russian media outlets claimed “the pro-Trump insurrectionists were merely “peaceful demonstrators” and blamed “Antifa” for the violence that took place in Washington, DC on January 6, 2021.”

Although the (FBI) has announced a series of developments regarding the Capitol riots, including the arrests of more than 100 Trump supporters, Russian media has focused on featuring clips from conservative news networks like Fox News in addition to remarks from widely known conservative public figures including Tucker Carlson, a number of Republican lawmakers, and other Trump allies and apologists. Continue reading.

Rioters wanted to ‘capture and assassinate’ lawmakers, prosecutors say. A note left by the ‘QAnon Shaman’ is evidence.

Washington Post logo

As federal law enforcement officers sift through evidence tied to the attack on the U.S. Capitol, they have tried to determine what compelled rioters to force their way into the building. Namely, did any of them plan to kill or capture lawmakers or their staffers?

Officials now say they have found clues to that question from one of the mob’s most distinctive figures: Jacob Anthony Chansley, the shirtless, tattooed man often referred to as “QAnon Shaman,” who stood out in a headdress made of coyote skin and buffalo horns.

In a court filing late on Thursday, federal prosecutors in Phoenix wrote that “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.” Continue reading.

Post-ABC poll: Overwhelming opposition to Capitol attacks, majority support for preventing Trump from serving again

Washington Post logo

The vast majority of Americans say they oppose the actions of the rioters who stormed and ransacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, while smaller majorities say President Trump bears responsibility for the attack and that he should be removed from office and disqualified from serving again, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Even as the findings are sharply partisan, over half of Americans — and 1 in 8 Republicans — say Trump should be criminally charged for his role in the attacks.

The president also comes in for broad criticism over his repeated and baseless assertions that the November election was rigged and tainted by widespread fraud. By a margin of more than 2 to 1, Americans say the president has acted irresponsibly in his statements and actions since the election. Continue reading.

Senate Democrats signal hope for bipartisan Trump impeachment trial

Washington Post logo

As President Trump’s historic second impeachment trial looms, the Senate Democratic leader’s office is emphasizing cooperation with Republicans rather than conflict — suggesting that Democrats want their latest effort to convict Trump to be more bipartisan than the last one, which saw a lone GOP senator break ranks with his party.

Despite the unprecedented speed with which the House acted Wednesday — impeaching the president one week after the deadly storming of the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has rebuffed Democratic calls for the chamber to reconvene before Tuesday, its scheduled date and one day before the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden.

Nonetheless, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) signaled Thursday that Democrats are far from taking a go-it-alone approach. Continue reading.

QAnon shaman accidentally unravels GOP impeachment defense: ‘He came at the request of the president’

AlterNet logo

House Republicans defended President Donald Trump from impeachment by insisting that he never encouraged his supporters to violently storm the U.S. Capitol, but court documents show those insurrectionists believed they were carrying out his orders.

The president addressed supporters Jan. 6 in Washington, D.C., where he urged them to “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard” by marching on the Capitol, and GOP lawmakers seized on those words in their impeachment defense — but one of the most recognizable figures in the siege told investigators he was doing what he believed Trump wanted.

“Your affiant and an FBI agent spoke on the phone with [Jacob] CHANSLEY, who confirmed that he was the male in the face paint and headdress in the Vice President’s chair in the Senate,” investigators said in an affidavit filed in court. “CHANSLEY stated that he came as a part of a group effort, with other ‘patriots’ from Arizona, at the request of the President that all ‘patriots’ come to D.C. on January 6, 2021.”‘ Continue reading.