FBI finds scant evidence U.S. Capitol attack was coordinated

[Richard Smith]

The officer was fighting for his life against a radical right wing violent mob and that triggered his stroke.

Are you going to deny that officers were beaten and attacked with weapons and fire extinguishers by violent Maga thugs?

Why are you condoning the attempted overthrow of the US Government by radicalized Trump supporters?

Why are you continuing to defend domestic terrorist Ashli Babbitt who wanted to attack and harm members of Congress?     

You have a reading comprehension issue.  Some officers were assaulted that day.  The people responsible were arrested as they should have been for the commission of a crime.  I don't have a double standard based on political bias unlike you.  There is no evidence, however, that the death of the officer who died from a stroke the next day was the result of any trauma that he suffered on Jan. 6.  None.  No one has been charged for his murder because he was not murdered.  He died of natural causes. The fact that you wish there to be some cause and effect due to your political bias doesn't make it so.  The only person killed that day was an unarmed female military vet.  Why do you defend the shooting death of an unarmed person, the hundreds of murders of minorities that occur every week in Dem controlled cities, the thousand of aborted children who die every week, the drone strike that killed the family of a humanitarian worker in Afghanistan, and on and on.  You are not concerned about police officers, justice, or who dies.  Your sole objective is to find cause to criticize Trump.

[Jon Banks]

As for Durham, I think he's a straight shooter and will get to the bottom of whether or not the FBI overreached in their 2016 investigation into Trump's campaign.

Durham Is Said to Seek Indictment of Lawyer at Firm With Democratic Ties

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/15/us/politics/durham-michael-sussmann-trump-russia.html

Some of the questions that Mr. Durham’s team has been asking in recent months — including of witnesses it subpoenaed before a grand jury, according to people familiar with some of the sessions — suggest he has been pursuing a theory that the Clinton campaign used Perkins Coie to submit dubious information to the F.B.I. about Russia and Mr. Trump in an effort to gin up investigative activity to hurt his 2016 campaign.

Mr. Durham has also apparently weighed bringing some sort of action against Perkins Coie as an organization. Outside lawyers for the firm recently met with the special counsel’s team and went over the evidence, according to other people familiar with their discussions, arguing that it was insufficient for any legal sanction.

The lawyers for Perkins Coie and the firm’s managing partner did not respond to phone calls and emails seeking comment.

Mr. Sussmann and his firm have been particular targets for Mr. Trump and his supporters...

[Rick Plant]

You have a reading comprehension issue.  Some officers were assaulted that day.  The people responsible were arrested as they should have been for the commission of a crime. I don't have a double standard based on political bias unlike you.  There is no evidence, however, that the death of the officer who died from a stroke the next day was the result of any trauma that he suffered on Jan. 6.  None. No one has been charged for his murder because he was not murdered. He died of natural causes. The fact that you wish there to be some cause and effect due to your political bias doesn't make it so.

More of the same denial from you.

How is there a political bias? These are the facts in which you continue to ignore. Officer Sicknick suffered two strokes because of the intense life and death situation he was put under by these maga thugs. Another officer, Michael Fanone, suffered a heart attack due to the same intense situation he faced. He testified to Congress that was indeed to case. So, don't try to claim otherwise. If Trump's thugs didn't storm the Capitol, Officer Sicknick would still be alive today. Their assault killed him.

D.C. officer who suffered heart attack on Jan. 6 calls out Trump for downplaying ‘brutal, savage’ riot
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/d-c-officer-who-suffered-heart-attack-on-jan-6-calls-out-trump-for-downplaying-brutal-savage-riot/

The only person killed that day was an unarmed female military vet.  Why do you defend the shooting death of an unarmed person, the hundreds of murders of minorities that occur every week in Dem controlled cities, the thousand of aborted children who die every week, the drone strike that killed the family of a humanitarian worker in Afghanistan, and on and on. You are not concerned about police officers, justice, or who dies.  Your sole objective is to find cause to criticize Trump.

First of all, why are you turning this into a racial issue with minorities?   

Second, do you understand what the job of Capitol Police officers inside the Capitol is? They are put there to protect the lives of our elected officials and they will defend their lives at any cost. When someone beaches security and is considered a direct threat to their lives they will get shot. Just as if someone rushes at a cop they will get shot. I can't believe you still don't understand this simple concept of reality and you keep arguing in support of domestic terrorists.     

Ashli Babbitt was a Qanon domestic terrorist. She was breaking through a Capitol window with other armed Trump rioters. She was told several times not to enter and she did anyway. So she was shot. She had no business being there or breaking into the Capitol. ​She was a direct security threat to our elected officials. Our entire chain of succession was present in the chamber and their lives were all at risk. This maga mob intended to kill them. And this officer is a hero for saving their lives.

Republicans refuse to do anything about gun violence so take it up with them if you don't like it. That's why people all across America needs to vote all Republicans out of office, so cities can be safe from gun violence.

A fetus is not a child and there aren't "thousands aborted each week". What a woman decides to do with her own body should be none of your concern. Republicans are the ones who are aborting children as infants and babies die from COVID each day and they refuse to do anything about it. And they claim to be the "Pro Life" party.     

Unfortunately during war, innocent people could die and that's why President Biden took the initiative to end this useless war and officially ended our involvement in Afghanistan. You should be thanking him for that.   
 
What do you mean that I'm not "concerned about police officers, justice, or who dies"?

My brother and cousin are both police officers and I worry about lunatics who are able to obtain assault weapons who should not be allowed to have them putting their lives in danger. Republicans refuse to do anything about dangerous assault weapons that put our officers lives at risk every day. Yet they claim to "back the blue". What a joke. It's all phony baloney nonsense as they are bought and paid for by the NRA and the gun lobbyists.

Of course I'm concerned about justice. I want Trump and all of his cohorts to face justice for all the crimes they committed against the United States.

I'm very concerned about "who dies" because I'm a huge advocate for life saving vaccines which will save all lives all over the globe ending this pandemic.

But you are not, as you defend all of Trump's crimes and are against vaccine mandates which will end this pandemic.                 

[Tom Scully]

Durham Is Said to Seek Indictment of Lawyer at Firm With Democratic Ties

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/15/us/politics/durham-michael-sussmann-trump-russia.html

Some of the questions that Mr. Durham’s team has been asking in recent months — including of witnesses it subpoenaed before a grand jury, according to people familiar with some of the sessions — suggest he has been pursuing a theory that the Clinton campaign used Perkins Coie to submit dubious information to the F.B.I. about Russia and Mr. Trump in an effort to gin up investigative activity to hurt his 2016 campaign.

Mr. Durham has also apparently weighed bringing some sort of action against Perkins Coie as an organization. Outside lawyers for the firm recently met with the special counsel’s team and went over the evidence, according to other people familiar with their discussions, arguing that it was insufficient for any legal sanction.

The lawyers for Perkins Coie and the firm’s managing partner did not respond to phone calls and emails seeking comment.

Mr. Sussmann and his firm have been particular targets for Mr. Trump and his supporters...

Three years, with unprecedented, politicized empowerment by a POTUS obsessed with only his perceived self interest and you're gloating over this "possible" indictment? The NY Times is attempting to sell newspapers and online subscriptions and the deadline to escape the five year statute of limitations for charging this perceived "offense" happens to fall on a Jewish holiday, long weekend. IOW, this cannot be charged after Sunday.

Instead of touting this, consider how embarrassing this is for an investigation that has no paperwork assigning Durham at its beginning, to justify it to the American people. After all of this time and the empowerment of Durham by Barr & Trump with no actual justifying predicate for any of it, this "speculative spew" dribbles out hours before Sunday's five year mark since the feebly described, "offense"?

If an indictmenrt actually does materialize before midnight, this Sunday, it will be impossible to successfully prosecute because of the past related performances... politicization, by Trump and Barr.

https://www.lawfareblog.com/durham-investigation-what-we-know-and-what-it-means

...Durham’s Review Becomes Public

On May 13, (2019) the New York Times reported that Barr had selected Durham to “examine the origins of the Russia investigation.” The Times later confirmed that Barr had appointed Durham “several weeks” earlier. (The official Order initiating the investigation, if any, has never been disclosed. Nor has the official date of the appointment.) ...

... Those dangers were exacerbated enormously by the fact that the investigation from the outset focused on individuals and processes that the president had virulently and repeatedly criticized and insisted had engaged in criminal behavior. Durham began this process as a credible figure, even if one not fully qualified for the task as it developed. But his investigation was burdened at the outset with the appearance of using law enforcement tools to carry the president’s water and harass his enemies. And it grew much more heavily politicized due to the actions of the attorney general.

2. Barr’s Role

No contemporary attorney general has, like Barr in the Durham investigation, offered such extended, opinionated, factually unsupported and damning public commentary, naming names and drawing conclusions, about an ongoing investigation that is at least in part a criminal investigation.

Barr’s commentary on the Durham investigation violates several Justice Department rules and norms. The department’s media contacts policy, which applies to “all [Justice Department] personnel,” prohibits “respon[ses] to questions about the existence of an ongoing investigation or comment on its nature or progress before charges are publicly filed.” None of the exceptions, such as for public safety, apply to the Durham investigation. Department regulations also prohibit information disclosure “relating to the circumstances of an … investigation [that] would be highly prejudicial or where the release thereof would serve no law enforcement function, such information should not be made public.” It is hard to see the law enforcement function of Barr’s public commentary.

Barr knows all this. He knows what he is doing is contrary to the rules and traditions of the Justice Department. He knows he is doing reputational harm to people nominally under investigation. He must know that the way he is comporting himself does damage to the department and will make whatever Durham finds more contestable than it otherwise would have been. In short, Barr has acted in ways that foreseeably politicize and damage the investigation that he initiated and has devoted so much time to. The question is: Why?

One possibility is that the evidence Durham has uncovered is objectively so damning that Barr’s commentary cannot delegitimize it. Perhaps, but we doubt it.....

Are you not aware of how "Trumpco" covered up the actual investigation of Trump Org. and Alfa Bank?
IOW, bring it on! What happened to all the right wing extremist BS about Durham not being permitted a free hand, "44 Trump party senators sent a letter to Atty. Gen. Garland out of their growing concern (invented out of thin air....) blah, blah, blah...."

This is three years old... as the NY Times "right wing bait" article you linked to states, Trump complained publicly about Mark Elias, misnaming Sussman. Be careful what you wish for!

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/clinton-campaign-lawyer-with-ties-to-trump-dossier-leads-democrat-recount-effort-in-florida
MIDTERM ELECTIONS Published November 9, 2018
Clinton campaign lawyer with ties to Trump dossier leads Democrat recount effort in Florida

...Last month, Fox News reported that Michael Sussman, another Perkins Coie lawyer working with the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign, contacted FBI general counsel James Baker in late 2016 and provided documents for the Russia probe as federal investigators prepared a surveillance warrant for Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

Sussmann’s contact with Baker suggests another connection between the early stages of the FBI’s Russia probe and those working with the DNC and Clinton campaign, according to the report....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Benczkowski#Assistant_Attorney_General_for_the_Criminal_Division
....Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division
Benczkowski was a member of President Donald Trump's transition team, helping to manage the Justice Department transition.[8]

In June 2017, President Donald Trump announced his intention to nominate Benczkowski to become Assistant Attorney General for the United States Department of Justice Criminal Division.[2][9] According to the Washington Post, "Benczkowski is a well-regarded lawyer, especially in conservative circles."[8] Politico called him the "GOP's go-to guy for hearings."[4] At the time of his confirmation in July 2018, Benczkowski had no prosecutorial experience.[10]

At his confirmation hearing, Benczkowski refused to recuse himself from dealing with the Mueller investigation, even though he supervised an internal investigation of a bank owned by two of Russia's leading oligarchs.[11] He did agree to recuse himself from all matters related to the bank.[12] While in private practice, Benczkowski oversaw an investigation by the cybersecurity firm Stroz Friedberg related to allegations that there was a "secret communications channel" between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank.[11] During Benczkowski's confirmation hearing he was emphatic that Stroz Friedberg, like Mandiant, had rejected the possibility of complicity, and the investigation's report found that "there was no communications link between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank."[11] Stroz Friedberg gave the same explanation for why it, along with Mandiant, was "unable to verify" older data in its investigation: it could not inspect the bank's Domain Name System (DNS) logs from 2016 and before because the bank retained such records at the time for only twenty-four hours.[11] The FBI concluded that the data moving between the companies did not amount to clandestine communications,[13] and Mueller himself later testified before Congress that he did not believe the allegations about a communications link were true.[14] ...

[Richard Smith]

More of the same denial from you.

How is there a political bias? These are the facts in which you continue to ignore. Officer Sicknick suffered two strokes because of the intense life and death situation he was put under by these maga thugs.             

There is no basis in fact to reach this conclusion.  In fact, it is a demonstrable falsehood even if you repeat it over and over.  Sicknick died of natural causes. A stroke.  No one has been charged with his murder or ever will be charged because he was not murdered.  At least one protestor died from a heart attack.  Would you conclude that this protestor was killed by the police?  Of course not.  You desperately want Sicknick's death to be attributed to the protest because that fits your desired political narrative not because you have any concern about this death.  It is political.  You have no concern about the shooting death of an unarmed female military vet that day because you don't like her politics.   In fact, you defame her character and use her political beliefs as the basis to justify her death.  As though having a different political perspective is a justification for shooting someone.  Imagine if that standard were applied to George Floyd?  I believe Floyd was murdered by the police and they should spend the rest of their lives in jail regardless of whether I agree with Floyd's politics.  His politics were not relevant.  The same standard should have been applied to the shooting death of an unarmed woman.  At the very least, there should have been more transparency into what occurred.  Something that Dems have clamored for in other police shootings.  But in this situation a closed investigation that did not even reveal the name of the shooter was deemed acceptable because the victim was a Trump supporter. 

[Rick Plant]

There is no basis in fact to reach this conclusion.  In fact, it is a demonstrable falsehood even if you repeat it over and over.  Sicknick died of natural causes. A stroke.  No one has been charged with his murder or ever will be charged because he was not murdered.  At least one protestor died from a heart attack.  Would you conclude that this protestor was killed by the police?  Of course not.  You desperately want Sicknick's death to be attributed to the protest because that fits your desired political narrative not because you have any concern about this death.  It is political.  You have no concern about the shooting death of an unarmed female military vet that day because you don't like her politics.   In fact, you defame her character and use her political beliefs as the basis to justify her death.  As though having a different political perspective is a justification for shooting someone.  Imagine if that standard were applied to George Floyd?  I believe Floyd was murdered by the police and they should spend the rest of their lives in jail regardless of whether I agree with Floyd's politics.  His politics were not relevant.  The same standard should have been applied to the shooting death of an unarmed woman.  At the very least, there should have been more transparency into what occurred.  Something that Dems have clamored for in other police shootings.  But in this situation a closed investigation that did not even reveal the name of the shooter was deemed acceptable because the victim was a Trump supporter.

Oh boy...still in denial of what transpired.

Officer Sicknick died from the deadly attack he was trying to defend. The situation he was put under triggered his stroke, just like the same deadly situation Officer Fanone was put under which triggered his heart attack. He testified in a congressional 1/6 hearing that was indeed the case. Are you calling this officer a liar? These officers were out there for hours fighting for their lives against these terrorists. And you're trying to ridiculously claim that deadly event didn't trigger any medical episodes with these officers even though these officers testified in front of Congress that it did. You just want to argue and defend these maga thugs because these lowlifes are Trump's rabid base.

Her politics are irrelevant. She illegaly breached a secure area with a mob of violent armed rioters behind her intending to kill members of Congress so she was shot. That is standard protocol. Not sure why you keep defending violent domestic terrorists. So, basically you are saying that Capitol Police have no right to defend the Capitol or our elected officials lives who run our Government. Any group of thugs are allowed to invade the inside of the Capitol with weapons and can hunt down our leaders and the police need to let them proceed according to you. Because that's exactly what you are saying.   

How can you compare George Floyd to Ashli Babbitt? That's totally laughable and proves you have no argument.   

George Floyd was not causing a violent coordinated insurrection. He passed a phony $20 dollar bill at a convenience store and then had the life squeezed out of him by a racist cop putting a knee to his neck.

Ashli Babbitt took part in an illegal coup and attempted overthrow of the US Government with a violent armed mob. She made several videos prior to the insurrection stating her intentions. She stormed the Capitol and broke through a secured area with a violent armed mob behind her. She was warned several times not to break through the area and she did anyway. That was her own fault and she paid the price for it. There was an investigation and the officer was cleared from any wrongdoing.

You are blaming an officer for the death of a domestic terrorist. He is an American hero for saving the lives of our elected officials. All she had to do was leave when she was warned several times not to break through the Capitol window and breach a secured area. She refused and stormed through the area. The officer's life was on the line with a violent mob behind her. So she was shot. Why didn't she leave when she was warned not to break through? She was given every opportunity and was aware of the consequences. She refused to retreat. That's her own fault. When a cop warns you not to move forward or you'll get shot you listen to what he says. Otherwise if you don't, you do so at your own peril. Not sure why you can't figure that out.       
 
Who cares if she was a military vet. Military vets commit crimes all the time and are arrested. You make it sound like she was innocently walking and strolling around and this cop came up and shot her for no reason. Absolutely ridiculous. You have no argument. 
 
So, are Capitol Police not allowed to defend the Capitol and our elected officials lives?

You believe a violent angry armed mob should be allowed to breach security and invade the chambers attacking our elected officials?       

Why don't you care that our Government was attacked by right wing domestic terrorists? 

Why are you defending them?

[Rick Plant]

'Unrepentant arsonist' Trump shamed on CNN for new statement praising jailed MAGA rioters

On Thursday, a CNN panel tore into former President Donald Trump following his statement in support of the January 6 Capitol insurrectionists.

Former Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) said that the former president's latest statement meant it was time for Republicans to stop keeping their heads in the sand and hoping that Trump would just go away.

"Hard to believe after January 6, I used to be a congressman and watched them break in to the Capitol, and now a rally in support of them and the president basically supports that," said Kasich. "Look. If you've been disgusted with Trump, keep your patience and talk to those Trump people and get them to open their eyes because this country is — keeps — continuing to go downhill and divided and denies a great future for our kids. Wake up for the good of our country."

Host Jim Acosta said it was no longer tenable for Republicans to stay silent given how much their base believes Trump's election lies.

"We deal with a former president who is sort of like an unrepentant arsonist," he said. "He can't help himself, enamored with the flames he sets. What's disturbing is 78 percent of Republicans say that Joe Biden did not actually win this election, getting back to what John Kasich was saying. It's disturbing that we are still dealing with this."

Watch below: