1/6 Insurrection Investigation

[Rick Plant]

New report says 'evidence is mounting' for a disturbing reason the National Guard failed to act on Jan. 6



Almost a year after that the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol Building, the events of that day continue to inspire a great deal of analysis and discussion — including the fact that the National Guard didn’t get to the Capitol sooner when it was under attack. Writers Ryan Goodman and Justin Hendrix, in an article published by Just Security this week, argue that the National Guard was “restrained” by the Pentagon because of fears that then-President Donald Trump would “invoke the Insurrection Act.”

“One of the most vexing questions about January 6 is why the National Guard took more than three hours to arrive at the Capitol after D.C. authorities and Capitol Police called for immediate assistance,” Goodman and Hendrix explain. “The Pentagon’s restraint in allowing the Guard to get to the Capitol was not simply a reflection of officials’ misgivings about the deployment of military force during the summer 2020 protests; nor was it simply a concern about ‘optics’ of having military personnel at the Capitol. Instead, evidence is mounting that the most senior defense officials did not want to send troops to the Capitol because they harbored concerns that President Donald Trump might utilize the forces’ presence in an attempt to hold onto power.”

Christopher Miller, who was serving as acting secretary of defense on January 6, told the U.S. Defense Department Inspector General’s office he feared that “if we put U.S. military personnel on the Capitol, I would have created the greatest constitutional crisis probably since the Civil War.”

Miller, Goodman and Hendrix note, “does not specify who held the fears that Trump would invoke the Insurrection Act.”

They also point out that Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “confided in one another that they had a persistent worry Trump would try to use the military in an attempt to hold onto power if he lost the election, the Washington Post’s Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker reported.”

Goodman and Hendrix write, “The top officials’ fears were warranted: Donald Trump, his close aides and a segment of Republican political figures had openly discussed the possibility of invoking the Insurrection Act or using the military to prevent the transfer of power on the basis of false claims that the election was ‘stolen.’ But the Pentagon’s actions with respect to the National Guard suggest a scenario in which, on the basis of such concerns, a potentially profound crisis of command may have played out on January 6.”

In other words, their report suggests that the National Guard may have failed to adequately protect Congress because top military officials feared Trump could turn around and use the troops to undermine the Constitution itself. Presumably, the Jan. 6 committee is examining this and other lines of inquiry in their largely behind-the-scenes investigation.

https://www.rawstory.com/national-guard-capitol-riot/

[Rick Plant]

The Obscure Charge Jan. 6 Investigators Are Looking at for Trump

Prosecutors have hit 240 insurrectionists with the rare charge of obstructing an official congressional proceeding. The Jan. 6 Committee might be looking at that charge for Trump.

As federal prosecutors increasingly use an obscure criminal charge to jail Jan. 6 insurrectionists, congressional investigators seem to be building a case that could result in that same charge against former President Donald Trump.

A third of the 700 people arrested by the Justice Department for attacking the U.S. Capitol building have been hit with a peculiar federal “witness tampering” law, according to researchers at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism. Those 240 insurrectionists have been charged with corruptly obstructing an official proceeding, a never-before-seen tactic by prosecutors for an equally unprecedented event.

So far, 12 have pleaded guilty, and three of those have already been sentenced. But if hundreds of people face prison time for interrupting Congress while it was certifying the 2020 election results, what happens to the president who ordered them to march there?

While the DOJ pursues the rioters, the special House Jan. 6 Committee is separately collecting evidence to formulate a picture about how this all came together. And legal scholars say a strategy is taking shape—one that builds a case to criminally charge the former president.

“The DOJ and the committee are building a pyramid of guilt to get to the top. The more people who plead guilty, the more the top of the pyramid begins to take shape,” said Joshua E. Kastenberg, a professor at University of New Mexico’s law school.

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), one of the two GOP members on the congressional panel investigating the insurrection, first drew attention to that possibility during a televised hearing last week. That’s when she made an obscure reference to “another key question before this committee: Did Donald Trump, through action or inaction, corruptly seek to obstruct or impede Congress’ official proceeding to count electoral votes?”

On Monday, The New York Times pushed that idea further when it revealed that the House committee investigating the insurrection is considering referring Trump to the Justice Department.

A source close to the committee told The Daily Beast that Cheney is an experienced attorney, and she was being deliberate when she raised the question that night.

“Her choice to use that language was not an accident,” the source said.

David Schultz, a law professor at the University of Minnesota, said congressional investigators could be building a case that Trump “aided and abetted” the rioters to interrupt the vote count. And Cheney’s statements, combined with the Justice Department’s aggressive use of this federal charge, hint at what might come.

“We are seeing a pattern of establishing an obstruction of justice that takes it up the food chain,” he said.

Cheney knows the committee can’t, on its own, charge anyone with a crime. But its findings can certainly result in Congress asking the Justice Department to pursue a case against the former president.

Trump’s representatives did not respond to an inquiry on Tuesday, but the former president in the past has repeatedly berated the committee’s work as illegitimate. Staff on the bipartisan Jan. 6 Committee declined to comment on the subject. And the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia declined to speak about their ongoing cases.

It might seem odd for a federal law against witness tampering to be used this way, but the statute includes a provision that makes it a crime for anyone who “corruptly… obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding,” or tries to do so.

As insurrection cases make their way through federal courts in the District of Columbia, judges are increasingly allowing prosecutors to use it.

Ronald Sandlin and Nathaniel DeGrave, accused rioters who were caught in Las Vegas, recently tried to stop the DOJ from using it against them. That effort was promptly cut short by U.S. District Court Judge Dabney L. Friedrich, a Trump appointee, when she issued an opinion on Dec. 10 that noted how Sandlin recorded a livestream shortly before the attack in which he said, “freedom is paid for with blood” and “there is going to be violence.”

Friedrich ruled that it’s appropriate for the feds to pursue these charges, because the dynamic duo’s alleged conduct—gearing up with pistols, knives, and walkie talkies and then storming the Capitol—“fall on the obviously unlawful side of the line.”

“And it was allegedly done with the intent to obstruct the congressional proceeding,” Friedrich wrote.

“This is a really a novel application of this law,” said Jonathan Lewis, a research fellow at GWU’s Program on Extremism who has been closely tracking the hundreds of insurrection cases.

“We’ve seen a number of legal challenges to 18 U.S.C. 1512(c)(2) saying this wasn’t an official proceeding. Or saying this was a political use of a U.S. code in an improper way,” he told The Daily Beast.

Then again, legal scholars concede, this is also the first time hundreds of people stormed into the meeting place of the nation’s Congress.

It worked against Paul Hodgkins, a Florida man who carried a Trump flag onto the Senate floor and got slapped with eight months in prison. Two others, “QAnon Shaman” Jacob Chansley and gym owner Scott Fairlamb, were sentenced to 41 months behind bars. Eight others have already pleaded guilty and await sentencing in the next year.

“One of the most commonly used defenses by January 6 defense attorneys is that their client could not have been intentionally obstructing the proceeding because they had no idea it was an official proceeding,” Lewis said.

But that defense has an obvious weakness: rioters were expressly there to “stop the steal” by preventing Congress from certifying the 2020 election results.

“They were there to interfere with the process. They may not have been there to commit acts of violence or commit an insurrection. But they were absolutely there to do exactly what this statute covers,” Kastenberg told The Daily Beast.

The more defendants plead guilty to this charge, the more they establish it as the norm. And prosecutors have established this pattern before.

“This is how you prosecute the mob. You don’t start at the top,” said Vermont Law School professor Jared Carter.

Going after Trump himself, however, is another matter.

Legal scholars said for this charge to work, prosecutors would have to find that Trump rebuffed his advisers’ pleas that he intervene and redirect the crowd—because he explicitly intended for the attack to happen. Or that he held back the National Guard or federal law enforcement forces from coming to the rescue.

This might be what Cheney means by “inaction” on Trump’s part, said Rachel E. VanLandingham, a professor at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles who spent years as a lawyer in the military.

“It’s going to be really hard to pin criminal liability on the president on this ‘obstruction of justice’ statute, especially when he has wide discretion as president in employing military force domestically,” said VanLandingham, who noted that “criminal law isn’t for bad judgment calls.”

As for Trump’s speech to protestors, where he told them to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell,” VanLandingham said it just wouldn’t be enough.

“This is so tied up with political speech. One could make an incredible argument that President Trump was inciting lawlessness. And there’s a strong argument he was aiding and abetting the obstruction of proceedings. But that has to be weighed against the core constitutional value that animates the First Amendment: the ability to engage in fiery, incendiary rhetoric. And the balance has to be tilted in favor of protecting that speech,” she said.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-obscure-charge-jan-6-investigators-are-looking-at-for-donald-trump

[Rick Plant]

Capitol rioter accused of DUI in incident with assault rifle and cops while out on bail



James Grant was one of many who drove to Washington, D.C. for the Jan. 6 rally that turned into a riot at the U.S. Capitol. While out on bail, however, Grant got in trouble with the law again.

The Justice Department's statement of facts about Grant explains that Grant was among those who shoved through the police barricades at the Capitol that day. He has already been indicted by the DOJ.

And despite the fact that he's currently out on bail, Grant continues getting into trouble with the law.

A recent police report involving Grant, flagged by legal expert Marcy Wheeler, revealed that earlier this month he "was operating a motor vehicle under the influence of an impairing substance(s)."

The report also claimed Grant "made statements such as, 'Just kill me now' and 'It's over'" an "was in possession of an Assault Rifle, ammunition, weapon accessories, and fatigues."

They are now attempting to revoke bail for Grant.

"Now, while on pretrial release for these crimes, he was caught driving drunk with an assault rifle and over 60 rounds of ammunition in his vehicle, and initially attempted to flee from law enforcement. There are no conditions or combination of conditions that could ensure the safety of the community and Grant's presence in Court if he were to remain released, and the Government requests that he be detained pending trial in this case," the motion to revoke bail says.

That isn't the whole story. The documents also note that unlike many of the rioters, "Grant has a criminal history and was on probation through the summer of 2019."

According to the filing, he was "convicted in 2018 for tampering with a vehicle and was sentenced on July 16, 2018 to 30 days of incarceration and 12 months of probation." Ahead of the Dec. 2021 incident, he was involved in something similar."

See the screen captures of the court documents from Wheeler below:









https://www.rawstory.com/capitol-attacker-arrested-again/

[Rick Plant]

Jim Jordan is ‘not a serious American’ -- and is ‘running very scared’ from Jan. 6 probe: House Dem

A Democratic lawmaker ripped into Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan for allegedly "running very, very scared" from a congressional probe of the Capitol insurrection.

Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA) made the comments Thursday night on MSNBC after the House select committee investigating Jan. 6 requested documents and testimony from Jordan.

MSNBC host Joy Reid played two clips of Jordan's recent comments about the committee. In October, Jordan said he has "nothing to hide" from the panel. On Wednesday, in response to the request for documents and testimony, he said he has "real concerns" about the investigation.

Dean didn't pull any punches in her response.

"He is not a serious legislator," Dean said of her colleague on the House Judiciary Committee. "He is a serious performer, but he's not a serious legislator, and he's not a serious American. He doesn't care about democracy. He doesn't care what happened on Jan. 6 and the lies that led up to it that he participated in. And he's running quite scared."

Dean also pointed to Jordan's inability in an interview earlier this year to specify the timing of his conversations with former President Donald Trump on the day of the insurrection.

"He stammers, he can't figure it out," Dean said. "He's running very, very scared. We have to make sure that the truth comes out. The Jan. 6 committee is doing extraordinary work, has interviewed more than 300 witnesses, people who know something. And what I have said to Jim Jordan or anybody else, like (House GOP) leader (Kevin) McCarthy or the former chief of staff (Mark Meadows) is, 'You should say I will offer you everything I know. I'll give you my phone. I'll give you my documents. I'll give you my emails, because I know that we suffered the most extraordinary attack on our democracy, and it must never happen again.'"

Watch below:

[Rick Plant]

Gun-toting MAGA rioter gets early gift from feds: A Christmas Eve request for pre-trial detention



A MAGA rioter who brought a loaded gun to the United States Capitol building last year got notice on Christmas Eve that federal prosecutors would be asking for him to be detained in jail ahead of his trial.

NBC 4 Washington's Scott MacFarlane reports that prosecutors filed a request on Friday that Indiana resident Mark Mazza be held in pre-trial detention due to being a continued threat to public safety.

Mazza brought a Taurus revolver loaded with shotgun shells with him to the Capitol protests, although he would subsequently lose the gun during the mayhem that followed.

Mazza then falsely reported that the gun had been stolen, only for police to use surveillance footage to put him in the area where the gun was found during the Capitol riots.

In their filing, prosecutors explained how his history of violent behavior makes him unfit to be released pre-trial.

"Mazza admitted to taking the police baton on January 6... and to using it to strike a law enforcement officer in the tunnel," prosecutors allege. :Mazza further admitted that he was recently in possession of several other firearms... Defendant had armed himself with a firearm loaded with hollow point bullets and shotgun shells capable of causing serious injury and his comments about Speaker Pelosi suggest he intended to commit serious bodily harm to the Speaker of the House of Representatives."

https://www.rawstory.com/capitol-riot-arrests-2656159012/

[Rick Plant]

DOJ releases longest video yet showing Capitol rioters fighting and pepper spraying police



This week, the Department of Justice released a three-hour video showing rioters fighting with police at the Capitol on Jan. 6, CNN reports.

According to CNN, the confrontations between police and rioters on the Lower West Terrace of the Capitol were the most violent on that day.

"The video, taken from a Capitol security camera, does not have sound. It starts as officers retreat, helping each other as they stumble inside and washing their eyes out with water from chemical spray," reports CNN. "Rioters crowd in behind them, coordinate efforts to attack and push through in infamous moments that have haunted the public, and officers, ever since."

CNN obtained the video after suing the DOJ for its release.

Watch the full video below:

[Joe Elliott]

. . .

The House Select Committee on the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol has called Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) to appear and answer questions before them. Jordan was almost appointed to the committee by Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).

. . .

It is fortunate he was not appointed to the committee. That would be like appointing a fox to a committee tasked with investigating an unfortunate incident that occurred inside a chicken coop.