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  • Trump Claims His Mob That Attacked Capitol Was “Well Behaved”

    Former President Donald Trump attempted to characterize the participants in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol as “well-behaved” ahead of the fourth day of public hearings on the day’s events.

    Trump, who made the remarks during an interview on Newsmax earlier this week, claimed he had done “nothing wrong other than complaining about the election,” and refused to acknowledge any role he played in instigating the violence.

    Dozens of people were injured as a result of the attack, and seven deaths have been linked to the day’s events. More than 800 participants in the attack have been criminally charged.

    After telling rally-goers on January 6, 2021, that they couldn’t take back the country “with weakness,” the former president then encouraged them to enter the building and air their grievances in person with Congress, which was meeting that day to certify the 2020 election results.

    Trump previously acknowledged that the mob called for the death of several officials, including his vice president Mike Pence. In an interview last year, the former president defended their behavior, describing the crowd’s chants for hanging Pence as “common sense.”

    Trump’s earliest statements on January 6 were critical of his loyalist mob. On the day after the attacks, the former president said he was “outraged” by the “mayhem” that had transpired.

    Critics of Trump have cited numerous examples of how the former president possibly broke the law in regard to the 2020 presidential election. Trump’s campaign team also coordinated a potentially illegal scheme to overturn the Electoral College results through the use of fake electors. Trump also tried to coerce election officials to “find” him votes to help overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential win.

    Legal experts have also said that Trump cannot defend himself by claiming he sincerely believed his own false claims about election fraud.

    Most Americans believe that Trump bears responsibility for what happened on January 6, 2021. A Politico/Morning Consult poll from earlier this month found that 57 percent of voters think Trump bears some level of responsibility for the attack. An ABC News/Ipsos poll found 58 percent in favor of charges against Trump for his role in the attack.

  • Trump Floated Blanket Pardon for Jan. 6 Attackers in Final Weeks of Presidency

    Former President Donald Trump tosses a MAGA hat to the crowd before speaking at a rally at the Canyon Moon Ranch festival grounds on January 15, 2022, in Florence, Arizona.

    In the final weeks of his tenure, former President Donald Trump asked several of his advisers about pardoning individuals who were involved in the January 6 Capitol attack.

    In an article that was published on Wednesday, former advisers to the ex-president spoke to Politico about Trump’s mindset during his final days in office. The advisers were granted anonymity in the article.

    One adviser said that Trump asked a variety of questions on issuing a blanket pardon to his loyalists who breached the U.S. Capitol building shortly after the attack.

    “Do you think I should pardon them? Do you think it’s a good idea? Do you think I have the power to do it?” Trump asked the advisor.

    Another adviser told Politico that Trump asked questions about how individuals who were involved in the Capitol breach might be prosecuted. He also wanted to know if pardoning hundreds of his loyalists could potentially work to his advantage.

    “He thought if he could do it, these people would never have to testify or be deposed,” that adviser said.

    Other White House advisers pointed out that a blanket pardon might not be appropriate, given that no one had been formally charged for their involvement in the attack at the time. Some, including White House counsel Pat Cipollone, allegedly threatened to leave the administration out of protest if Trump issued the pardons.

    The revelation that Trump was thinking about handing out pardons to hundreds of his loyalists after they attacked the Capitol comes days after the former president said he might pardon the Capitol attackers if he is elected president in 2024.

    Although he hasn’t yet made a formal campaign announcement, Trump said last Saturday at a rally in Conroe, Texas, that he might pardon his loyalists if he ever reenters the White House as commander in chief.

    “So many people have been asking me about it,” Trump said at the rally. “If I run and if I win, we will treat those people from January 6 fairly.”

    If that “requires pardons, we will give them pardons,” Trump added.

    Members of the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack have suggested that Trump’s comments may have violated the law. Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-California), for example, said that Trump is “absolutely” engaging in witness tampering by encouraging his supporters who are facing charges not to cooperate with the inquiry, and by suggesting that they will be pardoned if he is elected for a second time.

    The U.S. Constitution contains very few guidelines, if any, on issuing a presidential pardon, and there isn’t any congressional or judicial oversight on the matter.

    Within the first two years of Trump’s presidency, the former president issued 11 pardons and commutations. Meanwhile, current President Joe Biden hasn’t issued a single pardon or commutation since becoming president — and there hasn’t been any indication that he plans to pardon anyone by the end of this year, despite the fact that his administration said that it was evaluating clemency requests last August.

    Last fall, the White House vowed to create an equitable pardoning process in the future. But it’s taking too long, says Nkechi Taifa, head of Justice Roundtable, a coalition of more than 100 organizations seeking to reform the federal criminal legal system.

    “Their rhetoric says that they understand what we’re saying, and that they’re working on it…If it’s going to take this long for a first step, how long is it going to take for the rest?” Taifa said in December.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Trump Says if He’s President Again, He Might Pardon Those Involved in Jan. 6

    President Donald Trump speaks at the "Save America March" rally in Washington D.C., on January 6, 2021.

    During a rally on Saturday in Conroe, Texas, former President Donald Trump suggested that should he run for president in 2024 and win, he would pardon hundreds of his loyalists who face charges related to the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol building.

    “So many people have been asking me about it,” Trump said on Saturday. “If I run and if I win, we will treat those people from January 6 fairly. We will treat them fairly.”

    “If it requires pardons, we will give them pardons. Because they are being treated so unfairly,” Trump continued.

    Trump condemned the January 6 commission and a number of state-level investigations into his actions, including in New York, where state Attorney General Letitia James is looking into allegations that Trump’s company misrepresented the value of its assets, and in Georgia, where Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is investigating whether Trump illegally pressured state officials to overturn the 2020 election results.

    Trump encouraged his followers to engage in massive nationwide protests if investigations into his company and his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election continued.

    “If these radical, vicious racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal, I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protest we have ever had…in Washington, D.C., in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere,” Trump said on Saturday.

    Lawmakers from both sides of the political aisle blasted Trump for suggesting that he would pardon those who took part in the Capitol attack.

    In a CNN appearance on Sunday, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) likened Trump’s words to a “threat,” and said that he was acting like a “two-bit dictator.”

    Leahy added:

    To think that someone would run for a high office and say, ‘You can conduct any kind of criminal conduct you want. Don’t worry, if you’re doing it to support me, I’ll give you a pardon when I get there.’ As a [former] prosecutor, I’d say: ‘This has to be somebody’s making this up. It couldn’t be real.’

    Trump ally Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) also took issue with the former president’s comments over the weekend, expressing concern that Trump was encouraging his loyalists to engage in additional acts of violence.

    “There are other groups with causes that may want to go down the violent path if these people get pardoned,” Graham said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” program.

    Several of the people who have been charged for their involvement in the Capitol attack have justified their behavior by citing the speech Trump gave at the White House on January 6, 2021.

    During the speech that directly preceded the breach of the U.S. Capitol building, Trump told his supporters that if they didn’t “fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” He also instructed his loyalists to go directly to the Capitol building to interrupt Congress’s certification of the legitimate election results, telling them that they would “never take back our country with weakness.”

    Trump has since claimed that his words on January 6 were “extremely calming” and that he didn’t do anything wrong that day.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Trump Dismisses Jan. 6 Inquiry, Says His Words That Day Were “Extremely Calming”

    In an interview that aired on Fox News last Friday, former President Donald Trump alleged that the speech he gave directly before the January 6 Capitol attack had a “calming” effect on his loyalists — despite the fact that they forced their way past barricades and into the building a little more than an hour after the speech.

    While speaking to host Laura Ingraham, Trump said he has “nothing to hide” from the House select committee investigating the attack. But for months, the former president has been using litigation as a strategy to prevent the committee from accessing documents that reveal his communications during the attack and on the days leading up to it. In fact, Trump is expected to appeal to the Supreme Court soon, in yet another attempt to prevent those materials from being released to the committee.

    “I have nothing to hide. I wasn’t involved in that [the Capitol attack] and if you look at my words and what I said in the speech, they were extremely calming, actually,” Trump said.

    Throughout the interview, Trump downplayed the actions of his loyalists on January 6, describing their attack as a “protest.” He also rebuffed the idea that actions taken by his followers to disrupt the certification of the 2020 presidential election were unjust, erroneously describing the election — which he lost to President Joe Biden — as illegitimate.

    “The insurrection took place on November 3, which was election day,” Trump said.

    Trump expressed concern for people who have been charged with crimes relating to the attack, saying that “a lot of innocent people are being hurt” by those charges.

    The Department of Justice has charged more than 600 individuals for taking part in the violent breach of the Capitol building. Five people died as a result of what happened that day.

    Trump’s fictionalized account of the day’s events— including his claim that his speech before the attack was not incendiary — is not new. In fact, less than one week after the Capitol breach, Trump defended his words in an interview, claiming that they were “totally appropriate.”

    During his speech, Trump told his supporters that the presidential election was “stolen … by emboldened radical left Democrats” and by “the fake news media.” He also encouraged his followers to march to the Capitol to voice their discontent in person, telling them they would “never take back our country with weakness.”

    Many of Trump’s loyalists, who attended the rally in person, interpreted the speech as a direct call to action.

    “We fight like hell,” Trump said briefly before the attack. “And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Jacob Chansley, Man Known as “QAnon Shaman” Sentenced for Role in Capitol Attack

    Jacob Chansley screams "Freedom" inside the Senate chamber after the U.S. Capitol was breached by a mob during a joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

    Jacob Chansley, arguably one of the most recognizable individuals who took part in the breach of the United States Capitol on January 6, was sentenced Wednesday to serve 41 months in prison for his role in the day’s events.

    Chansley, who once described himself as the “QAnon Shaman,” was an ardent loyalist of former President Donald Trump who dressed himself in horns and a bearskin headdress and painted his face with the colors of the U.S. flag on the day that Congress was set to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election. Chansely joined a mob of hundreds of Trump loyalists, who falsely believed that President Joe Biden won the election due to election fraud.

    The Department of Justice (DOJ) charged Chansley with a number of offenses, including knowingly entering or remaining in a restricted building or grounds without the legal authority to do so, as well as violent entry and disorderly conduct inside the Capitol. The department also alleged that Chansley left a threatening note to then-Vice President Mike Pence, which read “it’s only a matter of time, justice is coming.”

    Many Trump loyalists, including the former president himself, falsely believed that Pence had the authority to overturn the results of the election. (Biden defeated Trump in the Electoral College by 306 votes to 232.) Indeed, on the day of the certification, just prior to the attack on the Capitol itself, Trump told his loyalists that he hoped Pence would do “the right thing” — implying he wanted his vice president to disregard the actual election results, and help him to stay president for another term.

    Trump also told his followers to march to the Capitol directly to voice dissatisfaction with the certification of the election, telling his loyalists who eventually attacked they would “never take back our country with weakness.”

    Chansley said he traveled to Washington, D.C., on January 6 because of Trump’s prior calls for “patriots” to attend a rally.

    In addition to his 41-month sentence, Chansley must pay $100 in restitution once he is released, and will be subjected to 36 months of supervised release.

    Prosecutors had demanded a longer sentence for the 34-year-old, arguing that his actions “made him the public face of the Capitol riot.” Chansley’s lawyers, meanwhile, maintained their client was “non-violent, peaceful and possessed of genuine mental health issues” at the time of his involvement in the attack on the Capitol.

    His sentence is among the longest of any individual who took part in the breach. Last week, another individual, New Jersey gym owner Scott Fairlamb, was also sentenced to 41 months in prison.

    Those lengthy sentences are atypical of what most Trump loyalists will face, analyses from this past summer surmised. Those making deals with federal prosecutors, and who were first-time offenders, will likely see prison sentences of under a year, with many facing no prison sentence at all.

    According to a website managed by the DOJ, more than 600 individuals have been charged by the department for their role in the attack on January 6. At least five individuals died as a result of the breach of the Capitol building on that day.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Gun Dealers Are Selling Accessories With “Let’s Go Brandon” Slogan on Them

    AR-15 rifle halftone image

    According to a report from NBC News, several gun dealers across the country are using an anti-President Joe Biden chant, popular among vehement supporters of former President Donald Trump, to sell weapon parts and ammunition to their customers.

    The slogan “Let’s Go Brandon,” is a not-so-secret way for Trump supporters to say “Fuck Joe Biden.” The phrase originated from a NASCAR event in early October after a driver named Brandon Brown won the race. Though chanters in the crowd were using the expletive against the current president, the reporter interviewing Brown misheard what they were saying.

    “As you can hear the chants from the crowd, ‘Let’s go Brandon,’” the reporter said.

    For the past several weeks, Trump’s supporters have been using the phrase in social media posts and even in public interactions (a pilot from Southwest Airlines, for example, is currently facing disciplinary action for using the words during a recent flight). Up until this point, the slogan has been viewed as an innocuous (albeit obnoxious) way to express displeasure with the current president.

    But the decision to attach the phrase to gun accessories has prompted new questions about the slogan’s appropriateness in certain places.

    According to the NBC News report, stores are attaching stickers with the phrase “Let’s Go Brandon” on them, as well as caricatures of Biden, to accessories for AR-15-style rifles, the type of gun most frequently used in mass shootings.

    While the phrase itself is subtle, some stores are being more direct. A gun dealer in Columbia, South Carolina, for instance, described a part in its store as having three different modes, each marked by a word in parentheses expressing anger toward the president.

    The mode “Safe” is accompanied by “F@CK!,” while “Fire” mode is labeled with the word “JOE!” The “Full-Auto” mode is marked with “BIDEN!” per NBC News’s report.

    Advocates for gun reform and regulations blasted gun dealers for including the messaging on their products.

    “There is nothing funny about this,” tweeted Fred Guttenberg, the father of a teenager who was killed in Parkland, Florida, during a 2018 school shooting. “This ought to lead to an immediate @FBI investigation & arrests.”

    Newtown Action Alliance, a grassroots group formed after the Sandy Hook school shooting in 2012, said that it was “dangerous & reckless” for dealers to sell accessories using the anti-Biden slogan.

    NBC News reached out to the Secret Service to get the agency’s view on these products and whether they constituted a threat toward Biden, but the agency didn’t respond.

    Several right-wing media pundits mocked NBC News for its reporting on the issue. “NBC News has now apparently decided that ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ also constitutes a threat that should be investigated by the Secret Service,” a tweet from the far right news site TheBlaze read. And in an article from Townhall, the author suggested that NBC News was “triggered” by the fact that guns included the anti-Biden taunt.

    But there’s reason to be concerned. Frank Figliuzzi, a former Assistant Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation for Counterintelligence, tweeted that the Secret Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should pay attention to gun dealers selling products like these.

    There’s also the concern that impressionable Trump supporters may feel emboldened by such rhetoric, as polling has already shown that a disturbing proportion of Trump loyalists believe violence is justifiable in certain circumstances right now.

    A poll that was released this week by the Public Religion Research Institute found that 3 in 10 Republican voters (30 percent) agree with the idea that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.” Among those who wrongly believe the election was “stolen” from Trump, 39 percent believe that violence may be necessary to “save” the country.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Newly Released Trump Audio Shows He Viewed Capitol Attackers as “Loving Crowd”

    President Donald Trump hugs the flag of the United States of America at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference at Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center February 29, 2020, in National Harbor, Maryland.

    Former President Donald Trump described the mob of his loyalists who attacked the Capitol building in January as a “loving crowd” during an interview with authors of a book examining his final year in office.

    The Washington Post released audio on Wednesday night of an interview between Trump and journalists Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, authors of the recently released book I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year. While speaking to them in March at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, Trump described a vastly different story about what happened on January 6 than what the record shows.

    After giving a speech in Washington, D.C., where he told his supporters that they needed to “show strength” and that they should “walk down to the Capitol” to express their grievances about the election, thousands of Trump loyalists broke through barricades, windows and doors, disrupting the certification of the 2020 presidential race. In total, five individuals lost their lives in the ensuing chaos.

    “Personally what I wanted is what they wanted,” Trump said of his loyalists who came to D.C. that day. “They showed up just to show support because I happen to believe the election was rigged at a level like nothing has ever been rigged before.”

    There is no evidence to back Trump’s claims that widespread election fraud affected the outcome of the presidential race.

    “It was a loving crowd too, by the way, there was a lot of love,” Trump said of the day’s events, adding that he’s heard from “many, many people” that it “was a loving crowd.”

    Possibly recognizing that his words didn’t match with the events of that day, Trump added it was “too bad” about what had happened.

    Trump also avoided answering a question about what he had intended for his followers to do when he had told them to convene at the Capitol. Instead, Trump errantly suggested that police had “ushered in” his mob inside the building.

    “The Capitol Police were very friendly. You know, they were hugging and kissing. You don’t see that,” Trump added.

    Trump’s claims about the Capitol police have also not been substantiated, and appear to rely on social media videos shared without context. According to the journalist who recorded them, officers were actually just backing off of the barricades because they were “completely outnumbered.”

    Nearly seven months after the breach of the Capitol, more than 535 individuals have been charged for their actions that day, and the identities of more than 300 suspects remain unknown, according to the Department of Justice.

    Attempts to create a congressional commission to investigate the attack on the Capitol have stalled this week, after House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-California) selected five individuals to take part in a select committee established late last month. Two of the individuals McCarthy had selected to serve on that committee, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Rep. Jim Banks (R-Indiana), had voted against certifying the results of the Electoral College.

    Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-California), who has the ability to reject McCarthy’s picks, removed Jordan and Banks, accepting the other three individuals McCarthy had picked. Following Pelosi’s move, McCarthy withdrew all five of his picks for the select committee in protest.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The Republican Slide

    The Republican Party is sliding toward a full-on embrace of authoritarianism. Former President Trump’s exit and ban from his favorite social media outlets has left a vacuum that younger politicians imitating Trump’s style are eager to fill by rallying people to the former president’s standard. Continue reading

    The post The Republican Slide appeared first on BillMoyers.com.

    This post was originally published on BillMoyers.com.