Tag: Capitol Insurrection

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Crime Domestic Terrorism Elections Justice Department Sedition

DOJ Issues New Criminal Conspiracy Charges Against Capitol Insurrectionists

The wait is over for some of the people who participated in the January 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol which resulted in the deaths of five people, including a member of the Capitol Police Force.

CNN reports that the U.S. Department of Justice has begun handing down more criminal conspiracy charges against members of the group known as the Oath Keepers:

“The Justice Department has added four new defendants to the federal criminal conspiracy case against Oath Keepers who allegedly prepared for and took part in the US Capitol riot, according to a new indictment made public in DC District Court on Sunday.

“The newly named Oath Keeper defendants are Joseph Hackett, who went by ‘Ahab,’ Jason Dolan, who went by ‘Turmoil,’ and William Isaacs, all from Florida. A fourth new defendant’s name and alleged actions are still redacted.”

All of the Oath Keeper defendants are accused of taking part in a criminal conspiracy and entering the restricted Capitol grounds:

 “Isaacs, for instance, allegedly yelled, ‘The fight’s not over’ once the Oath Keepers group had gotten inside the building, and he waved rioters down the hallway toward the Senate, according to the indictment.”

Additionally, five of the individuals already named as defendants are also facing charges of allegedly deleting their social media and cell phone activity, which could lead to them being convicted of obstruction of justice and other federal felonies.

The new court filings also lay out disturbing new details about how the Oath Keepers illegally attempted to smuggle weapons into Washington, D.C. for the Jan. 6 event:

“Department of Justice prosecutors were describing in court filings what else they’ve learned about the group’s so-called Quick Reaction Force, an effort to allegedly bring guns to a Northern Virginia Comfort Inn as backup for the siege.

“Previously, prosecutors had described how the Oath Keepers gathered and stashed weapons at the Comfort Inn, and how defendant Thomas Caldwell of Virginia allegedly had floated an idea of ferrying weapons across the Potomac River to assist with the Capitol siege.”

Before federal prosecutors are finished, many of the Oath Keeper defendants could well be facing charges that would put them in federal prison for the remained of their lives, a fitting punishment for anyone who dares to try and overthrow the elected representatives of the nation as they were going about their official duty of certifying the 2020 presidential election results.

Ironically, the Oath Keepers love to portray themselves as being devoted to the principle of defending the Constitution “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” But they’re nothing more than terrorist punks who deserve to rot behind bars.

 

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Congress GOP

Liz Cheney Is Already Getting Payback On Kevin McCarthy For Booting Her From GOP Leadership

It’s been just three days since House Republicans — led by Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) — unceremoniously stripped Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) of her post as the third-highest ranking member of the House GOP ranks and then replaced her with Trump loyalist Elise Stefanik (R-NY).

However, in that 72 hours, Cheney has made it clear that she will not stop speaking out about the dangers of allowing failed, one-term former President Donald Trump to return as the Republican presidential nominee in 2024, remarking:

“Right now, I am very focused on making sure that our party becomes again a party that stands for truth and stands for fundamental principles that are conservative and mostly stands for the Constitution. And I won’t let a former president or anybody else unravel the democracy. Whatever it takes.”

And now Cheney is aiming her fire at McCarthy, insisting that he should indeed be subpoenaed by the newly-minted commission that will investigate what transpired on January 6, 2021 when pro-Trump rioters staged an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Cheney was asked by Jon Karl of ABC News:

“Should Kevin Mccarthy be willing to speak, testify before that commission? After all, he is one of the few people that we know of that was actually talking to Donald Trump while the attack was taking place.”

In what must have been an incredibly satisfying moment of payback, Cheney replied:

“He absolutely should, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he were subpoenaed.”

In other words, Cheney is urging Democrats on the 1/6 committee to demand that McCarthy testify. And since he was one of the few people who spoke with Trump on the phone during the violent uprising at the Capitol, McCarthy might just be able to provide details that would sink the Donald once and for all.

Kevin McCarthy and his top lieutenants in House leadership may have thought they could oust Liz Cheney and go about their business as if nothing had changed. But the Wyoming Republican is letting it be known she still has some surprises in store for the people who pushed her overboard.

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Congress Elections GOP

GOP Congressman Says He’s Convinced Lauren Boebert Knew About The Jan. 6 Attack In Advance

A member of the House Republican caucus is speaking out and letting it be known that the GOP in its current form has utterly capitulated to the lies and lunacy of former President Donald Trump, and that he cannot sit still and watch as his party is destroyed without sounding an alarm.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) has long been a critic of Trump, but remarks he made to The New York Times Magazine are some of the harshest yet, with the Illinois congressman noting:

“I made the decision early in my career that I would be willing to take a potentially career-ending vote. But I thought that vote would be for something like a Social Security reform bill. I never thought it would be for defending democracy.”

The vote Kinzinger took to defend democracy was when he voted to authorize the creation of a bipartisan commission to examine what happened on January 6 and who is responsible for the Capitol insurrection which left five people dead.

Kinzinger was especially critical of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA):

“Kevin gave a great speech the week after that, and then he went to Mar-a-Lago and charged the paddles and brought Trump back to life. That’s the moment when I realized, Oh, man, this is a problem. You come to understand that when the party and party leaders talk about unity, and in the same breath, say that Donald Trump is the leader of the Republican Party, what they’re talking about isn’t unity. They’re talking about capitulation. When under the guise of unity, you act like Jan. 6 was just whatever you want to make of it, that is capitulating to a false narrative and to a dangerous attack on democracy. I will certainly talk to Kevin if he wants to. But I don’t see how we’re ever going to come eye-to-eye on this until there is a recognition that we can’t be the party of insurrection.”

And yet the GOP has indeed become the party of insurrection, with almost no Republicans being willing to say what needs to be said: That what transpired on Jan. 6 was a direct attack on the United States and an abomination that must be condemned in the strongest possible terms.

Of special concern to Kinzinger is the fact that he suspects there are current Republicans in Congress who knew what was going to take place on the fateful January day, yet didn’t say a word or warn their colleagues or the authorities:

“I will say, if you just looked at Twitter — the whole reason I brought my gun and kept my staff home and told my wife to stay in the apartment was looking at Twitter. I saw the threats. When Lauren Boebert — I will call her out by name — tweeted ‘Today is 1776,’ I don’t know what that meant other than this is the time for revolution. Maybe it was a dumb tweet that she didn’t mean. Fine. I’ll give her that credit for now. But if you have members of Congress who were involved in nurturing an insurrection, heck yeah, we need to know.”

Fortunately, a select committee is now investigating what happened on Jan. 6. And if it finds that some members of Congress did indeed have advance knowledge of the attack, they need to be booted from their seats and handed over to the Justice Department for prosecution.