Category: January6

Report from inside the Capitol Police rated chance of violence on Jan. 6 as ‘remote’

Posted on by Mark Sumner

When the Senate trial for Donald Trump gets underway, one of the tasks for the House impeachment managers is going to be laying out events between Election Day and Jan. 6 to show how Trump encouraged his supporters in a lie and incited them to violence. But it’s going to have to wait until later hearings before the House and Senate bring in additional testimony on security issues related to the insurgency. Which is frustrating. Because a month after the assault on the Capitol, it seems the police, the Pentagon, and intelligence agencies still can’t agree on who knew what, who asked for help, or how things got so royally mucked up.

Since the Jan. 6 insurrection, the House has heard testimony about the lack of preparations made by the Capitol Police—despite an assessment by the acting chief, who said: “We knew that militia groups and white supremacist organizations would be attending ... We knew that there was a strong potential for violence and that Congress was the target.” There has also been a continually shifting story over efforts from the police to obtain help from the National Guard.

A month after a Trump-loving mob stormed the Capitol in a deadly attempt to overthrow democracy, the truth about what police knew, and what they did to prepare, seems more muddled than ever. Because despite everything else, police labeled the potential for violence on that day as “remote.”

On Jan. 26, Capitol Police Acting Chief Yogananda Pittman told the House Appropriations Committee that two days before the event, the department knew that Trump’s rally was going to include white supremacist militias, that many of them were bringing weapons, and violence was expected. That was a big part of why then-Chief Steven Sund put in a request for National Guard assistance. 

But The New York Times is now reporting that a report issued by the intelligence division of the Capitol Police on that same day painted a very different picture. That report looked at the groups of Trump supporters expected on Jan. 6 and rated them on a scale ranging from “remote” to “highly unlikely” when it came to any probability of violence. Not only did the report not anticipate anything like the thousands who assaulted police, surged into the area around the Capitol, and eventually went hunting for congressional hostages—the prediction seemed to be that the whole thing would be a snooze.

That assessment seems starkly at odds with Pittman’s statements about what the police were expecting on Jan. 6, and with Sund’s request to the National Guard. However, it could explain why the police had only 170 officers outfitted with riot gear. If that report circulated beyond the Capitol Police, it might even partially explain why then-Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller placed what seemed to be unreasonable restrictions on the few National Guard forces who were allowed to direct traffic around the city.

The only way to justify the results of the police intelligence report would be if the people in charge treated each of the groups who had applied for rally permits as if they were holding completely separate events. It would also requiring ignoring the context, as well as the violence associated with those expected to attend. Even then, it would seem impossible to produce such a low threat potential, seeing that the same “Stop the Steal” events had led to violence in other locations.

The “remote” chance of violence not only conflicts with everything Sund and Pittman said earlier, but runs counter to a statement from the same intelligence division of the Capitol Police that appeared just one day earlier. That Jan. 3 statement indicated that Trump supporters were desperate about “the last opportunity to overturn the results of the presidential election” and warned there was a significant danger to both police and the public.

If the Capitol Police appear to have been confused, they were not alone. In a letter sent to congressional leaders by Sund this week, he declared that the “entire intelligence community” missed the signs of impending violence. At a Jan. 5 meeting among various agencies, the Times sources say that “no federal or local law enforcement agencies raised any specific threats of violence for the next day.” If that’s true, it happened even though these agencies knew the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three-Percenters, and other white supremacists militias were on their way to town. All of this makes it unclear whether agencies missed the signs or were simply told to ignore them. 

What’s absolutely clear is that the House investigation into the security decisions that led up to paramilitary forces prowling through the Capitol—and left a small knot of Metro D.C. police fighting a desperate battle in the tunnels behind the House—need a great deal more investigation. 

  • What caused Miller’s action in restricting the use of National Guard on Jan. 6?
  • Why were limitations put in place by the Pentagon that prevented the Guard from coming in response to direct requests from the police, even though those restrictions had not been in place for earlier events?
  • Why did the Capitol Police line up so few forces with riot gear when they knew white supremacist militias were specifically targeting Congress?
  • Most of all, why was there such an the enormous delay between the time that it was clear police at the Capitol would be overrun and an adequate response being provided?

All of those things may have explanations that amount to inadequate analysis and criminally poor planning … but that seems unlikely. If any, or all, of these actions are rooted in politics that insisted on giving Trump supporters protection even in the face of expected violence, that’s not just criminally poor planning—it’s criminal.

Republicans are afraid that Trump’s second impeachment trial is going to be ’embarassing’

Posted on by Mark Sumner

Donald Trump has been impeached for his role in using lies and incendiary language, over a period of months, to subvert the 2020 election, obstruct the business of the nation, and “gravely endanger the security of the United States and its institutions.” Those articles of impeachment have been forwarded to the Senate, along with supporting documents, to show that Donald J. Trump is uniquely responsible for the Jan. 6 assault on the United States Capitol, and that his behavior on that day “was not an isolated event.”

Unsurprisingly, House impeachment managers intend to focus on exactly these issues: Trump’s words, actions, and inactions as they relate to violence on Jan. 6. That includes how Trump encouraged the presences of white nationalist militias, lied repeatedly about the outcome of the election in ways meant to inflame his supporters, drove the whole mass toward the Capitol, and stood aside in pleasure as insurgents swarmed the halls of Congress. 

Just as expected is the response from Trump’s legal team and from Republicans in the Senate. Because they want to Trump’s second impeachment trial to be about anything other than the subject of his impeachment. 

What Republicans would enjoy most, would be to spend the entire trial arguing technical points about 19th century cases to prove that Trump can’t be tried now that he’s out of office. Two or three days of debating the impeachment of Judge Mark Delahay (who resigned in 1873 in an effort to avoid being impeached for repeatedly showing up in court drunk) or Secretary of War William Belknap (resigned in 1876 to get ahead of an impeachment for selling a government appointment) would suit them right down to the ground. Republicans would sincerely love to spend a few days putting America to sleep with the inside story of the Grant administration.

That tactic has already been on display in the vote forced by Sen. Rand Paul, in which all but five Republicans voted to just skip the entire trial. It also forms three-quarters of the response to the House impeachment from Donald Trump’s legal team, which would clearly love to spend their time talking about What Would Jefferson Do?

That’s because, as Politico reports, talking about the actual events of Jan. 6, and Donald Trump’s actions that led to men in paramilitary garb searching through the House chamber for hostages could be deeply embarrassing to Republicans. As eternal Trump advisor Steve Bannon notes, “The Democrats have a very emotional and compelling case. They’re going to try to convict him in the eyes of the American people and smear him forever.”

Yes. Because showing Trump’s words next to the results is “very emotional and compelling.” And there’s absolutely no doubt that the House impeachment managers will be pitching their case directly to the public, perhaps even more than to the senators seated in the chamber. After all, barring the discovery of Donald Trump’s fingerprints on the pipe bomb left outside the RNC, it’s highly unlikely that 17 Republican senators will suddenly recover their morality. The best thing that the House team might be able to do, in the sense of preventing Trump from continuing to be a source of divisiveness and damage for the nation, is to give the public a powerful reminder of just how Trump created the insurgency.

That’s why House impeachment managers are working to assemble a video presentation that will put together words and events on Jan. 6. Rather than working with producers who have done documentaries or political ads, the team has been reportedly working with producers of videos used at criminal trials. 

As The Washington Post reports, exactly how the trial will play out remains unclear. In Trump’s first impeachment, Republican control of the Senate allowed Mitch McConnell to define most of the proceedings, that included holding a vote to cut off the possibility of hearing from any witnesses. But Sen. Chuck Schumer is not bound by any of those past decisions. House impeachment managers could well choose to call witnesses, in spite of various “threats” from Republicans that calling any witnesses could lead to a drawn-out proceeding. A drawn-out proceeding that keeps hammering at Trump’s efforts to undermine democracy doesn’t seem like something that should concern Democrats.

And, as much as Trump’s attorney’s would love to keep the Senate buried in old citations and out of context statements from the constitutional convention, their own response opens the door to exactly the kind of pounding that Senate Republicans don’t want to see—one in which every one of Donald Trump’s false statements about the election gets hauled out for review. That’s because the response to the House managers included a statement from Trump saying that not only could no one prove he had lied, but he claimed to have won the election.

When it comes to the case that the impeachment managers would like to make, Law & Crime details exactly the points they need to hit to make their case. Key among the things that the managers need to emphasize is this point from the articles of impeachment: “[Trump’s] belief that he won the election—regardless of its truth or falsity (though it is assuredly false)—is no defense at all for his abuse of office.” 

It doesn’t matter if Trump believes his own lies. That doesn’t excuse his actions in undercutting American institutions or encouraging violent action. Trump can be as upset by his defeat as he likes—many other election losers were also upset. But whether it was Andrew Jackson or Al Gore, “all of these Presidential candidates accepted the election results and acquiesced to the peaceful transfer of power required by the Constitution.”

Trump’s situation is unique. And his despicable actions deserve to be uniquely punished. If the Senate Republicans have already stopped their ears to the truth, that case will be made to the public.

If Republicans are embarrassed, it’s because they should be. 

Rep. Jamie Raskin invites Trump to speak at his own Senate trial. Trump’s attorneys quickly say no

Posted on by Mark Sumner

Ever since Democrats began talking of impeaching Donald Trump for the second time, Republicans in the Senate have been sweating the idea of having to actually confront witnesses. In the first trial, where Mitch McConnell had control over everything that happened, Republicans were happy to just vote away the possibility of any witnesses being called. In this second round, they don’t have that option. So instead their only play has been making threats. If Democrats call a single witness, the Republicans will call the FBI to testify about how the insurgency was planned in advance. If Democrats call a single witness, Republicans will something something Kamala Harris.

There are a number of reasons why these threats are laughable. First, calling the FBI to talk about the pre-planning that went into the assault on the Capitol would only reinforce how Trump radicalized his base. Second, Republicans don’t get to call anyone—it’s Trump’s legal team that gets to request witnesses, and nothing at all says they will play along with a scheme that could hurt their client. Third, the threat is coming from Lindsey Graham and that’s always laughable.

And now it seems that lead impeachment manager Rep. Jamie Raskin has already asked a witness to appear in the Senate trial. He’s issued an invite to one … Donald J. Trump.

Raskin’s letter gets started quickly by pointing out that Trump has already been impeached (for a second time), is about to be tried in the Senate (for a second time), and has sent a response to the House impeachment managers. Wisely, Raskin just skips right back the first three fourths of that response—which is the part where Trump’s attorney’s attempt to make a case that an impeachment trial after the end of a term is unconstitutional—and gets right down to the one part of the reply that Trump clearly dictated himself. The part where Trump denies that he ever lied and claims no one can actually say for sure that he didn’t win.

Two days ago, you filed an Answer in which you denied many factual allegations set forth in the articles of impeachment. You have thus attempted to put critical facts at issue notwithstanding the clear and overwhelming evidence of your constitutional offence. In light of your disputing these factual allegations, I write to invite you to provide testimony under oath, either before or during the Senate impeachment trial, concerning your conduct on Jan. 6, 2021.

Raskin goes on to point out that both Gerald Ford and Bill Clinton provided testimony under oath while they were still in office. And, for an extra tweak of Trump’s bronzer-coated nose, Raskin adds “whereas a sitting president might raise concerns about distraction from their official duties, that concern is clearly inapplicable here.” In other words, since you’re not doing anything anyway ...

It would be easy to read the entire letter as an extended joke. After all, Trump’s legal team will surely make it clear to him that sitting down to defend his actions on January 6 would be a bad thing. That would be a day when Trump started out partying down while Rudy Giuliani was calling for “trial by combat,” took the stage to once again tell his followers that the election was being stolen and that he would march with them to the Capitol, returned to the White House to wonder why no one else was getting excited about the insurgency, failed to respond to requests for military assistance, and stepped out to tell the terrorists occupying the Capitol that “we love you” and “you’re very special.” Trump raising his hand to testify would be an abysmally misguided idea. 

On the other hand, like everyone else, Raskin knows Donald Trump way too well at this point. Throwing down the gauntlet like this, complete with a few obvious digs, is exactly the kind of thing that could make Trump angry and his legal team terrified. 

If you decline this invitation, we reserve any and all rights, including the right to establish at trial that your refusal to testify supports a strong adverse inference regarding your actions (and inaction) on Jan. 6, 2021

In other words: If you’re too big a chicken to show up, we’ll know you’re a liar.

The odds against Trump taking up the challenge are astronomically high. But Raskin deserves a round of applause for throwing this out there. The proposal here is exactly the kind of ploy that a third-rate third-grade bully like Trump would understand in only one way—Democrats are calling him a coward and a liar.

That’s unlikely to lever his rear into a witness chair. But who knows, it might.

Thursday, Feb 4, 2021 · 8:56:26 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Trump’s lead attorneys (at this moment) have responded to Raskin’s letter. 

“We are in receipt of your latest public relations stunt,” write Bruce Castor and David Schoen. Then they delightfully state both that there can’t be a negative inference in the trial, and that the trial is unconstitutional before finishing up with “this use of our Constitution to bring a purported impeachment proceeding is much too serious to play these games.”

What they don’t say is whether or not Trump has seen the letter.

Trump supporters were fed explicitly racist and anti-Semitic propaganda before marching on Capitol

Posted on by Mark Sumner

Republicans want to frame Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial as if it’s all about the speech he made at the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6. It’s not. The impeachment is over the incitement to violence and insurrection created by Trump over the whole span from the election to the assault on the Capitol. That includes Trump sending tweets such as “This Fake Election can no longer stand”  and, of course, “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”

However, so long as Republicans are focusing on the events of that one morning, it’s worth taking a second look at that rally and the one that came before on the evening of Jan. 5. While the words of Trump’s closing speech—complete with repeated demands that his followers march to the Capitol—are the most obvious subject of the impeachment, he was far from alone. Speakers at those two rallies included Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Rudy Giuliani, Eric Trump, and Donald Trump Jr. All of them did their share in both raising the temperature of the crowd and encouraging violent actions. 

But there was one other event at that rally that both sums up what Trump’s movement is all about, and contributed to driving insurgents into the halls of Congress. It was a film. One in which every frame is a cast study in delivering violent, anti-Semitic propaganda. 

There’s no doubt that every speaker on the agenda added to the dark energy that resulted in the deadly insurgency. In fact, as The Washington Post reports, one of the speakers at the Jan. 5 rally was actually among those who bashed their way into the Capitol the following day. Brandon Straka—a white guy who founded the “walk away” campaign that encouraged Black voters to leave the Democratic Party—described Jan. 6 as “the revolution” in his speech to the gathered Trump supporters, and encouraged them to “fight back” as “patriots.” Straka, who frequently appears on Fox News as “a former liberal,” assaulted a police officer, called on others to do the same, then broke into the Capitol. He’s now facing multiple felony charges.

That same evening Roger Stone spoke while being flanked by “guards” from the Oath Keepers. As Mother Jones noted, Stone has a long-standing relationship with terrorist group the Proud Boys. On Jan. 5, Stone was there to tell Trump supporters to “fight until the bitter end” to block Joe Biden’s victory. Stone described the following day as the central moment of an “epic struggle.”

Michael Flynn described Jan. 6 as “a crucible moment in United States history.” While his word choice was suspect, his message to the gathered mob was clear. “We should not accept this,” said Flynn.  “Some of these states had more dead voters than the battlefields of Gettysburg or the battlefields of Vicksburg or the battlefields of Normandy. … We did not have a free, fair, and transparent vote on the third of November. And the entire world knows, everyone in this country knows, who won the election on the third.” And Flynn finished by explicitly telling the crowd what was expected of them. “The members of Congress, the members of the House of Representatives, the members of the United States Senate … those of you who are feeling weak tonight; those of you who don’t have the moral fiber in your bodies, get some tonight. Because tomorrow we the people are going to be here, and we want you to know that we will not stand for a lie.” On the heels of Flynn’s speech, former Trump adviser George Papadopoulos stepped up to make it clear that Trump’s supporters would not forget the “traitors” who voted to count the electoral votes. 

Before Trump spoke on Jan. 6, Rudy Giuliani took the stage and spun a completely fantastic tale in which halting the day’s count of electoral votes would somehow generate a 10-day period in which everything about the election could be reviewed. There’s nothing in the Constitution or later law that even hints at such an event, and Giuliani was speaking after 63 days and 62 lawsuits had failed to uncover any of the evidence of fraud he assured the crowd was present. Still, “Over the next 10 days, we get to see the machines that are crooked,” said Giuliani, “the ballots that are fraudulent, and if we’re wrong, we will be made fools of. But if we’re right, a lot of them will go to jail. Let’s have trial by combat.”

Donald Trump’s sons also appeared that morning, and their speeches—particularly that of Donald Trump Jr.—did have one especially notable quality. As Politico reported, Junior’s speech was so laced with expletives that Fox News, which had been covering the event live, was forced to cut away. But as Trump’s eldest son warned Republicans that they better vote the way his father wanted spoke, he did make one clear statement between all the four letter words. “This gathering should send a message to them,” said Trump Jr. “This isn’t their Republican Party anymore! This is Donald Trump's Republican Party!” Oh, and Eric also spoke. “We will never, ever, ever stop fighting,” said Eric. 

But for all those speakers, it was a film that both set the mood of the day and serves as the best defining document of Trump and Trumpism. Just Security has done a breakdown of the imagery involved in this brief film, and the message of fascism shines through. Not just the kind of authoritarianism that everyone casually assigns to Trump as if that’s just peachy, but genuine shiny-boot and red armband fascism, complete with enough tropes of Übermensch and Untermensch to make Leni Riefenstahl jealous.

As Just Security’s analysis makes clear, the video follows a long tradition of fascist framing. That doesn’t just mean presenting Trump as a heroic figure whose powerful presence causes others to swoon, or contrasting a false paradise under Trump with an equally false wasteland without him. It also explicitly involves using images to remind supporters what Trump stands for: white nationalism.

Everything about the video is designed to help viewers see a through line that connects what’s happening in the Capitol to an elite group of Jews secretly, and not so secretly, guiding America toward a state where white Christians are under siege. The scope of the threat is expanded to include an international conspiracy that includes the U.N. and E.U. who, with Jewish-controlled Hollywood, are seeking to weaken powerful white America.

The video shifts to an image of Senator Charles Schumer, reminding the viewer of prominent Jewish leaders of the Democratic party. Schumer is wearing a Kente cloth, an image evocative of Ku Klux Klan ideology — that Jews support Black liberation movements as a way to undermine white rule and destroy the nation. The next frame shows the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, flanked by two Jewish Congressman, Representatives Nadler and Schiff. Pelosi, too, is controlled by Jews.

House minority leader Kevin McCarthy may have had a sudden memory lapse when it comes to understanding QAnon and the intrinsically anti-Semitic ideology at its core. Trump’s video team did not forget. They’ve created a video that is practically a look into Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s hate-filled mind.

Vimeo Video

This video was sequenced right after Rudy Giuliani told Trump’s supporters that he wanted “trial by combat” and right before Trump himself stepped up to call on his followers to march to the Capitol. What those people who murdered a police officer, trampled over a woman, injured hundreds, smashed open the doors of the Capitol, raised a gallows, and went hunting for congressional hostages received wasn’t just limited to Trump’s statements on the morning of Jan. 6. What drove them there was what Trump, his surrogates, the right-wing media, and Republicans in both the House and Senate did after—and before—the election.

They created a world where people don’t just believe the propaganda of the video above, they’re willing to act on it. 

Trump’s impeachment response includes Trump making outrageous claim of victory

Posted on (Updated by Mark Sumner

On Tuesday, Donald Trump’s legal team made their official response to the article of impeachment delivered by House impeachment managers. Though it might easily have been misdirected since that response is actually written to the “Unites States Senate.” This follows earlier filings by Trump’s legal team to the “United States Districct Court,” the “Northern Distrcoit of Georgia,” and the “Eastern Distrct of Michigan.”

But while the opening words of Trump’s reply may generate a chuckle or an eye roll, it’s really the last section of that response that’s the most laughable. And the most infuriating. Because after providing three replies in which the argument focuses on the question of whether it is considered constitutional to impeach an executive once they’re out of office, the last answer that Trump provides goes directly back to square one by claiming that he never did anything wrong in the first place and that: “Insufficient evidence exists upon which a reasonable jurist could conclude that the 45th president’s statements were accurate or not, and he therefore denies that they were false.”

That’s right. A month after he drove a mob into a murderous rage, Trump isn’t just denying he incited their assault on the Capitol. He’s denying he lied.

In the early hours of Nov. 4, as it was becoming clear to everyone that Joe Biden was going to collect far more than the 270 electoral votes necessary to secure victory, Trump stepped in front of the cameras to complain.  In that appearance, Trump said: “We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election.”

That’s a lie. Had Trump constrained himself to no more than such generalized statements, he might still have generated a sense of righteous anger and disappointment among his supporters, but it’s unlikely that would have created the kind rage that led to Jan. 6. However, Trump didn’t hold himself to the just a generic claim of victory.

By Nov. 7, shortly after the Associated Press called the election for Biden, Trump was back on the air to make a statement that leveled the first of many specific charges. “The Biden campaign ... wants ballots counted even if they are fraudulent, manufactured, or cast by ineligible or deceased voters.” All of those charges would persist right up until Jan. 6, with Trump’s team eventually assigning numbers to each category—8,000 dead voters, 14,000 out-of-state voters, 10,000 late ballots—without ever explaining where they obtained these values.

Over the course of the following months, Trump added more specific charges. He claimed that there were fraudulent drop boxes in Wisconsin. That votes of Arizona Republicans had been thrown out. That boxes full of votes had been smuggled into Philadelphia. 

Trump was still making both his general claims and these very specific charges right up to the final “Stop the Steal” speech on the morning of Jan. 6. “... this year they rigged an election, they rigged it like they have never rigged an election before, and by the way, last night, they didn't do a bad job either, if you notice ... We will stop the steal! ... We won it by a landslide. This was no close election. ... There were over 205,000 more ballots counted in Pennsylvania. Now think of this, you had 205,000 more ballots than you had voters ... So in Pennsylvania, you had 205,000 more votes than you had voters, and it’s — the number is actually much greater than that now ... In Wisconsin, corrupt Democrat-run cities deployed more than 500 illegal unmanned, unsecured drop boxes, which collected a minimum of 91,000 unlawful votes. ... They have these lockboxes. And you know, they pick them up and they disappear for two days. People would say where’s that box? They’d disappeared. Nobody even knew where the hell it was. In addition, more than 170,000 absentee votes were counted in Wisconsin without a valid absentee ballot application. So they had a vote, but they had no application and that’s illegal in Wisconsin. Meaning, those votes were blatantly done in opposition to state law and they came 100 percent from Democrat areas such as Milwaukee and Madison. 100 percent.”

Would a “reasonable jurist” know these statements were lies? Of course they would. That’s easy to see since every single time these arguments went before a judge they were uniformly rejected. Not all of the Trump team’s 62 lawsuits came down to statements of fact. Some were tossed with statements that explicitly called out the lack of any real evidence behind Trump’s claims.

“One might expect that when seeking such a startling outcome, a plaintiff would come formidably armed with compelling legal arguments and factual proof of rampant corruption. That has not happened.” — U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Brann

There were months in which Trump’s team might have fleshed out their claims. Months in which they might have explained the source of all those numbers. They didn’t do that. Instead they added claims about a dead Venezuelan dictator and servers hidden in Germany. Dominion Voting Systems is suing Rudy Giuliani for $1.3 billion for running a “viral disinformation campaign.” Trump repeated all those same allegations in his rallies, right up to the end.

When Trump’s attorneys claim that a “rational jurist” could not know that Trump’s claims are false, what they actually mean is an ignorant jurist.  Someone who had been subjected to all these false claims and allowed to view none of the actual information. Like a Fox News viewer. Because a rational, informed juror would definitely be able to tell that Trump’s statements were not just lies, but lies created expressly for the purpose of generating confusion over facts that are otherwise very cut and dry.

But what be most surprising is that Trump isn’t just saying that someone making these statements might have been believed before Jan. 6, he’s still refusing to admit that they are false. This explicit inclusion in his reply makes everything Trump has said before and after Jan. 6 fair game. House impeachment managers should be much happier about that than Trump’s legal team.

Trump’s legal team is trying to coordinate with Senate Republicans, but Trump is in the way

Posted on by Mark Sumner

Though it may seem as if bad lawyers are an infinite commodity, Donald Trump has spent years testing that theory. Trump’s line of personal attorneys have had a tendency to head off on “extended vacations,” often while handing authorities information that creates a challenge for Trump’s next attorney. In the process of contesting the election alone, Trump sifted the nation to come up with a legal team that was eventually headed by Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell after such legal powerhouses as Corey Lewandowski and Pam Bondi had fallen by the wayside.

The problem with being a Trump attorney isn’t just being forced to defend indefensible positions; it’s having to do so in the way that pleases Trump. That sometimes means not staging a defense in the way what’s most likely to lead to acquittal, and instead doubling down on why Trump was perfectly entitled to commit a crime in the first place. And did it perfectly.

In the case of Trump’s second impeachment, Trump is running through whole sets of attorneys, and he still doesn’t seem to have found one who will do what he wants: use the impeachment trial as another opportunity to encourage violence.

Shortly after the impeachment in the House, Bloomberg reported that Trump was “struggling” to find a team of lawyers to manage his defense before the Senate. Trump’s entire first impeachment defense team, including Jay Sekulow and former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, turned down the opportunity for a repeat performance. Even the time limit on Trump’s long-running arrangement with Pam Bondi seems to have expired; she also opted out.

Potential attorneys are likely to be feeling better these days, now that Senate Republicans have made it clear that when they gave Trump a free pass the first time, they really meant it. With 45 Republicans voting that it’s pointless to move forward with the impeachment, and Republicans threatening to drag the Senate into a months-long recounting of post-election events if a single witness is called, it seems as if the legal team of Nobody, Absent, and Nothing could stage an adequate defense.

The problem is that Trump isn’t happy to just sit there, collect another free pass, and move on. Instead, Trump has been insisting to his attorneys that he wants to use the impeachment trial to put on “evidence” of supposed election fraud.

In other words: Trump wants to use his impeachment trial not to defend himself against charges of inciting a murderous, seditious mob, but to explain why that mob was in the right when it smashed into the Capitol on a hunt for hostages.

That insistence is part of what has made it so difficult for Trump to secure a legal crew. Trump got so upset over the reluctance of his legal team to join in the sedition attempt that he parted ways with five members of his legal team last week. However, The New York Times did show Trump picking up two new attorneys to head his impeachment team: former Pennsylvania District Attorney Bruce Castor, and David Schoen. Schoen was most recently in the public eye as the lead attorney for Roger Stone in his defense against multiple charges related to the Mueller investigation. That would be Stone’s losing case, requiring Trump to get out his pardon pen.

But, as the Times is now reporting, just because Trump has new attorneys doesn’t mean that those attorneys are going to follow him off a cliff. Instead the team is arguing that they should conduct his defense on the lines that the trial itself is unconstitutional.

This claim is also false, but it has serious advantages in getting the results Trump, his legal team, and Senate Republicans want. First, it prevents Republicans from having to conduct a trial on whether Trump engaged in incitement while Trump is actively engaged in more incitement. Second, it lets the Republicans lean back into technical arguments they’ve already made about the legality of impeachment post-term. It’s an argument that lets Republicans vote to acquit Trump while still maintaining that they’re just darn horrified about the insurgency thing.

Which is, of course, the whole reason that Republicans launched the claim that impeaching Trump after they purposely allowed the clock to run out is unconstitutional. It’s certainly not because any of them feel there’s a real constitutional issue, and they know their position breaks with past Senate precedent. It’s a position designed to let them have it both ways: They can claim to be against what Trump did without ever going on record against Trump.

And the only thing that could get in their way … is Trump.

Donald Trump and his white supremacist militias planned assault on Capitol long before Jan. 6

Posted on by Mark Sumner

Jan. 6 may have been the culmination of Donald Trump’s efforts to overthrow a U.S. election, but it certainly was not the beginning. Even before the 2016 election, Trump began telling his supporters that American elections were corrupt. He repeated and amplified claims of voting by “dead people,” lied about Democratic officials bringing in “boxes of ballots,” and—especially after he lost the popular vote by more than 3 million—made enormous false claims about voting by “illegal immigrants.”

Trump never backed away from his lies about the 2016 election. Neither did his spokespeople in the White House, at Fox News, or across the rest of the right-wing media. By the time of the 2020 election, Trump had more than doubled down on claims that any election that failed to show him as a victor was a false election. He assailed mail-in ballots. He revived old conspiracy theories about voting machines. He ignored legitimate warnings from security officials about Russian attempts to interfere in the election and instead pushed false concerns about other nations working to help Democrats. He created a situation in the mind of his supporters where anything other than a landslide victory was “proof” that of a fraudulent election.

Before dawn on the day after the election, Donald Trump stepped in front of cameras to claim that he had won. Then both Trump and a collection of white nationalist militias set out to make that happen by destroying democracy.

That Trump would actually lose the election was certainly no surprise to anyone paying attention. Trump supporters may have turned out in greater numbers than pollsters expected, but the revulsion that four years of his chaotic reign generated brought those opposed to Trump out in numbers great enough to swamp that support. Joe Biden didn’t just reverse Trump’s surprise victories in Rust Belt states, he flipped states like Arizona and Georgia. The election results were a clear signal of how Trump’s actions to even more closely marry Republicans to overt racism, xenophobia, and isolationism had damaged the party far more than many realized. 

Trump certainly wasn’t surprised by the results on Election Day. He had not only already salted the earth with claims of election fraud, he immediately called on his supporters to interfere with the proper counting of votes in places ranging from Philadelphia to Detroit to Las Vegas. Trump immediately dispatched multiple legal teams to begin filing lawsuits in defense of his claims. And he immediately began calling officials at every level in an effort to secure their cooperation in defeating democracy.

Like Trump, members of the white supremacist militia movement were not surprised by the outcome. After years of receiving signals from Trump that it was okay to “get rough” and being told to “stand by,” these groups were more than prepared to respond to Trump’s loss at the polls.

As The Washington Post reports, indictments unsealed on Wednesday show that members of the Oath Keepers—a group that recruits heavily among the military and law enforcement—were already recruiting for assault on the Capitol by Nov. 9, just six days after the election. They didn’t just reach out to existing members of their organization; a group of (now arrested) Ohio members planned a “basic training” camp to prepare new members to fight in overturning the election. And while the stories of “antifa busses” that have constantly circulated on the right are entirely fiction, the white supremacist militia group was definitely planning to bring “at least one full bus 40+ people coming from N.C.” along with massive amounts of weaponry. The plans even included describing how weapons would be brought in advance using a truck so that in case the bus was stopped, the militia members would be able to continue to Washington.

Some Republicans have—bizarrely—suggested that the fact that the insurgency on Jan. 6 involved advanced planning somehow absolves Trump of the charges in his impeachment. After all, his speech that morning could hardly have incited the mob to break out the tiki torches if they came to Washington prepared to execute … executions.

The problem with that argument is everything. First of all, the impeachment documents make it clear that the problem was greater than just Trump’s words at a single “Stop the Steal” rally. A timeline of events just since Election Day makes it clear that Trump’s incitement began well before the morning of the insurgency. Trump was very deliberate in everything he did leading up to that day, including the signals he sent to groups like the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and other white supremacist militias. 

Events on Jan. 6 were not a spontaneous uprising. That’s exactly the point. They were the result of actions Trump took—not just on that day, not just since Election Day, but over a period of years—to activate a white supremacist base, reassure them of support, and encourage them to take violent action. Militia members arrested after participating in the insurgency sent messages in advance with statements such as, “If Trump activates the Insurrection Act, I’d hate to miss it.” They didn’t do that out of thin air. They did it because Trump supporters from Michael Flynn to Mike Lindell were openly encouraging Trump to take this action and they were still being invited to speak at Trump events.

Trump didn’t cross the Rubicon on Jan. 6. He waded through that stream day by day over a period of years. 

In the immediate wake of the insurgency, Republicans seemed aghast to find the barbarians weren’t just at the gates, but inside the building. Calls to remove Trump under the 25th Amendment didn’t just come from Democrats. The idea that impeachment might clear the two-thirds hurdle in the Senate were taken seriously.

But all it took was the merest glimmer of disapproval from Trump to bring Republicans back in line. He didn’t even have to step off the golf course to have Tucker Carlson declaring that the Rubicon was barely a creek after all or to get the weakest spine in Congress to blame the whole insurgency on Nancy Pelosi. Republican leaders had every opportunity over the last three weeks to finally pry their party away from Trump, and to do so in a way that might have left both them, and the nation, stronger. Instead, they fainted at the first mention of the dreaded “third party.”

As with every other Trump outrage, Republicans voiced momentary outrage. Then they backed away just long enough to catch the next hand signal from Trump and from Fox. Reassured, they then stepped forward again to pretend—as they always do—that whatever Trump did was no big deal, not worth raising a fuss about, and after all didn’t Hillary Clinton once something something email? Now we’re at the point where they’re declaring that the real outrage isn’t that armed insurgents broke into the Capitol, spread blood and excrement along the walls, ransacked congressional offices, and went looking for hostages to send to the gallows waiting outside. The real outrage is that anyone is raising a fuss. The next step is the one where Republicans demand an official Trump Bridge to commemorate that patriotic Rubicon crossing. And a Jan. 6 federal holiday for celebrating his triumph.

When the next violent assault goes even further, expect Republicans to be momentarily scandalized. But only momentarily.

GOP willing to overlook murder of police and desecration of Capitol to show their love for Trump

Posted on by Mark Sumner

Conservative Republicans have tried to dismantle labor unions as long as there have been labor unions. On the other hand, Republicans also long ago made their bet as the “party of law and order,” a position that has glorified every aspect of policing. That combination meant that of all unions, police unions have flourished not just with Republican blessings, but bolstered by racism, anti-immigrant policies, and disdain for public service that defines the GOP. As a result, when police unions make the news, it’s often because they’re defending officers in the shooting of an unarmed Black person, or defending the use of violence against peaceful protesters.

But that’s not the case with a statement that came out from the Capitol Police union on Wednesday. The union isn’t concerned about protecting the actions of some “rogue cop.” They’re outraged over what they see as a betrayal by leadership—at the Capitol police, and in the Pentagon. Testimony by the acting chief of the Capitol Police before the House Appropriations Committee on Wednesday, made it clear that leadership knew days in advance that Jan. 6 “would not be like any of the previous protests.” They knew that armed militia groups were coming. They knew white supremacist groups were answering Donald Trump’s call. They knew violence was likely and that Congress was the target.

They knew all that. They just failed to react in a way that would protect lawmakers, or police.

The statement makes it clear that the events of Jan. 6 took a huge toll on the Capitol police. “We have one officer who lost his life as a direct result of the insurrection. Another officer tragically took his own life. Between USCP and our colleagues at the Metropolitan Police Department, we have almost 140 officers injured. I have officers who were not issued helmets prior to the attack who have sustained brain injuries. One officer with two cracked ribs and two smashed spinal discs. One officer is going to lose his eye, and another was stabbed with a metal fence stake.” (On Wednesday, a member of the Metro D.C. Police who fought against insurgents on Jan. 6 also took his own life.)

Understandably, the fury of the union is directed mainly at their own leadership, including former Chief Steven Sund, acting Chief Yogananda Pittman, and Assistant Chief Chad Thomas all of whom it says were aware by Jan. 4 that Trump’s invitation for a “wild” event two days later was likely to result in mass violence. Even so, only 170 police were issued with riot gear and police were not given the chemical weapons or flash bangs that were used against peaceful protesters during Black Lives Matter protests over the summer.

Despite Pittman’s lengthy closed-door testimony on Wednesday, there continues to be confusion about events leading up to the insurgency in which police were overwhelmed by thousands of violent Trump supporters who forced their way into the Capitol. Sund had previously claimed, and Pittman testified, that police leadership requested permission from the police board to alert the National Guard. However, the only member of that board who has not resigned, Architect of the Capitol Brett Blanton, issued his own statement on Wednesday indicating that he was unaware of any such request and that there was no meeting of the police board on the date Pittman indicated. 

There are still dozens of unanswered questions about exactly why police failed to prepare for an event they knew was going to bring thousands of violent, armed extremists to Washington D.C. That’s not just true of actions by the Capitol Police. There are still no answers from Pentagon officials who both restricted the authority of the local guard commander and dithered for hours even as insurgents were hunting hostages in the halls of Congress.

And there’s the biggest question of all: Why was any of this necessary? Why did it take pleas from Washington’s mayor, from the police, and from National Guard leadership to get things moving? Why did the reports of the National Guard being authorized, when they finally came, include only the word that they had been supported by Mike Pence? 

The biggest unanswered question of Jan. 6 is what did Donald Trump do? The House has already impeached Trump for his actions in inciting the seditionists who marched on the Capitol, murdered a police officer, smashed their way into the building, and waged a war on democracy that included deploying pipe bombs and chemical spray. But why, when the images of this insurgency were being broadcast to the White House, did Trump not immediately order the military to provide support to the besieged police? 

Yes, police actions appear to have been confused. Yes, Pentagon officials appear to have weighed the “optics” of sending in forces in a way that’s completely inappropriate. Yes, the complex mess of D.C.’s unique status generated additional steps that made everything move more slowly. None of that should have mattered. Because the moment insurgents broke through the first police line, Donald Trump should have been on the phone to order more support for the badly outnumbered officers at the Capitol. 

He didn’t. He didn’t because, by all accounts, Trump was busy watching in approval. Trump took the time to step out of the White House and tell the people beating down police with thin blue line flags, "We love you, you’re very special.” He did not take the time to provide support to the police.

And that’s the man that the Republican Party didn’t just crown as its leader, it’s the man they are still defending. Still following. Still supporting. The party of law and order is now the party that is willing to “move on” from cop killers and seditionists. To move on from the greatest crime ever committed by any American official. Benghazi was worth no less than 33 hearings, even though none of those hearings ever surfaced a crime. Now, despite the seriousness of the event, Republicans just want to … let it go.

Not because they don’t realize the scale of that crime. But because they still worship that criminal.

There’s one thing that can both help ensure that protecting the nation’s capital isn’t hampered by shifting rules, and break the logjam in the Senate: Sign up to support D. C. statehood.

Trump supporters continue to plot violence as second impeachment trial approaches

Posted on by Laura Clawson

Thousands of National Guard troops will remain in Washington, D.C., through the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump thanks to continuing threats of violence against lawmakers. The number of troops has already dropped and will continue to drop from a high of around 25,000 to below 20,000 now. It is slated to drop to 5,000 in February.

In addition to the threat of armed protesters returning during the impeachment trial, law enforcement agencies are looking into threats that were “Mainly posted online and in chat groups” and “have included plots to attack members of Congress during travel to and from the Capitol complex during the trial,” the Associated Press reported based on information from an unnamed official who “had been briefed on the matter.”

These threats are not hard to imagine. Indeed, one of the alleged Capitol attackers already faces charges for threats against Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and for saying it’s “huntin[g] season” with respect to the officer who fatally shot rioter Ashli Babbitt as she tried to climb through a broken window to get to where lawmakers were evacuating the House chamber.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has been flailing in his response to the Capitol attack, but even he has been very clear about the threat to members of Congress, telling his caucus not to attack any of their colleagues by name because “it's putting people in jeopardy.” 

Saying he had reached out personally to some Republicans—we can guess which offenders those might have been—McCarthy emphasized, “Do not raise another member's name on a television, whether they have a different position or not. Let's respect one another and you probably won't understand what you're doing, and I'm just warning you right now—don't do it.”

The insurrection Donald Trump incited isn’t going to go away all at once. The threats continue, and they’re not just threats to individual members of Congress—they’re threats of continuing attacks on our democracy.

House Republican leader flails after blaming ‘everybody across this country’ for Capitol attack

Posted on by Laura Clawson

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is finding out that it’s tough to strike the right balance between supporting leaders of your party who incited a violent insurrection and criticizing the violent insurrection. It turns out that there’s no “right balance” when it comes to supporting violent insurrection, go figure.

McCarthy has ping-ponged from admitting that Donald Trump “bears responsibility” for his supporters’ attack on the U.S. Capitol that left five dead, including a police officer beaten to death by the mob, to stumbling backward to insist that “I don’t believe [Trump] provoked it, if you listen to what he said at the rally,” because oh noes, Trump supporters get mad if you say he ever bears responsibility for anything at all. Next McCarthy careened over to the insistence that “I also think everybody across this country has some responsibility.”

Everybody! Across the whole country! People who battered down windows at the Capitol and chanted “Hang Mike Pence” and people who watched in horror on their televisions as that happened. Politicians who, like Trump, told the mob to march on the Capitol while saying “you’ll never take our country back with weakness,” and politicians who went from trying to fulfill their constitutional duty to count the electoral votes to hiding in secure rooms while the screaming mob tried to find them. And, of course, President Biden bears responsibility for trying to unite the country by only pursuing policies Republicans like, and if he tries to do any Democrat-type things, then it’s all his fault, too.

McCarthy also went on to whine about Rep. Liz Cheney's impeachment vote, saying “Look, I support her, but I also have concerns.” He’s concerned she didn’t run her stand by him first, but again, Kevin McCarthy is not trying to be the guy taking a firm position on anything, so “I do think she has a lot of questions she has to answer to the conference.” He’s just concerned, himself, and disappointed she didn’t communicate better. But hoo boy, that conference is going to have some questions.

Next, McCarthy came out with an ass-covering tweet about how he doesn’t support the domestic terrorists, but “it is incumbent upon every person in America to help lower the temperature of our political discourse.” Again, everybody. No special responsibility to the people who are carrying out the violence. His staff even emailed other Republican communications staffers asking them to please please please retweet this masterful piece of statesmanship.

Or, more privately, ”We're eating sh*t for breakfast, lunch and dinner right now,” a McCarthy aide told Axios. Yeah, well, your boss is spewing sh*t every time he opens his mouth, then backtracking to eat his own words, so that makes sense.

There just isn’t a comfortable “both sides” on a violent mob attacking the seat of government to prevent lawmakers from formalizing an election result the mob doesn’t like. Until McCarthy realizes that and commits to a side—for violent insurrection or against it—he’s going to keep taking incoming from all directions. Forget the single violin, break out the entire tiny orchestra for this poor guy.