Speaking to a gaggle of reporters this Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was asked if he watched the House select committee’s first hearing in its investigation of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
“Did you watch any of the hearing today?” a reporter asked.
“No, I didn’t,” McConnell replied.
“Why not?” the reporter asked. Continue reading.
Officers testifying ask for answers on which public officials were involved
After hearing hours of gripping testimony from four police officers who endured grave physical and emotional wounds during the Capitol attack, the Jan. 6 select committee members will have time to digest those accounts before the next hearing, which could happen at some point in August.
“It sets the right tone for the work of this committee,” Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said of the four officers’ stories. “But it also says that there is significant work that we have to do over the next few months.”
It’s unclear what the exact focus of the panel will be in the second hearing, but when Thompson asked the officers what they need to see from this inquiry, they relayed that they wanted to know what role elected officials had in it. Continue reading.
A Republican congressman’s Jan. 6 speech at a rally ahead of the riot at the U.S. Capitol is not covered by protections for members of Congress and federal employees, the Justice Department said in a court filing Tuesday — drawing a legal line over attempts to stop the certification of the 2020 election results.
Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) had argued that he is effectively immune from a lawsuit filed by his colleague Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) that accused Brooks, then-President Donald Trump, and others of fomenting the failed attack on Congress.
Past court opinions and Justice Department legal interpretations have given broad safeguards to protect elected officials who are sued over their public statements. But in the case of Brooks, the Justice Department decided he went too far. Continue reading.
WASHINGTON — One officer described how rioters attempted to gouge out his eye and called him a traitor as they sought to invade the Capitol.
Another told of being smashed in a doorway and nearly crushed amid a “medieval” battle with a pro-Trump mob as he heard guttural screams of pain from fellow officers.
A third said he was beaten unconscious and stunned repeatedly with a Taser as he pleaded with his assailants, “I have kids.”
A fourth relayed how he was called a racist slur over and over again by intruders wearing “Make America Great Again” garb. Continue reading.
The U.S. Department of Justice, in a court filing Tuesday, rejected Mo Brooks’ defense that his fiery speech at the pro-Trump rally hours before the former president’s supporters stormed the Capitol was part of his duties as a congressman.
The DOJ agreed with an opinion from the House Administration Committee that House rules said such actions were not within the scope of his office, as Brooks had argued in a court affidavit last month.
In that affidavit, Brooks asserted the Westfall Act as protection for his actions at the rally – which protects federal employees from legal action when acting within the scope of their office. The DOJ filing concludes with, “The United States respectfully requests that Brooks’ petition for a Westfall Act certification be denied.” Continue reading.
Far-right members of Congress are rallying against alleged mistreatment of Capitol rioters
A small group of Republican lawmakers held a press conference in support of the January 6 arrestees, but it didn’t even last ten minutes. Instead of being met with supporters, the legislators were chased out of their own presser.
Earlier today, other members of Congress teared up while listening to police officers’ gripping eyewitness testimony on the opening day of Congressional hearings about the January 6 insurrection. However, a small group of their far-right legislative colleagues was on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue speaking out about a rather different cause: The alleged mistreatment of the folks who had stormed the Capitol that day.
Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar, Louie Gohmert, and Matt Gaetz—all members of the so-called “Sedition Caucus” of legislators, so named because they all voted against the certification of President Joe Biden‘s presidential victory—gathered reporters outside the Justice Department in what they described as an effort to demand answers from Attorney General Merrick B. Garland on the treatment of “January 6th prisoners”. Continue reading.
The House select committee’s first hearing Tuesday to investigate the Jan. 6 insurrection at the United States Capitol was as personal as it was probing.
Sober verbal accounts from four police officers who came under physical and psychological attack that day were combined with raw video footage of rioters shouting epithets and using physical force against law enforcement.
The panel hearing the testimony was unusually united — especially for present-day Washington. It included seven Democrats and two Republicans all handpicked by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). Continue reading.
On Monday night, Bill Gates, a Republican member of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, revealed on CNN that the Republican-controlled Arizona Senate has had Maricopa County officials served with a new subpoena seeking their routers for its audit of the 2020 election.
Appearing on CNN, Gates stated, “Right before I came on here, the board of supervisors received another subpoena from the state Senate ordering us to turn over the routers, in addition to some other information. And they threaten us in these papers that if we do not turn those over by Aug. 2. So that’s next Monday, then we could be held in contempt.”
According to the Washington Post’s Joseph Marks, that could run the bill associated with the audit, seeking evidence that Donald Trump had the 2020 election stolen from him, up to $9 million. Continue reading.
During hearing, Justice Department announces another arrest
Officers who fought to defend the Capitol from insurrectionists on Jan. 6 recounted in vivid and disturbing detail how close they came to death, what lasting effects they live with and the pain it causes them when the very members of Congress they fought to protect dismiss what happened that day.
The first public hearing on Tuesday of the select committee to investigate the attack put on display the terrifying brutality they were subject to. Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., commended the four officers who testified. “You held the line that day. I can’t overstate what was on the line: our democracy,” Thompson said. “You held the line.”
Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell, who served in the Army in Iraq, said at one point during the fighting in the lower west terrace, he could feel himself “losing oxygen” and recalled thinking, “This is how I’m going to die — defending this entrance.” Continue reading.
According to a report from Forbes, lawyers who brought lawsuits attacking the 2020 presidential election results in Michigan by alleging voter fraud are attempting to use Donald Trump’s words to avoid sanctions.
On the evening before House select committee opens hearings into the Jan 6th Capitol riot that was inspired by accusations that the election was stolen from Trump, the so-called “Kraken” attorneys, including one-time Trump attorney Sidney Powell, made a new filing.
According to the report, the attorney representing the lawyers, Donald Campbell, asserted that, because Donald Trump also made election fraud claims, the attorneys were within their rights to make the same claims. Continue reading.
