The tally was in, it was clear Donald Trump had lost – and he tweeted: “either a new election should take place or … results nullified.”
It sounds familiar, but it wasn’t November 2020. It was February 2016.
Trump was just months into his presidential campaign, and was already telling a story he would tell countless times over the following five years, hinting to the world at the character of the man the U.S. Senate will soon evaluate in the impeachment trial. Continue reading.
Adam Kinzinger, a Republican, represents Illinois’s 16th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Winston Churchill famously said, “Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.” All Americans, but especially my fellow Republicans, should remember this wisdom during the Senate’s trial of former president Donald Trump.
I say this as a lifelong Republican who voted to impeach Trump last month. Virtually all my colleagues on the right side of the aisle took the opposite path. Most felt it was a waste of time — political theater that distracted from bigger issues. The overwhelming majority of Senate Republicans appear to feel the same way about conviction.
But this isn’t a waste of time. It’s a matter of accountability. If the GOP doesn’t take a stand, the chaos of the past few months, and the past four years, could quickly return. The future of our party and our country depends on confronting what happened — so it doesn’t happen again. Continue reading.
Despite the widespread coverage of and attention to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by pro-Trump insurrectionists, law enforcement agencies been largely reticent to provide direct briefings to the press and updates for the public about what happened.
But on Wednesday, a statement from the Capitol Police Union, the officers on the front lines of the siege, shared new details and assessments of the attack that weren’t previously known. It added new information in response to the closed-door testimony of Yogananda Pittman on Tuesday, the acting head of the U.S. Capitol Police, whose remarks were reported by multiple outlets.
In the days since the attack, much of the information and videos that have come out revealed the events were much darker, more violent, and more organized than many initially believed. Because many of the people who stormed the Capitol wore ridiculous costumes or acted in absurd ways, some news viewers were led to believe the invasion was a largely farcical stunt. But in reality, the insurrection was a deadly serious expression of violent and menacing forces within American politics. Continue reading.
The board of directors behind Goya, the Latino food company, has voted to censure its CEO, Robert Unanue, due to his public comments backing former President Trump and his election fraud claims, news outlets reported this week.
Goya’s board voted last Friday to censure Unanue, meaning the CEO will not be permitted to speak to media outlets without the board’s approval, sources told CNN and The New York Post.
The decision will operate as a “full stop” on Unanue talking to news outlets, a person familiar with the board’s actions told CNN. The New York Post first reported the censure on Monday. Continue reading.
The former White House Chief of Staff for the Trump administration is now speaking out to dismiss the severity of the U.S. Capitol riots.
On Wednesday, Jan. 26, Mark Meadows made an appearance on “Fox & Friends” where he offered a partisan perspective on the Biden administration’s first full week in the White House, scrutinizing President Joe Biden’s executive orders that canceled out many of former President Donald Trump’s most controversial actions.
Fox News host Brian Kilmeade also asked Meadows for his take on Trump’s “Save America” rally, which occurred shortly before an angry mob of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol to hinder the Electoral College certification. Since the rally influenced the U.S. Capitol riot and subsequently led to Trump’s second impeachment and the impending Senate trial, Kilmeade asked, “In retrospect, was that rally on January 6th … a good idea?” Continue reading.
If a U.S. Senate vote held this week is any indication, it’s most unlikely that former President Donald Trump will be convicted in his second impeachment trial: all but five Senate Republicans voted that the trial is unconstitutional. However, Law & Crime reporter Jerry Lambe stresses, in an article published after that vote, that although the Senate will probably acquit Trump a second time, the trial could increase Trump’s chances of facing a criminal prosecution.
Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky proposed a vote on the constitutionality of Trump’s second impeachment trial, arguing that the trial is unconstitutional because Trump is no longer president. The Democrat-controlled Senate voted 55-45 that the trial is constitutional — not unconstitutional — but most of the senators who voted in favor of the trial going forward were Democrats. The only GOP senators who disagreed with Paul’s resolution were Utah’s Mitt Romney, Maine’s Susan Collins, Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, Pennsylvania’s Pat Toomey and Nebraska’s Ben Sasse.
Following the January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol Building, the U.S. House of Representatives indicted Trump on one article of impeachment: incitement to insurrection. Paul knew that his resolution declaring the trial unconstitutional wouldn’t pass, but he wanted to force other senators to go on the record with where they stand — and most Senate Republicans obviously don’t believe the trial should even take place. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and other Republicans have been arguing that because Trump is no longer president, a Senate trial would be “pointless.” Continue reading.
Prosecutor predicts sedition charges, but is cagey on incitement and potential involvement of lawmakers and staff.
Law enforcement has identified more than 400 suspects and has brought federal criminal charges against over 150 people for actions related to the storming of the Capitol by protesters seeking to block the certification of President Joe Biden’s win in the November election, officials said Tuesday.
In the first public update on the probe since Biden’s inauguration, a top prosecutor and FBI official said a central focus of investigators at the moment is violence against police officers who were beaten or crushed while seeking to hold the line against the rioters.
“You will see a geometric increase in cases related to assault on police officers,” acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Michael Sherwin told reporters on a conference call. Continue reading.
As the impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump approaches, federal officials are investigating threats to attack or kill members of Congress. This comes in the wake of the Capitol riot, when a mob stormed the building where members of the House and Senate were preparing to certify the presidential election. Some rioters reportedly threatened the lives of elected officials in both parties.
When the House took up impeachment proceedings, Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives reportedly felt afraid to vote to impeach Trump – even fearing for their lives. A video also captured a group accosting Republican Lindsey Graham, a U.S. senator from South Carolina, screaming that he was a “traitor” after he declared that Joe Biden had been lawfully elected president.
These threats do not simply reflect increased levels of anger and depravity among individual Americans. Rather, they appear to be evidence of a more systemic use of fear and intimidation in U.S. politics, seeking to force fealty from Republicans and reinforce the authoritarian turn that defined Donald Trump’s leadership. Continue reading.
Senate Republicans seem ready to hand former President Trump his second acquittal in an impeachment trial in a little more than a year after just five GOP senators on Tuesday rejected a motion that the trial was unconstitutional.
Most GOP senators haven’t formally announced how they will vote on convicting Trump, and, in a shift from 2020, most are not rushing to defend him after a mob, egged on by the then-president, sacked the Capitol.
But Tuesday’s vote, which sidelined the effort from Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), sends a clear signal to everyone in Washington that the trial is highly unlikely to end with a Trump conviction vote. Continue reading.
The attorney for Anthony Chansley, the so-called QAnon Shaman who made rounds on social media for his outlandish outfit during the Capitol riot, is blaming former President Trump for his client’s involvement.
“He regrets very, very much having not just been duped by the president but by being in a position where he allowed that duping to put him in a position to make decisions he should not have made,” Al Watkins, a lawyer for Chansley, told Missouri’s NBC-affiliated television station KSDK.
Chansley, also known as Jake Angeli, was arrested on Jan. 9 for his role in the riot. At the time, Chansley told NBC News he saw nothing wrong with his actions. Continue reading.
