Category: Trump Administration

A GOP Event to Support Accused Insurrectionists Went Off the Rails Pretty Quickly

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.

Five takeaways from a bracing day of Jan. 6 testimony

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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.

Arizona taxpayers could be on the hook for a $9 million bill after GOP subpoenas routers: report

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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.

Officers detail violence they faced on Jan. 6

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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.

‘Kraken’ lawyers attempt to avoid sanctions by citing Trump’s claim of election fraud: report

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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.

New Lincoln Project ad blasts corporate donors who bankrolled ‘murderous violence on Jan. 6’

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As a House select committee begins its investigation into the Capitol insurrection, a new ad from the conservative Lincoln Project targets corporations and CEOs who allegedly “helped financed the very structure that led to the murderous violence on Jan. 6.”

“Who funds the politicians trying to cover up the assault on America’s Capitol?” the ad’s narrator asks, following a clip of former president Donald Trump falsely claiming that insurrectionists were “hugging and kissing the police.” 

The answer, according to the ad, includes “leaders of the most respected and successful companies in America,” such as Koch Industries, Cigna, AT&T, and R.J. Reynolds. Continue reading.

VIDEO: Flynn Jokes About Assassination While Brandishing Assault Rifle

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Former Trump administration National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has made more than his fair share of disturbing, jaw-dropping remarks– like telling the former guy he should impose martial law to hold a new election or suggesting a Myanmar-like coup at a QAnon conference in May. But he seemed to reach a new low when he joked about using a newly gifted assault rifle to carry out an assassination in the nation’s capital. 

“We were trying to come up with a rifle that we thought was appropriate for a general, so we went with an old-school Woodland camouflage…one of our top-quality guns,” said Jason Parker, a gun company employee who gifted the weapon to Flynn.

“Maybe I’ll find somebody in Washington, D.C.,” Flynn replied, prompting an uproar of chuckles.  Continue reading.

Donald Trump finally has the obsequious press he always wanted

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It’s an ecosystem in which his false election claims spread unchecked

Fox News didn’t carry Donald Trump’s speech in Arizona this weekend. It’s not hard to figure out why. One could easily have predicted that the former president would say all of the false and potentially lawsuit-spawning things that he ended up saying, and, given that it unfolded on Saturday evening, it’s not as though it was going to yield billions of viewers.

But the speech didn’t need to air on Fox. Before it began, his newly appointed spokeswoman, Liz Harrington, hyped the fact that the speech would instead be carried on the small galaxy of Trump-loyal networks that have emerged in the past few years. For those interested in hearing Trump say the same things he’s been saying for nine months but with a new set of incorrect or misleading details, there was plenty of opportunity to do so.

This is how it works now. Trump has a relatively small footprint in the mainstream media and conversation, including on Fox News. But on the remote media fringes where accuracy dies in obsequiousness, Trump’s message is as loud as it has ever been. Continue reading.

A group of Republican lawmakers now want to openly defend the Capitol rioters

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The U.S. Dept. of Justice arrested and charged over 500 people who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, many in a coordinated effort to overturn a free and fair election. DOJ expects to charge about 100 others as well.

“The investigation and prosecution of the Capitol Attack will likely be one of the largest in American history, both in terms of the number of defendants prosecuted and the nature and volume of the evidence,” the U.S. attorney’s office in D.C. wrote in March, when the list of people to be charged was estimated at about 400, The Washington Post reported at the time.

On Tuesday, as the newly-minted U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack launches, holding its first day of events, four far right wing House Republicans – some of whom has been linked to white nationalists – will be holding a different type of event. Continue reading.

Officers detail violence they faced on Jan. 6

Roll Call Logo

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.