Insurrection Day: when white supremacist terror came to the US Capitol

[Rad]

All,

I thought it to be important to post the transiting planets relative to the natal chart for the USA for this insurrection effort of the government set in motion by Trump. You will immediately notice that the transiting Uranus is exactly squaring the natal Lunar Nodal Axis of the USA's chart. For those interested in history this transit mirrors the collective environment of the USA in the 1850's that lead to the actual Civil War. Not only was Uranus in Taurus at that time in the 1850's, but also the transit of Pluto. White supremacy is the root issue not only then, but is the same root issue in the USA now. Below is an article that documents what happened on January 6th, 2021 in the USA that also saw two new senators from Georgia, one black and one white, elected to the Senate of the USA giving the democrats control of that Senate. it is the same day that Joe Biden was formerly declared president-elect.

God Bless, Rad
                                                       
                                                        **************

                    Insurrection Day: when white supremacist terror came to the US Capitol

Witnesses say Trump was oblivious to the gravity of the situation as five died, Congress was violated and his vice-president faced the very real possibility of being lynched

by Julian Borger in Washington
10 Jan 2021
Guardian

If there was one single moment when the veil of American resilience crumbled and the Trumpist assault on democracy turned into an invasion, it arrived just before 1pm on Wednesday.

That was when a group of pro-Trump militants burst through a flimsy outer barrier on the north-west side of the Capitol building and advanced on a secondary barricade guarded by four frightened police officers, dressed only in basic uniforms and soft caps.

One of the officers can be seen resting his hands on the barrier in as casual a manner he can manage, in an attempt to defuse the confrontation. He clearly had no idea what was coming.

On the other side, a young man in a white hoodie and a red Make America Great Again cap, pulls at the metal barricade but it holds. Then an older man, also red-capped but in full military uniform, takes the youth by the shoulder and whispers something in his ear as the swelling crowd around them chants "USA".

Ten seconds later, the crowd pushes together, the metal fortification collapses, and the Capitol police officers are overwhelmed. The crowd surges past rushing towards the great white domed building atop Capitol Hill.

The protest has turned into an insurrection, breaching the home of US democracy, for the first time since the British army set it on fire in 1814.

Even those who had warned in vain of the Trump crowd's criminal intent were stunned at how quickly the nation's defences buckled. This was America's "shining city upon a hill" but only the thinnest blue line was there to guard it at the crucial hour.

It later turned out that the Capitol police had turned down offers of support from the national guard, only calling for reinforcements when it was too late. The plan was to act as relaxed and low-key as possible, presumably so as not to irritate the crowd.

The contrast with the mass deployments of over 5,000 troops for the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer could not have been more glaring. Then, Washington resembled a city under occupation.

On Wednesday, it was close to defenceless.

This appeared to be deliberate, at least in part. Donald Trump was not about to let the federal government go to war with "his people", who he had invited to the nation's capital in a last-ditch effort to reverse his emphatic election defeat, due to be certified by Congress on Wednesday.

The broader issue was race. The protesters in the summer were largely Black, infuriated by repeated police killings of unarmed Black civilians. The mob which stormed the Capitol was almost entirely white.

Efforts to build a concerted government response to the growing white supremacist terrorist threat had been stymied for years in the absence of political will and money. The warning signs along the road to Wednesday's attempted putsch, the dress-rehearsal occupations of state capitols and a foiled plot to kidnap the Michigan governor, not to mention the activities of the Proud Boys and other far-right factions, were mostly ignored.

The heedlessness was hardly surprising given that the commander-in-chief was leading the calls for sedition. He responded to extremist rallies against Democratic governors by tweeting out encouragement for his followers to "liberate" those states.

In his effort to somehow upend his resounding defeat in November, he summoned the faithful by Twitter for a "StopTheSteal" rally to reverse the result. "Be there, will be wild!" he promised.

Tens of thousands answered the call from around the country. Some drove all night, in part to avoid the price of a hotel. Some, like Texan real estate broker Jenna Ryan, arrived on a private jet with a group of friends, saying she was on the way to "storm the Capitol".

Ryan later posed with a smile and a V-for-victory hand sign in front of the smashed windows of the Capitol building and declared it "one of the best days of my life". After a wave of condemnation, she issued a statement saying she did not condone violence and was "truly heartbroken for the people who have lost their lives".

The crowd that converged under the giant needle of the Washington Monument was a carnival mix of red-hatted Maga aficionados, men dressed like commandos, and a sprinkling of apocalyptic cults. A pair of women in scarves held yellow signs saying "Women belong in the kitchen" and "Fake Christians Go to Hell". Over the years, Trump has built a broad church for the aggrieved, for which the only doctrinal requirement has been loyalty to its high priest.

Thousands of people filled one side of the mound under the monument and spilled on to Constitutional Avenue across from the Ellipse, an oval park in front of the White House where a stage had been set up, protected by bulletproof glass.

The choice of music on the sound system seemed deliberately melancholic, including Elton John's Funeral for a Friend, the My Heart Will Go On theme from Titanic, and In the End, by Linkin Park, in which the repeated refrain is: "I tried so hard and got so far. But in the end it doesn't even matter."

The tempo picked up with the Village People's Macho Man to introduce the warm-up act, 76-year-old Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, who called for the election to be resolved through "trial by combat".

A smartphone video of the Donald Trump Jr filmed inside the marquee backstage showed him and his girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, giddy with excitement. Guilfoyle breaks into a hip-thrusting dance and then shouts into the camera: "Have the courage to do the right thing! Fight!"

Trump's 74-minute speech began close to noon, and was a grab-bag of familiar resentments against the media (the "enemy of the people"), Democrats, "weak Republicans" and his latest target, his own deputy, Mike Pence, who had minutes earlier declared to Congress he had no power to reverse the election result.

"We're going to have to fight much harder and Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us," Trump declared. "If he doesn't, that will be a sad day for our country."

He told the thousands of people before him to march down Pennsylvania Avenue the mile and a half to the Capitol, to put pressure on Congress "peacefully and patriotically". But in an address that used the words "fight" and "fighting" 20 times, from the mouth of a leader who had consistently winked at violence by his followers, it had the weight of a caveat tacked on as an afterthought.

The crowd was certainly primed for conflict, after years of hyperbole and demonisation of enemies by their leader, who had convinced them he was their solitary hope in a looming existential struggle.

Kasey Botelho, a young woman from Rhode Island sitting under one of Washington's many cherry trees with her boyfriend Mike, speculated on what would happen if Congress did not bend to the president's will.

"Honestly, I'm not 100% sure, because the supreme court failed us. I think Trump's only option he really has left is to call military action into it because he has the right to do that," she said. "I think we've waited enough and dealt with enough shit "¦ to go through with it, get it over with."

Jacobb Lake, a contractor who had driven overnight with his teenage son from Joplin, Missouri, was standing on Constitution Avenue with a handmade sign bearing the insignia of the QAnon conspiracy theory subculture, and declaring "My vote is not for sale. This will not be forgotten."

He had an even more dire prediction than Botelho for America's future if the effort to overturn the election failed, and Biden took office.

"World war three," Lake said, adding that the nation "might split up".

Trump had said he would accompany his supporters to the Capitol but as soon as he finished speaking, he left in his motorcade for the 100-metre drive back to the White House.

Some of the crowd peeled away and scattered across the city, but many thousands made their way across the lawns of the National Mall heading eastwards towards Congress.

By that time, the day had already taken on a much darker hue. Two pipe bombs had been found at Republican and Democratic party offices near Congress and the assault on the Capitol had begun. Those who had gathered there in the morning were a harder-edged crowd than the Ellipse - more male with a lot more paramilitary gear. Someone had hung a rope noose on a frame on the Capitol grounds, and the vocabulary was noticeably more violent.

"I heard at least three different rioters at the Capitol say that they hoped to find Vice-President Mike Pence and execute him by hanging him from a Capitol Hill tree as a traitor," Jim Bourg, news pictures editor in Reuters' Washington bureau, recalled on Twitter. "It was a common line being repeated. Many more were just talking about how the [vice-president] should be executed."

Some of the gathering mob turned on journalists, demanding to know their affiliation, and in several cases attacking them. Some were thrown to the ground, and one photographer was thrown off a low wall.

As it became clear they would not be fired upon, the attackers gained in confidence. A few scaled a wall up to a terrace and then used scaffolding to climb higher still, where they could start smashing windows. By 2pm, they were inside the building.

Members of Congress had been holding a joint session in the House of Representatives chamber to certify the electoral college results - something that was a half-hour formality in normal times but which had been prolonged by the objections from Trump loyalists.

Vice-President Pence, in the chair for the session, was abruptly whisked out of the room by his security detail and a security officer strode into the centre of the chamber to declare an emergency. Plainclothes officers rammed a wooden chest against the main door to the chamber and drew their pistols.

Senators and representatives in the well of the chamber were ushered out of a back exit, while members and press in the gallery were told to duck down and don the gas masks kept in bags under each seat. Lisa Blunt Rochester, Democratic representative from Delaware, began to pray out loud for "peace in the land, peace in this country "¦ right now in the name of Jesus "¦ Protect America."

The tiled corridors outside the chamber were filling up with insurrectionists. Some police officers kept up efforts to contain them, while others simply gave up and even waved them through. At least one policeman was caught on camera taking a selfie with an insurgent.

One man unfurled a Confederate flag, a reminder that the US had its own long history of political violence which has snaked above and below the surface for decades and was now strutting unashamed in broad daylight in the heart of political power.

Finding the main door to the House chamber blocked, a group of rioters found their way to a side entrance, smashing the glass out of the doors leading to the Speaker's Lobby.
An explosion caused by a police munition is seen while Trump supporters gather in front of the Capitol.
An explosion caused by a police munition is seen while Trump supporters gather in front of the Capitol. Photograph: Leah Millis/Reuters

First through the breach was Ashli Bobbitt, a 35-year-old air force veteran from San Diego. She had once been an Obama supporter but during the Trump era, had been drawn into a parallel culture of QAnon conspiracy theories. Wearing a Trump flag around her waist and a Stars and Stripes backpack, video footage shows her climbing through the damaged wooden door, ignoring the shouted orders from inside to retreat, when a plainclothes police officer emerged from an office on the other side and shot her once in the neck. She fell backwards on to the floor and died, soon afterwards at about 2.45pm, illuminated by the mobile phones of other rioters filming her last moments.

Elsewhere in the building a Capitol police officer, Brian Sicknick, was fatally injured in a melee with rioters, reportedly by being attacked with a fire extinguisher. He died of his wounds on Thursday night. Three other people died of "medical emergencies" in the course of the breach, at least one of them from a heart attack, bringing the full death toll to five.

Back in the White House, the president and his aides were transfixed by the unprecedented scenes they could see on their television screens. The Washington Post cited an aide as saying Trump was "bemused" by the spectacle. He saw the rioters as fighting for his cause but found them aesthetically distasteful and "low-class".

According to this account, the president was characteristically focused on his own grievances: that Pence had betrayed him, and that his followers were being judged more harshly than the anti-Trump demonstrators in the summer. He refused to condemn his own people, despite the desperate pleas from his erstwhile allies on Capitol Hill to call off the assailants.

When Trump was finally persuaded to send a calming presidential message, it was on his terms. He began by repeating his groundless claim that he was the victim of a fraudulent election. He told people to go home but added: "We love you; you're very special."

Witnesses said he was oblivious to the gravity of what had occurred: the five deaths, the unprecedented violation of Congress, the irrevocable damage to America's reputation and the very real possibility his vice-president could have been lynched in response to Trump's vilification.

It was only after White House counsel, Pat Cipillone, made clear to Trump the extent of his legal liability for the storming of the Capitol, that Trump adjusted his tone in a second video on Thursday night, finally conceding defeat in the election two months earlier, and denouncing the insurrection.

By then, the backlash had already begun. Congress had certified the result, his congressional supporters were being shunned by fellow Republicans, Facebook and then Twitter banned him indefinitely and Democrats prepared for a second impeachment, likely to begin this coming week.

The Trump era is not quite over, however. There are still 10 days of this presidency left, and reports from the Oval Office suggest he no longer feels chastened, regretting having agreed to an orderly transition. He has flatly refused to attend his successor's inauguration on 20 January. No one who knows Trump is betting he will now just slink quietly out of the back door of history.

[soleil]

Hi Rad,

Thank you for that post. Really interesting.

I think what happened at the Capitol on January 6th is extremely disturbing. As I watched it happening, I was sickened by the way police let these criminal white supremacist terrorists storm right in, guns and all. If the rioters had been peaceful black activists, they would have been shot way before they even had a chance to enter the building. It looks to me like the police were in on it and/or were given orders by Trump to let it happen.

I'm concerned about the next 10 days, especially what will go down on inauguration day. If I were the head of the Secret Service there is no way I would consent to holding the inauguration in that public space on the mall. I think they should hold it virtually, from an undisclosed location. I'm concerned about violence against Biden, Pelosi and others.

Given the astrological dynamics you mentioned, what do you foresee for inaugural day and for the next 10 days, given that the psychopathic malignant narcissist is cornered and has had his main narcissistic feed supply (twitter) cut off?

Regards,

Soleil

[Rad]

Hi Soleil,

They will be a progressive and sustained backlash against Trump from many quarters, and those that have, and still do, enable it. This will of course infuriate him and his enablers manifesting as various behaviors that will intensify and harden the ongoing fracturing of American society.

Biden and Harris will be safe during the inauguration.

God Bless, Rad

[soleil]

Hi Rad,

Thanks for your feedback. I just hope Trump gets charged by the Justice Dept. at some point. Unfortunately, I'm doubtful, since the U.S. never holds its ex-Presidents accountable for anything. Do you think the Justice Dept. under Biden will ever file charges against him?

Regards,

Soleil

[Gypsie]

"The terrorist attack is not over"..Michael Moore shares his urgent thoughts on January 6th event.
https://youtu.be/tQCsVVVknzQ

[Rad]

Hi Soleil

My hope, and my sense of it all, is that what Trump has done starting with the incitement of insurrection, then the election interference that has been documented in Georgia, is that such a decision will be based on one of the core principles of the USA: no one is above the rule of law. So my sense is that what Trump has done is so wrong, so evil, is that he can not be given a pass on all this: in order to prove and assert this bedrock principle must apply to a president as well.  This would not only be important for the country itself, but the entire world.

God Bless, Rad

[soleil]

Hi Rad,

What you said is spot-on. I agree completely. We cannot give a pass to this level of evil. I just hope Merrick Garland, the new AG, has the guts and the backbone to follow through and that Biden allows him to.

Regards,

Soleil

[Rad]

 Trump is a 'wounded animal' who 'has never been in more legal jeopardy': CNN White House
correspondent

January 13, 2021
Raw Story

CNN White House correspondent John Harwood on Wednesday said President Donald Trump was very likely to try to pardon himself in a desperate attempt to avoid legal consequences for his actions.

Harwood started by explaining that Trump's powers have been greatly diminished in recent days, and that he no longer even has the power to cyberbully Republicans into doing his bidding.

"President Trump is like a wounded animal at this point," he said. "He doesn't have a lot of room to run. His ability to lash out directly at others or inspire others to commit violence, as he did last week, has been curtailed by the fact that social media companies have shut down his direct access."

Harwood then noted that issuing pardons is one of the few unchecked powers that the president has left at his disposal.

"One thing the president can do... assuming that he gets cooperation from his White House legal team to draw up the right paperwork, is take steps to protect himself," he said. "And the reality is that he has never in his life been in more legal jeopardy than he is right now."

Watch: https://youtu.be/V9iv41C6BLI

*******

Read Liz Cheney's full statement in support of Trump's impeachment

The Wyoming Republican is the third-highest ranking leader in the House GOP conference.

By POLITICO STAFF
01/12/2021 06:14 PM EST

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the third-highest ranking Republican leader in the House, announced Tuesday that she'll vote to impeach President Donald Trump for his role in inciting a deadly insurrection at the Capitol last week.

You can read Cheney's original statement here, or view the full text below.

"On January 6, 2021 a violent mob attacked the United States Capitol to obstruct the process of our democracy and stop the counting of presidential electoral votes. This insurrection caused injury, death and destruction in the most sacred space in our Republic.

"Much more will become clear in coming days and weeks, but what we know now is enough. The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the President. The President could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not. There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.

"I will vote to impeach the President."

[Rad]

'This cannot go unanswered': Watchdog files criminal sedition complaint against President Trump

January 14, 2021
Common Dreams

A Washington, D.C.-based government watchdog group has filed a criminal complaint calling on the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation to immediately probe "whether President Trump and his associates seditiously conspired to forcefully overthrow our democracy."

The complaint (pdf) filed Monday by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) focuses on the Jan. 6 violent attack on the U.S. Capitol to disrupt the certification of President-elect Joe Biden's win and the actions Trump took that day - and in leading up to it - that directly incited the insurrection attempt.

"In what will be remembered as a dark day for American democracy, President Trump and his co-conspirators appear to have engaged in nothing less than an attempt to overthrow the government by force," CREW executive director Noah Bookbinder said in a statement. "This cannot go unanswered."

The filing cites as evidence Trump's remarks before the "Save America March" including "We will stop the steal." The document further points to the president telling the crowd to "fight much harder" and that "you'll never take back our country with weakness." Trump also said, "You have to show strength, and you have to be strong."

The rally was just part of Trump's "months-long campaign to undermine faith in the democratic process and convince his supporters that he had won an election he had clearly lost." That effort included his urging Republican lawmakers to "fight" and explicit promotion of the rally, says the filing.

In short, wrote CREW, "Trump's supporters did exactly what he urged them to do."

What's more, the president declared support for the mob's actions after the attack, including by calling the right-wing extremists "great patriots" and telling them in a video message: "We love you, you're very special."

"While President Trump and his associates likely committed a multitude of federal criminal offenses prior to and during the insurrectionary events of January 6, 2021, the president's larger purpose appears to have been the violent overthrow of the United States government by delaying, hindering, or stopping Congress from affirming the results of the 2020 presidential election," according to the complaint.

"It appears that President Trump engaged in a seditious conspiracy to prevent, hinder, or delay by force the lawful transfer of power," the complaint says, "and to thus overthrow the government of the United States."

An accusation of sedition "should be reserved for only the most extreme circumstances," CREW wrote. "This is such a circumstance."

The complaint came as Democratic leadership is facing demands for a swift vote on articles of impeachment against Trump. Freshman Congresswoman Cori Bush of Missouri is also leading a resolution to launch investigations for removal of House Republicans who helped incite last week's violence.

Republican Sens. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, meanwhile, are the targets of a petition signed by thousands of lawyers and law students who say Hawley and Cruz "directly incited the January 6th insurrection, repeating dangerous and unsubstantiated statements regarding the election and abetting the lawless behavior of President Trump."

Progressive lawmakers including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., have warned in recent days that failure to hold Trump and other election result-denying GOP lawmakers accountable would ensure that a similar attack on the Capitol will happen again.

[Rad]

Manhattan DA issues subpoenas in expansion of Trump criminal probe: WSJ

Raw Story
1/16/2021

Donald Trump will face an expanded criminal probe in New York when his term as president ends at midnight on Wednesday, according to a new report by The Wall Street Journal that the newspaper is billing as an exclusive.

"Manhattan prosecutors have subpoenaed records relating to President Trump's sprawling Seven Springs estate north of New York City, according to people familiar with the matter, expanding the known scope of the only publicly disclosed criminal investigation into the president and his business," WSJ correspondent Corinne Ramey reported.

"Some of the information requested by Manhattan prosecutors relates to the president's valuation of Seven Springs, which he bought for $7.5 million in 1995 and in 2012 said was worth almost $300 million as he tried to develop it into a luxury residential community. Inflating assets to help secure loans or other financial benefits can be a state criminal offense, legal experts said. Prosecutors from the office of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. in recent weeks have sent subpoenas to local officials in the three Westchester County towns-New Castle, North Castle and Bedford-in which the Seven Springs estate sits, the people said. The people said the subpoenas request tax assessments, email correspondence, planning-board materials and other documents about the 213-acre property, with a mansion built in 1919 for former Federal Reserve chairman Eugene Meyer," The Journal reported.
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In October, Eric Trump sat for a deposition in the investigation.

"Mr. Vance's office has said in court filings seeking Mr. Trump's tax records that it is investigating possible bank, tax and insurance fraud. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Mr. Vance is entitled to obtain the records, though the president's lawyers have blocked their release so far with a second appeal to the high court on different grounds," The Journal reported. "The office of New York Attorney General Letitia James, which is also investigating Seven Springs as part of a civil-fraud probe, has said it determined Mr. Trump's statements of financial condition were provided to financial institutions, according to court documents the attorney general's office has filed in connection with its probe."

[Rad]

The case against Donald Trump - simplified

Steven Harper,
Moyers & Company
January 16, 2021

Let's start with the basics. The US Constitution establishes a system of checks and balances consisting of three equal branches of government - legislative (Article I), executive (Article II), and judicial (Article III). On January 6, 2021, the head of the executive branch, Donald Trump, incited a mob to attack the legislative branch and then did nothing to stop it. As a result, Congress was unable to perform its constitutional duty, which was to certify the election of the candidate who beat him - President-elect Joe Biden.

That's an impeachable offense for which the Senate can and should convict Trump and bar him from ever holding federal office again.

The Facts are Undisputed

    Pre-election polls showed Trump losing decisively to Biden. So months before November 3, Trump launched a pre-emptive attack on the election itself by claiming that he could lose only if it was "rigged."

    Trump lost the election by more than seven million popular votes and 74 electoral votes. Continuing his assault on the right of the people to select their president, he refused to concede, claiming falsely that the election had been "stolen" from him. "Stop the Steal" became the rallying cry.

    Trump and his allies then filed more than 60 unsuccessful court challenges seeking to reverse the outcome of a legitimate election. In none of those cases did any court find any evidence of the widespread fraud that he blamed repeatedly for his loss. Even Trump's loyal attorney general, William Barr, who went in search of such fraud, found nothing worth pursuing.

    When the courts and Barr refused to call the election into question, Trump pressured state election officials to overturn the will of 81 million voters who wanted him out of office.

    As the date for congressional certification of Biden's win approached, Trump pressured Vice President Mike Pence - as presiding officer of the session - to act unconstitutionally and decline to certify the vote.

    When Pence refused, Trump spoke for more than an hour to an organized mob of thousands whom he had called to the capital on the day of certification for a "Stop the Steal" rally. He continued to lie about the election, saying:

        "We will never give up. We will never concede. It doesn't happen. You don't concede when there's theft involved."

        "We won this election, and we won it by a landslide. This was not a close election."

        "I hope Mike is going to do the right thing. I hope so. I hope so, because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election"¦ All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify, and we become president, and you are the happiest people."

    As the congressional certification process began, Trump concluded his speech by inviting the mob to join him in marching to the Capitol. "We fight like hell," he said. "If you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore"¦ Our exciting adventures and boldest endeavors have not yet begun"¦ We're going to the Capitol. We're going to try and give them [Republicans] the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country."

    But Trump didn't walk to the Capitol as he had promised. Instead, he watched the violence unfold on television from the White House where officials reported that he was "borderline enthusiastic because it meant the certification was being denied." In fact, as the mob was overrunning the Capitol, Trump made a phone call to Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), urging him to delay certification further by endorsing numerous frivolous objections.

    After the mob had been inside the Capitol for more than two hours, Trump finally tweeted a scripted video. It opened with inflammatory rhetoric reiterating his lies.

    "I know your pain. I know you're hurt," he began. "We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election and everyone knows it, especially the other side."

    After telling his supporters to go home in peace, he continued, "There's never been a time like this where such a thing happened where they could take it away from all of us - from me, from you, from our country. This was a fraudulent election, but we can't play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace. So go home. We love you. You're very special. You've seen what happens. You see the way others are treated that are so bad and so evil."

The Law is Clear

    Impeachable conduct - "Treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors" - encompasses a defeated presidential candidate's attempted coup d'etat against the legitimate constitutional government of the United States. Constitutional scholars across the political spectrum have echoed Prof. Michael Stokes Parkman's view: "If Trump's misconduct is not impeachable, nothing is."
    Proof of a crime is not required for impeachment, but Trump probably committed several federal felonies. "Seditious conspiracy" is an agreement by at least two people to hinder the execution of federal law or to seize federal property. The agreement need not be express and can be inferred by willful participation in the unlawful plan with intent to further it. Conviction can lead to imprisonment for up to 20 years. "Inciting rebellion or insurrection" against the authority of the United States can result a 10-year prison term.

    The felony-murder rule might even apply. In some circumstances, a person who engages in a violent felony can be held responsible for deaths that occur during the course of that crime. For example, suppose two people try to rob a bank and a bank security guard pulls out a gun and kills one robber while the other is waiting in the getaway car. The driver of the getaway car could be held liable for the death of his fellow robber. Trump's incitement led to five deaths, including the mob's murder of a Capitol Police officer.

What's the Defense?

Trump is throwing everything against the wall in the hope that something will stick. Nothing will. His defenders rely principally on the First Amendment, but there is no constitutional right to incite an insurrection. According to the US Supreme Court, the Constitution does not protect conduct that is "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to produce such action."

    Although Trump claims that his January 6 speech to the mob was "totally appropriate," it wasn't, especially in the context of the speeches preceding his. Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, called for "trial by combat." Donald Trump Jr. told the mob, "If you're going to be the zero and not the hero, we're coming for you, and we're going to have a good time doing it."

    Members of the mob were already heading toward the Capitol when Trump himself exhorted them, "We fight like hell. If you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore"¦ Our exciting adventures and boldest endeavors have not yet begun"¦ We're going to the Capitol. We're going to try and give them [Republicans] the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country"¦"

    But even if Trump's words and deeds did not meet the Supreme Court's test, the First Amendment still wouldn't save him. High-level government officials can be held accountable for their speech in ways that private citizens cannot. As Prof. Ilya Somin notes, "Donald Trump himself has fired numerous cabinet officials and other subordinates because they expressed views he didn't like." And for the same reasons that impeachment does not require proof of a president's criminality, the fact that his speech might not lead to civil or criminal liability is not a defense anyway.

During the House debate on impeachment, some Republicans complained that the process had not involved hearings and witnesses. There was no need. Trump's impeachable conduct occurred in plain sight. Newspapers and allied governments around the world correctly labeled the attack on the Capitol an attempted coup.

Finally, unlike a criminal proceeding, conviction in the Senate does not require proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The purpose of impeachment is to get a president out of office and then, by subsequent majority vote in the Senate, assure that he never returns.

Saving American Democracy Begins with Truth and Accountability

Most Republicans argue that Trump's impeachment undermines efforts to unify the country. The opposite is true.

A US president encouraged a mob to attack a co-equal branch of government and then watched the violence unfold for hours on television. But in the eyes of most Republicans, Trump remains blameless. Although 70 percent of the GOP believe that the mob was undermining democracy and must be held accountable, 70 percent also say that the president who incited it is somehow protecting democracy. Even more of them - 87 percent - say that Trump should not be removed from office.

Without accountability for subverting the nation's political system, unity is impossible. That requires a common understanding and acceptance of facts. America's body politic cannot heal without first ridding itself of the infection that Trump's lies have caused. Impeachment is a necessary first step in that cleansing process.

As Trump and his allies dissemble in the days ahead, remember that the vote to impeach him was bipartisan. Ten Republicans, including Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) - the GOP's No. 3 leader in the House and a reliable Trump defender throughout his presidency, finally broke away from Trump's spell. On January 12, Rep. Cheney declared:

"On January 6, 2021 a violent mob attacked the United States Capitol to obstruct the process of our democracy and stop the counting of presidential electoral votes. This insurrection caused injury, death and destruction in the most sacred space in our Republic.

"Much more will become clear in coming days and weeks, but what we know now is enough. The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the President. The President could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not. There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.

"I will vote to impeach the President."

The prosecution rests.

[Rad]

Atlanta Prosecutor Appears to Move Closer to Trump Inquiry

The Fulton County district attorney is weighing an inquiry into possible election interference and is said to be considering hiring an outside counsel.

By Richard Fausset and Danny Hakim
NY Times
Jan. 16, 2021

ATLANTA - Prosecutors in Georgia appear increasingly likely to open a criminal investigation of President Trump over his attempts to overturn the results of the state's 2020 election, an inquiry into offenses that would be beyond his federal pardon power.

The new Fulton County district attorney, Fani Willis, is already weighing whether to proceed, and among the options she is considering is the hiring of a special assistant from outside to oversee the investigation, according to people familiar with her office's deliberations.

At the same time, David Worley, the lone Democrat on Georgia's five-member election board, said this week that he would ask the board to make a referral to the Fulton County district attorney by next month. Among the matters he will ask prosecutors to investigate is a phone call Mr. Trump made in which he pressured Georgia's secretary of state to overturn the state's election results.

Jeff DiSantis, a district attorney spokesman, said the office had not taken any action to hire outside counsel and declined to comment further on the case.

Some veteran Georgia prosecutors said they believed Mr. Trump had clearly violated state law.

"If you took the fact out that he is the president of the United States and look at the conduct of the call, it tracks the communication you might see in any drug case or organized crime case," said Michael J. Moore, the former United States attorney for the Middle District of Georgia. "It's full of threatening undertone and strong-arm tactics." 

He said he believed there had been "a clear attempt to influence the conduct of the secretary of state, and to commit election fraud, or to solicit the commission of election fraud."

The White House declined to comment.

Mr. Worley said in an interview that if no investigation had been announced by Feb. 10, the day of the election board's next scheduled meeting he would make a motion for the board to refer the matter of Mr. Trump's phone calls to Ms. Willis's office. Mr. Worley, a lawyer, believes that such a referral should, under Georgia law, automatically prompt an investigation.

If the board declines to make a referral, Mr. Worley said he would ask Ms. Willis's office himself to start an inquiry.

Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state, is one of the members of the board and has said that he might have a conflict of interest in the matter, as Mr. Trump called him to exert pressure. That could lead him to recuse himself from any decisions on a referral by the board.

Mr. Worley said he would introduce the motion based on an outside complaint filed with the state election board by John F. Banzhaf III, a George Washington University law professor.
On Politics with Lisa Lerer: A guiding hand through the political news cycle, telling you what you really need to know.

Mr. Banzhaf and other legal experts say Mr. Trump's calls may run afoul of at least three state criminal laws. One is criminal solicitation to commit election fraud, which can be either a felony or a misdemeanor.

There is also a related conspiracy charge, which can be prosecuted either as a misdemeanor or a felony. A third law, a misdemeanor offense, bars "intentional interference" with another person's "performance of election duties."

"My feeling based on listening to the phone call is that they probably will see if they can get it past a grand jury," said Joshua Morrison, a former senior assistant district attorney in Fulton County who once worked closely with Ms. Willis. "It seems clearly there was a crime committed."

He noted that Fulton County, which encompasses much of Atlanta, is not friendly territory for Mr. Trump if he were to face a grand jury there.

The inquiry, if it comes to pass, would be the second known criminal investigation of Mr. Trump outside of federal pardon power. He is already facing a criminal fraud inquiry into his finances by the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr. Even Georgia's Republican governor, Brian Kemp, does not have the power to pardon at the state level, though it's not assured that he would issue a pardon anyway, given his frayed relationship with Mr. Trump. Nonetheless, in Georgia, pardons are handled by a state board.

The question of whether or not to charge the nation's 45th president would present a unique challenge for any district attorney. Ms. Willis, who took office only days ago, is a seasoned prosecutor not unaccustomed to the limelight and criticism. A graduate of Howard University and the Emory University School of Law in the Atlanta area, she is the first woman, and the second African-American, to hold the job of top prosecutor in Fulton County, Georgia's most populous, with more than one million residents.

Ms. Willis, 49, is known for the leading role she played in the 2015 convictions of 11 educators in a standardized-test cheating scandal that rocked Atlanta's public school system. She is taking office at a time when Atlanta, like other big cities, is seeing a rise in crime.

She must also deal with the high-profile fatal shooting of a Black man, Rayshard Brooks, by a white police officer in June 2020 and has said she will take a fresh look at charges brought against the officer by her predecessor.

Several calls by Mr. Trump to Georgia Republicans have raised alarms about election interference. In early December, he called Mr. Kemp to pressure him to call a special legislative session to overturn his election loss. Later that month, Mr. Trump called a state investigator and pressed the official to "find the fraud," according to those with knowledge of the call.

The pressure campaign culminated in a Jan. 2 call by Mr. Trump to Mr. Raffensperger. "I just want to find 11,780 votes," Mr. Trump said on the call, during which Mr. Raffensperger and his aides dismissed the president's baseless claims of fraud.

After the Jan. 2 call, a complaint was sent to the election board by Mr. Banzhaf. (Three of his law students once brought a complaint that forced former Vice President Spiro Agnew to pay back to the state of Maryland money he had received as kickbacks.) Mr. Banzhaf has subsequently supplemented his complaint to incorporate the call made to the Georgia election investigator.

The complaint was also sent to Ms. Willis, and to Chris Carr, the Republican attorney general; a spokesperson for Mr. Carr could not be reached Friday.

Of the three Republicans on the board besides Mr. Raffensperger, one of them, Rebecca N. Sullivan, did not return a phone call, and another, Anh Le, declined to comment. The third, T. Matthew Mashburn, said that it would be inappropriate for him to comment on how he would vote before the motion was presented.

However, Mr. Mashburn also said that he was troubled by some of the language Mr. Trump had used in his phone call to Mr. Raffensperger. Mr. Mashburn noted, in particular, a moment when the president told Mr. Raffensperger, "There's nothing wrong with saying that, you know, um, that you've recalculated."

"The use of the word "˜recalculate' is very dangerous ground to tread," Mr. Mashburn said.

[Rad]

Records: Trump allies behind rally that ignited Capitol riot

By RICHARD LARDNER and MICHELLE R. SMITH
AP
1/18/2021

WASHINGTON (AP) - Members of President Donald Trump's failed presidential campaign played key roles in orchestrating the Washington rally that spawned a deadly assault on the U.S. Capitol, according to an Associated Press review of records, undercutting claims the event was the brainchild of the president's grassroots supporters.

A pro-Trump nonprofit group called Women for America First hosted the "Save America Rally" on Jan. 6 at the Ellipse, an oval-shaped, federally owned patch of land near the White House. But an attachment to the National Park Service public gathering permit granted to the group lists more than half a dozen people in staff positions for the event who just weeks earlier had been paid thousands of dollars by Trump's 2020 reelection campaign. Other staff scheduled to be "on site" during the demonstration have close ties to the White House.

Since the siege, several of them have scrambled to distance themselves from the rally.

The riot at the Capitol, incited by Trump's comments before and during his speech at the Ellipse, has led to a reckoning unprecedented in American history. The president told the crowd to march to the Capitol and that "you'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong."

A week after the rally, Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives, becoming the first U.S. president ever to be impeached twice. But the political and legal fallout may stretch well beyond Trump, who will exit the White House on Wednesday before Democrat Joe Biden takes the oath of office. Trump had refused for nearly two months to accept his loss in the 2020 election to the former vice president.

Women for America First, which applied for and received the Park Service permit, did not respond to messages seeking comment about how the event was financed and about the Trump campaign's involvement. The rally drew tens of thousands of people.

In a statement, the president's reelection campaign said it "did not organize, operate or finance the event." No campaign staff members were involved in the organization or operation of the rally, according to the statement. It said that if any former employees or independent contractors for the campaign took part, "they did not do so at the direction of the Trump campaign."

At least one was working for the Trump campaign this month. Megan Powers was listed as one of two operations managers for the Jan. 6 event, and her LinkedIn profile says she was the Trump campaign's director of operations into January 2021. She did not respond to a message seeking comment.

The AP's review found at least three of the Trump campaign aides named on the permit rushed to obscure their connections to the demonstration. They deactivated or locked down their social media profiles, removed tweets that referenced the rally and blocked a reporter who asked questions.

Caroline Wren, a veteran GOP fundraiser, is named as a "VIP Advisor" on an attachment to the permit that Women for America First provided to the agency. Between mid-March and mid-November, Donald J. Trump for President Inc. paid Wren $20,000 a month, according to Federal Election Commission records. During the campaign, she was a national finance consultant for Trump Victory, a joint fundraising committee between the president's reelection campaign and the Republican National Committee.

Wren was involved in at least one call before the pro-Trump rally with members of several groups listed as rally participants to organize credentials for VIP attendees, according to Kimberly Fletcher, the president of one of those groups, Moms for America.

Wren retweeted messages about the event ahead of time, but a cache of her account on Google shows at least eight of those tweets disappeared from her timeline. She apparently removed some herself, and others were sent from accounts that Twitter suspended.

One of the messages Wren retweeted was from "Stop the Steal," another group identified as a rally participant on a website promoting the event. The Jan. 2 message thanked Republican senators who said they would vote to overturn Biden's election victory, including Josh Hawley of Missouri and Ted Cruz of Texas. She also retweeted a Jan. 1 message from the president promoting the event, as well as promotional messages from one of the president's son, Eric Trump, and Katrina Pierson, a Tea Party activist and a spokesperson for Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.

Wren did not return messages seeking comment, and locked her Twitter account after the AP reached out to her last Monday to ask her about her involvement in the Trump rally and the tweets she had removed. Several days later, she blocked the AP reporter.

Maggie Mulvaney, a niece of former top Trump aide Mick Mulvaney, is listed on the permit attachment as the "VIP Lead." She worked as director of finance operations for the Trump campaign, according to her LinkedIn profile. FEC records show Maggie Mulvaney was earning $5,000 every two weeks from Trump's reelection campaign, with the most recent payment reported on Nov. 13.

Maggie Mulvaney had taken down her Twitter account as of last Monday, although it reappeared after an AP reporter asked her about the account's removal. On Sunday, the same day the AP published this report, she blocked that AP reporter on Twitter.

Maggie Mulvaney retweeted several messages on Jan. 6, including one from the president that urged support for the Capitol Police. Trump's Twitter account has been suspended, but the message could be seen in a cache of her Twitter account captured by Google. She also retweeted a message from her uncle, urging Trump to address the nation.

Maggie Mulvaney did not respond to messages seeking comment.

The insurrection at the Capitol prompted Mick Mulvaney to quit his position as Trump's special envoy to Northern Ireland. He told CNBC a day after the assault that remaining in the post would prompt people to say ""˜Oh yeah, you work for the guy who tried to overtake the government.'"

The leaders of Women for America First aren't new to politics.

Amy Kremer, listed as the group's president on records filed with Virginia's state corporation commission, is "one of the founding mothers of the modern day tea party movement," according to her website. Her daughter, Kylie Jane Kremer, is the organization's treasurer, according to the records.

The IRS granted Women for America First tax-exempt status as a social welfare organization a year ago, with the exemption retroactive to February 2019. The AP requested that the group provide any tax records it may have filed since then, but received no response.

In a statement issued the same day rioters attacked the Capitol, Amy Kremer denounced the assault and said it was instigated after the rally by a "handful of bad actors," while seeming to blame Democrats and news organizations for the riot.

"Unfortunately, for months the left and the mainstream media told the American people that violence was an acceptable political tool," she said. "They were wrong. It is not."

The AP reviewed social media posts, voter registrations, court files and other public records for more than 120 people either facing criminal charges related to the Jan. 6 unrest or who, going maskless during the pandemic, were later identified through photographs and videos taken during the melee.

The review found the crowd was overwhelmingly made up of longtime Trump supporters, including Republican Party officials, GOP political donors, far-right militants, white supremacists, off-duty police, members of the military and adherents of the QAnon myth that the government is secretly controlled by a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophile cannibals.

Videos posted on social media in the days following the Capitol attack shows that thousands of people stormed the Capitol. A Capitol Police officer died after he was hit in the head with a fire extinguisher as rioters descended on the building and many other officers were injured. A woman from California was shot to death by Capitol Police and three other people died after medical emergencies during the chaos.

Trump's incendiary remarks at the Jan. 6 rally culminated a two-day series of events in Washington, organized by a coalition of the president's supporters who echoed his baseless accusations that the election had been stolen from him. A website, MarchtoSaveAmerica.com, sprung up to promote the pro-Trump events and alerted followers, "At 1 PM, we protest at US Capitol." The website has been deactivated.

Another website, TrumpMarch.com shows a fist-raised Trump pictured on the front of a red, white and blue tour bus emblazoned with the words, "Powered by Women for America First." The logo for the bedding company "My Pillow" is also prominent. Mike Lindell, the CEO of My Pillow, is an ardent Trump supporter who's falsely claimed Trump didn't lose the election to Biden and will serve another four-year term as president.

"To demand transparency & protect election integrity," the web page reads. Details of the "DC PROTEST" will be coming soon, it adds, and also lists a series of bus stops between Dec. 27 and Jan. 6 where Trump backers can "Join the caravan or show your support."

Kimberly Fletcher, the Moms for America president, said she wasn't aware the Trump campaign had a role in the rally at the Ellipse until around New Year's Day. While she didn't work directly with the campaign, Fletcher did notice a shift in who was involved in the rally and who would be speaking.

"When I got there and I saw the size of the stage and everything, I'm like, "˜Wow, we couldn't possibly have afforded that,'" she said. "It was a big stage. It was a very professional stage. I don't know who was in the background or who put it together or anything."

In addition to the large stage, the rally on the Ellipse featured a sophisticated sound system and at least three Jumbotron-style screens projecting the president's image to the crowd. Videos posted online show Trump and his family in a nearby private tent watching the rally on several monitors as music blared in the background.

Moms for America held a more modest "Save the Republic" rally on Jan. 5 near the U.S. Capitol, an event that drew about 500 people and cost between $13,000 to $14,000, according to Fletcher.

Justin Caporale is listed on the Women for America First paperwork as the event's project manager. He's identified as a partner with Event Strategies Inc., a management and production company. Caporale, formerly a top aide to first lady Melania Trump, was on the Trump campaign payroll for most of 2020, according to the FEC records, and he most recently was being paid $7,500 every two weeks. Caporale didn't respond to requests for comment.

Tim Unes, the founder and president of Event Strategies, was the "stage manager" for the Jan. 6 rally, according to the permit paperwork. Unes has longstanding ties to Trump, a connection he highlights on his company's website. Trump's presidential campaign paid Event Strategies $1.3 million in 2020 for "audio visual services," according to the campaign finance records. The company declined to comment for this story.

Another person with close ties to the Trump administration, Hannah Salem, was the rally's "operations manager for logistics and communications," according to the permit paperwork. In 2017, she took a hiatus from the consulting firm she founded and spent three years as senior White House press aide, "executing the media strategy for President Trump's most high-profile events," according to her company bio and LinkedIn profile.

Last week, within minutes of an AP reporter sending her a LinkedIn message asking about her involvement in and understanding of what happened on Jan. 6, Salem blocked the reporter and did not respond to questions.
___

Smith reported from Providence, Rhode Island.
___

Associated Press researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York and Associated Press writer Zeke Miller contributed to this report.