Thread: Right-wing domestic terrorists

• Secret Service deleted text messages from Jan. 6 and previous day, Homeland Security watchdog says

The Secret Service erased text messages from both Jan. 6 and the day before the attack on the Capitol after the Department of Homeland Security’s internal watchdog requested records of electronic communications tied to the insurrection, according to a letter sent to congressional committees that was obtained by NBC News.

The details regarding the deleted messages were revealed in a letter sent to two congressional committees Wednesday by Homeland Security Inspector General Joseph Cuffari, who said he was informed that many of the messages from Jan. 5 and Jan. 6 had been erased “as part of a device-replacement program.”

The Intercept first reported the content of the letters.

A spokesperson for the House Homeland Security committee confirmed the letter, which was also given to the Jan. 6 committee, a source familiar with the matter confirmed to NBC News.

Cuffari’s letter was also addressed to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

“The USSS erased those text messages after OIG requested records of electronic communications from the USSS, as part of our evaluation of events at the Capitol on January 6,” Cuffari said in his letter.

He added that DHS personnel had repeatedly told inspectors that “they were not permitted to provide records directly” to the watchdog and that the records first needed to be reviewed by the agency’s attorneys.

“This review led to weeks-long delays in OIG obtaining records and created confusion over whether all records had been produced,” he said.

NBC News has reached out to the Secret Service, DHS and its inspector general for comment.

The Secret Service is part of the Department of Homeland Security.

The deleted text messages are likely to put a new focus on the Secret Service’s actions surrounding the Jan. 6 riot.

Last month, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson delivered bombshell testimony that involved a description of a physical altercation between former President Donald Trump and his top security official.

Hutchinson said Secret Service official Tony Ornato had described in conversations with her a livid Trump grabbing for the steering wheel from the back seat, wrestling with one of the bodyguards for control of the car and ultimately grabbing the bodyguard’s throat when he learned he was being driven back to the White House instead of the Capitol to join his supporters after his speech at the Ellipse.

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• Cheney says Trump’s team has changed Jan. 6 strategy to blame the ‘crazies’

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) on Tuesday said individuals in former President Trump’s orbit have recently changed their strategy when dealing with the Jan. 6 select committee, opting to blame the “crazies” in Trump’s orbit for his actions.

During her opening statement at Tuesday’s public hearing, Cheney said witnesses and lawyers connected to Trump have gone from denying arguments and delaying proceedings to blaming outside advisers for Trump’s conduct — a plan that she labeled “nonsense.”

The Wyoming Republican’s comments came after the committee established that individuals in Trump’s orbit were aware that the 2020 presidential election was not stolen.

“We have covered significant ground over the past several weeks, and we have also seen a change in how witnesses and lawyers in the Trump orbit approach this committee,” Cheney said.

“Initially, their strategy in some cases appeared to be to deny and delay,” Cheney said. “Today, there appears to be a general recognition that the committee has established key facts, including that virtually everyone close to President Trump — his justice department officials, his White House advisers, his White House counsel, his campaign — all told him the 2020 election was not stolen,” she added.

During previous hearings, the committee has presented testimony from figures in Trump’s inner circle calling his claims of election fraud baseless. Notably, the panel showed testimony from former Attorney General William Barr labeling Trump’s claims of election fraud “bullshit.”

Cheney, who serves as the vice chairwoman of the panel, said those close to Trump now seem to be arguing that the president “was manipulated by others outside the administration, that he was persuaded to ignore his closest advisers and that he was incapable of telling right from wrong.”

She specifically called out three individuals witnesses have sought to blame for Trump’s conduct: conservative lawyer John Eastman, former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell and Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.).

“In this version, the president was quote ‘poorly served’ by these outside advisers. The strategy is to blame people his advisers called quote ‘the crazies’ for what Donald Trump did. This, of course, is nonsense,” Cheney said.

“President Trump is a 76-year-old man. He is not an impressionable child. Just like everyone else in our country, he is responsible for his own actions and his own choices. As our investigation has shown, Donald Trump had access to more detailed and specific information showing that the election was not actually stolen than almost any other American. And he was told this over and over again. No rational or sane man in his position could disregard that information and reach the opposite conclusion. And Donald Trump cannot escape responsibility by being willfully blind,” she added.

Cheney’s comments came during the seventh public hearing put on by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

The hearing marked the first presentation from the panel since it spoke with former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone, who sat behind closed doors with the panel for more than seven hours on Friday.

Cheney on Tuesday said Cipollone’s testimony “met our expectations.”

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• Former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale said he felt "guilty" for helping Trump win on Jan. 6

Former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale said in a text exchange on the evening of Jan. 6 that "a sitting president [is] asking for a civil war," adding that former President Trump's rhetoric "killed someone" that day.

Driving the news: "This week I feel guilty for helping him win," Parscale wrote in a text message to former senior campaign adviser Katrina Pierson, in a text exchange obtained by the panel.

"You did what you felt right at the time and therefore it was right," Pierson wrote to Parscale on Jan. 6, to which he responded: "Yeah. But a woman is dead."

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Extra.

• Buffalo shooter indicted on federal hate crimes charges

The gunman accused of killing 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket in May was indicted Thursday of dozens of charges, including 10 counts of hate crimes resulting in death, the Justice Department said in a statement.

The big picture: Payton Gendron, 19, is accused of killing 10 people and injuring three at a Tops supermarket in Buffalo, New York on May 14.

• In what the FBI called "an act of racially motivated violent extremism," Gendron, who is white, drove more than 200 miles from Conklin, New York to allegedly commit the attack in a predominantly Black neighborhood. Eleven of the 13 people shot were Black.

Driving the news: Gendron was indicted on 27 total charges — 14 hate crimes charges and 13 firearms charges, according to the Justice Department.

• The indictment alleges that Gendron, who was 18 years old at the time, "committed the offense after substantial planning and premeditation to commit an act of terrorism."

What they're saying: "The Justice Department fully recognizes the threat that white supremacist violence poses to the safety of the American people and American democracy," Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. "We will continue to be relentless in our efforts to combat hate crimes, to support the communities terrorized by them, and to hold accountable those who perpetrate them."

What's next: The charges carry a maximum sentence of life imprisonment or the death penalty. Garland will decide whether to pursue the death penalty at a later time, the Justice Department said.

Fuck off to TC with your spam landreth.

^miss me much

Big Catch.........

• ‘A Federal Crime of Terrorism’: Prosecutors Ask Judge to Send Guy Reffitt to Prison for 15 Years for Jan. 6 Attack

Prosecutors have asked a federal judge to sentence a militia member from Texas who was convicted of bringing a gun to the Capitol on Jan. 6 to 15 years behind bars, arguing that his actions were “intended to promote a federal crime of terrorism.”

His lawyer has asked for a sentence of 24 months.

Guy Reffitt, 49, was convicted by a federal jury in March of five counts, including obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress and bringing a gun to the Capitol, both felonies. He was seen facing off against police on the Capitol steps on Jan. 6, as a growing mob of Donald Trump supporters — angry over Trump’s loss in the 2020 presidential election — tried to stop Congress from certifying the results.

Indeed, the mob did cause Congress to temporarily stop certifying Joe Biden‘s electoral win; as rioters roamed the building, lawmakers were forced to either evacuate or shelter in place.

Reffitt, a member of the Three Percenters militia group, which draws its name from the false idea that only three percent of American colonists fought against the British in the Revolutionary War, also warned his children against reporting his participation in the riot to federal authorities.

“Traitors get shot,” he said to two of his kids in the days following Jan. 6, according to the feds.

DOJ: Reffitt’s Actions Were “Intended to Promote a Federal Crime of Terrorism.”

Prosecutors also argued that Reffitt’s behavior warrants an upward departure because his “offense of conviction ‘involved, or was intended to promote, a federal crime of terrorism.'”

In its sentencing memorandum, the government argues that U.S. Judge Dabney Friedrich should make an upward departure from the federal sentencing guidelines range of 9 to 11.25 years, or 108 to 135 months.

Reffitt, armed with a holstered handgun, police-style “flexicuffs,” and fortified with a tactical helmet and body armor, confronted three U.S. Capitol Police officers on the west side stairs of the Capitol building.

“Reffitt rushed at the officers, who unsuccessfully tried to repel him with two different types of less-than-lethal projectiles before successfully halting his advances with pepper spray,” the DOJ’s sentencing memo says. “To assist Reffitt, other rioters cut down the tarp covering the scaffolding, both to further penetrate into the scaffolding and to use the tarp as a shield to protect Reffitt from additional pepper spray and projectiles. Before and after being hit with pepper spray, Reffitt encouraged other rioters to charge forward at the officers, which they did both by moving up the stairs and by climbing up through the scaffolding, overwhelming the police officers trying to defend their position on a landing at the top.”

That landing, prosecutors say, was the “access point to the final set of stairs leading to the Upper West Terrace and the Capitol building itself.”

Reffitt didn’t breach the Capitol, but prosecutors say that his actions that day made the siege on the Capitol possible.

“Reffitt’s actions enabled rioters to reach the West Front of the Capitol Grounds, where some of the most vicious assaults on police officers occurred,” prosecutors argue in the government’s sentencing memo. “And those assaults, in turn, made the rioters’ entry into the United States Capitol Building on January 6, 2021, possible. Initiated by the most fervent smaller groups and individuals within the crowd — individuals like Reffitt — and using the mob itself as a cloak for their actions, each blow helped the crowd penetrate further into the United States Capitol Police’s defenses until the building itself was accessible and its occupants were at risk.”

Prosecutors also argued that Reffitt’s behavior warrants an upward departure because his “offense of conviction ‘involved, or was intended to promote, a federal crime of terrorism.'”

Although Reffitt was not convicted of an enumerated terrorism offense, prosecutors say, he acted “with the object of influence government conduct or retaliating against a government.” That intention warrants a terrorism enhancement to the judge’s sentence, the government says.

“It is clear from Reffitt’s conduct, including his express and implied intent, that Reffitt sought not just to stop Congress, but also to physically attack, remove, and replace the legislators who were serving in Congress,” the DOJ’s sentencing memo argues. “This is a quintessential example of an intent to both influence and retaliate against government conduct through intimidation or coercion.”

So far, the longest sentence handed down in Jan. 6 conviction is just over five years, according to a Law&Crime review of sentences in Jan. 6 cases. Robert Palmer, who had pleaded guilty to one count assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers while using a dangerous weapon, was sentenced in December to 63 months in prison.

Reffitt’s Approach: Judge Should Avoid ‘Unnecessary Sentencing Disparities’

Reffitt, through his lawyer F. Clinton Broden, asked for a downward departure and a sentence of two years. Broden focused heavily on a federal sentencing factor that requires judges to try to avoid unnecessary sentencing disparities, and he listed other sentences issued so far in Jan. 6 prosecutions — including Palmer, Scott Fairlamb (41 months), the so-called “QAnon shaman” Jacob Chansley, and Lonnie Coffman, among others.

Those defendants, however, pleaded guilty; they were not convicted at trial. Still, Broden argued that Reffitt should not receive a harsher sentence than those defendants, some of whom engaged in direct violence with police by attacking them with weapons, objects, and chemical spray while others entered sensitive parts of the Capitol itself.

“[T]he very fundamental question that must be answered is, should Mr. Reffitt, who did not engage in any violence, did not throw any objects at police, did not attack police with any weapons, did not spray police with hazardous chemicals contained in fire extinguishers, spent only a limited time in the restricted areas (i.e. the Capitol steps and landing), and did not enter the Capitol (let alone the Senate chambers) be treated similarly to those that did?” Broden argued.

“Frankly put, most if not all defendants who received a sentence of greater than 24 months imprisonment are at a whole different level than Mr. Reffitt and Undersigned Counsel submits that is it important for Mr. Reffitt’s sentence to reflect these distinctions,” Broden added.

Broden also requested that, instead of day-for-day credit of the 19 months Reffitt has already spent behind bars, the court fashion a “different ratio and reduce any sentence it would otherwise impose in this case by the additional number of months produced by that ratio.”

Such a reduction, Broden argued, would be fair in light of the solitary conditions in which he says Reffitt has been held.

“Traitors Get Shot.”

Jackson Reffitt — Guy’s son who flagged his father’s activity to the FBI — did not write a letter of support, but he did not go unmentioned.

Jackson’s sister Peyton Reffitt recounted the now-notorious exchange between Reffitt and the two children in the days after he returned from Washington. An increasingly paranoid Reffitt had told his children that if they told the FBI that he was part of the Capitol siege, they would be traitors to him, and “traitors get shot.” Reffitt also told Peyton that if she was recording him on her cell phone at that moment, he would “put a bullet” through her phone.

In a letter to Friedrich in support of her father, Peyton described the exchange as “a statement that really had me and Jackson feeling disappointed in his choice of words.”

“Jackson claims he felt as though his life was threatened by our fathers statements about ‘traitors getting shot’ but I was there and I can say honestly that I saw our father ranting to more of a bigger picture of things rather than us, his own children,” Peyton wrote. “Jackson immediately asked if what he said was a threat, to which our father replied ‘don’t put words in my mouth’. Our father also stated he’d put a bullet through my phone if I was recording his nonsense. I thought ‘he pays for the phone, it’s his anyway’, although I wasn’t recording. I never felt threatened, my father doesn’t threaten me, I rather get annoyed about his dramatic way of speech that often uses outdated references and recitations. I guess he was nervous about being discovered and picked up by the FBI, as they were already doing in North Texas.”

Guy Reffitt himself also discussed Jackson in his letter to the judge, blaming his fractured relationship with his son, at least in part, on a teacher who was “very far on the left side of the spectrum” with whom Jackson, according to Reffitt, had an “odd teacher relationship.”

In that same letter, Reffitt, who has been incarcerated since his arrest in January of 2021, appeared to express sorrow over his actions at the Capitol that day.

“My regrets for what has happened is insurmountable,” he wrote in a letter to Friedrich. “There’s not a day go by that I don’t regret how much this has affected [his family]. 227 days of solitary confinement allows lots of time to reflect.”

“43% of my time has been in my cell wishing I could return back the clock and stay home,” Reffitt later wrote.

Reffitt was the first of the more than 855 Jan. 6 defendants to go to trial. So far, 11 trials have resulted in at least partial guilty verdicts, including at least 9 defendants convicted of felonies, according to a DOJ summary of the prosecutions and Law&Crime’s own review of court records.

Originally Posted by Cujo

Fuck off to TC with your spam landreth.

To be fair, his posts are on-topic. A bit more personal opinion might be good, but he's on topic without any obvious bias

“The government is going to be relentless in finding everyone who was involved in Jan. 6, because it is that important to our democratic process,” Howell said. “It might take them some time, but I trust this U.S. Attorney’s office and the prosecutors involved and the FBI agents involved are going to be relentless.”

The sad part is if you ask the average American what the biggest issue in the mid terms is going to be and they will tell you gas prices.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

The sad part is if you ask the average American what the biggest issue in the mid terms is going to be and they will tell you gas prices.

The funny thing is gas prices are coming down again, and guess who fox is BLAMING for that.
You guessed it, Biden. .
There's no end to the hypocrisy.

Tonight, Primetime (8:00 pm EST and Thursday morning 7:00 am Thai time) the 8^th (and maybe not final) January 6^th Committee hearing will start.

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• '187 Minutes': Jan. 6 Committee’s Prime Time Curtain-Dropper to Pick Apart Time Span Trump Failed to Act During U.S. Capitol Attack

After his speech at the Ellipse ended approximately 1:10 p.m. on Jan. 6, 2021, former President Donald Trump waited more than three hours before tweeting a video calling for his supporters to go home at 4:17 p.m. Eastern Time. The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol will scrutinize the 187 minutes that passed in between that time on Thursday night.

The prime time hearing, slated to begin at 8 p.m. Eastern Time, is believed to be the last of the committee’s first tranche of hearings.

On Face the Nation on Sunday, Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois — one of two Republicans on the committee — suggested a new set of hearings could follow when the panel releases its report or if new information emerges.

Thursday’s proceedings, however, come with high expectations as the tale the committee has told over eight installments reaches its chronological conclusion.

“The story we’re going to tell tomorrow is that in that time, President Trump refused to act to defend the Capitol as a violent mob stormed the Capitol with the aim of stopping the counting of electoral votes and blocking the transfer of power,” a Select Committee aide told reporters.

During its seventh hearing, the Jan. 6 Committee disclosed that Trump made last-minute changes to his speech and on-the-spot ad libs to inflame the crowd against his then-vice president Mike Pence. Trump changed his approach after Pence announced that he did not have the legal power to unilaterally block the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory, the committee revealed.

Prior hearings also have focused on Trump ignoring entreaties by top staffers and even his son Donald Trump Jr. to denounce the rioters. The committee on Thursday intends to put Trump’s “inaction” under a microscope.

“We’re going to talk about when he was made aware of what was going on Capitol,” an aide said. “We’re going to hear testimony from individuals who spoke to the president. We’re going to hear testimony from individuals who were in the West Wing, were aware of what the President was doing.”

According to the aides, the witnesses will share insights about what Trump’s “aides were doing, what his family [and] his allies were doing — and ultimately show that, despite the tweets from people inside the White House, from people on Capitol Hill [and] from allies elsewhere, the President didn’t tell his supporters to leave the Capitol and go home until 4:17p.m.”

Late last year in December, the committee’s vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) suggested that Trump’s inaction on that day could amount to a serious federal crime.

“Did Donald Trump, through action or inaction, corruptly seek to obstruct or impede Congress’ official proceeding to count electoral votes?” Cheney asked, in a question pointedly designed to resemble the statutory language of obstruction of an official proceeding.

That statute is one of the more common and serious charges on the Department of Justice’s Jan. 6 docket, and a federal judge found — in a civil discovery case — that Trump and his lawyer John Eastman “likely” violated it.

The committee’s chair, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), will lead the proceedings remotely because of his COVID-19 positive diagnosis. Leading the presentation will be a bipartisan duo, Kinziger and Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.), an aide said.

On Tuesday, The Guardian first reported that the committee obtained only one text message that it recently subpoenaed from the U.S. Secret Service, following reports that the others from the Jan. 5 and Jan. 6 time frame were wiped. A committee aide confirmed that account to reporters but declined to comment on whether the single message was useful.

“I think that the select committee members have concerns about what we understand to be data migration that took place that affected Secret Service devices,” the aide said. “The members are still determining exactly how to kind of get the information we’re seeking.”

Later on Wednesday, Thompson and Cheney expressed “concerns” about the erasures, suggesting that they may have violated federal law.

“Four House committees had already sought these critical records from the Department of Homeland Security before the records were apparently lost,” they said in a joint statement. “Additionally, the procedure for preserving content prior to this purge appears to have been contrary to federal records retention requirements and may represent a possible violation of the Federal Records Act. The Select Committee is seeking additional Secret Service records as well. Every effort must be made to retrieve the lost data as well.”

In a letter from its assistant director Ronald Rowe Jr. on Tuesday, the Secret Service insisted that its search for documents continues.

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• Jan. 6 panel says Secret Service may have violated law with ‘erased’ text messages

The Secret Service may have violated federal records laws by failing to preserve data — including information related to the Jan. 6 Capitol attack — after it had been requested by investigators, the House committee investigating the riot said Wednesday.

The condemnation came after the panel subpoenaed the agency following an allegation from the inspector general at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees the Secret Service, that it had “erased” the texts during a device replacement program.

“We have concerns about a system migration that we have been told resulted in the erasure of Secret Service cell phone data,” Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and Vice Chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said in a joint statement.

“The U.S. Secret Service system migration process went forward on January 27, 2021, just three weeks after the attack on the Capitol in which the Vice President of the United States while under the protection of the Secret Service, was steps from a violent mob hunting for him. Four House committees had already sought these critical records from the Department of Homeland Security before the records were apparently lost,” they added.

“Additionally, the procedure for preserving content prior to this purge appears to have been contrary to federal records retention requirements and may represent a possible violation of the Federal Records Act.”

Lawmakers confirmed Wednesday that the Secret Service turned over just one text sent on Jan. 6, a plea from then-Capitol Police chief Steven Sund to the Secret Service for help.

It was the only text included in more than 10,000 pages sent in response to the committee’s Friday subpoena.

The agency has said it did not intentionally delete any messages, but did lose some data as part of what it has called a system migration.

But the Secret Service’s letter to the committee sent alongside its documents, shared by the panel Wednesday, offers its most thorough explanation to date.

The agency underwent a migration to Microsoft starting Jan. 27, ordering agents to install Intune on their phones, a software that allows remote management of mobile devices and protects data.

“We are currently unaware of any text messages issued by Secret Service employees between Dec. 7, 2020 and Jan. 8, 2021 requested by OIG that were not retained as part of the Intune migration,” Secret Service wrote in the letter.

However, it appears it was left almost entirely to agents to determine what records on their phones needed to be preserved in accordance with the law.

Agents were directed to self-install Intune and follow a guide for preserving any data.

“All Secret Service employees are responsible for appropriately preserving any government records, including electronic messages that may be created during text messages,” the agency wrote in the letter, noting that employees are required to “certify that they understand this policy when they enter duty.”

The Secret Service has previously claimed that none of the 24 agents whose information was requested by DHS OIG had phones impacted by the migration.

But in the letter the agency notes that “Secret Service is further researching whether any relevant messages sent or received by the 24 individuals were lost due to the Intune migration and, if so, whether such texts are recoverable.”

Lawmakers are perturbed the Secret Service even went through with the migration given that the data had already been requested by numerous committees.

“They received four requests from congressional committees on Jan. 16 to preserve records, and they had this planned migration for the 25th, I believe, of January, and nobody along the way stopped and thought, ‘Well, maybe we shouldn’t do the migration of data and of the devices until we are able to fulfill these four requests from Congress,’” Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.) said during an interview on MSNBC on Tuesday.

Lawmakers have been hesitant to prescribe a motive to the Secret Service’s handing of the data.

“We were just updated and it remains a big mystery to me,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) told reporters Wednesday.

He added that the Secret Service’s explanation stretches the outer limits of plausibility.

“I smell a rat,” he said. “That seems like an awfully strange coincidence for those text messages to be banished into oblivion on two days where there was also the most violent insurrection against the union in our history, after the Civil War.”

The Secret Service did not respond to request for comment on the statement from the committee.

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Just for fun.

• ‘It’s the accumulation’: The Jan. 6 hearings are wounding Trump, after all

The conventional wisdom about the Jan. 6 committee hearings was that no single revelation was going to change Republican minds about Donald Trump.

What happened instead, a slow drip of negative coverage, may be just as damaging to the former president. Six weeks into the committee’s public hearing schedule, an emerging consensus is forming in Republican Party circles — including in Trump’s orbit — that a significant portion of the rank-and-file may be tiring of the non-stop series of revelations about Trump.

The fatigue is evident in public polling and in focus groups that suggest growing Republican openness to an alternative presidential nominee in 2024. The cumulative effect of the hearings, according to interviews with more than 20 Republican strategists, party officials and pollsters in recent days, has been to at least marginally weaken his support.

“It is definitely kind of this wet drip of, do you really want to debate the 2020 election again? Do you really want to debate what happened on Jan. 6?” said Bob Vander Plaats, the evangelical leader in Iowa who is influential in primary politics in the first-in-the-nation caucus state. “Frankly, I think what I sense a little bit, even among some deep, deep Trump supporters … there’s a certain exhaustion to it.”

Trump’s public approval rating among Republicans remains high as he prepares for a widely expected run for president again in 2024. He still tops most primary polls, and Republicans largely haven’t been persuaded by much of what the Jan. 6 committee is doing. They were more likely last month than last year — before the hearings began — to describe the events of Jan. 6 as a “legitimate protest.”

But for many Republicans, the ongoing, backward-looking call-and-response between the committee and Trump may nevertheless be getting old.

“I think what everybody thought was that the first prime-time hearing was such a non-event that that would continue,” said Randy Evans, a Georgia lawyer who served as Trump’s ambassador to Luxembourg. “But over the course of the hearings, the steadiness, the repetitiveness, has had a corrosive effect. You’d have to be oblivious to the way media works, the way reputations work, the way politics works, to not understand that it’s never the one thing. It’s the accumulation.”

Evans said, “This is all undoubtedly starting to take a toll — how much, I don’t know. But the bigger question is whether it starts to eat through the Teflon. There are some signs that maybe it has. But it’s too early to say right now.”

For more than a year after Trump lost the presidential election, his political durability was not even in question. But the committee hearings appear to have had an effect on Trump’s enormous fundraising operation, which has slowed in recent months. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who may run in 2024, has been gaining on Trump in some polls, including in New Hampshire, the first primary state, where one recent survey had DeSantis statistically tied with Trump among Republican primary voters. Republicans are still poring over a New York Times/Siena College poll last week that showed nearly half of Republican primary voters would rather vote for a Republican other than Trump in 2024.

In a series of focus groups with 2020 Trump supporters from across the country since the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2001, Sarah Longwell, a moderate Republican strategist who became a vocal supporter of Joe Biden in 2020, for more than a year found about half of participants consistently said they wanted Trump to run again. But that number has fallen off since the hearings began, she said.

“We’ve had now three focus groups where zero people have wanted him to run again, and a couple other groups where it’s been like two people,” Longwell said. “Totally different.”

The Trump supporters in her focus groups are still dismissive of the hearings, Longwell said, “and I don’t think people are sitting down and being persuaded” by them.

However, she said, the hearings have “turned the volume up on the Trump baggage.”

“The other thing,” she said, “is I cannot tell you how much these Republican voters want to move on from the conversation of January 6th.”

‘Political Theater’

That’s a far cry from the Republican view of the hearings when they started: Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) derided what he called a “prime-time dud.” Jim Justice, the Republican governor of West Virginia, dismissed them as “political theater.” And Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri called them a “complete waste of time.”

One reason that the hearings are resonating now is that even if Republicans don’t agree with the committee’s findings, they read polls. The percentage of Republicans who say Trump misled people about the 2020 election has ticked up since last month, while a majority of Americans say Trump committed a crime. Perhaps most problematic for Trump, 16 percent of Republicans in the Siena College survey said they would vote for someone else in the general election or aren’t sure what they will do in 2024 if Trump is the nominee.

That’s a relatively small segment of the Republican electorate, but a critical one in competitive states that will decide which party controls the White House.

“I think you’re starting to see the impact of the hearings, and just overall his behavior since he lost the election,” said Dick Wadhams, a former Colorado Republican Party chair and longtime party strategist.

“He’s got a hard-core base, and there’s no doubt about that,” said Wadhams. “I voted for him twice, I loved his accomplishments. But I do think he’s compromised himself into a situation where it would be very difficult for him to win another election for president.”
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Extra.

• Former Fort Bragg soldier receives one of the harshest sentences tied to Capitol riot

A former Fort Bragg soldier, who re-enlisted in the Army after attacking police with chemical spray during the riot at the U.S. Capitol, will now serve the longest prison sentence handed down so far against a North Carolina defendant tied to the massive insurrection case.

On Friday, a federal judge in Washington sentenced both James Mault of Fayetteville and a co-defendant to 44 months in prison plus three years of supervised release.

“They were not patriots on Jan. 6,” Chief U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell said during the hearings for Mault, 30, and Cody Mattice, 29, of Greece, New York, according to NBC News.

“No one who broke police lines that day were. They were criminals.”

On Friday, July 15, 2022, Mault was sentenced to 44 months — one of the longest prison sentences handed down so far in the prosecution of the riot.

A weeping Mault, formerly of Brockport, New York, near Rochester, took responsibility for his actions but asked for leniency.

“Those police officers did not deserve what happened to them,” Mault told the judge before she announced his punishment. “As a soldier ... I should have known better.”

That Mault was a soldier at all was a bit of a fluke. The Army veteran had been fired from his ironworker’s job in New York after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol by a mob of Donald Trump supporters trying to keep the defeated president in office.

Both Mault and Mattice were interviewed by the FBI and both denied taking part in the violence against police that left more than 140 officers injured and left at least five people dead.

Mault, who served four years as an Army combat engineer in Kuwait, re-enlisted in May. According to the Washington Post, the Army said it was not aware he was being investigated by the FBI when it allowed him to return.

He was arrested at Fort Bragg in October after investigators obtained videos that placed him and his friend Mattice at two front lines of the Capitol violence, according to court documents.

At around 2 p.m. on Jan. 6 on the West Plaza outside the Capitol, Mault urged officers in the police line to join the insurrection.

“Your jobs will be here when you come back after we kick the s--- out of everyone,” he said on Mattice’s video of the exchange, court documents show. “This s--- is f------ right. What we’re doing is right, or there wouldn’t be this many f------ people here. And you guys f------ know this s---."

When diplomacy did not work, Mault and Mattice pulled down several of the metal barricades in front of the police line and helped other rioters muscle through toward the Capitol, documents allege.

Later, both men crowd-surfed their way on top of the mob to the mouth of the west terrace tunnel leading into the building. There, they were caught on camera, firing chemical sprays toward police — in particular an officer identified in court documents as M.A.

Texts and emails obtained by the FBI show Mault and Mattice had planned the violence for days, including an exchange of tips on what protective clothes to wear and what weapons to bring. Both pleaded guilty in April to felony assault on police officers. Their sentences were enhanced by their use of chemical sprays. In return for the guilty pleas, prosecutors dropped other charges that could have added years to their punishments.

“My friends and I went to the Capitol on Jan. 6 with the best intentions,” Mault told the judge on Friday, according to the Post. “... Our protest got terribly out of hand, I fell into the mob mentality, and I didn’t think about what I was doing.”

To date, more than 850 people have been arrested in connection with the Capitol violence, including more than 260 who have been charged with assaulting or impeding police officers. Of those sentenced, only four have received longer prison terms than Mault and Mattice, according to the Post.

At least 23 North Carolinians have been charged in connection with the riot, including purported members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers extremist groups. Others remain under investigation.

Howell, the judge, said her sentences had to serve as a warning to “future malcontents disappointed with the outcome of an election” contemplating the obstruction of the peaceful transfer of power — “especially by directing participating in violence as these two defendants did,” the Post reported.

That didn’t take long…

• Steve Bannon Found Guilty Of Contempt Of Congress

A federal jury on Friday found former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon guilty of contempt for ignoring subpoenas from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

After three hours of deliberations, the jury found Bannon guilty on two counts of contempt of Congress, which carry a minimum sentence of 30 days behind bars and fines of up to $100,000.

Bannon’s team rested their case on Thursday without calling any defense witnesses — including Bannon himself — and instead asked the judge to acquit him, according to The Associated Press.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Molly Gaston said during closing arguments that the subpoenas were straightforward and that Bannon chose to blow them off.

“Our government only works if people show up. It only works if people play by the rules, and it only works if people are held accountable when they do not,” Gaston said, according to NBC News.

After the House Jan. 6 committee issued his subpoenas, Bannon was quoted by The Daily Mail as responding: “I stand with Trump and the Constitution.”

Later on Friday, the heads of the committee, chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and vice chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) released a joint statement calling Bannon’s conviction a “victory for the rule of law and an important affirmation of the Select Committee’s work.”

“As the prosecutor stated, Steve Bannon ‘chose allegiance to Donald Trump over compliance with the law,’” they continued. “Just as there must be accountability for all those responsible for the events of

January 6th, anyone who obstructs our investigation into these matters should face consequences. No one is above the law.”

Bannon has served as Trump’s fervent supporter and unofficial adviser for years, and has bragged about his own “starring role” in the Jan. 6 hearings.

But he has warned Trump supporters that the committee is out to get them.

“J6 [the committee] is about shutting down the army of the awakened,” he said on an episode of his podcast, “War Room.” It’s “shutting down Trump, but it’s also coming after you,” he added.

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Extra

• Nicholas Rodean, One of the First Jan. 6 Rioters, Convicted

Maryland Man Among the First to Breach U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 Convicted of a Felony and Several Misdemeanors

A Maryland man who counted himself among the first Donald Trump supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 was convicted on Tuesday of a felony and six misdemeanors.

Nicholas Rodean, a 28-year-old from Frederick, broke windowpanes next to the Senate door, leading to his felony charge of destruction of government property, prosecutors say.

Arrested on Jan. 13, 2021, Rodean wore his allegiance to the former president on his red cap branded “TRUMP” and a holding a flag “TRUMP IS MY PRESIDENT.” He was seen in court papers brandishing that banner on a staircase inside the building.

Rodean also had a badge from his workplace hanging from his neck, the FBI noted in its statement of facts.

U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee, found Rodean guilty of destroying government property and six other charges during a bench trial.

The misdemeanor counts were entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a Capitol Building, engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly conduct in a Capitol Building, committing an act of physical violence in the Capitol grounds of Capitol Building, and parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol Building.

McFadden had previously handed federal prosecutors their only defeat to date on the Jan. 6 docket, acquitting New Mexico man Matthew Martin of four misdemeanor charges against him. Martin, who reportedly called Jan. 6 a “magical day,” had “reasonably believed” that he was allowed him inside the building, the Trump appointee found.

In Rodean’s case, McFadden would grant no similar break.

Prosecutors say that Rodean climbed through the empty frame of a window glass that he had broken at around 2:13 p.m. Eastern Time, becoming the 15th rioter to illegally enter the building.

“Once inside the building, Rodean joined a small crowd of rioters in pursuing a Capitol Police officer up two flights of stairs to the second floor,” the Department of Justice wrote in a press release. “He proceeded to a long hallway, known as the Ohio Clock corridor, outside of the floor of the Senate Chamber, where he remained for more than 30 minutes. At one point, a Capitol Police officer noticed a small round object, appearing to be a small cannonball, in Rodean’s hand. He and another officer convinced Rodean to put away the object. Rodean then took out a hatchet, which the officers also convinced him to put away. After posing for a photo while waving his flag, Rodean was one of the last rioters to leave the Ohio Clock corridor. He exited the building at about 2:55 p.m.”

Judge McFadden scheduled Rodean’s sentencing for Oct. 21, 2022. The felony count carries a maximum 10-year sentence and the misdemeanors add up to a possible 4.5 years of additional time.

His conviction was announced less than a hour before the House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol is expected to hold its next public hearing, focusing on Trump’s ties to extremist groups like the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys and the QAnon movement.

30 days behind bars is not a big deal...what's the maximum?

^It doesn’t matter and it doesn’t matter in any of the Right-wing domestic terrorists cases that are being found guilty.

All that matters, is that they have now been convicted of a crime.

'I Don't Want to Say the Election Is Over'

___________

Extra.

This could happen again: Judge overseeing Capitol rioter trial details violent threats from Trump supporters

A judge overseeing the trial of a Capitol rioter is warning that there is a real possibility that political violence could once again erupt throughout the United States.

As reported by CBS News' Scott MacFarlane, Judge Tanya Chutkan on Friday oversaw a sentencing hearing for Capitol rioter Moises Romero in which she delivered an even stiffer prison sentence than what prosecutors had been requesting.

During the hearing, Chutkan explained why she believe it was important to send a message to Americans who acted violently to disrupt the nation's peaceful transfer of power on January 6, 2021.

"There's every chance this could happen again," she said, as transcribed by MacFarlane. "There has not been a nationwide realization of the gravity of what happened. If you don't think there are people out there who would do it again, you have not listened to the phone calls I and my colleagues have gotten."

MacFarlane says that Chutkan was referring to the "vulgar, violent threats" loaded with "invective" that she and other judges overseeing Capitol rioter cases have been receiving from Trump supporters.

At the end of the hearing, she sentencing Romero to a year and a day in prison, which was a full month longer than the sentence prosecutors had requested.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/case...40791/download

• It’s not over

Cheney says Jan. 6 panel will hold more hearings in September

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) announced on Thursday that the Jan. 6 select committee will hold additional hearings in September.

Cheney, the vice chair of the committee, announced the additional upcoming presentations at Thursday’s prime-time hearing, asserting that the panel has “considerably more to do.”

“In the course of these hearings we have received new evidence, and new witnesses have bravely stepped forward. Efforts to litigate and overcome immunity and executive privilege claims have been successful, and those continue. Doors have opened, new subpoenas have been issued, and the dam has begun to break,” Cheney said.

“And now, even as we conduct our ninth hearing, we have considerably more to do. We have far more evidence to share with the American people, and more to gather. So our committee will spend August pursuing emerging information on multiple fronts before convening further hearings this September,” she added.

The announcement is not a surprise. The panel has said it is coming up with more information, and some had described the prime-time hearing on Thursday night as a season finale of sorts.

New hearings later in August or September would follow Cheney’s own primary contest in Wyoming, where she is an underdog to a Trump-backed GOP rival.

_____________

• Seven stunning moments from the Jan. 6 hearing

Trump speaks off the cuff to rioters

Hawley flees the mob

Secret Service feared for their lives

Kushner says McCarthy sounded ‘scared’

Video shows lawmakers talking with Pentagon officials mid-riot

DC officer corroborates Hutchinson testimony

Trump outtakes from Jan. 7 video

_____________

Just for fun.

• GOP Josh Hawley

GOP during the Jan. 6^th hearings……

_____________

Extra.

• Woman who threatened to shoot Pelosi on Jan. 6 sentenced to 60 days

A rioter who threatened to shoot Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) “in the friggin’ brain” during the 2021 insurrection was sentenced to 60 days behind bars on Thursday.

The Department of Justice said that Dawn Bancroft has been sentenced to 60 days incarceration, and will be on probation for three years.

Bancroft will also have to complete 100 hours community service and pay $500 in restitution fees.

She previously pleaded guilty in September 2021 to a misdemeanor charge of parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building.

In the arrest warrant, the DOJ noted that Bancroft was arrested after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) received a tip with a “selfie” video which showed Bancroft and her friend Diana Santos-Smith attempting to exit the U.S. Capitol building.

The video showed Bancroft saying, “We broke into the Capitol. … We got inside, we did our part.” She then continued, “We were looking for Nancy [Pelosi] to shoot her in the friggin’ brain but we didn’t find her.”
According to an FBI affidavit, Bancroft estimated that she stayed inside the Capitol Building for approximately 20-30 seconds before deciding to exit.

On the day of the riots, a group of former President Trump’s supporters broke into the building and broke windows, wandered the hallways and vandalized offices in the building. One man was photographed in a chair in Pelosi’s office, and another man was seen carrying the Speaker’s lectern in the building.

As of July, the DOJ said it has arrested 855 people so far in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, riots, with those arrested coming from nearly all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

The department added that in the 18 months since the insurrection, approximately 263 defendants have been charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding officers or employees, including approximately 90 individuals who have been charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer.

Originally Posted by S Landreth

New hearings later in August or September would follow Cheney’s own primary contest in Wyoming, where she is an underdog to a Trump-backed GOP rival.

She will lose but to her end political goal, not important. She is aiming to be the GOP presidential candidate.

Originally Posted by S Landreth

Hawley flees the mob

Vile vermin

• Ex-defense secretary: Trump didn't order troops to protect Capitol on Jan. 6

Former President Trump never gave an order to deploy 10,000 troops deployed to protect the Capitol on Jan. 6, former acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller testified in a video released by the Jan. 6 select committee on Tuesday.

Why it matters: Trump previously said he requested up to 20,000 National Guard troops ahead of Jan. 6 because he had a feeling "the crowd was going to be very large." Miller's testimony contradicts that claim.

What he's saying: "I was never given any direction or order or knew of any plans of that nature," Miller says in the video.

• "There was no direct, there was no order from the president."
• "We obviously had plans for activating more folks, but that was not anything more than contingency planning," Miller adds. "There was no official message traffic or anything of that nature."

The big picture: The Jan. 6 committee previously revealed both General Mark Milley, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Mike Pence's former national security adviser Keith Kellogg testified that Trump did not request a law enforcement response prior to the day of the insurrection.

• Former top aides also testified about Trump's deliberate inaction even as the violence escalated.

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Extra

• Pennsylvania Man Admits to Hitting AP Photographer, Activating Stun Gun Near Police at Capitol on Jan. 6

A Pennsylvania man has admitted to hitting a photographer and raising a stun gun and activating it while facing off against police on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

Alan William Byerly, 55, pleaded guilty Monday to one count of assaulting, resisting, or impeding law enforcement officers and one count of striking, beating, or wounding an individual on federal grounds.

In court before U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, Byerly admitted to having brought a stun gun with him to attend then-President Donald Trump’s so-called “Stop the Steal” rally and then, later, to the Capitol grounds. He joined the riotous crowd of Trump supporters angry about Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral win, at one point participating in an extended assault on an Associated Press photographer on the scene.

“At about 2:10 p.m., rioters pulled a journalist from the Associated Press – who was carrying a camera and wearing a helmet-style gas mask and a lanyard with Associated Press lettering – down a flight of stairs leading to the western front of the Capitol,” the DOJ said in a press release. “Byerly watched the group that pulled the journalist down the stairs and a subsequent assault. Then, at the bottom of the stairs, he and three other individuals grabbed the journalist and pushed, shoved, and dragged him.”

According to documents, Byerly “grabbed the victim with both hands near the victim’s shoulder and upper chest and pushed the victim backwards.” He then continued to “shove and push the victim away from the stairs, and toward a low stone wall that separated the stairs of the west front of the U.S. Capitol Building from the west lawn below.”

A short time later, the DOJ said, Byerly approach law enforcement that were trying to hold off the crowd with a line of bike racks acting as a barrier.

“Byerly, unprovoked by anything that the officers were doing, approached the officers, raised his right hand that held a stun gun, and activated the weapon,” says the Statement of Offense, which outlines the facts to which Byerly is pleading guilty. “The electrical charge of the stun gun was clearly audible and caused officers … to react. The officers yelled ‘taser! taser! taser!’ seemingly to warn other officers that Byerly was charging and attacking the officers by using a taser.”

Prosecutors were able to determine the type of stun gun Byerly had with him, and described what kind of damage it could cause.

“A shock from the stun gun of one second or less is capable of causing pain and minor muscle contractions,” the Statement of Offense says. “Use of the stun gun on a person for one to two seconds may cause spasms and a dazed mental state. Stunning a person for three to five seconds may cause loss of balance and muscle control.”

Although police were able to disarm Byerly, he still “continued to charge toward the officers, physically strike, and push against them,” the court document says. “He grabbed an officer’s baton.”

Byerly’s actions against the police caused one officer to lose his footing and fall, the Statement of Offense says.

At the hearing, Byerly acknowledged his culpability in the riot that forced Congress to stop certifying the 2020 election results, forcing lawmakers and staff to evacuate or shelter in place.

“Are you entering this plea of guilty voluntarily and of your own free will because you are guilty, and for no other reason?” Cooper, a Barack Obama appointee, asked Byerly.

“Yes, Your Honor,” the defendant replied.

• Byerly faces up to eight years in prison for the assault charge and up to one year behind bars on the charge of striking, beating, or wounding an individual on federal grounds. The remaining charges in the eight-count indictment against him, which include civil disorder and additional assault charges, will be dismissed at sentencing, set for Oct. 21.

https://s3.documentcloud.org/documen...of-offense.pdf - https://lawandcrime.com/u-s-capitol-...itol-on-jan-6/

• Merrick Garland calls Justice Department’s Jan. 6 probe the ‘most wide ranging investigation in its history’
  

The Justice Department plans to prosecute anyone who was “criminally responsible for interfering with the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to another,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said Tuesday, speaking more expansively than he has previously about a federal criminal investigation that appears to have moved far beyond the rioters who attacked the Capitol.

In an exclusive interview with NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt, Garland said that the televised hearings by the House Jan. 6 committee highlighted “the truth of what happened…and what a risk it meant for our democracy.” And he acknowledged that Justice Department investigators learned things from the congressional testimony.

“Look, the Justice Department has been doing the most wide ranging investigation in its history,” he said. “And the committee is doing an enormously wide ranging investigation as well. It is inevitable that there will be things that they find before we have found them. And it’s inevitable that there will be things we find that they haven’t found. That’s what happens when you have two wide ranging investigations going on at the same time.”

A day after news broke that the chief of staff to former Vice President Mike Pence had been called before a federal grand jury investigating Jan. 6, Holt pressed Garland on whether the Justice Department would indict former President Donald Trump if the evidence supported such an action.

“The indictment of a former president, and perhaps a candidate for president, would arguably tear the country apart,” Holt said. “Is that your concern as you make your decision down the road here, do you have to think about things like that?”

Garland replied: “We intend to hold everyone, anyone who was criminally responsible for the events surrounding Jan. 6, for any attempt to interfere with the lawful transfer of power from one administration to another, accountable. That’s what we do. We don’t pay any attention to other issues with respect to that.”

Holt followed up, asking whether, if Trump were to become a candidate for president again, “that would not change your schedule or how you move forward or don’t move forward?”

Garland responded: “I’ll, say again, that we will hold accountable anyone who was criminally responsible for attempting to interfere with the transfer, legitimate, lawful transfer of power from one administration to the next.”

Garland has previously spoken about the peaceful transfer of power, but in the context of the attack on the Capitol. In a speech on Jan. 5, Garland described the assault as “interfering with a fundamental element of American democracy: the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next.”

But Garland’s language in the Tuesday interview appeared to hint at a broader focus — any criminal interference with the transfer of power, not just actions connected to the attack. Some experts have argued that many of Trump’s actions, including his attempt to use the Justice Department to advance bogus claims of fraud and his effort to pressure Pence prior to Jan. 6, are part of a criminal scheme to halt the transfer of power.

Since January, the Justice Department has acknowledged that it is investigating those who put forth slates of fake electors. And Marc Short, who was chief of staff to Vice President Pence, testified last week before a federal grand jury in Washington, according to a person familiar with the matter—the highest ranking person in the Trump White House known to have done so.

The Jan. 6 hearings highlighted allegations that Trump knew the crowd of protesters was armed, but wanted them to march to the Capitol anyway — and that he sought to pressure the Justice Department and Pence in schemes to undermine and overturn the legitimate election results. Many legal experts say the hearings presented a robust legal roadmap for a series of prosecutions that could include Trump.

“The only pressure that I, my prosecutors, or the agents feel is the pressure to do the right thing,” Garland said. “That’s the only way we can pursue the rule of law. That’s the only way we can keep the confidence of the American people in the rule of law, which is an essential part of our democratic system.”

On other topics, Holt asked Garland about the recent spate of mass shootings, and how authorities can detect troubled individuals before they commit violence.

“This is the most difficult question in a democracy,” he said.

“We have to respect the First Amendment. We can’t just troll the internet looking at what everybody in the country is doing. But we have joint terrorism task forces which evaluate both foreign and domestic terrorists and domestic violent extremists including racially motivated violent extremists, which was what you’re talking about. We need to have eyes on the ground. This is why our cooperation with local communities and our cooperation with state and local law enforcement is so important.”

________________

Extra

• Christine Priola Pleads Guilty to Jan. 6-Related Felony

Ohio School Therapist Who Brought ‘Children Cry Out for Justice’ Sign to Mike Pence’s Desk Pleads Guilty to Jan. 6-Related Felony

An Ohio woman spotted carrying a sign with the blaring red message “THE CHILDREN CRY OUT FOR JUSTICE” at then-Vice President Mike Pence‘s desk pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a felony count of obstructing an official proceeding on Jan. 6, 2021.

The day after the attack on the U.S. Capitol, Christine Priola gave her employer a glimpse into the thinking that went into that placard in a resignation letter.

“I will be switching paths to expose the global evil of human trafficking and pedophilia, including in our government and children’s services agencies,” Priola, now 50, declared in a resignation letter dated Jan. 7, 2021, which was obtained by Cleveland-based news outlet WKYC.

Priola previously worked for the Cleveland Metropolitan School District as an occupational therapist. That was before she hopped on a chartered bus from her home in Willoughby, Ohio, on Jan. 6, which arrived in Washington, D.C. later that day.

According to her signed statement, Priola entered the Capitol through the East Rotunda doors, before making her way to the Senate and entering the restricted floor area. Authorities say she was there for roughly 10 minutes, where she was photographed holding the placard in the spot where Pence had planned to certify Joe Biden’s victory that afternoon.

On the flipside of Priola’s placard, unseen in the picture, was the message “WE THE PEOPLE TAKE BACK OUR COUNTRY.” She wore tights with the Donald Trump campaign slogan “Make America Great Again.”

“She also made a number of telephone calls, including one to an associate who was outside the building,” her signed statement of offense reads. “Priola told this associate that she believed she was in the Senate and that he needed to come inside. Priola took photographs and videos inside the chamber using her cell phone.”

Priola acknowledged telling another associate that she had been pepper sprayed.

At some point between Jan. 6 and Jan. 12, 2021, Priola deleted her cell phone data for photos, videos, chats and messages from two days before until one day after the attack. She pleaded guilty to obstructing an official proceeding. Prosecutors calculated her federal sentencing guidelines between 15 and 21 months in prison, but a federal judge can sentence her above or below that range.

The statutory maximum sentence is 20 years imprisonment.

Priola’s case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, a Barack Obama appointee who handed down a stiff sentence of more than five years imprisonment on Tuesday in an unrelated Jan. 6-related assault case. That sentence, for D.C. man Mark K. Ponder, was higher than what prosecutors sought.

Court papers in Priola’s case do not mention QAnon, a conspiracy theory positing the existence of a child-eating cabal of pedophiles and Satanists in government opposing Trump. But the QAnon movement has been widely linked as a motivation for many rioters on Jan. 6.


Shortly after the attack on the Capitol, local reporters in Ohio spotted Priola wearing a white shirt with the handwritten message “Save Our Children,” associated with the QAnon movement. The TV station WOIO quoted her telling reporters: “Look into the pedophilia. This world is run on the blood of innocent children. Please. Look into it.”

https://s3.documentcloud.org/documen..._offense_0.pdf

Originally Posted by S Landreth

Shortly after the attack on the Capitol, local reporters in Ohio spotted Priola wearing a white shirt with the handwritten message “Save Our Children,” associated with the QAnon movement. The TV station WOIO quoted her telling reporters: “Look into the pedophilia. This world is run on the blood of innocent children. Please. Look into it.”

This woman doesn't belong in a jail . . . rather a mental asylum.

^the only thing that matters….

Criminal Record – there goes any chance of her working as a therapist again

___________

• Cassidy Hutchinson, Jan. 6 panel star witness, now cooperating with DOJ probe

Cassidy Hutchinson, an ex-aide to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, is cooperating with the Justice Department’s investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack, according to multiple news reports.

Sources told ABC News, which first reported the news, that Hutchinson began cooperating following her explosive testimony before the House select committee investigating the Capitol riot.

It was not clear what she has discussed as part of the cooperation, according to ABC and CNN, which also confirmed Hutchinson’s cooperation.

Hutchinson offered several revelations during her testimony before the House panel, including that Meadows suspected that Jan. 6 had the potential to take a turn for worse, that Meadows and former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani had both asked for presidential pardons and that former President Trump wanted to go to the Capitol so badly that day that he lunged at his security detail.

Secret Service agents are reportedly prepared to contradict some of her allegations about Trump on Jan. 6, though none have done so publicly.

Hutchinson also said that former White House counsel Pat Cipollone had told her that he did not want Trump to go to the Capitol on Jan. 6, worrying that “we’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable.”

The Justice Department is conducting its own probe into the events surrounding the Capitol attack, and Attorney General Merrick Garland told NBC News in an interview aired Tuesday that the investigation would not be affected by a possible 2024 Trump presidential bid.

“We intend to hold everyone, anyone, who is criminally responsible for the events surrounding Jan. 6 — for any attempt to interfere with the lawful transfer of power from one administration to another — accountable,” he said. “That’s what we do.”

The Hill has reached out to Hutchinson’s lawyers, the House select committee and Justice Department for comment.

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Extra

• Co-defendant in Jan. 6 assault on officer Sicknick pleads guilty

A West Virginia man charged in the chemical spray assault of police officers including the late Brian Sicknick during the Capitol riot pleaded guilty Wednesday to two misdemeanor charges after striking a deal with federal prosecutors.

Driving the news: George Tanios, 40, pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court in D.C. to entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds and to disorderly and disruptive conduct on restricted grounds, according to his plea agreement.

He attended a virtual hearing alongside co-defendant Julian Khater, who was also accused of using chemical spray on the officers as a mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, per Reuters.

Details: Tanios said in his plea deal that he brought two cans of chemical spray to the U.S. Capitol complex on Jan. 6, 2021, and that he had given one of these to Khater.

Video footage from the scene of the insurrection showed the pair "working together to assault law enforcement officers with an unknown chemical substance by spraying officers directly in the face and eyes," according to an FBI affidavit.

Those officers included Sicknick, who had two strokes and died of natural causes the day after the Capitol attack.

What's next: Tanios is due to be sentenced on Dec. 6 and could face up to six months in prison. From Politico: Tanios faces up to a year in prison and a $500,000 fine.

What to watch: Khater's trial date is set for Oct. 5, though prosecutors said Wednesday that they offered him a plea deal of two felony counts of assaulting federal law enforcement, Reuters reports.

The prosecutors' offer has an expiry date of Aug. 17, but Khater's attorney has asked for further time to review the potential deal before deciding on it, according to Reuters.