Thread: Right-wing domestic terrorists

• Durbin calls for DOJ probe of missing Jan. 6 texts from Secret Service, Trump-era DHS officials

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) is calling on the Justice Department to intervene amid reports that a government watchdog at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) repeatedly failed to alert improper handling of government documents.

Durbin’s call follows news that there are additional texts that cannot be accounted for among top Trump administration DHS officials Chad Wolf and Ken Cuccinelli, appearing to mark a second time that Inspector General Joseph Cuffari failed to follow protocols for alerting higher-ups over serious mishandling of public records.

“The destruction of evidence that could be relevant to the investigation of the deadly attack on our Capitol is an extremely serious matter. Inspector General Cuffari’s failure to take immediate action upon learning that these text messages had been deleted makes clear that he should no longer be entrusted with this investigation,” Durbin said.

“That’s why I’m sending a letter today to Attorney General [Merrick] Garland asking him to step in and get to the bottom of what happened to these text messages and hold accountable those who are responsible,” Durbin added.

The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to request for comment, nor did Cuffari’s office.

The call from Durbin comes just two weeks after a similar move from lawmakers on the House Homeland Security Committee and the House Oversight Committee asking Cuffari to step aside after he failed to notify Congress in a timely manner of what he called “erased” Secret Service text messages.

Cuffari told Congress about the issue this month, despite being alerted in December of last year that the text messages could not be accessed.

“These omissions left Congress in the dark about key developments in this investigation and may have cost investigators precious time to capture relevant evidence,” House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) wrote in a letter.

“Inspector General Cuffari’s actions in this matter, which follow other troubling reports about his conduct as Inspector General, cast serious doubt on his independence and his ability to effectively conduct such an important investigation. In light of these serious failures, we request that Inspector General Cuffari step aside from the ongoing investigation into the Secret Service’s erasure of text messages,” the two lawmakers wrote.

The lawmakers said the failure to notify could be a violation of the Inspector General Act — which requires inspectors general to report particularly serious matters to the head of their agency within seven days.

More missing texts, this time from Trump DHS officials, raise new Jan. 6 questions | The Hill

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• James W. Clark Sent Bomb Threat to Katie Hobbs: Indictment

‘Her Personal Space Will Be Detonated’: Massachusetts Man Charged with Sending Bomb Threat Against Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs

Since vocally defending the 2020 presidential election results, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D) reported a fusillade of threats that began shortly after the race and ratcheted up again in the wake of a partisan “forensic audit.”

On Friday, federal authorities arrested one of the men accused of threatening to harm her — allegedly, through a bomb threat on Valentine’s Day of 2021.

Prosecutors say that James W. Clark, a 38-year-old from Falmouth, Mass., filled out the web form of the Elections Division of the Arizona Secretary of State’s office on Feb. 14, 2021.

In the message, prosecutors say, Clark wrote that if Hobbs didn’t resign within two days an “explosive device impacted in her personal space will be detonated.”

Clark’s indictment shielded the identity of the elections official as “VICTIM-1.” Though the message allegedly addressed the target as the “attorney general,” Hobbs’ office confirmed that the secretary of state was the person referenced. The message also referred to the official as a woman, and Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich (R) is a man.

Some four days after that missive, Clark allegedly searched for the official’s address and “how to kill” her, followed by other web searches for “fema boston marathon bombing” and “fema boston marathon bombing plan digital army,” according to the indictment.

Clark faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of making a bomb threat and five-year maximum sentences should he be found guilty of additional counts of a bomb hoax and making a threatening interstate communication.

Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite, Jr. of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division credited Clark’s prosecution to the Election Threats Task Force established by Attorney General Merrick Garland.

“Illegal threats of violence put election officials and workers at risk and undermine the bedrock of our democracy: free and fair elections,” Polite said.

U.S. Attorney Gary M. Restaino, from the District of Arizona, sounded a similar note.

“Throughout Arizona, we are fortunate to have highly professional state, county and local officials who administer elections in a fair and impartial manner,” Restaino said in a statement. “Democracy requires that we support those officials, and that we take seriously allegations of threats or violence against them.”

Weeks after the presidential election, Hobbs released a Nov. 18th statement linking threats against her to “misinformation” peddled by then-President Donald Trump and his allies in Congress.

“It is well past time that they stop,” Hobbs wrote at the time.” Their words and actions have consequences.”

After the GOP-dominated Arizona Senate backed a partisan election review by the firm Cyber Ninjas, Hobbs told Law&Crime in an interview that she faced “renewed threats.”

“The level of harassment and — just — attacks on my office from every angle has not let up, and there are renewed threats, leading to me having to have a security detail for the second time,” Hobbs said on Law&Crime’s podcast “Objections: with Adam Klasfeld.” “It’s not part of my job to have that. But it’s the second time in the last six months that it’s happened.”

The Cyber Ninjas review amplified unfounded suspicion about Joe Biden’s victory in the state — but ultimately released a report stating that Trump lost by a wider margin than the official counts hold.’ The firm’s self-styled “forensic audit” had a $5.2 million price tag, financed by Trump loyalists with contributions by Arizona taxpayers.

The firm’s bizarre methods included searching for watermarks under ultraviolet light, measuring ballot thickness, and inspecting ballots for bamboo fibers, a hunt guided by the proposition that tens of thousands of ballots were flown in from Asia.

“Though conspiracy theorists are undoubtedly cheering on these types of inspections—and perhaps providing financial support because of their use—they do little other than further marginalize the professionalism and intent of this ‘audit,’” the secretary wrote in early 2021.

Hobbs announced her run for Arizona governor a little more than a year ago, in June 2021. On Twitter, she speaks about the threats against her in a video embedded in pinned tweet.

https://s3.documentcloud.org/documen...om_pacer_0.pdf

• Jan. 6 panel agrees to turn over 20 depositions to DOJ

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol expects to turn over 20 depositions to the Department of Justice as it accelerates its probe into the riot that day.

Lawmakers on the panel confirmed Friday that it would share the depositions shortly after coming to an agreement with the Justice Department following months of standoff between the two entities over sharing their work.

“I’m not certain who the 20 will be. But I would generally say that they’d probably be persons of interest, either they’re taking them to court or something like that,” Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) told reporters Friday.

The agreement to share some committee work follows news that the Justice Department brought two former aides to Vice President Mike Pence before a grand jury. They’ve also secured the cooperation of Kenneth Kulkowski, who worked alongside Jeffrey Clark, the assistant attorney general that former President Trump weighed installing as attorney general to forward investigations into purported voter fraud.

All can weigh in on a broader effort by the Trump campaign to focus on its fake elector scheme, using baseless claims of voter fraud as a justification for sending fake electoral certificates from key states President Biden had won.

Reporting from The New York Times earlier this month also indicates the Justice Department is beginning to more directly investigate Trump’s actions surrounding Jan. 6.

“Donald Trump was not an innocent bystander to these events, and he was at the center of a lot of the action. So I imagine if you’re the Department of Justice, and you’re investigating criminal offenses against the United States, his name would be coming up,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) told reporters Friday.

“We don’t know that there’s an investigation into him going on. But I do understand, at least from press reportage, that his name has come up in those grand jury investigations, and it seems to me implausible that it wouldn’t come up.”

The committee had previously said DOJ was too broad in its request for information from the panel, essentially asking them to turn over all depositions. Thompson relented on his earlier position that DOJ come in for an “in camera” review of documents, instead agreeing to turn over a smaller subset of depositions after DOJ narrowed their request.

“We’ve collected a lot of information, and I think a broad brush request would have interfered with the normal process of our work. We now have it cataloged to where it’s reasonable. Initially, we talked about an in camera review of material and we’ve since modified that to make information available upon request,” Thompson said.

“They won’t go beyond 20 at this point, and we think that’s reasonable. And after that, we’ll negotiate it. But everything we’ve done at some point will be made available to the public anyway, and if DOJ has an interest in particular individuals now, we will do that.”

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In the days after Jan. 6, having returned to Texas, Reffitt warned his children against telling the FBI where he was that day, telling them that “traitors get shot.”

Reffitt’s participation in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was flagged to the FBI by his son, Jackson Reffitt.

• Guy Reffitt Gets Longest Jan. 6 Sentence After Jury Trial

Militia Member Prosecuted in First U.S. Capitol Case to Reach a Jury Receives Longest Jan. 6 Sentence to Date

Texas man Guy Reffitt, the first person to be convicted by a jury in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, will spend more than seven years in prison — the longest sentence issued so far in the Justice Department’s prosecution.

He did not, however, receive a terrorism enhancement requested by federal prosecutors.

Reffitt, a 49-year-old associated with the far-right Three Percenters, was sentenced Monday by U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich, who sent Reffitt away for 87 months. The judge tacked on three years of supervised release, and, according to reports, a warning to Reffitt that if he violated any of the terms of his release, he could end up serving years more.

A jury convicted Reffitt in March on five counts, including felony obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress and bringing a gun to the Capitol.

Friedrich’s ultimate sentence is just less than half of the 15 years that prosecutors had requested. The DOJ had sought a terrorism enhancement to Reffitt’s sentence, arguing that Reffitt’s conviction included an offense that “involved, or was intended to promote, a federal crime of terrorism.”

Judge Friedrich, a Donald Trump appointee, did not grant the government’s request; according to reports, she said that doing so would lead to “unwarranted sentencing disparity,” which federal sentencing guidelines are meant to avoid. She also noted that prosecutors hadn’t sought the terrorism enhancements for Jan. 6 defendants who had pleaded guilty to similar actions.

Indeed, Reffitt’s sentence was the first time the DOJ had argued terrorism in requesting an upward variation from federal sentencing guidelines.

Friedrich’s denial of government’s enhancement request put Reffitt’s guideline sentencing range between 87 and 103 months behind bars.

Reffitt’s attorney, Clint Broden argued for a downward variance, saying Reffitt’s actions were no worse — and in some cases, significantly less dangerous — than others. Broden pointed out that Reffitt didn’t even breach the building, although Friedrich implied that she thinks he might have, had he not been stopped by a chemical irritant sprayed by police, noting that his body armor had protected him from their rubber bullets.

Matthew M. Graves, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, said that Reffitt’s actions were extremely serious, noting that the Texas man brought a loaded gun onto Capitol grounds.

“Guy Reffitt came to the Capitol on Jan. 6 armed and determined to instigate violence,” Graves wrote in a statement. “In his own words, his goal was to take the Capitol ‘before the day is over.’ He and others contributed to the many assaults on law enforcement officers that day, putting countless more people — including legislators — at risk. The ‘jury’s verdict and today’s sentence hold him accountable for his violent, unconscionable conduct.'”

After Reffitt’s sentencing, prosecutors released his interview with the FBI on Jan. 16, 2021. According to government’s sentencing memo, Reffitt told an FBI agent that an unregistered silencer found next to his Walther P22 semi-automatic pistol in his home was a “fuel filter.”

“Reffitt’s possession of the unregistered silencer is illegal,” they wrote.

Even though it’s less than half of what prosecutors had wanted, Reffitt’s is the longest sentence so far in the government’s expansive prosecution of Jan. 6 rioters. The records were previously held by Mark K. Ponder and Robert Scott Palmer, who both received sentences of 63 months in prison for assaulting law enforcement. Reffitt was not charged with assaulting police.

Reffitt was among the first to face off against police on Jan. 6, confronting three Capitol Police officers on the west stairs of the Capitol building. At the time, he was wearing a tactical-style helmet and body armor, carrying police-style “flexicuffs,” and armed with a holstered handgun. He rushed the officers, who, according to prosecutors, fired back with “less-than-lethal projectiles before successfully halting his advances with pepper spray.”

Other rioters provided backup to Reffitt, cutting down tarp covering scaffolding in the area, “both to further penetrate into the scaffolding and to use the tarp as a shield to protect Reffitt from additional pepper spray and projectiles.”

Prosecutors said that Reffitt’s confrontation paved the way for other rioters to overwhelm police at a key moment in the siege.

“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,” the government said in its sentencing memo.

This, according to prosecutors, was part of Reffitt’s plan.

“He played an integral role in overwhelming the officers protecting the building, directly leading to the very first breach of the Capitol building, the evacuation of lawmakers engaged in their duties, and the suspension of the Certification proceeding,” the sentencing memo said.

Reffitt is affiliated with the Three Percenters, a militia group that bases its name on the false belief that the number of Americans who fought in the Revolutionary War amounted to three percent of the population.

Indeed, according to prosecutors, Reffitt seemed prepared for a violent and bloody revolt on Jan. 6, as lawmakers in the Capitol had begun to certify Joe Biden‘s win in the 2020 presidential election.

A camera affixed to his tactical helmet captured some of his words that day, including a graphic description of what he hoped would happen to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.):

• We’re taking the Capitol before the day is over.
• We’re going for the Capitol before the day’s over with, everybody’s coming out kicking and fucking screaming. Fuck ’em.
• I’m taking the Capitol with everybody fucking else. We’re all going to drag them mother fuckers out kicking and screaming, I don’t give a shit. I just want to see Pelosi’s head hit every fucking stair on the way out. (Inaudible) Fuck yeah. And Mitch McConnell too. Fuck ’em all. They fucked us too many goddamn years for too fucking long. It’s time to take our country back. I think everybody’s on the same damn wavelength. And I think we have the numbers to make it happen.
• I’m packing heat and I’m going to get more heat, and I am going to that fucking building and I am dragging them the fuck out.
• Grab ’em by the ankle and drag ’em, let their heads hit the steps all the way down. Fuck ’em, every one of ’em’s coming out. I don’t give a shit. I like Ted Cruz. He’s still a goddamn politician. They are all coming out. We’ll start over. We own this motherfucker. We’ll start over.
• Whatever it takes to get ’em out of that building, and empty it out, and put us in that motherfucker.

Reffitt’s participation in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was flagged to the FBI by his son, Jackson Reffitt. While Jackson testified against his father at trial, he reportedly did not make any in-person statements at his father’s sentencing, but instead submitted a letter to serve as his victim impact statement.

In the days after Jan. 6, having returned to Texas, Reffitt warned his children against telling the FBI where he was that day, telling them that “traitors get shot.” Friedrich said these threats were “highly disturbing,” as were his efforts to get his fellow Three Percenters to delete their messages after Jan. 6.

“Under no legitimate definition of the word patriot does what Mr. Reffitt did on Jan. 6 fit the term,” Friedrich said, according to WUSA reporter Jordan Fischer. “What he and other rioters did was the antithesis of patriotism.”

• DOJ sues Peter Navarro over Trump White House emails

The Department of Justice is suing former White House adviser Peter Navarro for emails from a private account he used while working for former President Trump and for allegedly "wrongfully retaining” those communications, according to court documents.

Why it matters: The lawsuit is an unusual move by the DOJ's Federal Programs Branch — which typically pursues civil matters — targeting alleged sloppy federal records maintenance from the previous administration, per CNN.

What they're saying: The suit alleges that Navarro "refused to return any Presidential records that he retained absent a grant of immunity for the act of returning such documents."

• "Mr. Navarro is wrongfully retaining Presidential records that are the property of the United States, and which constitute part of the permanent historical record of the prior administration," the suit continued.

The other side: Navarro's lawyers told The Hill that he "never refused to provide records to the government."

• "As detailed in our recent letter to the Archives, Mr. Navarro instructed his lawyers to preserve all such records, and he expects the government to follow standard processes in good faith to allow him to produce records. Instead, the government chose to file its lawsuit today," his attorneys added.

Of note: Navarro had previously been indicted for contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with subpoenas from the House select committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot.

• Navarro refused to give testimony or produce documents in compliance with the subpoena.

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• ‘I Choose Violence’: Michigan Man Who Quoted Game of Thrones After Jan. 6 Sentenced to Jail Time

A Michigan man who scaled a wall at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 and breached the building — and days later, quoted a fictional TV character in expressing his support for the violence that day — will spend a little more than a month in jail.

Jeramiah Caplinger, who was 25 at the time of his charging, was pictured climbing a wall on the west side of the Capitol, joining in a crowd that had rushed a line of police inside the building, and wandering through the office suite of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) as staffers hid behind closed doors and under desks.

He pleaded guilty in November to one count of climbing on U.S. Capitol grounds, a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in prison and a $5,000 fine. He admitted to having scaled a wall in order to reach the Upper Terrace level of the Capitol building, entering the building minutes after the initial breach, and spending a little more than 30 minutes inside.

During that time, he joined a group of rioters in rushing police trying to hold off the crowd in the Crypt. He then walked through Pelosi’s suite of offices before returning to the Rotunda, where he stayed for about seven minutes before exiting the building.

On Monday, Senior U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman sentenced Caplinger to 35 days behind bars. Caplinger must complete two years of probation, put in 60 hours of community service, and pay $500 in restitution.

During the hearing, prosecutors focused not only on Caplinger’s actions at the Capitol, but his statements before and after — statements that, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Gordon, didn’t suggest anything other than pride in joining the scores of Donald Trump supporters that day in overwhelming police and causing Congress to temporarily stop certifying Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 presidential election.

Gordon went through multiple examples of Caplinger’s post-Jan. 6 braggadocio, including a February 2021 interview with the news website MLive, in which Caplinger compared himself to a “pissed off” bear that had been repeatedly poked with a stick and that “being told the election was stolen was one poke too many.”

Gordon honed in on what he said was a particularly disturbing passage from that interview, in which Caplinger was talking about the lawmakers at the U.S. Capitol that day who were forced to either evacuate or shelter in place as the mob streamed in.

“If you take a job, you take on the responsibility of that job and everything and anything that comes with it,” Caplinger told the outlet. “So, to members of Congress that sit there like AOC (and say) ‘I almost died.’ Then why don’t you quit and go do something else. If you feel that strong about it, leave.”

Gordon said that Caplinger’s idea of the role of lawmakers has no place in a democracy, and that Caplinger’s attitude — that the risk of dying from mob violence is just “part of the gig when you run for public office” — is dangerous.

“Politicians are not soldiers,” Gordon said, adding: “Risk of death isn’t in the job description.”

Caplinger stuck to that view later that year, posting on Twitter in July 2021 that House lawmakers hiding from rioters closing in on the House chamber were “worthless cowards.”

“This isn’t remorse,” Gordon said. “This is opportunism on the back of a riot that caused politicians to literally fear for their lives.

Prosecutors also said that Caplinger was prepared for violence when he went to the Capitol on Jan. 6. When his sister sent him a text asking “how’s rioting going[?]” Caplinger replied: “Greeaat … Glad I had body armor.” Two days later, Caplinger again signaled his approval, posting: “As said by Cersi [sic] Lannister ‘I choose violence.'”

In the sentencing memo, prosecutors provided context for Caplinger’s comment:

Cersei Lannister is a fictional character in the HBO television series “Game of Thrones.” After being confronted by a group of politically-empowered religious zealots, who warn her that that if she does not yield to them “there will be violence,” Cersei Lannister responds, “I choose violence.” Shortly thereafter, Cersei Lannister used a weapon of mass destruction to blow up one of the largest and most important buildings in the capital city, which at the time contained almost all of the city’s preeminent politicians and religious leaders. In stating, “I choose violence,” Cersei Lannister embraced—and then carried out—mass murder to achieve her political ends. In the context of Caplinger posting this just two days after January 6, Caplinger’s adoption of this quote is alarming and provides insight into his mental state and intent in storming the Capitol.

In court on Monday, Caplinger’s lawyer James Gerometta said that his client is “not in the same place he was” on Jan. 6, citing coronavirus-related measures as having contributed to a sense of isolation that led to his extremism. Gerometta said that Caplinger’s work in a factory in a Michigan suburb has forced him to get along with a diverse group of people, and he now knows that “people who disagree with him politically aren’t his enemy.” He also said, in a defense brief, that his client is “attempting to mount a campaign to become a state representative.”

Caplinger himself kept his remarks to the judge brief, focusing on his desire to not be separated from his family.

“I would like to first apologize to you and the court for my actions on Jan. 6,” Caplinger said to Friedman, a Bill Clinton appointee. “I am sorry for all that has occurred, then and afterwards. For me, the most important thing is not being taken away from my family. My daughter is very young. I don’t want to be an absent father. Please don’t separate me from my family. That would be all I have to say, your honor.” https://lawandcrime.com/u-s-capitol-...-to-jail-time/

"Please don’t separate me from my family."

Tell that to the ones that died you worthless fucking piece of shit.

• Jan 6 committee to subpoena Alex Jones’ texts and emails obtained in Sandy Hook trial, report says

The January 6 committee is preparing to subpoena Alex Jones’ texts and emails that were accidentally sent to an attorney for the Sandy Hook victims, according to a report.

Attorney Mark Bankston revealed he had mistakenly received a trove of thousands of Jones’ private communications during the Infowars founder’s defamation trial on Wednesday.

Within minutes of the stunning revelation, the House committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol began preparing to subpoena the messages, a source told Rolling Stone.

“We fully intend on cooperating with law-enforcement and US government officials interested in seeing these materials,” Mr Bankston told the court.

Mr Jones riled up a crowd of rioters during the assault on the Capitol in Washington DC in January last year, pushing the false claim that the election had been stolen.

In a video posted to the Infowars website, he told the crowd: “We need to understand we’re under attack, and we need to understand this is 21st-century warfare and get on a war-footing.”

Mr Jones also made an inflammatory speech on 5 January at a Stop the Steal protest in Washington DC.

“I don’t know how this is all going to end, but if they want to fight, they better believe they’ve got one,” he told the crowd, in a video published by Media Matters.

The select committee issued subpoenas for documents and testimony from the notorious conpiracy theorist in November 2021.

It’s unclear what information he provided for the committee. In April, he said that he had offered to speak with the committee in exchange for immunity.

The January 6 committee also subpoenaed close Trump ally and political dirty trickster Roger Stone.

Mr Bankston, representing representing Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis in their ongoing defamation trial against Jones, dropped the bombshell revelation while cross-examining Jones on Wednesday.

“Did you know 12 days ago your attorneys messed up and sent me an entire digital copy of your entire cell phone with every text message you’ve sent for the past two years?” Mr Bankston asked him.

He said Mr Jones’ attorney Andino Reynal did not take any steps to identify the texts as privileged.

The data file containing Jones’ messages is several hundred gigabytes in size and goes back at least 27 months, Mr Bankston told the court.

The texts from Mr Jones’ phone revealed he earned as much as $800,000 a day from the Inofwars site in 2018.

He went on to accuse Jones of lying about not having any text messages relating to Sandy Hook during the discovery phase of the lawsuit.

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• West Virginia Man Gets 3 Years For Threatening Dr. Fauci, Other Officials

A West Virginia man was sentenced Thursday to three years in federal prison after he sent emails threatening Dr. Anthony Fauci and another federal health official for talking about the coronavirus and efforts to prevent its spread.

Using an anonymous email account based in Switzerland, Thomas Patrick Connally, Jr. threatened to kill Fauci or members of his family, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a news release. One of his messages said they would be “dragged into the street, beaten to death, and set on fire.”

Another email said Fauci would be “hunted, captured, tortured and killed,” according to court records.

Fauci is President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is part of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Fauci has been a vocal supporter of vaccines and other preventive measures against COVID-19. He said he expects to retire at the end of Biden’s current term.

Another target was Dr. Francis Collins, who was director of NIH at the time of Connally’s threats. Collins and his family were threatened with physical assault and death if Collins continued to speak about the need for “mandatory” COVID-19 vaccinations, the Justice Department said.

Connally also admitted to sending emails threatening Dr. Rachel Levine, Pennsylvania’s then-Secretary of Health, the Justice Department said. An unidentified public health official in Massachusetts and a religious leader in New Jersey were also threatened.

“Everyone has the right to disagree, but you do not have the right to threaten a federal official’s life,” Erek L. Barron, U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland, said in a statement.

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis sentenced Connally, 56, to 37 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release. Connally most recently lived in Snowshoe, West Virginia.

He was arrested last summer, and pleaded guilty in May to making threats against a federal official.

Man Who Made Threats Against Dr. Anthony Fauci and Other Federal Officials Sentenced to Over Three Years in Federal Prison | USAO-MD | Department of Justice

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I have so many of these smaller right-wing domestic terrorists articles. Slow Saturday morning so why not get rid of a few......

• Lawsuit seeks Rep. Maddock’s removal from Nov. ballot for allegedly ‘engaging in insurrection’

A lawsuit seeks to remove state Rep. Matt Maddock (R-Milford) from the Nov. 8 general election ballot due to what were called “his violations of his oath of office and attempts to illegally overturn the 2020 election while pushing the Big Lie.”

The suit, filed with the Michigan Court of Appeals (COA), was brought by Oakland County voter Lee Estes, who alleged that Maddock “has ‘engaged in insurrection’ in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment and therefore is ineligible to serve as a candidate for or a member of the Michigan Legislature.”

A similar suit brought by Estes sought to disqualify GOP gubernatorial candidate Ryan Kelley from Tuesday’s ballot, but was eventually rejected by the COA as having been filed less than 28 days before the primary, and thus “did not speedily request relief.”

Kelley, who is charged for his actions during the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection attempt, ended up finishing fourth in the gubernatorial race, behind right-wing commentator Tudor Dixon, businessman Kevin Rinke and chiropractor Garrett Soldano. Kelley has refused to concede and claimed to the Advance, without evidence, that there were.”unprecedented oddities” in the election.

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• Troy Faulkner Pleads Guilty to Destroying Capitol Window

Ohio Man Who Wore Company Jacket with His Name and Number to Jan. 6 Capitol Attack Pleads Guilty

The Ohio man who joined the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol while wearing a jacket bearing the name and phone number of his business has pleaded guilty to destroying government property.

Troy Elbert Faulkner, 41, admitted to kicking in a window at the Capitol building as Donald Trump supporters, angry over the results of the 2020 election, swarmed Capitol grounds. Video showed Faulkner jumping on a ledge and striking the window pane with his foot, eventually breaking through to the interior of the building.

In addition to destruction of property, which in Faulkner’s case rose to the felony level because the damage was estimated at more than $1,000, the defendant was charged with obstruction of Congress, punishable by up to 20 years in prison, along with a handful of trespassing and disorderly conduct misdemeanors.

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• Iowans charged in Capitol riot argue self-defense and selective prosecution

Two Iowans criminally charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol are arguing in court that they acted in self-defense and are the victims of selective prosecution.

Salvador Sandoval Jr. of Ankeny, and his mother, Deborah Sandoval of Des Moines, are facing charges that include with entering and remaining in a restricted building; disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building; disorderly conduct in a Capitol Building, and parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol Building.

In addition, Salvador Sandoval is charged with obstruction of an official proceeding, civil disorder, multiple counts of assaulting a federal law enforcement officer, engaging in an act of physical violence in a Capitol Building, and engaging in physical violence on restricted grounds.

The two are accused of participating in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, which involved hundreds of supporters of former President Donald Trump storming and then breaking into the Capitol building.

“Within approximately one minute of breaching the east side doors of the Capitol, Salvador proceeded into the rotunda and assaulted a law enforcement officer by stealing his shield,” the Department of Justice has told the court. “Salvador then retreated into the entryway of the east-door area and assaulted three additional officers. There is simply no basis for Salvador to claim self-defense when he had illegally entered a restricted area of the U.S. Capitol. The videos further show that no officer used excessive force against Salvador at any time.”

Government prosecutors have also indicated they plan to introduce evidence showing the Sandovals were aware they had committed crimes that day.

“After Deborah and Salvador returned home to Iowa following the riot, they deleted potential evidence and sought to evade capture by law enforcement,” the Department of Justice claims in court filings. They say Deborah Sandoval deleted materials from her phone and then sent a Facebook message to an acquaintance, saying, “I erased all.” She then purchased a burner phone and allegedly sent a Facebook message that said, “I bought a phone that can’t be tracked.”

Prosecutors allege Deborah Sandoval was in the first wave of rioters to enter the Capitol and that she then entered the office of Sen. Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat, took photographs, and then made her way through the Capitol.

According to prosecutors, a December 2020 video on Deborah Sandoval’s phone shows her and her son, Salvador, driving to Washington, D.C., with Deborah Sandoval announcing their plans to protest the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

In the video, according to prosecutors, Deborah asks Salvador if he is ready, Salvador nods, and Deborah responds by saying, “It ain’t over. The Supreme Court didn’t [unintelligible]. It was worded wrong. It will be refiled. But anyway, there is always martial law. Don’t concede, Trump, because we are not going to.”

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• Elliot Bishai Gets Two Weeks Behind Bars for Jan. 6 Breach

South Carolina Firefighter Caught Shouting ‘Civil War Two!’ on Jan. 6 Gets Two Weeks Behind Bars

A South Carolina firefighter who joined the mob of Donald Trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, shouting “Let’s go!” and “Civil war two!” before entering the building through a broken window has been sentenced to two weeks in jail.

Elliot Bishai, 22, had pleaded guilty in April to one misdemeanor count of entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds, which carries a potential maximum sentence of one year in jail and $100,000 fine.

He admitted to driving with friends to Washington, D.C. from South Carolina to attend Trump’s so-called “Stop the Steal” rally. He then headed over to the Capitol, joining the scores of Trump supporters looking to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral win. Bishai entered the building through a broken window and stayed inside for nearly 30 minutes, at one point entering a Senate conference room that is considered a sensitive area.

In his sentencing memorandum, Bishai said that he didn’t remember yelling “Civil war two!” while outside the Capitol until prosecutors reminded him with audio and video footage showing him doing it.

Bishai, who was 20 at the time of the siege, had requested a sentence of probation only.

Bishai’s lawyer, Donald M. Brown, Jr., had argued that the young man had “already paid dearly for his actions” and that putting him in jail “would not serve the best interest” of either Bishai or the government.

“Defendant has already lost an opportunity to serve the United States Army as a pilot in the Army Warrant Officer Flight Program,” Bishai’s sentencing memo said. “That has been Elliot’s lifelong dream and his actions have already cost him dearly. Additionally, Elliot has also had his student pilot’s license revoked by the Federal Aviation Administration, in conjunction with the Transportation Safety Administration.”

Bishai, a traveling firefighter, had served in the United States Civilian Air Patrol, a federally-supported public entity affiliated with the U.S. Air Force.

“I haven’t heard a lot of acknowledgment and compassion and sympathy for the people who were terrified, crying, hiding under their desks, calling their children, worrying about not being able to see them again,” Chutkan said, referring to lawmakers and Capitol staffers who were forced to either evacuate or shelter in place as the mob breached the building.

“While I’m sure you wish none of this had ever happened, I wonder how much of that is because of what has happened to you,” she told Bishai.

Chutkan also pointed out what she saw was the irony of Bishai benefitting from the very system the mob so violently railed against on Jan. 6.

“I think it’s ironic, Mr. Bishai,” Chutkan said. “I believe strongly that you have gotten every single benefit of presumption of innocence, the criminal justice system, and the rule of law in this country.”

“I can tell you this as an immigrant: I don’t know of any place that does it better,” the Jamaican-born judge continued, perhaps also nodding to the fact that Bishai is the son of an immigrant of Egyptian and Sudanese descent.

“That whole system you wanted to tear down on Jan. 6 has given you all the presumptions and rights that you are entitled to under the same constitution that you ignored that day,” Chutkan added. “I hope that’s not lost on you.”

Calling Bishai’s apparent desire to go into military service a “double-edged sword,” Chutkan said that the fact that he would take an oath to defend the country and then join the Jan. 6 mob “boggles the mind.”

“You need to consider how you could have done what you did and how you square that with your desire to serve this country,” she added. “I don’t understand how you looked those officers in the eye and did what you did.”

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• Pennsylvania Woman Accused of Stealing Laptop from Nancy Pelosi’s Office on Jan. 6 Can’t Remove Ankle Monitor: Judge

A federal judge has denied a request for relaxed pretrial release conditions from the Pennsylvania woman accused of stealing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D) laptop from the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

“The record reflects that the defendant initially tried to evade arrest by leaving her home, deleting her social media accounts, and changing her phone number,” U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson wrote in her order, issued Wednesday, denying Riley June Williams‘ modification request (citations omitted).

Williams is accused of stealing a laptop from Pelosi’s office during the melee at the Capitol on Jan. 6. According to prosecutors, a witness had told investigators that Williams intended to send the computer device to a friend in Russia, who then planned to sell the device to SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence service.

Prosecutors also allege that Williams had tried to evade arrest by leaving her home, telling her mother that she would be gone for a few weeks, changing her telephone number, and deleting her social media account. Her lawyer, Lori Ulrich, has said that Williams was fleeing an abusive ex-boyfriend.

From the time she was arrested, Williams was considered by federal authorities to be a flight risk. U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui didn’t keep Williams behind bars, however, instead allowing her to stay home on strict home detention. He imposed strict restrictions, including the ankle bracelet, and barred Williams from using electronics such as a tablet and smart phone, except through her third party custodian — in this case, her mother Wendy Williams. The defendant was ordered to use a flip phone only, and Wendy Williams was instructed to monitor all of the her daughter’s calls, as well as her use of the TV at their home.

In late May, Williams had asked Jackson to remove her from electronic location monitoring, via an electronic ankle bracelet. In her motion, attorney Ulrich cited Williams’ “good behavior and her employment” since her arrest, and subsequent home detention, since her arrest in January of 2021.

Jackson, a Barack Obama appointee, was not convinced.

“Given the evidence adduced at the time of defendant’s release establishing not only a risk of flight, but also a risk that the investigation would be obstructed, and given the supervising officer’s assessment that ‘removal of the location monitoring condition would be premature and unwarranted’ because the defendant ‘has not demonstrated a willingness to consistently comport to the release conditions,’ defendant’s motion will be denied,” Jackson wrote in her order.

Williams is charged with civil disorder, aiding and abetting theft of government property, obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress, and assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers, as well as a handful of disorderly conduct and trespassing misdemeanors. Earlier this month, Jackson denied Williams’ request to dismiss the civil disorder, obstruction, and two misdemeanor charges.

https://s3.documentcloud.org/documen...of-release.pdf - https://lawandcrime.com/u-s-capitol-...monitor-judge/

There is just an endless amount of the stupidity.

^And a lot of them actually documented/recorded the crimes they were committing.

• Justice subpoenas of Trump counsel mark turning point

The Justice Department’s grand jury subpoenas to former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and others in former President Trump’s inner circle mark a turning point in the federal law enforcement investigation of the former president.

The grand jury probe has considerably more power than the House Jan. 6 select committee to pierce any executive privilege claims that the former president might raise — an issue that has come up with Cipollone.

When Cipollone agreed to provide testimony to the Jan. 6 panel, he declined to answer certain questions concerning his conversations with Trump, citing attorney-client and executive privileges.

Experts say those assertions of privilege would be unlikely to hold up in court if Trump or Cipollone were to try to use them to withhold information from a grand jury.

“The grand jury subpoena from the Department of Justice is a much more powerful tool than a congressional subpoena,” said Neil Eggleston, who served as White House counsel for the Obama administration and represented former President Clinton in a dispute over another White House lawyer’s grand jury testimony.

“In my view, would be inconceivable that the Department of Justice would not win,” Eggleston added.

Cipollone’s insights into Jan. 6 are likely of great interest to prosecutors following his emergence as a key figure in the congressional investigation.

The select committee has presented evidence that the former top White House lawyer expressed concerns about Trump’s conduct in the weeks leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide in the Trump White House, testified in June that Cipollone issued stark warnings in the days before Jan. 6 when it became clear that Trump wanted to lead his supporters in a march to the Capitol to protest Congress’s certification of his election loss to President Biden.

“Please make sure we don’t go up to the Capitol, Cassidy,” Cipollone told Hutchinson, according to her testimony. “We’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable if we make that movement happen.”

While select committee lawmakers had little recourse when Cipollone and others declined to answer questions about their conversations with Trump, legal experts say federal prosecutors have more tools at their disposal and any assertion of executive privilege in a grand jury context would face an uphill battle in the courts.

ABC News reported on Tuesday that a federal grand jury had subpoenaed Cipollone, making him the highest-ranking Trump White House official to be targeted in the DOJ’s escalating Jan. 6 investigation.

The select committee has been fighting to enforce their investigative demands through the courts in more than a dozen civil lawsuits over the past year. While the panel has had some success, the cases can drag on for months.

In instances where a target of a congressional subpoena refuses to comply, the House also has the option of issuing a criminal contempt referral to the Justice Department for prosecution, which is what lawmakers did with four of Trump’s close allies.

But prosecutors ended up charging only two of them – Steve Bannon and former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro – with criminal contempt of Congress, and neither of them appear to be any closer to cooperating with the committee. A jury convicted Bannon last month on two counts of the misdemeanor contempt charge, each of which carries a possible sentence of between 30 days and one year in jail.

The Justice Department declined to bring charges against two other Trump aides who were held in contempt, social media guru Dan Scavino and former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.

Meadows filed a civil lawsuit against the committee late last year, challenging its subpoena and claiming to be protected by testimonial immunity for White House advisers. The case has been tied up in court for eight months and it’s unclear when it might be resolved.

While the Supreme Court has said former presidents have some authority to assert executive privilege, some legal scholars say such an assertion would stand little chance of shielding information sought in a criminal investigation.

Jonathan David Shaub, a law professor at the University of Kentucky and a former attorney with the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, said he believes any assertions of privilege from Trump or Cipollone before the grand jury would be “frivolous” and federal prosecutors would be able to move quickly to force compliance.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) “has a much more effective and quick enforcement mechanism to go to the district court and have these claims of privilege adjudicated and almost for sure rejected,” Shaub said.

“My guess is given how tenuous his claims of privilege are that we’re not going to hear much else, that he’s going to enter into negotiation and ultimately get the best he can from DOJ and then comply, because he doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on,” he added.

When courts evaluate privilege assertions against subpoenas, the major question judges seek to answer is whether the need for the information is compelling enough to outweigh the need for executive branch confidentiality.

In 1974, the Supreme Court unanimously sided with the Watergate special prosecutor when then-President Nixon tried to quash a grand jury subpoena for White House tape recordings.

Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote in the decision, “The generalized assertion of privilege must yield to the demonstrated, specific need for evidence in a pending criminal trial.”

In a more recent case, the Supreme Court rejected Trump’s bid to block the select committee from obtaining troves of documents from his time in the White House. In an 8-1 ruling in January, the justices declined to review a lower court’s decision that the select committee’s need for the documents would outweigh any assertion of privilege even if Trump had still been in office at the time.

Eggleston said he believes the courts would rule the same way if a dispute over privilege were to arise out of the grand jury investigation.

“I think that’s probably the way the courts are going to think about this as well,” he said. “Because if you just apply a standard balancing test under U.S. v. Nixon, I think it is overwhelming that the Department of Justice will have shown compelling need for this testimony and President Trump’s interest in confidentiality at this stage, particularly after the January 6 hearings, is virtually zero.”

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Extra

• Ricky Willden Gets Prison Time for Spraying Cops on Jan. 6

Self-Proclaimed Proud Boys Member of Who Unleashed Chemical Spray on Police at Capitol on Jan. 6 Gets Time Behind Bars

A California man who unleashed a can of chemical spray on police officers guarding the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 has been sentenced to two years behind bars.

Ricky Willden, 41, was seen on video among a crowd facing off against police at the East Columbus doors to the Capitol building. He was recording the chaos on his phone, which had a sticker that read “I [heart] my Proud Boy.” The Proud Boys are a self-described group of “Western chauvinists” who support an “anti-white guilt” agenda. The Anti-Defamation League called the Proud Boys an extremist group with a history of hate, and the Canadian government lists them as a terrorist entity.

At around 2:35 p.m., as the mob of Donald Trump supporters — angry over the results over the 2020 election and spurred on by the former president’s ongoing, false allegations of widespread voter fraud — surged closer to the building, Willden deployed a can of chemical spray toward the officers. He then threw the empty can at the police line.

Around 30 minutes later, the East Columbus doors having been breached, Willden entered the building. Prosecutors say he stayed inside for around 18 minutes.

Later, Willden took to Facebook and boasted about his exploits at the Capitol.

“I think they got the message from everyone of all ages,” he wrote.

“FYI the cop who started his shit by mazing [sic] me and hitting my nuts playing stupid games, hope you enjoyed my special prizes,” Willden wrote in a separate comment.

He pleaded guilty in April to one count of assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers engaged in official duties. The maximum sentence is eight years in prison and a $250,000 fine; the sentencing guidelines range estimated a term of 24 to 30 months.

Prosecutors had asked for a sentence in the upper level of the range, while Willden, through his lawyer Griffin Estes, asked for a sentence of 12 months and one day.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras sentenced Willden to two years in prison, followed by three years of supervised release. He must also pay $2,000 in restitution toward the estimated $2.7 million in damage to the Capitol.

• FBI searches Mar-a-Lago, Trump says

The FBI searched the Mar-a-Lago home of Donald Trump, the former president said in a statement.

“They even broke into my safe,” Trump said in a lengthy statement describing it as a “raid.”

Two sources familiar with the search said it was related to allegations that Trump allies improperly removed boxes of presidential records from the White House after leaving office — including some that may have included classified information. One of those sources said the raid took “hours.”

Trump, who was the first to confirm the raid, said in a statement that his resort was “under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents.”

“After working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate,” Trump said.

The former president was not present at Mar-a-Lago and was at Trump Tower in New York City, according to a person familiar with the situation.

The FBI and U.S. Attorney’s offices in Washington, D.C., and for the Southern District of Florida didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Spokespeople at Justice Department headquarters in Washington declined to comment. The Secret Service and Palm Beach Police Department deferred comment to the FBI. Two sources familiar with the matter said top Biden White House officials were not given advance notice of the raid.

The news of the FBI action comes amid an increasingly complex thicket of legal threats encircling Trump and his inner circle. Most prominent among them is the escalating investigation of efforts by Trump and his allies to disrupt the transition of power in 2020, in part by attempting to appoint fraudulent presidential electors that would create a pretense for blocking Joe Biden’s victory.

From Election Night to Jan. 6: A plot grows within Trump’s W.H.

That investigation has become an increasingly public threat to Trump, with some of his top allies and former White House facing grand jury subpoenas and FBI searches. Earlier in the day, the Justice Department defended its decision to seize the cellphone of John Eastman, the attorney who helped devise Trump’s strategy to seize a second term he didn’t win.

Federal investigators have pursued evidence that Trump’s administration mishandled presidential records and even removed some boxes to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

An executed search warrant would require the signoff of a federal judge or magistrate, who would issue the warrant based upon evidence of a potential crime.

The law enforcement moves at Trump’s residence came as lawyers and other observers have been bracing for action this month in politically sensitive Justice Department investigations as prosecutors approach a traditional quiet period for such probes in the lead-up to elections.

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Extra.

• Judge rejects bid to delay Oath Keepers Jan. 6 trial

The first trial on seditious conspiracy charges related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol is on track to begin in Washington next month for nine members of the Oath Keepers’ militia, after a federal judge on Tuesday turned down a request by nearly all defendants to put off the courtroom showdown until next year.

Defense attorneys argued that publicity related to the House Jan. 6 select committee’s televised hearings and difficulties accessing evidence related to the case warranted putting off the trial from its scheduled Sept. 26 date for the opening of jury selection.

However, U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta said that a postponement would upend the court’s trial calendar and that trying to schedule the trial to avoid any potential conflict with the House committee would be unwise and likely ineffective.

“I can’t move this trial and I’m not going to move this trial,” Mehta said during a hybrid courtroom and videoconference hearing Tuesday that stretched to more than two hours. “It would quite literally wreak havoc for this court’s docket.”

Mehta said he was confident the court could find jurors untainted by publicity related to the House hearings.

“We are not going to avoid that publicity by moving this trial for a few months,” said the judge, an appointee of President Barack Obama. “I don’t know what they’re going to do and when they’re going to do it. This is a court of law. We cannot wait on the legislative process to move forward.”

Mehta did question a prosecutor about why the Justice Department agreed in June to a delay in another seditious conspiracy case against members and affiliates of the Proud Boys group, amid concerns that the House panel might soon release as many as 1,000 witness transcripts. Both sides in that case expressed concern that such a release just before, during or after the trial could cause significant problems.

However, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathryn Rakoczy said Tuesday that the release of those transcripts in August seemed more certain several weeks ago, and she suggested the government believed the potential timing was now too unpredictable to justify a delay in the Oath Keepers trial set to open at the end of next month.

“The government did not have perfect information at that time, but we were afraid that would come to bear,” Rakoczy said of the potential document dump. “And that seemed much more certain at that point in time.”

Rakoczy said that at this point, the Justice Department wasn’t sure whether the panel would release any transcripts or when. POLITICO reported last week that the panel’s chair, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), said a framework for sharing the documents with prosecutors had been worked out. The panel later said through a spokesperson that 20 unspecified transcripts were likely to be shared soon, but gave no guidance about the remainder.

“We have no promises or assurances that these transcripts will be released,” she said Tuesday.

Mehta emphasized that if the witness transcripts did emerge shortly before the trial, he would consider again whether a delay is warranted.

“If there are transcripts dropped on the eve of the trial that pertain to these defendants and the allegations against them, I will revisit the issue. You have my word,” the judge said.

Nine defendants are currently expected to be part of the trial starting in September, including Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes. Three Oath Keepers members have already pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy charges and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. A trial for other Oath Keepers members not facing that charge is set for February 2023.

• FBI Search of Trump’s Home Means DOJ Believes Evidence of ‘Crime or Crimes’ Was at Mar-a-Lago, Former Federal Prosecutor Says

Former federal prosecutor Mitchell Epner, who is now a partner at Rottenberg Lipman Rich PC, emphasized that the development marks a first in American history — and signals several things.

“Number one, people at the highest level of the Department of Justice authorized prosecutors to seek a search warrant for the former president,” Epner noted. “This is not something that would be done by a line assistant, or something that would be done by the U.S. Attorney for a district. This would require approval either from the Deputy Attorney General, the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division or the Attorney General himself.”

If the FBI executed a search warrant, it must be supported by probable cause of evidence that satisfied a federal judge, Epner continued.

“Having sought a search warrant, there is some place — currently under seal — an affidavit that lays out what crimes the DOJ believes are committed, and why there is probable cause to believe that evidence of that crime or crimes would be found at Mar-a-Lago,” he said. “And that affidavit was convincing to either a United States magistrate judge or a United States district judge, who issued the warrant on the basis of that affidavit.”

Though the basis of the search is currently unknown, a federal judge previously found, in a civil case involving Trump’s lawyer John Eastman, that both Trump and his attorney “more likely than not” committed two crimes: obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States.

Just the highlights…….

FBI search of Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence brings focus on Presidential Records Act

The FBI on Monday executed a search warrant at former President Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence in what one former federal prosecutor called the "most important search warrant in the history of the United States."

The big picture: The search appeared to mark a dramatic escalation in the investigation into Trump's handling of presidential documents.

• Two sources familiar with Monday's investigation told Axios' Jonathan Swan that it was their understanding that the raid was related to documents Trump took from the White House that may have been classified.

Classified documents and Trump

The Jan. 6 select committee delivered a letter to the National Archives last August, requesting any insurrection-related White House documents and communications from or around the date of the insurrection.

• The requested records would shed light on the events leading up to Jan. 6 and the day itself, including what intelligence was gathered and disseminated, security preparations around the Capitol, and the planning of events scheduled for Jan. 5 and 6, per the committee.
• Trump's legal team sought to invoke executive privilege on an initial set of White House documents produced in response. However, President Biden then waived executive privilege on the initial set of White House documents.

The 45th president took his legal challenge all the way to the Supreme Court, which in February rejected his request to block NARA from releasing the records to the select committee.

• The court's rejection marked a formal end to Trump's efforts to prevent lawmakers from obtaining records that contained White House visitor logs and other documents that the former president attempted to keep hidden.

FBI's search warrant

• To obtain and execute a search warrant, the FBI must have an affidavit that sets forth probable cause that at least one crime was committed.
• Search warrants also require a connection between the crime and the place that is being searched; federal agents must be able to list the specific items that are going to be searched; and the evidence has to be relatively fresh.
• When a search warrant is requested for a major figure, including a president or other elected official, "it goes through a long review process," Gene Rossi, a former federal prosecutor, told Axios.

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Jan. 6 Committee Gets 2 Years Of Alex Jones’ Text Messages

A lawyer for two Sandy Hook parents suing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones turned over more than two years of his text messages to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the U.S. Capitol, according to multiple reports.

The messages were turned over by Houston attorney Mark Bankston, who represents the parents of a child killed during the 2012 school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. A jury last week awarded those plaintiffs more than $49 million in compensatory and punitive damages for spreading repeated lies that the shooting didn’t happen.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/alex-...b0db71d8cb69a4

• Rep. Scott Perry says FBI seized his phone

Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), the chair of the House Freedom Caucus, said Tuesday that FBI agents seized his phone.

Why it matters: Perry was a key player in the Jan. 6 select committee's public hearings in June and July, which featured testimony alleging he requested a pardon from the White House in the aftermath of the Capitol attack.

• Perry has denied the testimony by former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson that he requested a pardon, telling Axios "this never happened."

Driving the news: Perry said in a statement to Axios, first reported by Fox News, that three FBI agents visited him Tuesday morning while he was traveling with his family and "seized my cell phone."

• Perry said he is "outraged" that the FBI would seize a member of Congress' phone, adding that his phone contains "info about my legislative and political activities, and personal/private discussions with my wife, family, constituents, and friends. None of this is the government’s business."
• "As with President Trump last night, DOJ chose this unnecessary and aggressive action instead of simply contacting my attorneys. These kinds of banana republic tactics should concern every Citizen," he said.
• The FBI's raid of Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort on Monday has drawn widespread rebukes from Republicans — though it's not clear whether the two are related.

The backdrop: Perry was involved in multiple aspects of the campaign to overturn the 2020 election in the run-up to Jan. 6, according to testimony to the Jan. 6 committee and a report from the Senate Judiciary Committee.

• He pressed the Justice Department to investigate election fraud claims and championed Trump's efforts to install Jeffrey Clark, a vocal believer in the fraud claims, as acting attorney general, according to the Senate report.
• The Jan. 6 panel has also revealed closed-door testimony alleging Perry attended a Dec. 21, 2020 White House meeting at which GOP House members discussed a legal theory that then-Vice President Mike Pence could unilaterally reject electors.
• Perry also filed the objection to counting Pennsylvania's electors in the hours after the Jan. 6 attack.

The state of play: In recent months the DOJ expanded its Jan. 6 probe, which initially focused on prosecuting rioters, to look at those schemes.

• Clark, a former DOJ official, had his home searched and electronic devices seized by federal investigators in June, reportedly as part of that investigation.
• Spokespeople for the DOJ and FBI declined to comment.

___________

In other news.

• FBI agents, Garland and Wray see increased death threats after Trump Mar-a-Lago raid: sources

FBI agents, as well as U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Chris Wray, are experiencing an uptick in death threats in the wake of the raid at former President Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, according to sources speaking with Fox News.

Authorities monitoring social media posts are spotting a significant increase in death threats aimed towards agents, Wray and Garland. These threats are reported to continue at a steady pace online.

The FBI/DOJ security procedures are not made public, and both Garland and Wray travel with armed security. Still, Fox News is told there are discussions to potentially increase their security. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fbi...o-raid-sources

_______

• The Fox News report does not mention, however, that the network itself has been broadcasting multiple conspiracy theories and inflammatory claims about the FBI search, including baseless speculation that the agency "planted" incriminating evidence to frame the twice-impeached former president of wrongdoing. https://www.rawstory.com/fbi-fox-news/

• Trump national security adviser to meet with Jan. 6 committee

The House Jan. 6 committee is set to interview former National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien Friday as it expands its inquiry into former President Donald Trump's role in the insurrection, a source familiar with the panel's work confirmed.

Former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, who resigned the day after the Capitol riot, has already spoken with the committee, the source said. Chao's interview happened on Aug. 3. A representative for Chao declined to comment.

The committee is trying to learn more about what top Trump administration officials knew about the former president's intentions on Jan. 6 and whether Cabinet members discussed removing him from office — by invoking the 25th Amendment to the Constitution — in the wake of the riot, the source said.

In a series of high-profile public hearings, the committee has shown that Trump and his allies tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election in a number of different ways. They included pressuring state elections officials to reverse results, creating slates of "fake electors" to replace certified electors and urging Justice Department officials to falsely declare the election fraudulent.

After all else failed, Trump tried to get then-Vice President Mike Pence to agree to interfere with the constitutional count of the electoral votes that made Joe Biden president.

_______________

Will not be able to be employed as a Mall security guard when he gets out

• Ex-Virginia cop sentenced over 7 years in prison for Capitol riot

A former Virginia police officer was sentenced to more than seven years in prison on Thursday for his role in the Capitol riot, The Washington Post reports.

Driving the news: A federal judge sentenced Thomas Robertson to 87 months in prison, matching the longest sentence handed down to a Capitol rioter so far, per the Post.

• "You were not some bystander who just got swept up in the crowd," Judge Christopher Cooper said at Robertson’s sentencing hearing, according to the Post. "It really seems as though you think of partisan politics as war and that you continue to believe these conspiracy theories."

The big picture: Robertson, 49, joined the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, at one point using a large wooden stick to block police, according to the Post. He was later fired from his position as a police officer in Rocky Mount, Virginia.

• Robertson was initially released after being charged in January 2021. However, he was rearrested in July 2021 for illegally stockpiling weapons.
• In April, a jury found Robertson guilty on all charges, including obstruction of an official proceeding, disorderly and disruptive conduct, impeding law enforcement, destroying evidence, and entering and remaining on restricted grounds while carrying a deadly or dangerous weapon.

• Read: What DHS watchdog employees wanted to tell Congress about missing Jan. 6 Secret Service texts

Congress was nearly notified in June that Secret Service text messages relevant to its Jan. 6 investigation had disappeared — weeks before it ultimately found out — according to documents obtained by the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight.

Career officials at the Department of Homeland Security’s office of the inspector general added language about the missing texts to a mandatory report to the Hill, along with sharp criticism of the Secret Service. But that draft language didn’t make it into the final document, which is public.

And the DHS inspector general’s office didn’t tell Congress about the deleted Secret Service text messages until July.

The draft language critical of the Secret Service was greenlit by lawyers at the inspector general’s office, as outlined in another document that the nonprofit also obtained and shared with reporters. The draft language was also shared with the inspector general’s Office of External Affairs, which is helmed in an acting capacity by the chief of staff to IG Joseph Cuffari.

The language that didn’t make it into the final report to Congress included specific detail about resistance the watchdog office faced in obtaining Secret Service texts during “this reporting period,” meaning Oct. 1, 2021, through March 31. Over that time period, “Secret Service has resisted OIG’s oversight activities and continued to significantly delay OIG’s access to records, impeding the progress of OIG’s January 6, 2021 review,” the draft text opens.

The draft language then said that Secret Service interviewees refused to provide documents directly to the inspector general’s office, which amounted to “resistance to OIG’s oversight activities, for which justification has not been provided.”

Secret Service also gave redacted documents to the DHS watchdog, without saying who made the redactions or why, according to the draft text. The inspector general’s office eventually got those documents without redactions, after surmounting hurdles that “regularly resulted in avoidable delay.”

The draft language also would have told Congress about the missing texts.

“[M]ore than 2 months after OIG renewed its requests for select Secret Service employees’ text messages,” the draft language reads, “Secret Service claimed inability to extract text message content due to an April 2021 mobile phone system migration, which wiped all data.”

“Secret Service caused significant delay by not clearly communicating this highly relevant information at the outset of its exchanges with OIG during this reporting period,” the draft text added. “Moreover, Secret Service has not explained why it did not preserve the texts prior to the migration.”

Unlike the text Congress received, the draft language also said explicitly that the Secret Service’s resistance to oversight was ongoing.

“As outlined above, during this reporting period, the Secret Service has resisted OIG’s oversight activities and delayed the results of its review of the events of January 6, 2021,” it concluded.

In the end, the document that went to the Hill included just two sentences on the topic.

“During the previous reporting period, we included information about Secret Service’s significant delay of OIG’s access to Secret Service records, impeding the progress of our January 6, 2021 review,” reads the report Congress received. “We continue to discuss this issue with Secret Service.”

The DHS inspector general’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi said that the agency is “cooperating fully with all of the inquiries into the events that occurred on January 6, 2021. In the spring of 2021, the Secret Service first notified DHS OIG of the loss of certain phones’ data in as part of a pre-planned system migration. We look forward to responding to the OIG on these allegations through their formal investigative process.”

Congressional aides have obtained the same documents that the Project on Government Oversight obtained, according to two people familiar with the materials.

The Secret Service’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021, are of keen interest to the House select committee investigating the attack — and the deletion of some text messages that agents sent that day, as part of what the agency called a data migration, has sparked outrage among its members.

That ire is particularly acute since Secret Service and its parent department, the Department of Homeland Security, focus on cybersecurity issues.

The delay between when the DHS inspector general learned the messages vanished and when he told Congress has also generated furor. Cuffari pushed back against the criticism in an email last week to the office’s workforce that POLITICO reviewed, saying his team faced an “onslaught of meritless criticism.”

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Extra

Will be mowing lawns in 9 months

• Trump supporter who called Capitol cops 'weasels' on Jan. 6 sentenced to prison

A Capitol rioter who pushed against a police line on Jan. 6 before storming the building and calling the police officers "little f--king spineless f--king oath violating little f--king weasels" was sentenced to eight months in federal prison on Friday.

Glen Simon pleaded guilty, first in October, then again in April after more evidence against him was discovered, to a count of disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds. Chief Judge Beryl A. Howell noted Friday that he had a plated vest, joined a mob pushing a bike rack against a line of police officers, and entered the building as the "tip of the mob."

Simon, Howell said, "helped incite the crowd" by yelling and cursing at law enforcement and then lied twice to the FBI about his actions on Jan. 6. She noted that he could have been charged separately for his lies.

Howell said that Simon's personal problems "perhaps contributed to his susceptibility" to falling in with "conspiracy theories about a stolen election being egged on by politicians." But his susceptibility made it important to deter others "who also might be susceptible" like the defendant, she said.

"Listening without question to political rhetoric that leads to serious offenses, criminal conduct, is not an excuse when you're standing in a court of law," Howell said. "There are consequences for going along with a crowd with such unquestioning, following of political rhetoric."

Howell said she knew his time in prison would be difficult for his children, but said she hoped it might be a lesson for his children as well.

"You've got to use your common sense and your own sense of who you are and how you'd like to conduct yourself as an American citizen before just blindly doing what a political figure says," Howell said.

• Mike Pompeo meets with January 6 committee

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with the House January 6 committee on Tuesday, according to panel member Rep. Zoe Lofgren. The California Democrat confirmed CNN's earlier reporting that Pompeo would be deposed by the committee, according to a source familiar with the matter.

CNN has previously reported on Pompeo's negotiations with the committee about his testimony. The panel has shown an increased interest in members of former President Donald Trump's Cabinet, particularly regarding conversations among Cabinet members about invoking the 25th Amendment after January 6, 2021, and the committee's focus in the Pompeo interview was expected to be on the 25th Amendment, the source said.

A portion of the 25th Amendment, which addresses presidential succession, allows a vice president and a majority of the Cabinet to vote to remove a president from office due to his inability to "discharge the powers and duties of his office."

Pompeo served as CIA director for the first year of Trump's presidency, and led the State Department for Trump's final three years, where he was a stalwart Trump ally and defender.

Lofgren refused to comment on the particulars of Pompeo's testimony in an interview on Tuesday, but told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on "The Situation Room" that "he came in willingly, and he did answer questions for quite some time."

When asked if the committee learned any new information from Pompeo's testimony, Lofgren said, "I think we fill in a few pieces here and there each time we interview someone. Obviously, we've had testimony from others about what he said and did. And so, it's just a matter of filling out the entire picture, especially on that day and the events subsequent to that day, where the Cabinet secretaries had concerns about the President."

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Extra

At least 889 people have been charged in the Capitol insurrection so far. This searchable table shows them all.

347 rioters have pleaded guilty for their role in the Capitol insurrection so far. This table is tracking them all.

In both “search in tables”, you can look for someone you might know.

• Justice Department subpoenas Trump White House lawyer Eric Herschmann

A federal grand jury investigating the Jan. 6 attack has subpoenaed Trump White House lawyer Eric Herschmann for documents and testimony, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Herschmann represented Donald Trump in the former president’s first impeachment trial and later joined the White House as a senior adviser. He did not work in the White House counsel’s office, but did provide Trump with legal advice. Because of that responsibility, there will likely be litigation over the scope of the subpoena and over how executive and attorney-client privileges may limit Herschmann’s ability to comply.

Herschmann is not the first former Trump White House lawyer to receive a DOJ subpoena. Pat Cipollone, who served as White House counsel, and Patrick Philbin, who served as deputy counsel, have also been subpoenaed.

During the tumultuous final weeks of Trump’s term, Herschmann clashed with other aides and advisers who pushed the defeated president to fight the election results. He was also present for many of the most consequential meetings in that period of time. Among them was a high-stakes meeting where most of the Trump Justice Department’s top brass threatened to resign rather than work under a colleague who wanted to advance spurious claims of widespread voter fraud.

Herschmann also sparred with Sidney Powell and Michael Flynn when they urged Trump to have the military seize voting machines. The Jan. 6 select committee has aired numerous portions of his testimony to their panel, which is blunt and sometimes darkly amusing.

A spokesperson for Herschmann declined to comment. The Justice Department declined to comment.

In his testimony to the select committee, Herschmann described lambasting Jeffrey Clark, then a top Justice Department lawyer, during a White House meeting on Jan. 3, 2021. At that time, Clark was urging Trump to remove then-Acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen and give him the job.

Clark had encouraged his DOJ colleagues to send letters to state legislators saying the department had found concerning evidence of voter fraud in the 2020 election. Former Attorney General Bill Barr, however, had said the department found no evidence of fraud that could have swung the election. Under those circumstances, Clark’s plans so concerned his colleagues that many of them warned Trump in that Jan. 3 meeting that they would quit if he gave Clark the top job.

Herschmann later recalled to the select panel that he found Clark’s idea to be “asinine” and dryly brought up Clark’s past as an environmental lawyer.

“I thought Jeff’s proposal — Clark’s proposal was nuts,” Herschmann told the committee. “I mean this guy, at a certain point, ‘Listen, the best I can tell is the only thing you know about environmental and elections challenges is they both start with E. And based on your answers tonight, I’m not even certain you know that.’”

Herschmann also told the select panel about a contentious phone call he had on Jan. 7, 2021, with Trump-allied lawyer John Eastman. In the call, Eastman discussed plans to keep pursuing Trump’s efforts to reverse the election — despite the violence of the previous day’s Capitol riot.

“And I said to him, ‘Are you out of your F-ing mind?’” Herschmann told the panel. “I said, ‘I only want to hear two words coming out of your mouth from now on: orderly transition.’”

Eastman finally said those words, according to Herschmann.

“I said, ‘Good, John. Now I’m going to give you the best free legal advice you’re ever getting in your life: Get a great F-ing criminal defense lawyer. You’re going to need it,’” Herschmann added. “And then I hung up on him.”

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Extra

• Threats To Federal Law Enforcement Reportedly Rising Since Mar-A-Lago Search

Federal authorities are warning of a spike in threats to law enforcement following last week’s FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, according to an intelligence bulletin cited by several news outlets.

The unclassified joint intelligence bulletin dated Friday and released by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security advises federal officials to remain vigilant and stay abreast of issues relating to domestic violent extremists, two senior law enforcement officials told NBC News.

“The FBI and DHS have observed an increase in threats to federal law enforcement and to a lesser extent other law enforcement and government officials following the FBI’s recent execution of a search warrant in Palm Beach, Florida,” the bulletin reads, according to one official.

The bulletin’s content was similarly confirmed by CNN and CBS News.

The threats are primarily occurring online, including on social media sites, web forums, video sharing platforms and image boards, according to CBS News.

The threats call for the “targeted killing of judicial, law enforcement, and government officials associated with the Palm Beach search, including the federal judge who approved the Palm Beach search warrant,” the memo states.

The memo also reportedly mentioned Thursday’s shootout at an FBI building in Cincinnati where authorities say 42-year-old Ricky Shiffer fired a nail gun at the building before fleeing in his car with an AR-15 rifle. He was later killed by police.

Shiffer appears to have expressed a desire to kill federal agents on Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social, just before the attack.

FBI Director Christopher Wray acknowledged the rise in threats to federal agents and the Justice Department at a press conference Wednesday, calling them “deplorable and dangerous.”

“Violence against law enforcement is not the answer, no matter who you’re upset with,” he said.

Trump has publicly criticized the FBI in the wake of Monday’s search, which authorities said was over classified and top secret government documents.

He’s called the federal agency corrupt and has suggested that the agents could have planted fake evidence inside his home.

Representatives with the DHS and FBI declined to comment on the memo when reached by HuffPost Sunday, only saying in separate statements that they are working with their law enforcement partners to address the heightened threats and prevent violence.

“As always, we would like to remind members of the public that if they observe anything suspicious to report it to law enforcement immediately,” the FBI said.

• Federal prosecutors have ‘all’ Trump White House documents obtained by Jan 6 committee: report

Federal prosecutors have reportedly used a grand jury subpoena to obtain a duplicate set of the Trump White House records which the National Archives and Records Administration has been providing to the House January 6 select committee since last year.

The Independent has confirmed the existence of the subpoena which was first reported by the New York Times and was served on Nara this past May. According to a copy of the document viewed by the Times, it demanded that the archives provide prosecutors with “all materials, in whatever form” that had been produced in response to a subpoena issued last year by the select committee as part of its’ parallel investigation into the worst attack on the US Capitol since 1814.

Although former president Donald Trump attempted to block Nara from turning over records created during his presidency to the House panel, the Supreme Court in January rejected his appeal of two lower court decisions which held that Congress was entitled to the documents because the incumbent president, Joe Biden, had not chosen to invoke executive privilege to prevent their production.

Since that Supreme Court ruling, Nara has been providing documents to the panel on a rolling bases, including White House phone logs, copies of the “daily diary” that documented Mr Trump’s movements, calls, meetings and other daily activities, files from ex-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, former deputy White House counsel Pat Philbin, and ex-senior adviser Stephen Miller.

Other tranches of documents provided to the select committee include draft remarks for the speech Mr Trump delivered at the Ellipse on the day of the attack.

The subpoena was reportedly issued at the request of Thomas Windom, the senior federal prosecutor who is overseeing the Justice Department’s investigation into Mr Trump’s attempt to remain in office against the wishes of American voters, including a plan for the ex-president’s allies to submit fake documents to the Archives purporting to be electoral vote certificates for Mr Trump from states that were carried by Mr Biden in the 2020 election.

The fact that prosecutors have requested copies of the same documents obtained by the select committee is a strong indicator that the department is actively investigating whether Mr Trump’s schemes to remain in power broke US laws. It also suggests that Justice Department officials believe the documents obtained by the select committee could be used as evidence to prove that crimes were committed by Mr Trump and his allies as they strove to overturn his loss to Mr Biden.

The department has also issued subpoenas to several former Trump White House officials, including ex-White House lawyer Eric Herschmann and former Meadows aide Cassidy Hutchinson. Ms Hutchinson gave evidence before a grand jury investigating the January 6 attack shortly after she testified in an open hearing before the select committee on 28 June.

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Updating Right-Wing domestic terrorists.

• Gab User Arrested for Threatening to Kill FBI Agents

Pennsylvania Man Arrested for Posting Threats on Social Media to Kill FBI Agents: ‘If You Work for the FBI Then You Deserve to Die’

A Pennsylvania man was arrested over threatening messages saying he wanted to murder FBI agents following the raid of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property.

The Pennsylvania Trump supporter, identified as Adam Bies, was not happy with the raid and threatened to kill those he called “child molesting law enforcement scumbags” through the social media site Gab. Bies is now being charged with influencing, impeding, or retaliating against a federal law enforcement official.

According to the FBI affidavit, Bies wrote that his only goal is to “kill more of them before I drop.”

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• Maine’s most seriously charged Jan. 6 riot defendant, Kyle Fitzsimons, set to stand trial

Kyle Fitzsimons is the first defendant from Maine who will stand trial for participating in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol, in U.S. District Court, in Washington, D.C., starting Tuesday.

Fitzsimons, 38, has waived his right to a trial by jury and will instead have his guilt or innocence decided by Judge Rudolph Contreras, who denied Fitzsimons’ request for a change of venue.

Contreras rejected Fitzsimons’ argument, also advanced unsuccessfully by other Jan. 6 defendants, that the district’s overwhelming vote in the 2020 presidential election for Joe Biden over Donald Trump made seating an impartial jury impossible.

Fitzsimons faces 11 criminal charges, six of them felonies, including obstructing an official proceeding — Congress certifying Biden’s Electoral College victory over Trump — disorderly conduct in a restricted building and grounds, and most seriously, assaulting and injuring three law enforcement officers.

Those officers are expected to testify, and one of them, Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonel, spoke to CNN last year.

“I got hurt,” Gonel told CNN, without naming anyone. “They kept saying, ‘Trump sent me. We are here to take over the Capitol. We are here to hang Mike Pence.’”

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• Virginia Cop Fired After Breaching Capitol on Jan. 6 Gets Lighter Sentence for ‘Fulsome’ Cooperation with Feds, Testimony Against Former Mentor

A former Virginia cop who breached the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 with a sergeant and mentor he saw as a “father figure” — and later testified against him at trial — was sentenced Tuesday to probation and home confinement.

Jacob Fracker could have faced up to five years behind bars for conspiring to obstruct, influence, and impede Congress, the felony offense to which he had pleaded guilty in March.

The government, however, had asked for a downward departure from federal sentencing guidelines, citing Fracker’s “fulsome” cooperation with the government in its prosecution of Thomas Robertson, Fracker’s former sergeant in the police department in Rocky Mount, Virginia.

After he was convicted by a jury in April of multiple charges, including felony obstruction, Robertson was sentenced last week to more than seven years in prison.

Jacob Fracker Gets Probation for Thomas Robertson Testimony

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• ‘Texas Pleather’ Man Accused of Confronting Police Inside Capitol on Jan. 6 and Tipped Off to Feds by Ex-Girlfriend Pleads Guilty to a Felony

The Texas man who wore a conspicuous orange jacket to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6 — and was later identified to authorities by his ex-girlfriend — has pleaded guilty to a felony.

Geoffrey Samuel Shough, 38, admitted Tuesday to one count of civil disorder, a felony punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. According to his plea agreement, he started driving from Austin to Washington on Jan. 2, 2021. He planned to attend then-President Donald Trump‘s so-called “Stop the Steal” rally and to “protest Congress’s certification of the Electoral College” and Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 presidential election.

When Shough was arrested, court documents revealed that an ex-girlfriend, identified as L.T. in court filings, had confirmed his identity to federal authorities.

“L.T. stated that she had been dating Shough until the prior week, at which time they broke up. L.T. explained that Shough was visiting friends in Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021, and had previously expressed an interest in attending the ‘Stop the Steal’ rally while he was in Washington, D.C.,” the probable cause affidavit said. “L.T. confirmed that Shough had a cognac-colored leather jacket.”

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• Port Orchard man sentenced to 36 months of probation, fined for involvement in Capitol riot

PORT ORCHARD, Wash. — A Port Orchard man was sentenced to 36 months of probation, including 30 days of intermittent confinement, for his involvement in the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot.

John Cameron was also fined $1,000 and must pay $500 in restitution.

Cameron initially faced four charges but ended up pleading guilty to one count of parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building following an agreement with federal prosecutors. The charge carried a maximum sentence of six months in prison, five years probation and/or a fine of $5,000.

On Jan. 8, 2021, the FBI received a tip indicating that Cameron had been at the U.S. Capitol riot two days earlier. The tipster provided the FBI with a link to Cameron's Facebook account, which included posts and pictures documenting his trip to Washington D.C. for the "Stop the Steal" rally, according to probable cause documents.

Cameron posted a picture on his Facebook page that morning showing himself dressed in a "Make America Great Again" cap and a black hooded sweatshirt with a t-shirt on top that read "count all legal votes," according to court documents.

CCTV video taken within the capitol building showed a man matching Cameron's description entering through the Senate Wing Door at around 2:20 p.m. on Jan. 6.

The man made his way to the Crypt, and then toward the Memorial Door on the east side of the building. Video shows him exiting the Capitol by climbing through a broken window near the Senate Wing Door at around 2:42 p.m.

Cameron posted other photos and videos on his publicly accessible Facebook account of himself and the crowd on restricted grounds of the U.S. Capitol, according to court documents. One video, captioned "Civil disobedience," showed rioters breaching the secured areas of the scaffolding surrounding the Capitol building.

Cameron posted another video of himself on a D.C. Metro train after leaving the Capitol describing the events of the day. "Was it pretty?" Cameron said. "No. Did it make a statement? Yes."

Cameron was officially charged for his participation in the Capitol riot on Dec. 10, 2021, and was arrested on Jan. 5, 2022. He entered a guilty plea on May 4. Port Orchard man sentenced to 36 months of probation, fined for involvement in Capitol riot | king5.com

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Will soon be back at his old job of flipping BBQ wings on the grill

• First Amendment Scholars Say Jan. 6 Rioter Is Subject to ‘Constitutional Command’ Disqualifying Insurrectionists from Holding Public Office

Leading First Amendment experts have weighed in on a lawsuit against a New Mexico man convicted in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, saying that he cannot use the First Amendment as a defense to the constitutional prohibition against insurrectionists holding public office.

First Amendment expert Floyd Abrams (“Pentagon Papers” attorney and father of Law&Crime founder Dan Abrams), UC Berkeley School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, Harvard professor and former Harvard Law Dean Martha Minow, Harvard Law professor Laurence H. Tribe, and University of New Mexico Law School professor Maryam Ahranjani are among those who signed on to an amicus brief filed last week in the case brought by three New Mexico residents against Couy Griffin, an Otero County Commissioner.

Griffin was convicted of a misdemeanor trespassing charge (https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...fin-sentenced/
14 days in jail and 3,000.00 fine) in March following a bench trial before U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, a Donald Trump appointee, of entering a restricted area on Capitol grounds, a misdemeanor. Griffin was at the Capitol that day seen standing over a crowd of Trump supporters in an apparent effort to lead the group in prayer. He was also seen using a metal barricade as a ladder to reach Capitol grounds.

According to prosecutors, Griffin had pledged to return to the Capitol specifically “plant our flag” on the desks of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). He also allegedly threatened that “there’s gonna be blood running out of that building.”

The government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a lawsuit in March against Griffin in on behalf of three New Mexico residents looking to remove Griffin from his County Commissioner position and blocking him from running for office again. In their lawsuit, plaintiffs Marco White, Mark Mitchell, and Leslie Lakind argue that the 14th Amendment’s Disqualification Clause prohibits Griffin from holding public office.

That clause says:

No person shall . . . hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.

Last week, a group of First Amendment lawyers and scholars, along with representatives from religious advocacy groups, filed an amicus brief in the case, anticipating that Griffin will claim that his First Amendment rights protect him against the disqualification clause — and saying that his defense is, essentially, legal hogwash.

In their brief, they get right to the point.

“Griffin is mistaken,” the brief says regarding the Capitol rioter’s anticipated First Amendment defense. “[T]he people of the United States may, without infringing upon any First Amendment rights, amend the Constitution to ban oath-breaking insurrectionists from seeking or holding office; and a court may — indeed, must — enforce that constitutional mandate against those, like Griffin, who flout that ban.”

The brief notes that Griffin’s case “does not involve a mere statute or regulation,” but rather “a constitutional command that officials who swore to support the Constitution, yet engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the United States, do not get a second chance to violate their oath unless and until they are rehabilitated by an act of Congress [emphasis in original].”

Griffin’s anticipated argument — that the Disqualification Clause of the 14th Amendment is itself unconstitutional — doesn’t hold water, the brief says, arguing that its never envisioned it in conflict with the First Amendment, as Griffin would suggest.

“Griffin ignores the fact that the drafters of the Clause possessed full knowledge of the First Amendment, yet provided no First Amendment defense to disqualification,” the brief says. “Moreover, his ‘unconstitutional constitutional amendment’ theory has never succeeded in American courts and was specifically rejected by the Clause’s drafters. That theory has gained a foothold in some foreign jurisdictions where the legislature possesses plenary power to undermine or even replace the national constitution through repeated amendment. But in the United States, the arduous Article V amendment process historically has provided sufficient protection against constitutional death-by-a-thousand-amendments.”

Calling Griffin’s argument an “inherently implausible theory,” the amicus argue that the Disqualification Clause “poses no threat to speech or expression protected by the First Amendment.” Instead, it applies only to a “unique category of persons who assumed their positions voluntarily — namely, current and former officeholders who violated their oath — and it directly affects only their limited and qualified right to hold office.”

“More important, any speech capable of triggering constitutional disqualification also is likely to fall within the long-established First Amendment exception for ‘speech integral to illegal conduct’ — more specifically, speech that encourages, induces, furthers a conspiracy to take, or credibly threatens to take, violent action,” the brief continues. “Such speech has never enjoyed First Amendment protection.”

Griffin did, in fact, raise First Amendment issues in a request for an injunction he filed in May in federal court in New Mexico. That lawsuit sought to block White, Mitchell, and Lakind from pursuing their state claim against him.

“As a County Commissioner, Griffin is subject to NMSA 1978, § 44-3-1 et seq., and, in fact, Defendants have challenged his ability to hold that office under the statute,” Griffin’s motion said. “If successful, Griffin would be removed from office and barred from running for state or federal office in the future. That is quintessential First Amendment activity.”

U.S. District Judge Kenneth John Gonzales, a Barack Obama appointee, found that the federal court didn’t have jurisdiction over the case and denied Griffin’s injunction request in June.

https://lawandcrime.com/u-s-capitol-...public-office/

https://s3.documentcloud.org/documen...a-scholars.pdf

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• Man accused in threats to kill Rep. Pramila Jayapal charged

Brett Forsell, 49, was arrested July 9 after allegedly yelling obscenities and threats outside Jayapal’s Seattle home late at night. He has been charged with felony stalking.

A 49-year-old Seattle man arrested earlier this month on suspicion of committing a hate crime against U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal and threatening to kill her has been charged with felony stalking.

The King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office said Brett Forsell was charged Wednesday after additional evidence was gathered by police investigators.

Forsell was arrested July 9 after allegedly yelling obscenities and threats outside Jayapal’s Seattle home late at night and booked into jail. He was released when prosecutors said there wasn’t enough evidence for a hate crime charge, though authorities noted the investigation would continue.

In 2016, Jayapal became the first Indian American woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. The Democrat heads the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

As part of the felony stalking charge, prosecutors note Forsell was armed with a deadly weapon and that Jayapal was stalked in connection with her elected position.

Seattle police arrested Forsell outside Jayapal’s house in the Arbor Heights neighborhood at 11:25 p.m. on July 9 after she called 911 and reported an unknown person or people were near her home using obscene language and mentioning her name, probable cause documents said. She told a dispatcher her husband thought someone may have fired a pellet gun, the statement said.

Officers found Forsell standing in the the street with his hands in the air and a handgun holstered on his waist, the probable cause statement said.

Forsell told police he drove by Jayapal’s house yelling obscenities multiple times since late June and on July 9 drove by, stopped, got out of the car and directed profanities at Jayapal, according to the probable cause statement.

He left after encountering her husband and then returned a short time later, knowing they were home, and was seen by neighbors and Jayapal’s husband appearing to approach the house while yelling at Jayapal, documents said. A neighbor told police she heard a man threaten to kill Jayapal and believed the statements were made by the man arrested that night.

Police learned the man sent an email to Jayapal’s public account in January, saying he didn’t like her, documents said.

A temporary Extreme Risk Protection Order to require Forsell to surrender his firearms and concealed pistol license, citing concerns about escalating behavior toward Jayapal and increasing mental health struggles, remains in place.

Prosecutors said a judge approved a bail amount of $500,000. It didn’t appear that Forsell had been booked into jail as of Wednesday evening. The Associated Press was unable to locate Forsell for comment and it was not known if he had an attorney who could speak on his behalf.

Jayapal said in a statement that the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s office charging Forsell with felony stalking demonstrates that the justice system is doing its work.

“I am grateful to the King County Prosecutor’s Office for holding this man accountable for his dangerous actions, to the victim’s advocate for her assistance throughout the process, and to the Seattle Police Department, U.S. Capitol Police, and the House Sergeant at Arms for continuing to keep my family, me, and my staff safe,” Jayapal said. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/con...rged-rcna40416

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• An Oklahoma bakery owner faces January 6 charges after her friends tipped off the FBI

A day after joining fellow Trump supporters in storming the Capitol, Dova Winegeart sent a text message to a friend: "It got crazy," she said. "I did shit."

On Tuesday, more than 18 months after January 6, 2021, the FBI arrested Winegeart on a raft of charges stemming from the Capitol attack, in which prosecutors said she swung a wooden pole with metal spikes into a glass door leading into the House of Representatives.

According to online records and social media profiles, Winegeart owns a bakery in Fairview, Oklahoma, where she was arrested on charges she destroyed government property, engaged in physical violence on restricted Capitol grounds, and disorderly conduct. Winegeart made her initial court appearance Tuesday in Oklahoma, according to court records.

In a court filing, the FBI said it received photographs from two of Winegeart's friends showing her on the Capitol grounds on January 6. One of the photographs shows Winegeart — wearing a red peacoat, white hat, and dark-rimmed glasses — "swinging a long wooden pole with what appears to be pointed metal attachments at the window of a door marked as 'House of Representatives,'" an FBI agent wrote.

The FBI later reviewed a photograph of the window showing cracks and holes consistent with damage caused by the metal attachments on the wooden pole. According to the FBI, the Architect of the Capitol estimated that the cost of repairing the window would exceed $1,000.

In October, the FBI interviewed a third friend of Winegeart's who received text messages from her on January 7, 2021. The bakery owner's tone was anything but sweet a day after the Capitol seige.

"Yes we are mad. Yes we want to go inside Capital [sic]. It's our building. Not the governments [sic]," she wrote in one text message. "We are their bosses but get treated like dogs. I'm done with this government. It's fight time non stop now. They asked for it."

In another message, Winegeart described police protecting the Capitol as "pieces of shit" and said she didn't enter the building because she "couldn't break open alone."

"I'm good. I'm sore. I'm exhausted. I feel horrible. But I'll keep fighting. Nothing to loose [sic]," she wrote.

Law enforcement officials went on to interview Winegeart and her husband in early November at their home. Her husband, Terry Winegeart, admitted in the interview that they were both present at the Capitol on January 6, and he identified his wife as the woman in the red peacoat who swung the wooden pole.

"Winegeart also admitted that she was present on the U.S. Capitol grounds on January 6, 2021," the FBI said.

https://news.yahoo.com/oklahoma-bake...144209408.html

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• Rioter found guilty after climbing US Capitol wall on January 6

A rioter who asked "where those pieces of sh-t at?" during the breach of the US Capitol was convicted by a Washington, DC jury in federal district court Thursday for his role in the January 6, 2021, attack.

Matthew Bledsoe, a Memphis-area businessowner, was found guilty on five counts, including the felony of obstructing an official proceeding.

Bledsoe, 38, faces a maximum of 20 years in prison, though he will likely receive a lighter sentence. He will be sentenced in October.

Bledsoe shook his head as the jury delivered each verdict.

While testifying Wednesday, Bledsoe said that, at the time, he thought January 6 was "pretty peaceful" and a "fun experience." Bledsoe did add, however, that is no longer his perception of the day.

Bledsoe also blamed police officers for not stopping the rioters, telling the jury that "it felt like we were being let in" by police officers at the Capitol. "Ninety to 95% of the people wouldn't have gone in if they [police] would have said something," he said.

Defense attorney Jerry Smith argued his client, whom he referred to as a "loudmouth," did not intend to disrupt the certification of electoral college votes and that he merely believed the Capitol riot was a continuation of former President Donald Trump's rally at the ellipse.

"He came to demonstrate the same way millions of people have come to our city over the years," Smith said.

According to texts sent by the defendant and testimony from the trial, Bledsoe scaled a wall on the West side of the Capitol.

"I chose the challenge of going up the wall," he said. Bledsoe added that he could have gone up stairs, but climbing "seemed funner for me at the time."

During cross-examination, prosecutor Jamie Carter asked if climbing walls was a normal way to enter a building accessible to the public, to which Bledsoe replied, "It wasn't a normal day."

According to video presented in the trial, Bledsoe entered the Capitol through a broken door while claiming the Capitol as "our house" and asking, "where those pieces of sh-t at?"

Chief Justice Beryl Howell did not seem convinced by Smith's argument that Bledsoe was unaware he was on restricted grounds. In response to Smith asking her to drop the charges against Bledsoe, she said a "rational jury could very well find this defendant guilty of every charge" and added she believed he knew the Capitol was closed to the public.

"Based on his texts, he fully understood what was going on in Congress that day," she said. "He was there to stop what he believed was a stolen election." https://edition.cnn.com/2022/07/21/p...soe/index.html

• Chairs Maloney and Schiff Request National Security Damage Assessment of Highly Classified Information Recovered at Mar-a-Lago

Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, Chairwoman of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, and Rep. Adam Schiff, Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, sent a letter to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines requesting an immediate review and damage assessment following reports that former President Trump removed and retained highly classified information at his personal residence at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida in potential violation of the Presidential Records Act and laws protecting national security, including the Espionage Act.

“Those entrusted with access to classified information have a duty and an obligation to protect it,” the Chairs wrote. “Yet, a recently unsealed court-authorized search warrant and the inventory of property recovered at the Mar-a-Lago Club describe numerous classified documents held by former President Trump, including Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) material—among the most sensitive and highly protected information in the U.S. Government. Former President Trump’s conduct has potentially put our national security at grave risk. This issue demands a full review, in addition to the ongoing law enforcement inquiry.”

On Monday, August 8, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) conducted a court-authorized search of former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club and removed at least 27 boxes of materials. The search followed months of reported back-and-forth between federal investigators and the former President regarding U.S. Government property that may have been improperly retained following the end of the Trump Administration, some of which was reportedly kept in a storage area at the Mar-a-Lago Club.

According to the search warrant and property log recently unsealed, the recovered materials span 45 categories, including 11 sets of classified documents ranging from “Confidential” to “Secret” to “Top Secret” and “TS/SCI documents.” The unauthorized disclosure of Top Secret information would cause “exceptionally grave damage to the national security.”

In light of this, the Chairs requested that Director Haines instruct the National Counterintelligence Executive, in consultation with the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community and other Inspectors General as appropriate, to conduct a damage assessment. The Chairs also requested a classified briefing on this assessment as soon as possible.

Click here to read today’s letter.

____________

• Michigan white supremacist group leader sentenced for terrorizing family, AG's office says

DETROIT — The leader of a national white supremacist group that advocates for violence against the government has been resentenced for terrorizing a Dexter family, according to the Michigan Attorney General's Office.

Justen Watkins "used intimidation tactics at a family's home and posted messages to other The Base members targeting the home," according to a press release from Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel's office.

Nessel said in 2020 that Watkins and Alfred Gorman terrorized a Dexter family, sharing their home address with The Base members and trying to intimidate the couple.

He was sentenced Monday to 56 months to 20 years in prison for being a member of a gang. Two other charges — using a computer to commit a crime and unlawfully posting a message online — were dismissed as a part of a plea deal.

This corrected an invalid prison term Washtenaw County Circuit Court Judge Patrick Conlin Jr. imposed in July. His original sentence, 56 months to 72 months, violated the law because maximum sentence ranges must be the same as the charge's maximum penalty under law, said Amber McCann, spokeswoman for Nessel's office.

This prison term will run concurrently with a May sentence from Tuscola County, where Watkins was sentenced to at least 32 months for conspiring to train for a civil disorder. The Tuscola County sentence is connected to members of The Base, including Watkins, assessing abandoned Michigan jail facilities as potential paramilitary firearms training areas, according to Nessel's office.

Assistant Attorney General Sunita Doddamani said in 2020 Watkins ran a "hate camp" for members of The Base so they could prepare to overthrow the government. FBI agents seized 15 guns from the Bad Axe property where the camp was held and found extremist propaganda in the home.

Watkins had written a manifesto calling for genocide and had "expressed a desire to die for the cause ... and take as many people with him," Doddamani said in 2020.

Gorman was sentenced to four years of probation and one year in jail, which he will not have to serve as long as he successfully completes his probation.

A third member of The Base, Tristan Webb, was sentenced last week to five years of probation for guilty pleas to being a member of a gang, conspiracy to train with firearms for civil disorder and a felony firearms enhancement. His two incarceration sentences — one year in jail and two years in prison — were deferred or delayed.

"I refuse to allow domestic terrorists to incite violence against our residents and communities," Nessel said in a statement Thursday. "I am proud to work alongside law enforcement agencies at the local, state and federal levels to safeguard the public from these serious threats and gratified to see justice served."

The Base, a literal English translation of "Al-Qaeda," is a white supremacy group that advocates for violence and criminal acts against the country. The group says they are training for a race war to establish white ethnonationalist rule in parts of the country, including the Upper Peninsula.

Oh look, a landreth spam thread. Fuck off Landreth, who's got the time.

Originally Posted by Cujo

Oh look, a landreth spam thread. Fuck off Landreth, who's got the time.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

Oh do fuck off you tedious twat.

If landreth posted one interesting article/clip at a time I might be bothered but seriously, he stings one after the other in a whole series in ONE POST, then posts post after similar post without even commenting.
FFS. Ban the kunt.

Originally Posted by Cujo

Oh do fuck off you tedious twat.

If landreth posted one interesting article/clip at a time I might be bothered but seriously, he stings one after the other in a whole series in ONE POST, then posts post after similar post without even commenting.
FFS. Ban the kunt.

Why don't you simply block him?

Or are you retarded?

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

Why don't you simply block him?

Or are you retarded?

Why should I have to?
Why doesn't he just stop the fucking spamming.
Same thing he did on TC ruining thread after thread..
Are YOU retarded?
(I think so)