#u.s. capitol rioters

[saywhat-politics]

Hours after taking office, Trump signed an executive order pardoning over 1,500 rioters and commuting the sentences of some extremist group members.

President Donald Trump, free from the burden of his own indictment for allegedly conspiring to subvert the results of the 2020 election, on Monday signed an executive order pardoning people who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

While signing a series of executive orders at the White House hours after his inauguration, Trump said he was pardoning about 1,500 defendants charged in the attack on the U.S. Capitol — including those who assaulted police —and issuing some commutations. 

[womenclature]

The Associated Press says they are “free," “fair," “factual,” “nonpartisan," and “unbiased," yet in the same breath uses words like “carnage,” “riot,” and “attack” to describe the events of January 6, 2021. The Associated Press is just another wolf trying to dress in sheep’s clothing. Such blatant lies should be prosecuted.

[ivygorgon]

An open letter to the U.S. Congress

January 6 Insurrection

3 so far! Help us get to 5 signers!

Please support a bipartisan commission to investigate the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol.

In my lifetime, I have never before been so aware of the date the electoral college votes were formally counted to validate a Presidential election.

The day is well-documented — video, photos, sworn testimony of witnesses and rioters, a noose was hung for then Vice President Pence, elected officials barricaded doors and vacated chambers, the Confederate flag was marched into the capitol, the list goes on — 5 people died, $30,000,000 of damage was done. Watching the events unfold that day, I was terrified for our elected officials, terrified for our democracy and horrified by the unhinged insurrectionists. What have we become?

Please do what is right for our democracy and support a bipartisan commission to investigate the January 6 insurrection.

▶ Created on May 19, 2021 by Kathryn

📱 Text SIGN PBYCVZ to 50409

🤯 Liked it? FOLLOW KATE.RESIST

[simply-ivanka]

“Well, you know, the only one that was killed was a beautiful young lady named Ashli Babbitt … shot for no reason whatsoever.” —Donald Trump this week

Just before Christmas, when most of the Leftmedia talkingheads and scribes were bloviating about the possibility that Donald Trump would issue pardons to nonviolent January 6 protesters, Joe Biden issued a record list of 65 pardons and 1,634 clemencies for some very violent criminals.

Biden has now pardoned or granted clemency to more than 8,000 criminals, far more than any president in U.S. history. For context, Trump issued a total of 237 pardons and clemencies in his first term. Biden’s pardons came on the heels of his disgraceful pardon of Hunter Biden, despite his assurances that he would never do so. Of course, Biden will be most remembered for his endless list of lies over the course of his entire life on the taxpayer dole.

The big pardon and clemency giveaway was much like his last-minute presidential medals extravaganza. He awarded trophies mostly to his disreputable political benefactors.

So, what will Trump do with the convictions of nonviolent January 6, 2021, protesters in Washington? More than 1,400 people were charged with federal crimes associated with that protest, most with nonviolent offenses like trespassing. Over 900 people have been convicted. Amid tens of thousands of rally participants outside on the Capitol grounds, there were an estimated 50-75 offenders who committed violence or damaged the Capitol building.

Prosecute Michael Byrd for Killing Ashli Babbitt

Repost

[theonion]

President Donald Trump pardoned approximately 1,500 rioters who participated in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Here is everything you need to know about the pardons and commutations.

[hoosbandewan]

No matter who someone votes for does not make them a bad person. If someone votes differently than you and you find that as a reason to not support them then you are part of the problem. I'm thankfully open-minded and glad I can have Democrat and Republican friends and we can all still be friends even with different beliefs and opinions. I don't understand how anyone can have that mindset.... You want Peace and love but are the first ones to throw someone under the bus if they think differently than you do.

And using Ewan to push your thoughts is shameful

Having friends on both sides of the aisle is fine. Having a difference in opinions is fine. I think it can be incredibly damaging for people to get caught in an echo chamber and be surrounded only by people who share their same viewpoint. And the fact that we can all have our own thoughts and opinions is what makes a free country like the U.S. so wonderful.

I even know a good number of Republicans and conservative-leaning people who didn't and wouldn't vote for Trump. And, you see, that's the difference.

Voting for Trump.

You cannot, in good conscience, look me in the eye and tell me that casting a vote for Donald Trump makes you a good person. I could have forgiven a Trump vote in 2016, but not in 2020 and certainly not in 2024.

Trump attempted to overturn a democratic election and was indicted for it. And on that day, he voiced support for the Capitol rioters who wanted to hang his vice president for failing to reject the electoral votes that proved Biden's win.

Trump nominated Supreme Court justices to overturn Roe v. Wade, a move that has already killed women and will continue killing people. In Texas alone, the maternal death rate rose by 56% between 2019 and 2022, the year that Roe was overturned. Since the reversal, the infant mortality rate has risen by 7% nationally - and by 13% in Texas alone.

Trump is unapologetically and unabashedly racist, displaying repeated and disturbing rhetoric aimed at immigrants, Mexicans, black Americans, Haitians, Muslims, and more. In his first term, he instituted new procedural barriers to prevent immigrants from seeking asylum in America. He put migrant children in cages. He has unjustly called for the death penalty for numerous people of color - remember the Central Park 5?

Trump has threatened to deploy the military and law enforcement to target his political opponents and left-leaning Americans.

Trump rolled back almost 100 policies focused on clean air, water, wildlife, and toxic chemicals in an era when mitigating climate change is more important than ever. And he plans on gutting even more.

Trump is a convicted felon with 34 felony counts under his belt.

Trump has shown time and time again that his views and policies align with fascist ideals. He wants very, very badly to turn the U.S. democracy into an authoritarian regime.

And if this isn't enough, Trump has been endorsed by the KKK since his 2016 campaign. He's the golden child of white supremacists and white nationalists everywhere.

So, yeah. If this is your guy, I don't want fucking anything to do with you.

I am so sick and tired of Trump supporters crying about peace and love and civility and "oh, but where are the tolerant left?" when they turn right around and vote for Donald Trump.

You don’t get to hold abhorrent views and beliefs and then be friends with us. You don’t get to be friendly to our faces all while supporting a man who wants us dead or oppressed. You can't profess to love your fellow Americans if you are condemning them.

I don't want to hang out with racists and fascists. Because if you choose to support and vote for a racist, fascist, misogynistic, dangerous person, then that makes you one, too.

[comeonamericawakeup]

If Attorney General Merrick Garland had done his job, said Jeremy Stahl, Donald Trump might already be serving a prison sentence. In early 2021, federal prosecutors reportedly began looking into Trump's role in the fake-elector scheme and the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. But Garland decided that the Department of Justice would focus its investigation only on the rioters, because he was worried that prosecuting a former president would have "unpredictable consequences." Garland also delayed bringing criminal charges against Trump for taking boxes of classified documents to Mar-a-Lago. The dithering attorney general finally felt compelled to act only after the House's Jan. 6 committee made public an embarrassing mountain of evidence about Trump's role in possible crimes. By the time special counsel Jack Smith obtained indictments on the documents and Jan. 6 cases more than two years after Trump left office, Trump was running for president again.

He and his legal team knew their best strategy was to delay, and rely on friendly federal judges and Supreme Court justices to block any trials until after the election. They were right, and "a dangerous criminal" escaped justice. "The law did not do enough to protect the country."

THE WEEK November 15, 2024

[deadpresidents]

"When inmates are released from federal prison, the Justice Department places a call to their victims, notifying them that the defendant who attacked them is now free. On Tuesday, the phones of U.S. Capitol Police and D.C. police officers were buzzing nonstop.

For Aquilino A. Gonell, a former Capitol Police sergeant, the automated calls began on Monday evening and continued into Tuesday morning after President Trump issued a sweeping legal reprieve to all of the nearly 1,600 defendants, including those convicted of violent crimes, in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Between 7:03 a.m. and 9:37 a.m., Mr. Gonell received nine calls from the Justice Department about the release of inmates.

Mr. Gonell, who was assaulted during the attack and retired because of the injuries he suffered, was as outraged and distraught as he was shortly after the violence.

"It's a miscarriage of justice, a betrayal, a mockery, and a desecration of the men and women that risked their lives defending our democracy," he said of the nearly 1,600 pardons and 14 commutations.

More than 150 police officers from the two agencies were injured during the assault on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob four years ago. Some were hit in the head with baseball bats, flagpoles and pipes. One lost consciousness after rioters used a metal barrier to push her down as they marched to the building.

Now many of those officers described themselves as struggling and depressed in response to Mr. Trump freeing their attackers."

-- Here's a gift article to bypass the paywall and read Luke Broadwater's New York Times article, "Police Express Outrage Over Trump's Jan. 6 Pardons".

[ralfmaximus]

Nearly three years ago, a young professional in the nation's capital was sitting in her apartment after the Jan. 6 attack and saw that the FBI was looking for help identifying the rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol. So she opened up the Bumble dating app, changed her political beliefs to conservative and got to swiping.

Her strategy, she said, was saying "Wow, crazy, tell me more” to guys on repeat until they gave her enough for her to send their information to the FBI.

This goddamned hero turned in about a dozen names to the FBI, and one of them was just convicted.

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

😡

[saywhat-politics]

Vice President JD Vance defended the pardons of Jan. 6 rioters Sunday on “Face The Nation,” going against his comments earlier this month when he said violent rioters should not be pardoned.

Vance told “Face The Nation” moderator Margaret Brennan that violence against a police officer is “not justified,” but that the “weaponized” Department of Justice was “unconstitutional” in its charges against the rioters.

[urialnathanonwright]

Trump's Pardons: A Betrayal of Justice and an Assault on Democracy

Ladies and gentlemen, what we are witnessing is nothing short of a seismic assault on justice, accountability, and the very fabric of our democracy. Former President Donald J. Trump, in a decision that reeks of contempt for the rule of law, has pardoned virtually every individual involved in the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Let’s be crystal clear about what this means. This isn’t just a political calculation. This isn’t just a nod to his most fervent supporters. This is a brazen act of undermining the foundational principles that govern our nation — a nation built on the belief that no one, not even those who chant your name in rallies, is above the law.

For Trump to issue such sweeping pardons, including for individuals who violently assaulted police officers — men and women who put their lives on the line to protect this nation — is beyond abhorrent. It’s an insult to every officer who stood on the front lines, to every American who believed in accountability, and to every democracy-loving citizen who watched in horror as the Capitol was desecrated.

The excuse offered by Trump and his allies. That these individuals have "suffered enough" or that the justice system is "broken." Let me tell you what’s broken: the moral compass of anyone who believes that attacking the very heart of American democracy can be washed away with a stroke of a presidential pen.

Michael Fanone, a hero who endured a stun gun to his neck and countless injuries in defense of this country, called it “outrageous.” And he’s right. It’s a betrayal of every officer who bled, every family who mourned, and every citizen who believed that justice would be served.

And yet, this should come as no surprise. This is who Donald Trump is. A man whose primary loyalty is to himself and his political expediency, not to the Constitution he swore to uphold. He’s a man who equates the loss of his Twitter account with the suffering of those imprisoned for storming the Capitol, who sees justice not as blind but as something to be wielded as a weapon against his enemies and a shield for his allies.

To those who claim Trump was merely keeping a campaign promise: shame on you. Promises to undermine justice and exonerate the guilty are not campaign promises — they are threats. They are warnings of a descent into autocracy.

Let us be unequivocal: pardoning those who participated in an insurrection is not leniency. It’s complicity. It sends a message to every extremist, every would-be rioter, and every authoritarian that violence in the name of power will be forgiven, that the ends justify the means, and that the rule of law is nothing more than an inconvenience.

We must stand united against this. Not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans. Because if we allow this to stand, we are tacitly accepting that our democracy, our rule of law, and our very identity as a nation can be traded away for political expediency and applause lines at rallies.

Donald Trump may have pardoned them, but history will not. The arc of the moral universe may be long, but it bends toward justice — and it will not bend for Donald Trump.

[reading-writing-revolution]

(via Judges increasingly alarmed as Trump’s Jan. 6 clemency decision nears - POLITICO)

He may pardon them, but we know what they did. #treason

“In extraordinary but little-watched court proceedings since Election Day, judges appointed by presidents of both parties have emphasized the need for accountability for the people who stormed the Capitol in an attempt to derail the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 victory. These judges have sounded dire warnings about the fate of the country if the lessons of the 2020 election go unlearned, and they are bluntly bracing for a turbulent start to the second Trump presidency”

Trump did that. He sowed insurrection and treason.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, a Ronald Reagan appointee to the bench, captured the mood among many of the federal judges in Washington when he issued a 13-page statement accompanying his sentence of a Jan. 6 misdemeanor defendant earlier this month. He decried efforts by some defendants to “minimize” the toll of the riot or recast themselves as victims of a government intent on squelching their First Amendment rights.

“On January 6, 2021, an angry mob of rioters invaded and occupied the United States Capitol, intending to interrupt the certification of the 2020 presidential election results,” Lamberth wrote. “No matter what ultimately becomes of the Capital Riots cases already concluded and still pending, the true story of what happened on January 6, 2021 will never change.”

Here are those 13 pages: https://bit.ly/3P6yP5J

Chutkan, on Monday, said she fully endorsed Lamberth’s words.

“This is the United States Capitol — the people’s house,” Chutkan said. “They trashed it. They treated it like a motel room after a concert. … Engaging in an act of destruction and violence in order to halt the peaceful transfer of power has to be met by consequences.”

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Mike Luckovich

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

January 23, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

Jan 24, 2025

Last night, in an interview with host Sean Hannity on the Fox News Channel, President Donald Trump tried to explain away his blanket pardons for the January 6 rioters, calling the instances of violence against police officers “very minor incidents.”

In fact, as Brett Samuels of The Hill reported, about 600 of the rioters were accused of assaulting, resisting, or impeding police officers, and ten were convicted of sedition.

Ryan J. Reilly of NBC News explained that rioters wounded more than 140 officers with “firearms, stun guns, flagpoles, fire extinguishers, bike racks, batons, a metal whip, office furniture, pepper spray, bear spray, a tomahawk ax, a hatchet, a hockey stick, knuckle gloves, a baseball bat, a massive ‘Trump’ billboard, ‘Trump’ flags, a pitchfork, pieces of lumber, crutches and even an explosive device.”

Three federal judges have weighed in on the pardons after Trump’s appointees in the Department of Justice ordered them to dismiss pending cases against current January 6 defendants, an order that, as David Kurtz of Talking Points Memo noted, “flies in the face of decades of DOJ independence.”

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly summed up the judges’ outrage when she wrote: “Dismissal of charges, pardons after convictions, and commutations of sentences will not change the truth of what happened on January 6, 2021. What occurred that day is preserved for the future through thousands of contemporaneous videos, transcripts of trials, jury verdicts, and judicial opinions analyzing and recounting the evidence through a neutral lens. Those records are immutable and represent the truth, no matter how the events of January 6 are described by those charged or their allies.”

The leaders of two key paramilitary gangs who participated in the January 6 violence, Enrique Tarrio of the Proud Boys and Stewart Rhodes of the Oath Keepers, are not helping Trump to put the pardons behind him. Now out of prison rather than serving his 22-year sentence, Tarrio called in to conspiracy-theorist Alex Jones’s Infowars within hours of his release to claim that he still commands the gang and that he plans retribution for those who put him behind bars. Tess Owen of WIRED reported that the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, which monitors online activity, saw a surge among Proud Boys’ channels after the pardons, as members discussed ways to advance Trump’s agenda.

Rhodes, who was sentenced to 18 years in prison, also wants revenge. On Wednesday, he was at the U.S. Capitol, where Michael Kunzelman and Lisa Mascaro of the Associated Press reported he met with at least one lawmaker and chatted with others.

Politico’s Charlie Mahtesian reported tonight that those January 6 rioters Trump pardoned are already talking about running for office. Mahtesian notes that in primaries where candidates need to prove they are truly MAGA, those who served time in prison for Trump will have sterling credentials.

Kunzelman and Mascaro also noted that, in an apparent attempt to divert attention from the pardons back to Trump’s contention that the bipartisan January 6 committee had been biased against him, on the same day that Rhodes was at the Capitol, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) revived a special committee to retrace the steps of the House committee that investigated the riot.

But that didn’t go terribly well, as Jacqueline Alemany of the Washington Post today reported an exclusive story revealing that last June an aide to Johnson advised the committee not to subpoena White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson out of concern that if it did, the sexually explicit texts Republican lawmakers had sent her might come to light. According to Alemany, “multiple colleagues had raised concerns with the speaker’s office about the potential for public disclosure of ‘sexual texts from members who were trying to engage in sexual favors’ with Hutchinson.” Instead, the committee accused former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) of talking to Hutchinson without Hutchinson’s lawyer present. Cheney called the report “defamatory” and a “malicious and cowardly assault on the truth.”

Apparently undaunted, Trump today issued pardons for nearly two dozen antiabortion activists convicted of violating the 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, or FACE Act, which the civil rights division of the Department of Justice explains “prohibits threats of force, obstruction and property damage intended to interfere with reproductive health care services.” Trump, who is due to speak tomorrow by video with the annual antiabortion March for Life, said it was a “great honor” to pardon the protesters.

Still, Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico reported that one antiabortion activist, who wanted to remain anonymous because she fears retaliation from the administration, wondered why Trump hadn’t pardoned the antiabortion activists on Monday, as he did the January 6 rioters. “These pardons are fully in line with Trump’s agenda to oppose the weaponization of the government,” she told Ollstein. “So why he couldn’t have pardoned them along with the 1,500 on Day 1 is beyond me.”

It seems that for Trump and his extremist supporters, the federal government—which reflects the will of the majority—has been “weaponized” against a political minority that seeks to control the country.

To gain that control, Trump has assured his followers that the country is literally under attack and that the United States, which has the strongest military and the strongest economy in the world, is losing. On Monday, Trump—who persuaded congressional Republicans to kill a strong bipartisan measure to tighten the border and fund immigration courts so asylum-seekers could have quick hearings—declared that a national emergency exists at the southern border of the United States, although border crossings are lower now than they were at the end of his first administration. The order asked the heads of the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security to consider whether it was necessary to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act, which allows the president to deploy the military to suppress domestic insurrection.

Yesterday, acting secretary of defense Robert Salesses told reporters that the Department of Defense has ordered 1,500 active-duty military personnel along with air support and intelligence assets to the southern border of the United States, joining 2,500 active-duty military personnel already there, and that the military will provide flights for deportations led by the Department of Homeland Security. White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told reporters that Trump is directing “the Department of Defense to make homeland security a core mission of the agency.”

Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart of Reuters report that there have been informal discussions in the department about sending as many as 10,000 troops to the border, a discussion that raises the question of whether Mexico would feel obliged to respond in kind. And, according to Meg Kelly, Alex Horton, and Missy Ryan of the Washington Post, the Trump administration is trying to get rid of an office in the Pentagon that works to protect civilians in battlefield operations. The Civilian Protection Center of Excellence is housed within the Department of the Army and works to help the military limit unintended civilian deaths.

And yet the idea of using a strong military to defend America apparently does not extend to its leadership. Tara Copp of the Associated Press reported that Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, Fox News Channel weekend host Pete Hegseth, who has a history of financial mismanagement, alcohol abuse, and allegations of sexual assault, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he paid a woman $50,000 as part of a confidentiality agreement to maintain her silence after she accused him of sexual assault.

Today, both Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) said they could not support Hegseth’s nomination. They were the only two Republicans who refused to vote in favor of his nomination advancing to the full Senate today.

But they are not the only ones standing against Trump’s attempt to overturn traditional American values.

Today, U.S. District Judge John Coughenour issued a temporary restraining order to block Trump’s executive order that sought to end the birthright citizenship established in 1868 by the Fourteenth Amendment. Twenty-two states and two cities, as well as other parties, have sued over the executive order. Coughenour was responding to a suit brought by Arizona, Illinois, Oregon, and Washington.

Coughenour, who was appointed to the bench by Republican president Ronald Reagan in 1981, told Trump’s Department of Justice attorneys, “I have been on the bench for over four decades. I can't remember another case where the question presented is as clear as it is here. This is a blatantly unconstitutional order." When the lawyers told him they maintained the order was constitutional, Coughenour was aghast. "I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar can state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order. It boggles my mind. Where were the lawyers when this decision was being made?"

Coughenour blocked the order until February 6, when he will hold a hearing to consider a preliminary injunction.

And after Trump announced he would withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), billionaire former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg yesterday announced that his philanthropic foundation will cover the financial contribution the U.S. will not. According to Zack Budryk of The Hill, it will also provide the agreement’s reporting requirements for emissions associated with climate change.

“[P]hilanthropy’s role in driving local, state, and private sector action is more crucial than ever—and we’re committed to leading the way,” Bloomberg said.

Finally, tonight, firefighters have begun to control the fires in Southern California. As of this evening, the Hughes fire is 36% contained, the Laguna fire is no longer expanding, the Palisades fire is 75% contained, and the Eaton fire is 95% contained. New fires have broken out, but rain is forecast for the weekend.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[socialjusticeinamerica]

🖕