Breaking 1-06-21: MAGA terrorist attack on Capitol

If you are talking about Officer Sicknick, it turned out he died of natural causes (two strokes). They released the medical examiner's conclusions (though not the actual autopsy report) quietly more than three months later. No injuries or reactions to chemicals, though likely the stress was a contributing factor. A Capitol police officer was killed in April by a Black Nationalist associated with the Nation of Islam, but that didn't get much coverage for some reason.

 

Do you think it is probable that Officer Sicknick would be alive today had the insurrection not occurred?

 

Im sure Sicknick would be alive in the riot didn't happen.

 

Flying to Cancun

 

I don't know. I don't think it is possible to know. I think it is likely he was very stressed by the riot and that stress can certainly be a contributing factor to a stroke. I know the medical examiner said everything is a contributing factor (which is quoted in the wiki article I linked). I know that the feds charged two guys that were directly fighting with Officer Sicknick, but neither of them were charged in any way related to his death. I would say it is likely dealing with the riot was a contributory factor in his death, but that it would be misleading to say he was killed in the riot (or in the insurrection, or whatever language) or that "Trumpers killed a police officer".

 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/democr...-trump-election-11641421265?mod=hp_opin_pos_1

Democracy Isn’t Dying
Jan. 6 was a riot, not an insurrection, and U.S. institutions held.
By The Editorial Board
Jan. 5, 2022 6:46 pm ET

The Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021, was a national disgrace, but almost more dispiriting is the way America’s two warring political tribes have responded. Democrats led by SpeakerNancy Pelosi seem intent on exploiting that day to retain power, while the Donald Trumpwing of the GOP insists it was merely a protest march that got a little carried away.

We say this as a statement of political reality, not as a counsel of despair. Our job is to face the world as it is and try to move it in a better direction. So a year later, what have we learned?

***
One lesson is that on all the available evidence Jan. 6 was not an “insurrection,” in any meaningful sense of that word. It was not an attempted coup. The Justice Department and the House Select Committee have looked high and low for a conspiracy to overthrow the government, and maybe they will find it. So far they haven’t.

There apparently was a “war room” of motley characters at the Willard hotel and small groups of plotters who wanted to storm the barricades. But they were too disorganized to do much more than incite what became the mob that breached the Capitol.

The Justice Department says some 725 people from nearly all 50 states have been charged in the riot, linked mainly by social media and support for Donald Trump. About 70 defendants have had their cases adjudicated to date, and 31 of those will do time in prison. The rioters aren’t getting off easy.

They also didn’t come close to overturning the election. The Members fled the House chamber during the riot but soon returned to certify the electoral votes. Eight Senators and 139 House Republicans voted against certifying the electoral votes in some states, but that wasn’t close to a majority.

The true man at the margin was Mike Pence. Presiding in the Senate as Vice President, he recognized his constitutional duty as largely ceremonial in certifying the vote count. He stood up to Mr. Trump’s threats for the good of the country and perhaps at the cost of his political future.

In other words, America’s democratic institutions held up under pressure. They also held in the states in which GOP officials and legislators certified electoral votes despite Mr. Trump’s complaints. And they held in the courts as judges rejected claims of election theft that lacked enough evidence. Democrats grudgingly admit these facts but say it was a close run thing. It wasn’t. It was a near-unanimous decision against Mr. Trump’s electoral claims.

None of this absolves Mr. Trump for his behavior. He isn’t the first candidate to question an election result; Hillary Clinton still thinks Vladimir Putin defeated her in 2016. But he was wrong to give his supporters false hope that Congress and Mr. Pence could overturn the electoral vote. He did not directly incite violence, but he did incite them to march on the Capitol.

Worse, he failed to act to stop the riot even as he watched on TV from the White House. He failed to act despite the pleading of family and allies. This was a monumental failure of character and duty. Republicans have gone mute on this dereliction as they try to stay united for the midterms. But they will face a reckoning on this with voters if Mr. Trump runs in 2024.

As for the Pelosi Democrats, the question is when will they ever let Jan. 6 go? The latest news is that the Speaker’s Select Committee may hold prime-time hearings this year, and the leaks are that they may even seek an indictment of Mr. Trump for obstructing Congress.

Really? Their constitutional power runs to impeachment, and they’ve already impeached Mr. Trump twice. As our friends at the New York Sun note, such a prosecutorial inquiry runs close to what the Constitution bars as a “bill of attainder” against a single individual. As a way of harming Mr. Trump’s future prospects, we suspect it would work about as well as both impeachments did.

We have an open mind about the Jan. 6 Select Committee, not least because an honest inquiry that laid out the facts could be helpful. But at this point it’s also hard not to see that playing up Jan. 6 has become the main Democratic election strategy for November.

One clue came recently from Marc Elias, the Democratic election lawyer and House insider. He tweeted on Dec. 20: “My prediction for 2022: Before the midterm election, we will have a serious discussion about whether individual Republican House Members are disqualified by Section 3 of the 14th Amendment from serving in Congress. We may even see litigation.” Mr. Elias would rip at democracy in the name of defending it.

***
None of this leaves much cause for optimism—but then we survived Jan. 6, as well as more than a few bad Presidents. Keep your eye on the Constitution’s enduring principles and institutions, and who sustains or tears them down. That’s where self-government will live or die.

Appeared in the January 6, 2022, print edition.



​

 

It was a riot. End of story. It's the new Russiagate though. A useful way to demonize the political opponents of the Billionaire class.

 

OPINION COMMENTARY
Republicans’ Jan. 6 Responsibility
The GOP has a duty to condemn the riot and those who refuse to acknowledge it.
By Karl Rove
Jan. 5, 2022 6:15 pm ET

We’re in an acrimonious period of partisan tribalism and have been for some time. Both parties are guilty of overwrought denunciations of their political opponents. My criticisms are often aimed at Democrats; on the anniversary of Jan. 6, I’m addressing squarely those Republicans who for a year have excused the actions of the rioters who stormed the Capitol, disrupted Congress as it received the Electoral College’s results, and violently attempted to overturn the election.

These apologists say those who stormed the Capitol were innocent patriots, tourists visiting the seat of the national government to petition their elected representatives peacefully. We’re told that these harmless, ordinary Americans are being persecuted as political prisoners.

Let’s stipulate that while the thousands who went to the Capitol a year ago were wrong to insist the election was stolen, most weren’t violent as they exercised their First Amendment rights to gather peacefully on the Mall—just as I had seen liberals gather to protest both inaugurations of President George W. Bush.

But last year there were several thousand protesters willing to use force to disrupt Congress in its constitutional duty to receive and certify the electoral vote. Some went to Washington with that purpose in mind. Others were swept up in the moment’s savagery, led astray by stronger wills with dangerous motives.

The leaders of this group were intent on committing violence, some having planned to do so for weeks. Many wore tactical gear. Some came armed with chemical agents, flagpoles, batons and sticks. They broke through barricades and assaulted approximately 140 police officers, in some cases with an officer’s own shield or gear. They smashed doors and windows, illegally entered the Capitol, ransacked offices and searched for leaders of Congress, and made dire threats about what would happen if they found them.

More than 725 people have been charged so far, and law enforcement is searching for hundreds more suspects who appear on video or social media, some recorded attacking police officers. At least 163 people have pleaded guilty, and 71 have been sentenced. Only one defendant’s charges have been dismissed. Many of the most serious trials have yet to be held, as lawyers prepare defenses or negotiate plea deals.

So, on this anniversary, here’s a simple thought experiment: What if the other side had done it? What if in early January 2017, Democrats similarly attired and armed had stormed the Capitol and attempted to keep Congress from receiving the Electoral College results for the 2016 presidential election?

What if Democrats claimed that Donald Trump’s razor-thin victories in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin resulted from extensive voter fraud and should be rejected, despite having failed to establish in a single court that extensive fraud had actually occurred?

What if some of these Democrats breached the Capitol defenses and threatened violence against the Republican speaker, Paul Ryan, and Republican Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell ?

What if they insisted that in his role as Senate president then-Vice President Joe Biden had sole authority to seat Hillary Clinton’s electors from any contested states and thereby hand her the presidency?

If this happened, would some of my fellow Republicans have accepted it as merely a protest? Would they have called patriots those charged with violent acts against our country, its laws and Constitution? Would they have accepted such extralegal means to change the outcome of a presidential election?

No they would not. I’m certain of that.

If Democrats had done what some Trump supporters did on that violent Jan. 6, Republicans would have criticized them mercilessly and been right to do so. Republicans would have torched any high official who encouraged violence or stood mute while it was waged and been right to do so. Republicans would have demanded an investigation to find who was responsible for the violence and been right to do so.

To move beyond Jan. 6, 2021, we must put country ahead of party. For Democrats, that means resisting their leadership’s petty habit of aggravating partisan fault lines by indiscriminately condemning all who came to Washington that day.

We Republicans have a heavier burden. I’ve been a Republican my entire life, and believe in what the Republican Party, at its best, has represented for decades. There can be no soft-pedaling what happened and no absolution for those who planned, encouraged and aided the attempt to overthrow our democracy. Love of country demands nothing less. That’s true patriotism.

Mr. Rove helped organize the political-action committee American Crossroads and is author of “The Triumph of William McKinley” (Simon & Schuster, 2015).
https://www.wsj.com/articles/republ...ol-trump-protesters-investigation-11641417707

 

Where’s the party at?

 

By all means, the 140 Rs, who refused to certify a free and fair election, only hours after a violent mob attacked the Congress, need to step up and apologize for their treasonous behavior.

Trump cancels Jan. 6 event, as Republicans worry 2022 election could be a referendum on coup attempt

 

Journalist highlights a key 'pivot point' in the Jan. 6 investigations that leads directly to Trump

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s January 6 committee has covered a lot of ground in its probe of the Capitol riot and the events leading up to it, including former President Donald Trump’s efforts to bully former Vice President Mike Pence into helping him overturn the 2020 election results. Journalist Marcy Wheeler examines Trump and Pence’s post-election activities this week on her Empty Wheel blog, citing Pence as an important “pivot point” between the January 6 committee’s investigation and the U.S. Department of Justice’s investigation of January 6.

“Over the course of a year,” Wheeler explains, “the news-friendly January 6 select committee and even the public parts of the locked-down DOJ investigation have met at a common pivot point in their investigation of January 6: on Trump’s efforts to pressure Mike Pence to violate the Constitution. Trump did so, first, with personal pressure. Then, he sent his mob.”

On January 6, 2021, Pence was responsible for overseeing Congress’ electoral vote count and the certification of now-President Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory; that was his duty as vice president. Trump insisted that Pence didn’t have to certify the 2020 election results if he didn’t want to, but Pence maintained that he had no choice.

“The Select Committee appears to have corroborated stories told by Bobs Woodward and Costa in (their book) ‘Peril,’” Wheeler observes. “After losing all their attempts to challenge the election in the courts and backed by a coup memo from (attorney) John Eastman, in December 2020, Trump’s people started demanding that Pence refuse the vote totals from a select group of states…. Pence conducted a series of consultations, most notably with his predecessor Dan Quayle, who counseled Pence could only open the ballots.”

Wheeler continues, “In the hours before the riot, conservative legal stars John Yoo and Michael Luttig backed the vice president as well. That led to the remarkable scene on January 5…. as Trump invited Pence to call on unconstitutional power from the mob.”

By “the mob,” Wheeler isn’t referring to an organized crime entity like la Cosa Nostra or the Sinaloa drug cartel, but rather, the violent insurrectionist mob of Trump supporters who were in Washington, D.C. on January 5 and 6, 2021.

Wheeler notes that on January 5, “In spite of Pence’s refusals, Trump released a false statement that the vice president would, in fact, do Trump’s dirty work…. This set the expectation with the already enraged mob that their efforts to keep Trump in office might just work. As the select committee revealed last night, the White House Counsel’s Office was objecting to all of this, and threatening to resign if Trump tried it.”

The mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol Building was so angry at Pence that some of them were chanting, “Hang Mike Pence, hang Mike Pence” and set up a hangman’s gallows outside the Capitol. They were clearly comfortable with the idea of lynching the vice president for, as they saw it, betraying Trump.

Wheeler wraps up her blog column by reiterating that Pence is where the DOJ’s January 6 investigation and the select committee’s January 6 investigation “converge.”

“DOJ is finalizing its understanding of the coordinated effort, using the mobs Alex Jones lured to the Capitol and to a second front, that resulted in multiple breaches of the building and vastly inflated risk to Pence and members of Congress,” Wheeler writes. “But on one point, both investigations have already converged: the motive of a vast many involved, from Trump to his scheming associates to organized militias to unwitting trespassers, was to pressure Mike Pence to violate his duty.”

Even former Attorney General Bill Barr seemed to see the events in similar terms. He told the AP "orchestrating a mob to pressure Congress is inexcusable" the day after the attack.

 

I don't know, maybe because it wasn't part of an active coup to install a dictator in which the capitol building was occupied by a mob of terroristwho tried to overtun the election by kidnapping and murdering the VP?

Anyway, how many antivax antimask fox news watching dipshit cops died of COVID and how much coverage did that get, for some reason?

You should sit today out friend, as should all white nationalists. Even Trump canceled his press conference.

 

We've seen evidence on top of evidence that the White House and OVER ONE HUNDRED Congressional Republicans were attempting to overturn the election. The violent mob is being used here as a distraction to that.

Yes we should celebrate that our Democracy held that day. I think eventually we should celebrate January 6th as Democracy day. However right now, until we pass legislation that ensures this never happens again, there's no reason to celebrate because we've done nothing to ensure this does not happen again. Because under the 12th amendment, these people have the power (if they have the House & state legislative seats) to attempt this again... and again... and again.... Mob or no mob.

 

It's going to take more than legislation but I have no clue what that "more" is. There is an entire ecosystem of misinformation and making people mistrust our voting system. No amount of legislation can fix 30+% of the country believing our voting system is worthless.

 

Joe Biden is crisp as **** early this morning eviscerating the former president...too bad Trump's probably still asleep.

 

Oh yeah... I mean legislation is worthless if people in power ignore it and do what they want. It's words on paper. But Legislation is a way to make things clear to those in the legislative branch (Supreme Court), and in the Military that what they would be doing in these future scenarios is illegal, and considered treason to the country. A coup and overthrow of our election system cannot be done alone. This isn't about Trump or any fascist in the future who uses the disdain among the 30% to rally a movement. It's about the other parts of government not being allowed to stand on the sidelines.

What do we do though about FoxNews, and online disinformation that is fomenting this movement to accept and embrace fascism???.... Good lord... I dont know. I think it actually starts with Facebook, and online regulation. And Facebook cannot be regulated appropriately because we have the Citizens United decision that says Facebook is a person with free speech who can buy off politicians with as much money as they want to spend to make sure they are not regulated.

In a perfect world:
-Overturn Citizens United
-Regulation Bill completed that strips Facebook of the ability to incite overturning of Democracy
-Legislation that cleans up the processes left unclear in the 12th amendment
-Pro-Democracy billionaires making major investments in legitimizing media to have more BBC type of news outlets in the US and in the West to drown out FoxNews

 

I heard it was shenanigans.

 

@dachuda86 - do you have the intellectual capacity and honesty to address this?

Same to everyone else who spends time and energy trying to minimize, characterize, spin, justify, defend Jan 6.

This says everything that needs to be said, full stop.