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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 22 days

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Nine people died as a result of the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection that Republicans pretend was a "normal tourist visit." Four rioters and five police officers lost their lives during the attack or in its immediate aftermath, in ways that likely would not have happened but for the Capitol riot. This death toll is rarely discussed in the media coverage of the attack, likely because journalists don't want to argue with gaslighting fascists who want to get into bad faith debates about whether the assault "caused" the heart attacks and suicides that took lives. But there is one death that no one can deny was due to Jan. 6: That of Ashli Babbitt, the QAnon-believing insurrectionist who was shot by a Capitol police officer as she attempted to lead a charge of rioters to run down fleeing members of Congress.

Instead of erasing her death in their efforts to pretend the riot was "peaceful," Donald Trump and his goons have turned the 36-year-old conspiracy theorist into a MAGA martyr. As with much of Trump's campaign antics, it calls back to the tactics of the Nazis, who turned a murdered scumbag named Horst Wessel into a fallen fascist hero honored in iconography and song. Babbitt is even easier to prop up as a sympathetic figure, she was both pretty and female.

Trump in particular likes to get maudlin, calling Babbitt an "innocent, wonderful, incredible woman." He also spent months demonizing the Capitol police officer, Michael Byrd, who was forced to shoot Babbitt that day. (Byrd's actions have been exonerated through multiple investigations, though anyone who has seen the footage of the shooting can see he had no choice.) Trump has suggested Byrd should face extra-legal execution, complaining, "if that were on the other side, the person that did the shooting would be strung up and hung." It's language that should remind us that his "bloodbath" talk is both serious and literal.

So really, it should be bigger news that recently released testimony from a White House valet shows that Trump's reaction when told about Babbitt's death was utter indifference. It's buried in a New York Times report on this recently released transcript of an interview the anonymous valet did with the House committee investigating Jan. 6. The Times reporters are more focused on the valet's recollections of how Trump told his vice president, Mike Pence, that it would be "a political career killer" if Pence refused to steal the election for him. In passing, however, they also mention Trump did not care about Babbitt's killing — and the timeline suggests he understood perfectly well at the time that Babbitt was to blame for her own death.

As the transcript shows, the investigator asked the valet about a note that was given to Trump, shortly after the shooting, informing him that "1X civilian gunshot wound to chest at door of House Chamber." The valet affirmed that he saw Trump with the note, and that they also knew of the killing because it was being reported on cable news, which Trump was watching avidly throughout the riot.

"But there was no, like, reaction" to the news, the valet explained. Trump said nothing. But shortly after being informed, he did send out a tweet telling the insurrectionists "to remain peaceful, no violence," and to "[r]espect the law and our great men and women in blue."

Everyone understands — and understood at the time — that the tweet was just a CYA measure from Trump, who stubbornly refused for hours to ask the rioters to chill out, despite drinking in all the violent images on TV. But that he issued it after being told a supporter of his was shot makes it all the more clear that his main focus at the time was disavowing responsibility for the violence he fomented.

That Trump did not actually care about Babbitt's death, outside of fears that it made him look bad, is not a surprise to most Salon readers, journalists, or anyone who is honest about Trump's utter lack of morality. Perhaps this is why this revelation isn't getting more press attention. There's a tendency in the jaded press to assume "everyone" knows that Trump has never in his life cared about anyone but himself. But not all voters know that Trump is for-real sociopathic, and they may be surprised to find he reacted to a deluded woman dying for him like normal people react to stepping on an ant.

But this should be a huge story. Trump is making his phony concern about the fates of the January 6 insurrectionists the centerpiece of his campaign. He opens his rallies with elaborate ceremonies to honor the rioters, characterizes them as "hostages" and "unbelievable patriots," and promises pardons for people convicted of assaulting police and seditious conspiracy. He pretends to care about these people to valorize his selfish efforts to overthrow democracy. His feigned love of them is also about keeping up morale among the nastier members of the MAGA movement because Trump unsubtly expects them to use violence on his behalf again.

Trump's exploitation of Babbitt's is also part of a larger habit of faking outrage over imaginary threats to innocent white womanhood from dark-skinned men. Trump loves to brag that "I protect women," which is a lie like most words that come out of his face. But he definitely likes to share his elaborate fantasies of men of color raping and killing white women. That goes back to his 2015 campaign kickoff when he said Mexicans were "rapists." He has falsely declared that, because of immigration, "women are raped at levels that nobody has ever seen before." He's recently been hyping the murder of Laken Riley, a Georgia woman who was allegedly killed by an undocumented immigrant.

Trump's lurid obsession with violence against women is dishonest on two levels. First, he's lying about the racial dynamics of gendered violence. Most men who sexually abuse, beat or kill women target those they know, and who are usually of the same race. It's not the dark-skinned strangers lurking in bushes of Trump's imagination. Trump knows this personally, as nearly all the over two dozen women who have come out with stories of being sexually abused by him are white women who met him through normal work and social situations.

Thus, Trump not only doesn't care about violence against women, he's a big fan of it. He bragged about sexually assaulting women on the infamous "Access Hollywood" tape. A New York jury found he did sexually assault journalist E. Jean Carroll in the 90s. He's repeatedly used the word "fortunately" when asked if he thinks rich men have the privilege of sexually assaulting whomever they wish. Over and over, Trump goes out of his way to defend other men who are accused of sexual harassment or abuse.

Babbitt's death is an outlier in the sense that she was the person at fault and gender had nothing to do with it. Still, Trump talks about her with the same tones of fake outrage he brings when exploiting the deaths and rapes of genuine victims. Pretending to suddenly care about violence against women when it suits his political needs is doubly gross, given Trump's otherwise lengthy record of cheerleading for gendered violence. But the mainstream media tends to avoid contrasting his pretend views on this issue with the substantial real-world evidence that he has no problem with violence against women.

The Babbitt case is especially egregious because, ultimately, her death is his fault. If Trump hadn't spun up ordinary people with lies about a "stolen" election, she wouldn't have been in the Capitol, foolishly dying for a man who does not care about her. That he's now using her corpse as a campaign prop is disgusting. Most MAGA voters will refuse to see this, of course, or make false claims that "all" politicians do it. But if they knew how little he cared, maybe a few would wake up and see that Trump would happily let them all die for him.

#us politics #news #salon #2024 #jan 6 insurrection #donald trump #conservatives #gop #republicans #ashli babbitt #fascisim #new york times #Michael Byrd #mike pence #house select committee #violence against women #e. jean carroll #laken riley #op eds

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memesnotwelcome · 2 years

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Imagine being immortalized in congressional record because you used your real name to comment on an insurrection live blog.

#politics #jan 6 commission #january 6 #select committee #Trump

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bighermie · 1 month

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Evidence That Could Have Exonerated Trump Over Jan. 6 Was Suppressed

Evidence That Could Have Exonerated Trump Over Jan. 6 Was Suppressed https://link.theepochtimes.com/mkt_app/epochtv/evidence-that-could-have-exonerated-trump-over-jan-6-was-suppressed-5605377?utm_source=andshare

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mongowheelie · 1 year

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Marjorie Taylor Greene calls for 'serious criminal charges' against Liz Cheney over January 6th panel - Alternet.org

The stupid, it burns!

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gusty-wind · 5 months

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war is real. ncswic.

#war is real #ncswic #panic in dc

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simply-ivanka · 3 months

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A bombshell new report alleges that just days before the GOP took over the House majority in 2022, over 100 encrypted files relating to the January 6th Capitol riot probe were mysteriously deleted.

In a new interview with Fox News, the chairman of the House Administration Committee's Oversight Subcommittee, Rep. Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, described the revelation as bringing the investigation into a 'new phase.'

Loudermilk alleges that a forensics team found that 117 files had been either deleted or encrypted on January 1, 2023, shortly before the Republicans took over the investigation that had previously been led by Rep. Bennie Thompson and Rep. Liz Cheney.

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 1 year

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Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Monday released security video from the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, using footage provided exclusively to him by Speaker Kevin McCarthy to portray the riot as a peaceful gathering.

Carlson acquired the tapes as part of a deal for McCarthy, R-Calif., to win the Speaker’s gavel. When McCarthy was struggling to gather the votes to lead the House, Carlson used his program to list two “concessions” he could make to win over far-right Republicans.

“First, release the January 6 files. Not some of the January 6 files and video — all of it,” Carlson, the most-watched host on cable news, said after McCarthy faced three failed votes. “So that the rest of us can finally know what actually happened on January 6, 2021.”

In the two months since McCarthy won the gavel, he has granted both. Carlson announced in late February that McCarthy had given him exclusive access to 44,000 hours of security video from the deadly riot before he unveiled some clips of the video on his show Monday night.

Carlson focused Monday’s segment on promoting former President Donald Trump’s narrative by showing video of his supporters walking calmly around the U.S. Capitol. He asserted that other media accounts lied about the attack, proclaiming that while there were some bad apples, most of the rioters were peaceful and calling them "sightseers," not "insurrectionists."

“The footage does not show an insurrection or a riot in progress,” Carlson told his audience Monday. “Instead it shows police escorting people through the building, including the now-infamous ‘QAnon Shaman.’”

He continued: "More than 44,000 hours of surveillance footage from in and around the Capitol have been withheld from the public, and once you see the video, you’ll understand why. Taken as a whole, the video does not support the claim that Jan. 6 was an insurrection. In fact, it demolishes that claim."

Video that Carlson didn’t air shows police and rioters engaged in hours of violent combat that resulted in injuries to hundreds of police officers. Two pipe bombs were also planted nearby but were not detonated.

Nearly 1,000 people have been charged in connection with the Capitol attack. About 140 officers were assaulted that day, and about 326 people have been charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding officers or employees, including 106 assaults that happened with deadly or dangerous weapons. About 60 people pleaded guilty to assaulting law enforcement.

Carlson also said on his show Monday that Democrats lied about the death of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick. He played video that he said showed Sicknick walking around inside the Capitol after the mob attacked him. “They knew he was not murdered by the mob, but they claimed it anyway,” he said.

Sicknick died of natural causes on Jan. 7, the day after he engaged with rioters outside the Capitol. An autopsy report determined that he died of a stroke at the base of the brain stem caused by a blood clot. Capitol Police have said Sicknick returned to his office after the riot and collapsed. Two men have been sentenced to prison for spraying him with a chemical irritant during the melee, and Sicknick’s family has contended that the fighting with rioters contributed directly to his stroke.

McCarthy’s controversial decision to hand over Jan. 6 video to Carlson is a new twist for one of the most scrutinized events in American history, which has produced countless hours of social media video, a sweeping Justice Department criminal investigation, a House Select Committee probe and a bipartisan impeachment of then-President Donald Trump alleging “incitement of insurrection.”

The video’s release after two years, on Fox News in prime time, highlights the influence of Carlson, who has downplayed and promoted conspiracy theories about Jan. 6, and the far right over the slim new House majority.

Carlson also said at the top of his show Monday that Fox had checked with Capitol Police before it aired any of the video.

“Their reservations were minor,” he said, saying Fox blurred a door inside the Capitol in response to the agency's request.

U.S. Capitol Police is not commenting publicly on the security video released by Carlson, but a Capitol Hill source familiar with the matter told NBC News on Monday that “the police thought there was an agreement" with the Committee on House Administration, not with Carlson's show, that Capitol Police would be given the opportunity to review all the clips that Fox was planning to air Monday night.

But "the show only allowed the police to review one clip late this afternoon and then did not allow them to review any of the other clips.”

NBC News has reached out to the Committee on House Administration for comment.

Carlson said he plans to air additional video on his show Tuesday night.

The episode presents thorny politics for McCarthy who, in releasing the video to Carlson, is reigniting a national debate over the failed insurrection that cost his party seats in the midterm election — and looms over the 2024 presidential contest as Trump leads the GOP field in pursuit of a comeback.

“Electorally, it’s not to their advantage to be on the side of insurrectionists. But hasn’t stopped them before,” said Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii.

McCarthy’s actions have sparked criticism from members of both parties and demands from news outlets, including NBC News, for access to the video. Some lawmakers say the video could be taken out of context to create a false narrative of what happened that day. Others worry it could expose the identities of police officers who defended the Capitol and subject them to harassment. And numerous Republicans say that security information should be protected and that all media should have equal access.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, the former chairman of the Jan. 6 Committee, said in a statement after Monday's show that it was a “dereliction of duty for Kevin McCarthy to give Tucker Carlson carte blanche access to sensitive U.S. Capitol security surveillance footage from one of the darkest days in the history of our democracy.”

Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said the video “should have been reviewed to make sure that they would not be used in a way that could harm law enforcement” before it was disclosed to anyone.

“I don’t quite know what Speaker McCarthy had in mind,” he said. “I think it’s appropriate to provide information to the public generally and not just to one network.”

McCarthy defended his decision, saying that he had accounted for security concerns and that his office had “worked with Capitol Police” to ensure that security concerns were “taken care of.”

“He’ll have an exclusive, then I’ll give it out to the entire country,” McCarthy said, adding that Carlson’s team is “not interested” in showing sensitive security video, such as images of exit routes. “We’re working through that. We worked with the Capitol Police, as well. So we’ll make sure security is taken care of.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a recent letter to colleagues that McCarthy’s decision “laid bare that this sham is simply about pandering to MAGA election deniers,” accusing Carlson of using “his platform to promote the Big Lie, distort reality, and espouse bogus conspiracy theories about January 6.”

Some Republicans believe it is a mistake to reopen the Jan. 6 discussion, particularly after Trump-backed election deniers faced midterm defeats up and down the ballot in swing states.

“The 2022 election was a categorical rejection of election denialism. It cost Republicans the Senate and nearly kept them from winning back the House,” said Republican strategist Ken Spain, a former aide on the GOP’s House campaign arm. “With a razor-thin majority, House Republicans can’t waste a minute looking backward.”

Trump’s allies are looking for one thing on the video: vindication.

“We heard for two years how incredibly important this Jan. 6 committee was, how important all the evidence they collected was,” said Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who mounted the first Senate objection to 2020 results that forced a vote, turning a sleepy ritual into a rallying point for Trump and his ardent followers. “Let’s see it. Let’s see the whole video.”

Hawley said that among the people at the Capitol, “I think the overwhelming majority were peaceful.” He added: “My friends on the left are melting down about this. ‘We can’t have that!’ Well, why can’t we? I thought it was critical that it all be put out there.”

“What’s on the tapes? I don’t know, but I’m interested to see them,” he said.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said the Jan. 6 security video “should be made public” or at least made available for “congressional oversight” because “that’s a very dramatic thing that happened one day in our country’s history.”

“What’s been investigated would be such a small percentage of it that a lot could be learned,” he said.

The release of some of the Jan. 6 security video comes two years after the attack, in which Trump supporters violently breached the Capitol in an attempt to overturn his 2020 defeat. Trump, who on Monday night praised Carlson on Truth Social for airing the newly accessed footage, has persisted in his fabricated claims that the election was stolen from him, despite failing to produce evidence of substantial fraud. He has also persisted in defending many of the rioters as patriots.

In his letter to colleagues last month, Schumer warned that Carlson would use any clips from the riot to advance his own narrative. “If the past is any indication, Tucker Carlson will select only clips that he can use to twist the facts to sow doubt of what happened on January 6 and feed into the propaganda he’s already put on Fox News’ air, which, based on recent reports, he may not even believe himself,” Schumer wrote.

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xox000xox · 29 days

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ridenwithbiden · 9 months

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HERE COMES THE JUDGE "When Judge Tanya Chutkan presides over the new criminal case against Donald Trump, it won’t be her first time tangling with the former president and his lawyers.

In fact, the U.S. district court judge already dealt the ex-president one of the most significant legal blows of his lifetime, triggering perhaps the greatest deluge of evidence about his bid to subvert the 2020 election — a scheme for which he now stands charged with serious crimes.

The Obama-appointed jurist ruled in fall 2021 that the House Jan. 6 select committee could access reams of Trump’s White House files — a ruling that was subsequently upheld by an appeals court and left undisturbed by the Supreme Court. That evidence — call logs, memos, internal strategy papers and more from the desks of Trump’s most trusted advisers — became the backbone of the committee’s evidence and shaped much of the public’s understanding of his effort to seize a second term he didn’t win.

Much of that evidence resurfaced Tuesday in special counsel Jack Smith’s four-count indictment of Trump, which referenced call logs and White House records that were already familiar to Americans who tracked the Jan. 6 committee proceedings. Chutkan was randomly selected Tuesday to preside over Trump’s latest criminal case, his third in the last four months.

“Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President,” Chutkan wrote in her 2-year-old ruling, a rebuke that is sure to echo as she prepares to preside over the newest criminal case against the current GOP frontrunner for the presidential nomination in 2024.

Chutkan, 61, was born in Kingston, Jamaica, and came to the U.S. for college as a teenager, attending George Washington University and then law school at the University of Pennsylvania. She spent more than a decade as a public defender in Washington, D.C. She later worked for the law firm Boies Schiller & Flexner before being confirmed as a federal trial judge in Washington in 2014.

Chutkan has avoided some of the most pointed criticisms of Trump that some of her colleagues on the federal bench in D.C. have delivered as they’ve sentenced defendants who participated in the Jan. 6 mob that attacked the Capitol as part of Trump’s bid to remain in power. Judge Reggie Walton has called Trump a “charlatan.” Judge Amit Mehta has said Jan. 6 defendants were “pawns” of Trump and his allies. Judge Amy Berman Jackson has chastised Republicans for refusing to level with Trump about the 2020 election.

“It is not patriotism, it is not standing up for America to stand up for one man — who knows full well that he lost — instead of the Constitution he was trying to subvert,” Jackson said at a sentencing last year.

But Chutkan has delivered some of the harshest sentences to Jan. 6 defendants and made her disgust and horror over the attack clear, lamenting the prospect of renewed political violence in 2024 and noting that no one accused of orchestrating the effort to subvert the election had been held accountable.

“You have made a very good point,” she told Jan. 6 rioter Robert Palmer at his December 2021 sentencing, “that the people who exhorted you and encouraged you and rallied you to go and take action and to fight have not been charged.”

“The issue of who has or has not been charged is not before me. I don’t have any influence on that,” she said. “I have my opinions, but they are not relevant.”

But Chutkan also said that reality wasn’t a reason to go easy on those who bought into the election lies and acted upon that belief.

“The people who planned this and funded it and encouraged it haven’t been charged, but that’s not a reason for you to get a lower sentence,” she said. “I have to make it clear that the actions you engaged in cannot happen again. Every day we’re hearing about reports of antidemocratic factions of people plotting violence, the potential threat of violence, in 2024.”

Chutkan has alluded more specifically to Trump in other Jan. 6 sentences, including her first — to misdemeanor defendant Carl Mazzocco, who Chutkan said “went to the Capitol in support of one man, not in support of our country.”

During those early months of the Jan. 6 investigation, Chutkan also staked out territory that some of her colleagues were reluctant to tread: She pointedly rejected the equivalence some defendants were drawing between violence adjacent to Black Lives Matter protests and the riot at the Capitol.

One Trump-appointed judge, Trevor McFadden, had raised sharp questions about whether Jan. 6 defendants were being treated more harshly than people accused of similar conduct during the summertime violence of 2020.

“I think the U.S. attorney would have more credibility if it was even-handed in its concern about riots and mobs in this city,” McFadden said at the time.

Chutkan, while sentencing a defendant in a different case, appeared to allude to her colleague’s remark, before saying she “flatly” disagreed.

“People gathered all over the country last year to protest the violent murder by the police of an unarmed man. Some of those protesters became violent,” Chutkan said of the protests and rioting that followed George Floyd’s death. “But to compare the actions of people protesting, mostly peacefully, for civil rights, to those of a violent mob seeking to overthrow the lawfully elected government is a false equivalency and ignores a very real danger that the January 6 riot posed to the foundation of our democracy.”

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contemplatingoutlander · 10 months

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House Republicans censuring Adam Schiff says more about them than him

The Editorial Board of The Washington Post rightly calls out the House Republicans for weaponizing the House to punish one of Trump's enemies, after Trump threatened to primary the 20 Republicans who initially voted against censuring him.

Here are some excerpts from the editorial:

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) became on Wednesday just the third member of Congress to be censured in the past 40 years. The party-line vote reflected worse on the House Republicans who pushed it through than it did on Mr. Schiff. The resolution accuses the former House Intelligence Committee chairman of falsely claiming that Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign colluded with the Russian government. Mr. Schiff responded that Paul Manafort, as chairman of Mr. Trump’s campaign, provided internal campaign polling data to a Russian intelligence operative amid widespread Kremlin efforts to assist Mr. Trump. Experts can debate whether that technically constitutes collusion. But this semantic question is hardly the basis for a censure motion. Contrary to what many Trump supporters claim, the investigation by Robert S. Mueller III never exonerated Mr. Trump. Indeed, the special counsel’s report laid out significant evidence of obstruction of justice. It’s indisputable that Russia interfered in the 2016 election on Mr. Trump’s behalf. [...] After 20 Republicans voted last week with Democrats to table the censure resolution, Mr. Trump wrote on social media that he’d support primary challengers against them. (Mr. Schiff had spearheaded Mr. Trump’s first impeachment and played a leading role on the select committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.) When the resolution came up again Wednesday, this time without a threat to fine Mr. Schiff $16 million, most of those Republicans capitulated. In so doing, they weakened the power of congressional censure as an official rebuke reserved for egregious conduct — and, in the process, made themselves appear to be the wrongdoers. [color emphasis added]

#house republicans #adam schiff #republicans weaponizing congress #trump #house republicans are corrupt #editorial board #the washington post

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