Right-wing Domestic Terrorism

[jackd]

Before judging the sentencing, I think we need to see what happens to those who were provably violent. I doubt the Indiana grandmother was (at least provably).

[LFC]

The possibility of water wars, or at least water terrorism, continues to build. Remember that these are the same people who denied climate change and/or elected climate change deniers. Now that the resource is dwindling in large part due to climate change they're demanding an ever increasing percentage.  And do you want to know who is to blame for the drought? Hint: It starts with "J" and rhymes with "news."

As an historic drought was intensifying in the Southwest late last month, members of a far-right chat group about Arizona state politics got to talking about similar water shortages in Oregon and northern California. There, farmers were struggling with dry fields and strict water limits. The crisis, members of the Arizona group chat falsely claimed, amounted to a deliberate plot by “Jews” to “starve Americans by cutting off the water supply.”

The claim was vile, untrue, and nonetheless quickly spread across multiple popular channels on the messaging platform Telegram. It also wildly mischaracterized a genuine, complicated water emergency in the West—one experts fear might give rise to violent clashes.

Much of the western United States is experiencing what meteorologists describe as an “exceptional drought.” With record-high temperatures and record-low water levels in parts of the country, among other causes, the drought is one devastating symptom of worsening climate change. The shortages have left some communities, like Oregon farmers and Californian fishers, competing for scarce water.

Stoking the conflict are anonymous nativist shit-posters, doomsday websites that conveniently sell apocalypse preparation gear, and more established far-right figures threatening to open a river’s headgates by force.

The Arizona Telegram chat group where members falsely accused Jewish people of orchestrating the drought has discussed the emerging crisis with growing urgency in recent weeks. They aren’t the only ones feeling the heat: Across the state, farmers and ranchers are facing the difficult task of raising their crops and livestock on the combined three inches of water that have fallen over the past 15 months.

But in certain fringe groups, the drought talk has taken a particularly ugly turn. Another Arizona-based Telegram channel (this one a conspiratorial anti-immigrant group) recently boasted of finding water bottles in the desert. Some aid groups leave water near the U.S.-Mexico border to reduce heat-related deaths among the desperate. But the Telegram group accused migrants of being “child predators” and said the water was better spent on plants. It boasted of emptying the bottles onto “our Desert vegetation experiencing a severe drought.”

“Those repeating the Lie that Migrants are dying because there is no water” were welcome to face off with the group’s dog, a member of the group posted on Telegram. “He has a way of explaining himself that delivers the message clearly.”

Feeling righteous about potentially killing desperate immigrants. How Christian, which I'm sure most of these numbnuts claim to be.

Be sure to read on. This isn't the end of the crazy or the threats of violence and lawlessness to steal the water that they aren't entitled to.

[AnBr]

Jun 24, 2021 21:17:54 GMT LFC said:

 And do you want to know who is to blame for the drought? Hint: It starts with "J" and rhymes with "news."

The drought is caused by their space lasers.

[goldenvalley]

Jun 24, 2021 20:47:29 GMT LFC said:

The first insurrectionist sentenced gets off light. I hope this isn't a pattern for those demonstrably involved in violence against Capitol Hill Police and destroying property.

A middle-aged Indiana grandmother who referred to storming the Capitol with thousands of MAGA rioters on Jan. 6 as the “best day ever” became the first insurrectionist to be sentenced for her crime on Wednesday.

By all accounts, it was a slap on the wrist that offered hope for hundreds of rioters to get off easy.

Anna Morgan-Lloyd, a 49-year-old from Bloomfield, was sentenced to three years of probation after pleading guilty to one misdemeanor count of parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building. D.C. District Judge Royce C. Lambert also sentenced Morgan-Lloyd to 120 hours of community service and ordered she pay a $500 fee for her crime, stating that the grandmother received a lower sentence because of her immense remorse for her crimes.

Morgan-Loyd is among roughly 500 individuals who have been charged in connection with the Jan. 6 riot—and among the first to cop to their crime. But the grandmother’s sentencing signals that similarly accused insurrectionists who strike up a deal with prosecutors may not see jail-time, a dynamic one federal prosecutor described as a “massive win” for many far-right extremists.

“No question Morgan-Lloyd’s case will set precedent for the hundreds of non-violent accused individuals who participated on Jan. 6,” Neama Rahman, a former New York federal prosecutor, told The Daily Beast on Wednesday. “No question that some charged individuals will be breathing a sigh of relief about this sentencing. This slap on the wrist is a significant win.”

Eh I'm not that concerned about this one.  There were two broad groups there on 1/6: the Oath Keeper, Proud Boy, 3%, etc pseudo military dudes; and then there were the people like this Morgan-Lloyd person, vaguely trying to help their hero not really understanding what he really wanted.  The latter group really did not understand what they were doing and why.  The first group, those are the ones to give maximum sentences too.

[Traveler]

I really dont care about the trespassers. They just better throw the book at the violent ones and ring leaders.

[LFC]

Nancy Pelosi is moving forward with a House Select Committee that will investigate the Jan. 6 Republican Insurrection. The terms are vastly less favorable to Republicans than the deal they rejected. Sure they'll whine that it's partisan but they were going to do that no matter what. Now they've allowed a committee to be set up that could be more like their Benghazi committee except that I'm sure it will deal in facts and reality. Oh, yeah. And there's no deadline for a final report.

A new resolution unveiled Monday revealed the contours of the Jan. 6 select committee, which the House plans to vote on this week.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) announced that she’d create the committee on Thursday, a last resort after Senate Republicans filibustered her preferred independent, 9/11-style commission. A select committee only needs to pass through the majority-Democratic House, avoiding the same filibuster pitfall in the Senate.

“Sadly, as of last week, there remains no prospect for additional votes from Republican Senators to create the National Commission to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol Complex,” she wrote in an accompanying press release.

The select committee will be 13 members large. Pelosi will appoint all 13, though she’ll consult with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) in choosing five of them.

The chair of the committee, who Pelosi will appoint, will have unilateral subpoena power. In the independent commission model, that subpoena authority required Republican participation, a feature critics pointed to as a built-in GOP block.

The chair of the select committee can also order depositions, in consultation with the ranking member.

The committee will issue a final report of its findings, with interim reports “from time to time” as its work proceeds. There is no due date listed for the final report, something sure to further antagonize Republicans who previously expressed concern that such an investigation may wrap up around the 2022 midterms in an unwanted reminder to voters about the role their party played in the insurrection.

Josh Marshall notes just what the Republicans have given up in their zeal to protect the insurrectionists and their myriad of Republican supporters in Congress.

[LFC]

I can't even.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is angling to get herself a new gig after being stripped from all of her committees for threatening Democrats in social media posts: the January 6 select committee.

“I have time on my hands, right?” she told Newsmax. “I don’t have any committee assignments, so I think it’s the perfect thing to happen.”

She added that she’d like to be on the committee to ensure that it doesn’t become a “witch hunt against Trump supporters,” and to find out who killed Ashli Babbitt, the Trump supporter who was fatally shot by police as she tried to climb through a window to the House chamber.

I love the fact that the Dems are using the creation of the Benghazi committee as the template.

Per the resolution released Monday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has the final say on all 13 committee appointees, though she’ll consult with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) for five of them.

A senior Democratic aide confirmed to TPM that Pelosi is reserving the right to reject any of McCarthy’s selections.

“The language for the Benghazi select committee was the same,” the aide said, adding: “McCarthy is not going to name MTG.”

[RichTBikkies]

Jun 29, 2021 15:53:17 GMT LFC said:

Josh Marshall notes just what the Republicans have given up in their zeal to protect the insurrectionists and their myriad of Republican supporters in Congress.

This could equally have gone in the "GOP has completely lost its mind" thread.

THE STUPID! IT BURNS!

[LFC]

Another one that the DHS warned us about a decade ago but who the Republicans provided cover for. F***ing traitors.

An active-duty U.S. Marine came under federal investigation for allegedly plotting with at least two others to assassinate minorities, drug users, and employees of the Democratic National Committee with explosives, rocket launchers, and automatic rifles.

That’s according to a newly unsealed FBI search warrant affidavit obtained by The Daily Beast, which indicates USMC Private First Class Travis Owens and his partners in the unrealized murder plot were influenced by Timothy McVeigh, the former U.S. Army soldier behind the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that left 168 people dead and injured nearly 700. The document also states that one of the suspects had links to the Atomwaffen Division, a violent neo-Nazi group linked to at least five murders. A handful of active service members and veterans have been identified as being members of Atomwaffen, which calls for the armed overthrow of the U.S. government.

The investigation began in late August 2019, when a tipster contacted the FBI about disturbingly violent conversations they had observed in a private Facebook Messenger chat group named “Right Wing Death Squad.” According to the FBI, three men were behind the troubling chats: James Wisdom of Arkansas; mechanic Jason D’Juan Garfield—also of Arkansas—who went by the noms de guerre “Moon Man” and “Jugger Bugger;” and Owens, a Marine Corps E-1 from Arkansas stationed at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri.

“Rhetoric in the private chat messages was consistent with racially motivated extremism ideology, to include aspirational violence against religious and racial minorities,” states the affidavit, which was signed by Special Agent Ryan Crump of the FBI Little Rock Joint Terrorism Task Force.

The only one of the three who has been charged to date is Garfield, who in May 2021 was sentenced to 78 months in prison for illegal gun possession. Charges against Wisdom and Owens have not been filed, a DOJ spokesperson confirmed to The Daily Beast, and neither has a lawyer listed in court records. Assistant U.S. Attorney Aaron Jennen, the prosecutor handling the case, declined to comment.

Owens, however, was kicked out of the Marine Corps in April 2020, “after news of the NCIS/FBI investigation came to light,” USMC spokesman Capt. Andrew Wood told The Daily Beast.

When to the likes of MTG, Gaetz, and Gosar come out to stand up for this poor American's right to the freedom of speech? He's just their kinda' guy.

[LFC]

McCarthy (what is it with politicians that have that name anyway?) is digging in hard to protect the Republican terrorists who took part in the Jan. 6 insurrection.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy on Wednesday issued a blanket threat during a meeting with freshmen members of his caucus that he would strip any Republican member of their committee assignments if they accept an offer from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to serve on the select committee to investigate the January 6 insurrection, according to two GOP sources with knowledge of the matter.

McCarthy's threat comes after the House voted to establish the committee. Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois were the only two Republican members to vote in favor of its formation. It's not yet clear whether Pelosi will appoint Republicans to the commission, but the threat from McCarthy underscores how he feels about any members accepting an offer from the Democrats to serve on the committee.

He immediately followed with a bit of play acting as he tries to paint the Republicans as serious about solving any problems other than how to obtain and retain power. Oooooo, task forces! How cute!

[LFC]

Liz Cheney just told McCarthy to go f*** himself.

Kevin McCarthy overnight threatened to take committee assignments away from any member of his caucus who agreed to serve on the new Jan 6 select investigative committee. That’s the equivalent of the death penalty for a member of a political party. Liz Cheney has just agreed to join the committee at the invitation of Speaker Pelosi.

Pelosi just announced these members in a just released announcement.

Chair Bennie Thompson: Chair of Homeland Security Committee

Chair Zoe Lofgren: Chair of Committee on House Administration

Chair Adam Schiff: Chair of House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

Rep. Pete Aguilar, House Administration and Appropriations Committees

Rep. Liz Cheney, Armed Services Committee

Rep. Stephanie Murphy, Armed Services Committee

Rep. Jamie Raskin, Oversight and Judiciary Committees

Rep. Elaine Luria, Navy veteran, Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees

Under the legislation there are 13 members. Pelosi chooses eight and then another five are chosen in consultation with Kevin McCarthy. He’s refusing to participate, even forbidding members to join. It’s not clear whether she’s just choosing eight and being done with it or leaving those open in case he changes his mind.

[LFC]

Why is this even a question? This guy needs to be incarcerated immediately. If only he was a BLM protester.

Federal prosecutors are seeking to revoke the pre-trial release of a former police officer charged in the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, after he purchased 34 guns. Investigators also found a partially assembled pipe bomb at his home.

Thomas Robertson, a former police officer in Rocky Mount, Va., was ordered by a judge not to possess guns following his arrest on several charges stemming from the insurrection, including felony disruption of an official proceeding and misdemeanor disorderly conduct in a restricted building. Robertson and another Rocky Mount officer, Jacob Fracker, were fired in the wake of their arrests after they posted photos of themselves inside the Capitol on social media.

Prosecutors filed a motion to revoke Robertson's release on Wednesday, after FBI agents served a search warrant at his home, where they found the pipe bomb inside a box labeled "booby trap" in addition to numerous boxes of ammunition. Authorities also tracked online gun purchases made by Robertson, who was allegedly storing his arsenal at a local firearms dealership.

"The defendant's possession of an explosive device and firearms, coupled with his extreme rhetoric advocating for violence indicating no remorse illustrate that the pending charges are unlikely to serve as a deterrent to future violence. For these reasons, the defendant should be detained," prosecutors wrote.

Their motion also details several of Robertson's social media posts.

[LFC]

Sometimes it's just general, casual right-wing domestic terrorism.

A Republican lawmaker from Alaska this week shared a Facebook meme that promoted hanging doctors and journalists who are promoting vaccinations against the novel coronavirus.

The Peninsula Clarion reports that Alaska House Rep. Ron Gillham last month shared a meme that featured a photo of a public hanging from post-World War II Germany that falsely claimed it showed Nazi-aligned doctors and journalists being executed for "misleading" the public.

Above the photo was a caption that read, "Still so sure you want to try to force me to get the experimental vaccination?"

Gillham told the Clarion that he didn't mean to offend or intimidate anyone with his post.

[goldenvalley]

Here's the NYT video of 1/6 made up of video from participants social media feeds plus other video from police body cams and other sources.  Narration is by a person with a sort of Irish accent which struck me as an interesting way to suggest this was a dispassionate, just the facts ma'am observer. (That might be my imagination talking).  Yes, I realize editing can shape a narrative to whatever the editors want but it's the first view I've had of the insurrectionists behavior and words so it struck me as more complete than what the impeachment trial showed.

The most interesting parts of the 40 minute long video is being to hear the voices of the insurrectionists and getting a feel for all the various entry points into the Capitol.  And that Capitol police guy who led the insurrectionists away from where Pence was hidden is a true hero...level headed and smart.

It also strikes me that I've seen no similar video of hand to hand combat with police coming out of the various protests of last summer.  Is that because there was no video of it or is that because very little of that sort of thing happened? We heard lots about water bottles and maybe bricks being thrown, but not about this sort of medieval looking combat.

[LFC]

TPM summarized the Republicans' current position on the Jan. 6 investigative committee. Basically they're f***ed. They gave threw away everything they negotiated for and will be left with nothing more than shouting at the wind that the committee is a witch hunt. Woop-dee-doo. They were going to do that anyway. They could have had an enormous amount of control PLUS be able to screech that what the Dems were doing was partisan. On top of that they threw away an end date.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) was prescient.

Back in May, while explaining his rationale for voting in favor of the independent January 6 commission, he expressed concern that the alternative would be far worse for his party.

“The legislation I voted for ensured Republicans had equal power over the commission and set a deadline of December 31, 2021 to prevent a needlessly drawn-out process,” he said in a statement.

“Without this commission, there will still be an investigation,” he added. “But it will be a House select-committee set up by Speaker Pelosi – the nature of which will be entirely dictated by Democrats and would stretch on for years.”

While the duration of the select committee is yet to be seen, he was mostly right on the money.

By rejecting the independent commission — a move led by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) — Republicans tossed away their best chance to exert some control over the course of the investigation.

In the independent commission model, Republican cooperation was required to issue subpoenas. GOP appointees would have had a built-in ability to block anyone their Democratic counterparts wanted to call, from McCarthy to former President Donald Trump. The select committee gives Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), Pelosi’s appointed chair, unilateral subpoena power.

The legislation standing up the independent commission mandated that the final report be issued no later than the last day of 2021. Even at the time, some Republicans fretted that the investigation would cross that deadline and color the 2022 midterm campaign season, reminding voters of the role their party played as they decided who to vote for.

Now, that fear is much more likely to come true — there is no hard end date for the select committee, meaning that the majority-Democratic appointees can take as much time as they want.

I hope Pelosi drags this thing out and issues a final report in late November ... of 2022. In the meantime keep fairly quiet until early 2022 and then just keep issuing a series of reports through the entire election season. These are the rules that the Republicans set for Hillary Clinton. Just follows the rules of engagement set up the GOP.

[LFC]

Jul 1, 2021 19:32:06 GMT LFC said:

Why is this even a question? This guy needs to be incarcerated immediately. If only he was a BLM protester.

The story on this dirtbag gets worse. And this wasn't even his first time he violated court rules. He needs to be in prison without bail until he trial is complete. Hopefully after that he'll spend a lot more time in jail. He's a dangerous terrorist.

The former Virginia cop accused of secretly buying over 30 firearms after storming the Capitol is insisting his secret arsenal did not violate his pre-trial conditions—because he did not actually have the antique guns he ordered online in his possession.

Thomas Robertson, a former Rocky Mount Police sergeant, is facing several charges after prosecutors allege he stormed the Capitol with a fellow officer and made an “obscene statement in front of a statue of John Stark,” before later boasting he was “fucking proud” of his actions on Facebook. After his Jan. 13 arrest, Robertson was released pending trial on several conditions, including that he was forbidden from owning any guns or destructive devices.

But in a damning motion requesting Robertson’s bond be revoked, prosecutors state the Army veteran and trained sniper purchased at least 34 firearms and thousands of rounds of ammunition, marking the second time he violated his pretrial conditions in six months. Seemingly knowing his secret arsenal was prohibited, the motion states he even tried to hide some of his purchases by labeling them on Venmo as “wedding photos.”

His attorney's defense is ... pathetic.

The former cop’s lawyers, however, offered a simple explanation for their client’s alleged violations: the “antique gun lover” supposedly does not have any of the purchased firearms in his possession, they said, and the government should have been clearer about their rules.

“Ordering guns does not equate to possession,” defense attorney Mark Rollins said in a Sunday response to prosecutors, noting that since his client did not “ship or transport these items” the dispute could simply be resolved with updated pretrial language that states he is not allowed to order firearms online.

“Mr. Robertson was an antique gun lover, served his Country honorably, and the guns he allegedly purchased but did not possess were antique guns from the World War II era,” Rollins added in the motion.

Here are more details on the violations.

After Robertson’s arrest, Judge G. Michael Harvey ordered him to relocate all of his firearms by Jan. 15 in accordance with the conditions of his release. The motion states that just four days after that deadline, investigators executed a search warrant at Roberston’s Ferrum, Virginia home—where they found at least eight guns. Inside his shed, Roberston also had “large amounts of ammunition.”

Despite the violation, Harvey granted Roberston a second chance with strict instructions he could not “possess a firearm, destructive device, or other dangerous weapons,” the motion states. In February, however, the FBI received information that Roberston had again violated his conditions—prompting investigators to get a search warrant for his email account.

The motion states that Roberston purchased several firearms over his email, including one that he paid for via Venmo under the description “Wedding Photos.” On June 29, the FBI raided Roberston’s home for a second time, where they found “an arsenal of 34 firearms... a loaded M4 rifle, ammunition, and a partially assembled pipe bomb.” They also found a box labeled “Booby Trap” in an outhouse that contained “a metal pipe with two ends caps, with a fuse inserted into a hole that had been drilled into the device; epoxy had been used around the sides of the fuse to secure it,” the motion states.

[LFC]

This is what happens when the armed terrorists move in and stink up the place.

On Saturday, about 100 people gathered in a park in this normally sleepy town of about 1,200, some wearing Black Lives Matter shirts, others with peace symbols. Speakers took turns inveighing on fighting racism and standing up for LGBTQ rights, regular causes in the left-wing activist space.

But their target was not racist cops, conservative Republicans, or some other traditional bête noire. Instead, their anger was squarely trained at the paramilitary organization some locals say has gained a disturbing foothold here.

“The racism and division of the right-wing militias really has no place in our community,” Mayor Scott Chaplin told the crowd.

Tension has been steadily rising here on Whidbey Island, a collection of picturesque rural towns north of Seattle, after a militia group started holding rallies and taking aim at community groups and local government. The precedent of far-right activists on the rise everywhere from Portland to the steps of the U.S. Capitol has local officials and residents alike bracing for the worst.

In the meantime, residents described extremists quietly tearing the very fabric of their community apart.

“I’m concerned because I think the Trump presidency emboldened a very small fringe group of people, but they’ve been growing a movement and attracting more and more people,” Chaplin said in an interview with The Daily Beast. “And they truly believe what they’re doing is right.”

South Whidbey Island is a rolling, wooded landscape with pine forests punctuated by idyllic farms and spectacular views of the Puget Sound. It’s a small, tight-knit community, the kind of place many come for a peaceful retirement on the water, and where tourists flock by ferry on weekends to shop in quaint, seaside villages, like Langley.

So last fall, when members and supporters of The Washington III Percent militia took control of the nearly 100-year-old local Grange association and began rejecting applications for those not aligned with them, it caught a lot of locals off-guard. The Grange, and its turn-of-the-century lakeside building, serves as a gathering place for the community. Think quilting classes and slideshows of neighbors’ trips abroad.

How democratic! How American! Blocking people you don't like from using a building owned by all of the taxpayers and maintained by their tax dollars.

Read the rest to see how racism is playing into this as well. Trump really did bring the scum to the surface.

[LFC]

The right has been coming around to full-throated support of right-wing domestic terrorism that go well beyond apologetics. TPM lists 5 ways the right-wing movement around Ashli Babbitt has promoted her as a martyr and hero while demonizing the officer who took her down in as clean a kill as we've seen on video (unlike how many black men?).

When Ashli Babbitt breached a final window in the Capitol building, it was the closest any of the rioters on Jan. 6 would come to reaching then-evacuating members of Congress.

Since that day, her death has become a cause célèbre on the far-right. Former president Trump tested the waters of grievance around her death in a speech on Saturday, getting an approving roar from the crowd after suggesting that the Capitol police officer who killed her should be “strung up and hung.”

But Trump’s comments mark a significant escalation for the attempt to cast Babbitt as a martyr and to find and punish the officer who killed her. Below are five points on how the far-right stoked an uproar over Babbitt’s death.

American traitor Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZzwipe) is demanding charges be brought against the Capitol Hill Police officer who did his job. So much for supporting the police. This is worse than the most misguided case I've seen of attacking a shooting by an officer. Nice brown shirt you've got there, Mr. Gosar. Or should I say Herr Gosar?

A DOJ inquiry did not find evidence to support charges against the officer; Babbitt’s family have sued D.C. for records on the officer.

But Gosar, who has ties to the far-right, has taken a lead role in pushing the idea that the federal government “executed” Babbitt. When DOJ officials have come before the House Oversight Committee, on which Gosar sits, to testify about Jan. 6, Gosar has used it as an opportunity to ask who “executed” Babbitt.

In the statement, Gosar restated his mantra of the past few months, demanding to know the identity of the officer who killed Babbitt while claiming the existence of a shadowy “effort to cover up the full circumstances of this homicide and the American people won’t stand for it.”

He once again referred to Babbitt’s death as an “execution,” saying that “we do not allow the execution of citizens by street ‘justice’ in our country.”

He went on to ask in the statement “why have no charges been brought against the shooter for negligent homicide or more?”

[goldenvalley]

Maybe those Ashil Babbitt folks should take a look at the video compiled by the NYT last week. It pretty clearly shows the woman attempting to get through the broken glass on the door...footage from inside the room shows it.

[LFC]

Josh Marshall has a good summary on Babbitt. The Republicans and other right-wingers using her death as a prop and somehow describing it as anything but justified are traitors to our nation. They have now shit on the Constitution and the rule of law. They disgust me.

Here's a perfect description of where they were when Babbitt tried to lead them through the last barrier that safeguarded the presidential chain of succession. Anybody trying to make the case that nobody would have gotten hurt can first explain the 140 or so officers who were injured. Was the screaming armed crowd smashing down doors going to have a nice chat with the people they were angry with? This was an assault on America, plain and simple.

A few more points on Ashli Babbitt.

As I’ve written before, Ashli Babbitt’s death was a tragedy. She didn’t deserve to die. But there is no question that the unknown Capitol Police office who shot her was totally justified in his decision to use lethal force in the situation. Indeed, he would have been negligent not to have taken extreme measures under the circumstances. It was, frankly, borderline offensive when the DOJ announced that there was insufficient evidence to bring charges against the person, as though he had somehow skated by for lack of evidence. Lack of evidence may technically be the correct description. But the real conclusion should be justification.

Let’s remember the situation. The Capitol complex is being stormed by a pro-Trump insurrectionary mob set on overturning the results of the election through violence. At this point Capitol Police have lost control of the mob and are in the process of evacuating members of Congress to a secure location. The doors being smashed down are the entrance to the Speaker’s Lobby. On that afternoon that was the last barrier before the insurrectionists got into immediately physical proximity to members of Congress. That was the last line of defense. It’s just a few more yards once you’re past that door.

This is not only the lives of numerous Representatives, Senators and staffers. It’s also multiple members of the succession to the Presidency: the Vice President, the Speaker of the House, etc. So it’s numerous individual lives and the continuity of government itself.

The video footage we’ve all seen shows one officer inside the entrance way guarding the door. With his pistol visibly drawn and aimed at the insurrectionists beating on the door he repeatedly warns the mob banging on the door to come no further. At this point Babbitt breaks through the upper window panel on the door and is shot. The single shot proved fatal.

The foundational justification for the Capitol Police to have firearms is to protect Congress – individual lives and institution – and the orderly functioning of the United States government. This standoff clearly and immediately implicated both those core missions. Babbitt ignored repeated warnings and the visible threat of lethal force.

If Babbitt and those who would certainly have followed her had not been stopped but rushed the few yards to capture, kill or injure the Vice President, the leadership of Congress, numerous members we would be demanding an explanation for the inexplicable fact that no one had acted in such a critical moment, that no one would have used lethal force to prevent a massacre of the Congress.

[LFC]

Jul 6, 2021 20:27:27 GMT goldenvalley said:

Maybe those Ashil Babbitt folks should take a look at the video compiled by the NYT last week. It pretty clearly shows the woman attempting to get through the broken glass on the door...footage from inside the room shows it.

Black man reaches for a cell phone with no warning from an officer? Clean kill. A front line rioter ignores multiple orders to stand down and breaches the final barrier? Murder. That's how they think. Reality has been left behind by these people long ago.

[jackd]

The fact that Gosar is an idiot should be enough to deal with his comments.

[LFC]

Capitol Police are dealing with more threats. Right-wing domestic terrorism and Republican fascism continue skipping hand in hand down the road.

The acting Capitol Police chief announced Tuesday that the force will be setting up field offices in California and Florida, with more locations to come, to help address the spike in threats against members of Congress.

The release, signed by acting chief Yogananda Pittman, marked the changes and improvements the force has been making on the six-month anniversary of the Capitol insurrection.

Capitol Police Inspector General Michael Bolton testified before Congress in May that his office had been aware of the shortage in manpower to handle those lawmaker threats since at least 2020, and that the “caseload has basically exploded” since then. Capitol Police have said that in 2021 alone, threats against members were up 107 percent compared to the previous year.

Pittman added Tuesday that Capitol Police will also bulk up its protection of lawmakers while they are away from Washington D.C.

[LFC]

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-ALl D-Bag, All the Time) says he can't be sued for giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) demanded his dismissal from a federal lawsuit alleging that he helped incite the mob behind the deadly Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6, arguing that he can’t be sued because he was acting as a federal employee while vowing to challenge the election results hours before the attack.

In a motion Friday, Brooks said that he should be dropped as a defendant or represented by the Justice Department in the lawsuit filed by Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) in federal court back in March. The lawsuit also names former President Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and Rudy Guliani for allegedly inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection and breaking laws in the process.

Brooks cited a 1988 law that protects federal employees from being held liable while acting within the scope of their office or employment. Brooks insisted that his speech hours before the Capitol insurrection, tweets and related conduct “were indisputably made in the context of and preparation for” the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6 certifying Joe Biden’s electoral victory.

“Brooks represented the interests of his constituency when Brooks challenged the Electoral College vote submittals of states whose election processes were less than reliable in the judgment of Brooks,” Brooks said in the filing. “It makes no difference whether Brooks was right or wrong.”

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta in Washington directed the Justice Department and Swalwell to respond to Brooks’s claims. Mehta gave Swalwell and the Justice Department a July 27 deadline to respond.

Trump similarly asked the judge to dismiss the case by arguing that he has absolute immunity from lawsuits over his official actions as President.

"I AM ABOVE THE LAW!"

[goldenvalley]

A little insight into McCarthy and the Select Committee on 1/6.  

One House Republican who said McCarthy recognizes the select committee calls for serious-minded appointees fretted over the low prospects of "any good at all" coming from the investigation. "I mean, we've got three impeachment managers on the" Democratic side, this member said, sharing candid views on condition of anonymity.

Cheney's presence on the Jan. 6 panel at the invitation of Speaker Nancy Pelosi is also causing fellow Republicans heartburn. While the McCarthy critic's presence brings the committee closer to a partisan balance, with seven Democrats filling seats to six Republicans if the minority leader chooses to make appointments, some GOP colleagues see Cheney's appointment as a Pelosi gambit to stave off criticism that the inquiry’s findings will be partisan.

And the right flank of the House GOP, which exiled Cheney from leadership over her repeated condemnation of the former president, is going after the conservative scion directly.

While some Republicans want some serious minded Republicans to be on the committee even as they see it as a Trump witch hunt:

A handful of House Republicans point to the imbalanced partisan makeup of the select committee as a reason why they were encouraging their GOP colleagues to support the bipartisan 9/11-style Jan. 6 commission. Still, they're already on the offensive: Some point to Pelosi's selection of three former managers of Trump's impeachments to serve on the select panel — Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Administration Committee Chair Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) — as proof that she's more interested in going after Trump.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, has already dismissed the prospect of probing Pelosi’s role in responding to security breakdowns at the Capitol during the insurrection. Republicans have taken that as a sign that Democrats are trying to shield the speaker’s own decisions from scrutiny.

“Speaker Pelosi has set a playing field that is going to be stacked with her partisan sycophants — many have been part of the now-defunct Russia collusion story that cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. Others have been part of impeachments that were nothing but partisan against President Trump,” said Illinois Rep. Rodney Davis, the Administration Committee's top Republican.

Even so, Davis said he would serve if McCarthy asked, adding that "if the conference agrees, we need voices on this," and that Republicans should pick "voices that are willing to talk about what went wrong in the processes leading up to January 6. And Democrats control the House. They ought to be able to answer some of those questions."

Davis, it seems, is not someone who believes that the people in the building on 1/6 were tourists.

I'm not sure McCarthy is required to appoint anyone to the committee.