Mentions
- Post
"President Trump’s direct and express efforts, over several months, exhorting his supporters to march to the Capitol to prevent what he falsely characterized as an alleged fraud on the people of this country were indisputably overt and voluntary. Moreover, the evidence amply showed that President Trump undertook all these actions to aid and further a common unlawful purpose that he himself conceived and set in motion: prevent Congress from certifying the 2020 residential election and stop the peaceful transfer of power."
- Post
"Throughout these several hours, President Trump ignored pleas to intervene and instead called on Senators, urging them to help delay the electoral count, which is what the mob, upon President Trump’s exhortations, was also trying to achieve.
And President Trump took no action to put an end to the violence.
To the contrary, as mentioned above, when told that the mob was chanting, “Hang Mike Pence,” President Trump responded that perhaps the Vice President deserved to be hanged.
President Trump also rejected pleas from House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, imploring him to tell his supporters to leave the Capitol, stating, “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.”'
- Post
"Rather than taking action to end the siege, however, approximately one hour later, at 2:24 p.m., he tweeted, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”
This tweet was read over a bullhorn to the crowd at the Capitol, and produced further violence, necessitating the evacuation of Vice President Pence from his Senate office to a more secure location to ensure his physical safety.
President Trump’s next public communications were two tweets sent at 2:38 p.m. and 3:13 p.m., encouraging the mob to “remain peaceful” and to “[s]tay peaceful” (obviously, the mob was not at all peaceful), but neither tweet condemned the violence nor asked the mob to disperse."
- Post
“And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” - Donald Trump
Unsurprisingly, the crowd at the Ellipse reacted to President Trump’s words with calls for violence. Indeed, after President Trump instructed his supporters to march to the Capitol, members of the crowd shouted, “[S]torm the capitol!”; “[I]nvade the Capitol Building!”; and “[T]ake the Capitol!”
- Post
"Notably, from the approximately 28,000 attendees who passed through these security checkpoints, the Secret Service confiscated hundreds of weapons and other prohibited items, including knives or blades, pepper spray, brass knuckles, tasers, body armor, gas masks, and batons or blunt instruments. Approximately 25,000 additional attendees remained outside the Secret Service perimeter, thus avoiding the magnetometers."
- Post
This is the series of events that I observed that helped me anticipate how and where things were going, likely to culminate on Jan 6. The FBI put out a report warning about this activity.
"Far-right extremists and militias such as the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, and the Three Percenters viewed President Trump’s December 19, 2020 tweet as a “call to arms,” and they began to plot activities to disrupt the January 6 joint session of Congress."
- Post
"And President Trump continued to fan the flames of his supporters’ ire, which he had ignited, with ongoing false assertions of election fraud, propelling the “Stop the Steal” movement and cross-country rallies leading up to January 6. Specifically, between Election Day 2020 and January 6, Stop the Steal organizers held dozens of rallies around the country, proliferating President Trump’s election disinformation and recruiting attendees, including members of violent extremist groups like the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, and the Three Percenters, QAnon conspiracy theorists, and white nationalists, to travel to Washington, D.C. on January 6.
Stop the Steal leaders also joined two “Million MAGA Marches” in Washington, D.C. on November 14, 2020, and December 12, 2020. Again, as relevant to President Trump’s intent here, after the November rally turned violent, President Trump acknowledged the violence but justified it as self-defense against “ANTIFA SCUM.”'
- Post
"Substantial evidence in the record showed that before the November 2020 general election, President Trump was laying the groundwork that the election was rigged.
Moreover, when asked at a September 23, 2020 press briefing whether he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power after the election, President Trump refused to do so.
President Trump then lost the election, and despite the facts that his advisors repeatedly advised him that there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud and that no evidence showed that he himself believed the election was wrought with fraud, President Trump ramped up his claims that the election was stolen from him and undertook efforts to prevent the certification of the election results."
President Trump sought to overturn the election results by directly exerting pressure on Republican officeholders in various states."
- Post
"In short, the record amply established that the events of January 6 constituted a concerted and public use of force or threat of force by a group of people to hinder or prevent the U.S. government from taking the actions necessary to accomplish the peaceful transfer of power in this country. Under any viable definition, this constituted an insurrection, and thus we will proceed to consider whether President Trump “engaged in” this insurrection."
- Post
“Insurrection is distinguished from rout, riot, and offenses connected with mob violence by the fact that, in insurrection, there is an organized and armed uprising against authority or operations of government, while crimes growing out of mob violence, however serious they may be and however numerous the participants, are simply unlawful acts in disturbance of the peace which do not threaten the stability of the government or the existence of political society.”
- Post
"Insurrection (Noah Webster’s dictionary (1860): A rising against civil or political authority; the open and active opposition of a number of persons to the execution of law in a city or state. It is equivalent to SEDITION, except that sedition expresses a less extensive rising of citizens.
In light of these and other proffered definitions, the district court concluded that “an insurrection as used in Section Three is (1) a public use of force or threat of force (2) by a group of people (3) to hinder or prevent execution of the Constitution of the United States.” Anderson, ¶ 240
the district court concluded that “an insurrection as used in Section Three is (1) a public use of force or threat of force (2) by a group of people (3) to hinder or prevent execution of the Constitution of the United States.” Anderson, ¶ 240."
- Post
"President Trump asks us to hold that Section Three disqualifies every oathbreaking insurrectionist except the most powerful one and that it bars oath-breakers from virtually every office, both state and federal, except the highest one in the land. Both results are inconsistent with the plain language and history of Section Three."