Writes Joel Mathis at The Week in "The Jan. 6 'plot' that wasn't." Mathis strains to patch together something like a conspiracy theory:
There didn't need to be a secret conspiracy. Instead, it sounds more like self-radicalization as a mass phenomenon. The term "self-radicalization" has been used in recent years to describe the underlying causes of lone-wolf terror attacks like the... Orlando's Pulse nightclub, or the Pensacola shooter... [or] Dylann Roof.... What is Jan. 6, if not a similar phenomenon... only with all the wolves gathered in a single, very important location for the same purpose? None of this gets Trump off the hook.... The people who came to Washington D.C. on Jan. 6 did so at Trump's invitation, and then marched to the Capitol at his behest. He didn't have to plot with anybody — he just had to rile up his followers, then point them in the right direction.
They were protesters, though, not killers! They behaved like protesters, going to the place where the thing they were protesting was happening. If they'd been like Roof or like the Pulse or Pensacola shooters, they'd have done something much more violent than trespassing on the building.
By the way, I've been wondering what might have happened if the Senators had not all gotten the same idea at the same time and run out of the Senate chamber, leaving it to the protesters. What if a Senator or 2 or 3 had stayed in place, where they belonged and the protesters had to face them?
We've been encouraged to think the protesters would have brutalized them. But what if one Senator had the nerve and the presence of mind to stand his (or her) ground and confront them with words? I'm thinking of something about law and civilization....
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56 comments:
An actual insurrection is what we see going on in Afghanistan right now.
An actual conspiracy is what you call the press and our Speaker and the Democrats getting behind and supporting the riots by BLM and Antifa that destroyed cities, towns, and lives in the summer of 2020. They promoted it, paid for it, and helped to cover for it. Hell, they had deliveries of bricks and bats set up in these cities. Someone paid for and arranged all that. Hell, our Vice President led the charge to pay for insta-bail for the criminals who looted and burned down the cities.
And our cities have never recovered. Now THAT is a conspiracy. I wonder where this country would be now if we had a functioning press filled with people who could, oh...I dunno...think?
I am sufficiently cynical at this point to think there's only one realistic interpretation of this latest finding: after Darren J Beattie at RevolverNews demonstrated evidence of major Federal involvement, of agents and informants on and before 1/6, a story picked up by Tucker and also with reporting from Greenwald, the Feds would prefer that we don't look too closely into the organization of the protest (or the widespread, coordinated propagation of the "insurrection" narrative). Meanwhile hundreds of people have been imprisoned for several months, charged mostly with trespassing. This latest turn is not a sign of progress for us. It is our rotten elite covering its ass.
"The FBI has found 'scant' evidence the Jan. 6 insurrection was the result of an organized plot...'Ninety to ninety-five percent of these are one-off cases,' an anonymous former official said of the nearly 600 people who have been arrested for their involvement in the attempt to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election.
It wasn't an insurrection, the FBI itself was elbow deep in organizing any plot (that's why the FBI now wants to walk the allegation back), and the aim was to delay -- not "stop" -- the certification vote.
By the way, I've been wondering what might have happened if the Senators had not all gotten the same idea at the same time and run out of the Senate chamber, leaving it to the protesters.
Watch the protester video. From what I've seen, most of the protesters initially headed to the upstairs gallery to watch the proceedings, presumably with the intent to call-out the Senators. Remember, Chewbacca Guy was upstairs in the gallery first letting out a roar before he looked around, saw a nearly empty chamber and came downstairs.
This is all such a disconnect, these conspiracy theories. My impression from the beginning was that Trump and his ragtag crew were never organized enough to coordinate with Russia or with protesters. Nothing I have read in multiple Trump exposés or the Mueller Report suggests otherwise.
Isn't there some kind of fallacy that attributes much more competence to the Other than to one's own side?
More to come.
Those that have made plea deals and accepted sentences have made a big mistake.
The FBI is scrambling. If this goes in front of a jury, the demand for all the video that all those officers captured on body cams, will have to be made available to the defense. ALL the faces in those videos will have to be identified.
The Number of FBI/government agents and confidential human sources will be exposed.
We know this because the FBI planned the kidnapping of the Michigan Governor
We know this because The FBI planned the Russia Collusion with President Trump
"The FBI has found 'scant' evidence the Jan. 6 insurrection was the result of an organized plot..."
IOW, none. As we righties could have told them at the outset, and did. But it didn't fit the propaganda narrative. As in the case of the Russia collusion, Dems used a story that had no basis and would be found to have no basis. They went for short-term gain, in the expectation that no one would hold them accountable for the lies along the way. They mostly calculated correctly, since the insurrection meme stuck.
"They were protesters, though, not killers! They behaved like protesters, going to the place where the thing they were protesting was happening. If they'd been like Roof or like the Pulse or Pensacola shooters, they'd have done something much more violent than trespassing on the building."
There you go again, being reasonable and all. Of course, this "insurrection" was the first in human history that did not involve weapons or violence, except the killing of Ashley B. Even the "killing" of officer Sicknick was fabricated.
"What if a Senator or 2 or 3 had stayed in place, where they belonged and the protesters had to face them? . . . But what if one Senator had the nerve and the presence of mind to stand his (or her) ground and confront them with words?"
No words necessary. Adolfo Suárez stayed seated during the 1981 coup attempt in Spain. One of the most moving images in recent political history. And of course, he confronted men with guns, not protesters in costume.
Hell, they had deliveries of bricks and bats set up in these cities.
This statement is simply a lie. Provide evidence to back it up. You can't.
Ben Sasse from Nebraska could have faced downed those protesters. He’s small, but tough; wrestled at Fremont high school and Yale.
Ben can also act like fellow Nebraskan Henry Fonda.
Silly!!
The FBI doesn't FIND evidence.
Iowan2 how much longer would you be willing to stay locked up in solitary as a political prisoner before you made a deal? Your point is valid however, they do not want to have to release the video, that it has not been released speaks to the cowardice of our Republican representatives.
And when does Parler get their company back? I would expect this will be a prominent part of their lawsuit against Amazon, apple and Google if they are still willing to push it, which I hope they do.
Stewart Rhodes, the leader of Oath Keepers, was an FBI operative.
The FBI wants to impede public investigations that might reveal the FBI's own role in orchestrating the protest that took place on January 6.
Since 2015, the FBI has been trying to ruin Donald Trump and his associates and supporters. Top FBI officials believed that Trump was a secret agent of Russian Intelligence. Therefore, they thought they had just cause to use dirty tricks against him.
Soon after Trump became the US President, the FBI used dirty tricks to remove Trump's new National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, from office.
During the following years, former FBI Director Robert "The FBI Whitewasher" Mueller used dirty tricks to try to remove President Trump from his elected position. Former FBI Director Mueller staffed his investigation staff largely with Trump-hating FBI officials.
The main purpose of Mueller dirty-tricks operation was to lure Trump into an obstruction-of-justice situation that would enable Congress to impeach and remove Trump from his elected position.
Another purpose was to ruin Trump's associates and supporters in order to compel them to snitch on Trump or to compose false testimony against him.
The January 6 protest was a continuation of the FBI's dirty-tricks campaign to ruin Trump and his associates and supporters.
The problem with "What if a Senator or 2 or 3 had stayed in place, where they belonged and the protesters had to face them?" is that the senate was evacuated because of the pipe bombs found and the RNC, the DNC and somewhere on capitol hill. The mostly peaceful protest of tourist and Trump supporters had nothing to do with it.
Look it up.
I should add that I heard Senator Ben Sasse address the Federalist Society in Omaha. He referred to January 6 as an insurrection. He lost my vote right there.
Former FBI official Mark Wauk proposes two reasons why the FBI is trying to walk-back its aggressive stance on the January 6 protest:
First, if DoJ pushes ahead with prosecutions, many of those cases would not come up for trial until 2022. Think about that. There's a major election -- most likely including a major power shift away from the currently installed regime -- that's also coming up in 2022.
My working assumption would be that DoJ and the FBI were hoping to get all this behind them through guilty pleas within months, as part of cementing the legitimacy of the Zhou [Biden] regime in the public mind within the first 6 months. That hasn't happened, and now it increasingly looks as if regime change will be necessary. The Deep State will want the citizenry focusing on that regime change rather than on the origins of the Zhou regime -- of which the January 6 Event is a constant reminder. Thus the need to get the January 6 Event behind us, out of public consciousness, rather than the open running sore that Pelosi had hoped to make it -- constantly blaming Trump. Game plan changes.
Second, it increasingly appears that the judiciary as an independent branch if government isn't on board with being manipulated in the fashion that DoJ has been doing. As a result defense attorneys could be emboldened to fight these cases and seek embarrassing discovery material. This already appears to be happening -- cases are being expedited by dropping any serious charges and letting people free on time served.
The bottom line here would be, the less information that comes out in the judicial process the less a new conservative majority in the House would have to work with in hearings.
Funny how leftwing riots and looting/arson are not considered "Self-radicalizing"
I was watching a local show with Jon Caldera as host.
He was interviewing one the CU regents. They were talking about many issues but one topic was the radicalized progressive intolerance on the CU campus. CU President, Mark Kennedy was forced out of his position for having conservative opinions.
opinions that do not line up with the thought-police. the oh so tolerant thought-police.
At one point the CU regent described some sort of speaking event where Kennedy was booed, screamed at, silenced, spit upon, object thrown.. etc... A young female conservative was in the audience and bravely raised her hand meekly to speak and mentioned she too was conservative and the entire crowd gathered around her to drown her out, and then became violent and threatened her physically. She had to be surrounded by security to protect her from a violent mob, and to aid her escape.
THE LEFT TELL US THEY ARE TOLERANT.
Althouse, Mathis doesn't presume or suggest that the January 6 insurrectionists were not "violent." He says that they were violent. Clearly, there is a mountain of video evidence and law enforcement witnesses, and VICTIMS of the violence all attesting to the violence. They might not have been sociopathic killers like Dylann Roof (and here I acknowledge that it was Mathis, and not you who invoked the name of Dylann Roof), but they sure were violent.
And to that point, I look to this paragraph from the column that you did not put into your blog post:
If true, that doesn't mean the events of Jan. 6 weren't dangerous, both to members of Congress and to the health of American democracy. What it does suggest is that the narrative of what happened that day is pretty straightforward and that it played out very publicly: Then-President Donald Trump lied for two months that the election had been stolen from him, a lot of people believed his lies, and then they (violently) acted accordingly.
Yes! The "(violently)" parenthetic just above is not mine; it is Mathis' own writing.
As for conspiracies, I didn't much expect any evidence of a vast multilevel operation which plotted out the entire day's events. What I have seen solid reporting on, are groups of 10 or 12 organized "militia" members having coordinated their travel and activities. One oath keeper group from Ohio-West Virgina-Virginia was "30 to 40" in number and we know that because of audio recordings and contemporaneous social media postings by people who have been fully investigated and are under federal indictment:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/conspiracy-oath-keeper-arrest-capitol-riot/2021/01/19/fb84877a-5a4f-11eb-8bcf-3877871c819d_story.html
I don't need to see any larger conspiracies than those. I agree with Mathis; this all happened because (a)Trump is himself a sociopath who cannot accept his national loss; (b)Trump's sociopathic reaction was to lie about and try to steal back that election loss; (c)Lots of people believed Trump, and;(d) as Mathis says, "they (violently) acted accordingly."
That's good enough for me. And all that I need to see now, is hundreds of those shit heads going to court, getting humiliated in the press, and getting hit with federal criminal penalties that will brand them forever as felons. They can go back to working in the oil change shop or working part time for their friend who has a welding business. They just won't be part of any serious national debates anymore. The FBI will know who they are, and where they are. And if we as taxpayers don't have to pay for them to reside in federal prisons, it's okay by me.
"The people who came to Washington D.C. on Jan. 6 did so at Trump's invitation, and then marched to the Capitol at his behest. "
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances
As to why the FBI made this admission at this time, it's because of the cover that the Afghanistan fiasco provided. Plus they didn't want to look into their own actions with embedded agents on top of that other fiasco, where their agents cooked up a plot with a small group of misfits to kidnap a governor. People who didn't plead at this point are likely to defend themselves vigorously. Congress is looking to change hands, both House and Senate.
The only encouragement I take from this is that independent media, whether shoestring operations like RevolverNews or Greenwald's or the odd principled talking head with a megaphone, can still make a difference. This story doesn't take such a turn without them: the awful conditions in which they're holding the 1/6 political prisoners is all about getting them to plead and avoiding discovery. That was going to work without this reporting. Upshot: the baddies are going to be gunning hard for Tucker/Beattie/Greenwald and their ilk. Very inconvenient people.
I’m so impressed by the dot-connecting there! After all the Muslim immigrant bombers in Boston were simply lone wolves. Well two wolf-brothers working together. And the San Bernardino shooters were just poor immigrant line wolf— well a married couple of wolves. But it’s not like a movement. In fact that workplace violence at Fort Hood certainly is not part of a worldwide jihad or anything. Hey that Pulse nightclub shooter was also on a jihad but that was only his personal journey. Nope no theme here.
Definitely white supremacy must be behind it all.
First they tried to tell us it was sedition.
Then someone found a technicality that prevented them from charging that. (technicality is that there is now law against sedition)
Then they claimed "insurrection". But someone read the law and realized that there was no way to make it fit the legal definition of "insurrection" per the US Code.
So far the most serious charges have to do with "parading" I think improperly or some such.
What a farce.
And Michael Bryrd has been absolved for what looks to many to be the cold blooded murder of Ashley Babbit
If a Senator or two had stayed they would have been met with an American arguing his or her beliefs right to their faces, nothing more. But that is probably more than the vast majority could handle. It was a rowdy town hall meeting in the most American of town halls.
Whether you want to have fair and honest elections w massive voter turnout or an "insurrection" look to Puerto Rico to show how it's done.
https://history.house.gov/Oral-History/Events/1954-Shooting/
What Daskol said.
The problem with plea dealing out for time served is that most of these guys have already had their lives ruined by the 6 months in jail. The DOJ knew what they were doing.
It doesn't matter that they don't have evidence, the process was the punishment.
"Ben Sasse from Nebraska could have faced downed those protesters. He’s small, but tough; wrestled at Fremont high school and Yale. Ben can also act like fellow Nebraskan Henry Fonda."
When I tried to picture a Senator doing what I describe, I thought of them in this order: Bernie Sanders, Rand Paul, and Mitt Romney.
Mitt Romney and Miss Lindsey and Sen. Cramer (ND) have all talked about how frieghtened and scared they were and how the Capital Police "saved them". Senator Cramer called Ashli babbitt a "criminal" who deserved to be murdered (supposedly) by Capital Hill policeman Lt. Byrd.
NOthing is going to change until the Averge Republican Dumbos start voting these Senate Republican Clowns out of office. Conservatives love to whine and complain, but end up voting for the same crowd every election. And since Reagan, they've given us Dole, Romney, 2 Bushes, and McCain. The only time they've gotten smart was Trump.
David Begley said...
I should add that I heard Senator Ben Sasse address the Federalist Society in Omaha. He referred to January 6 as an insurrection. He lost my vote right there.
That is encouraging. Now, in truth, Sasse won't much want your vote until 2024 when he runs in presidential primaries. And he won't actually need your vote until 2026, when his current "Class II" term will be ending and he will need to seek reelection.
But I am encouraged that there are folks like you out there who won't even support a Republican unless there is full endorsement of the insurrection goals. I thought of your comment, David, in connection with Matt Gaetz's recent comment about Donald Trump being elected Speaker of the House after Republicans retake the majority after 2022. I thought, "these will be the litmus tests of 2022. Some Republicans won't accept anyone who condemns the insurrection, other Republicans won't accept anyone who supports the insurrection. And just think about an election where every Republican candidate, in a primary or general election, is asked to declare whether they support an election of Donald Trump as a non-member Speaker of the House. It will tear the election up, and insure that Republicans do not retake a majority. My party -- the Republican Party -- should not be allowed to run around the house with any sharp objects until they grow up.
This last week's "Truck bomb" "incident" is the same old playbook by the FBI.
Remember Cesar Sayoc in Florida, "Trump Supporter" in 2018 who lived in his van and was supposedly mailing bombs (that weren't really bombs) to Maxine Waters, John Brennan, James Clapper, Hillary Clinton, Robert DeNiro etc etc.
How neat and tidy that little FBI operation was to set that guy up.
Get ready for lots more of these setups from the FBI for 2022 and 24. I suspect our FBI "amigos" will have to "up their game" and actually cause alot of death now that they have been exposed.
I recently spent a couple of weeks studying the Ashli Babbitt incident. I had come to think that she was not actually shot and killed. On one of my blogs, I posted 37 articles supporting my opinion.
Eventually, however, I did recognize that Babbitt was shot and killed. Therefore I deleted all those 37 articles and started over with an article titled I've changed my mind about the Ashli Babbitt incident.
In my next article, I posed ten questions I still did have about the incident. After that, I posted an article answering some of those questions.
I still wonder if the incident was staged to some extent.
An incident was expected at that location. The scene was a large portal with two large doors and four glass windows. The doors were closed and locked, and four Capitol guards were standing in front of the portal. Behind the portal was a pile of furniture that served as a make-shift back-up barricade.
Apparently, the protesters were expected to break through the doors and/or windows, but then they would be impeded by the furniture barricade. Beyond that furniture barricade was an empty corridor.
A few of the protesters, who reached the portal first, violently attacked its doors and windows. The four Capitol guards did nothing to stop the attack. Rather, they walked away to the wall and merely watched the attack.
Likewise, most of the protesters simply watched the few who were attacking the doors and windows.
Meanwhile, an "emergency response team", which had been downstairs, came up into lobby where the protesters were. Just as this team reached the top of the stairs, Babbitt began to go through a broken-out window. She had climbed up onto a man's shoulders, and from there she began to go through the window.
I think that Babbitt's intention was to get into the empty corridor, remove some of the furniture barricade and then try to unlock the doors from the corridor side. In other words, her intention was not to go directly into the Congress area.
I think the shooter did have a plausible reason for shooting Babbitt. I think so because the few protesters who were attacking the portal were indeed about to break through. I do think that the shooter should have first walked out into the empty corridor, confronted the protesters face-to-face and perhaps fired a warning shot. However, the justification for the shooting is not my main interest.
Rather, my main interests are 1) the expectation of a violent attack on that portal and 2) the actual motives of the few protesters who violently attacked the portal.
I still suspect that the incident was staged to some extent.
Marco Rubio's been showing a little spunk lately, could see him making a stand.
There was no insurrection and there was no seditious conspiracy. Trump did not have advance knowledge of the plans of some of the protesters to invade the Capitol Building and prevent the Congress from certifying the electoral vote, and he did not conspire with anyone to do that. What he did do, in my humble opinion, was mount a campaign of lies about election fraud and a stolen election, for the purpose of bringing public pressure (from GOP voters) to bear on Senators and Congressmen to vote under 3 U.S.C. 15 to reject enough Biden electors to throw the election into the House of Representatives. Assuming for the sake of argument that my view of the facts is correct, does Trump’s conduct constitute an attempted coup? If he had succeeded in putting himself in the White House through a campaign of lies, even though he lost the election, would you call that a coup? I’m not sure what law he violated with his campaign of lies. It would be a dangerous road to go down to start punishing politicians for lying. But in my opinion, his conduct was outrageous, so much so that I couldn’t vote for him again, even though Biden and Harris are awful. And don’t tell me about the outrageous campaign of lies the Democrats told about Trump being a traitor, a Russian intelligence asset, in order to force him from office. I can’t vote for them, either.
Are you not? as I am befuddled : how can you call it THE PEOPLES HOUSE and charge people with trespass?
... Meanwhile hundreds of people have been imprisoned for several months, charged mostly with trespassing. ...
Dear professora : please shines some erudition on this
... And Michael Bryrd has been absolved for what looks to many to be the cold blooded murder of Ashley Babbit ...
... It doesn't matter that they don't have evidence, the process was the punishment...
i am trying visual juxtapositio :
Byrd was absolved after internal probe ... that was the process ??!!!
happy outcome for him ... yea !!!
Evidence? We don't need no stinkin' evidence.
I'm old enough to remember when protestors tried to prevent the Senate from their constitutional duties to confirm a Supreme Court justice. They even cornered a Senator in the elevators and intimidated him into changing his position. Yet those protestors were treated as heroes by the media. I wonder why.
When I tried to picture a senator doing what you described the list started and ended with Rand Paul
Ann's point is a great one. Almost never does a politician show personal courage in a crisis situation. Maybe Guiliani right after 9/11, but I have always been at least a little skeptical of that.
It surprises me because the primary objective of politicians is self promotion and advancement. Any crisis situation is an opportunity for them to get attention and be a "hero." Yet, they always are too scared to step up.
One recent exception was Jill Biden helping to beat back the protester at the Biden appearance during the early part of the campaign. She, of course, is not a politician in the sense of seeking her own office, so maybe she was in a different category. Of course, now, she is sort of president, so maybe she is a politician.
Back in the 60's, Civil Rights advocates showed great amounts of personal courage. But they were not truly politicians. They, for the most part, were sincerely seeking to help people as their primary objective.
Douglas B Levene at 10:15 AM
... What he did do, in my humble opinion, was mount a campaign of lies .... If he had succeeded in putting himself in the White House through a campaign of lies ... It would be a dangerous road to go down to start punishing politicians for lying. ...
You sure do like to accuse people of "lying" when you disagree with their opinion.
I suggest you watch this video: Seth Keshel Presents Ten Statistical Anomalies Highlighting 2020 Election Vote Fraud and Manipulation.
Keshel does not prove that the election was stolen. However, he might give you reason to respect more civilly the opinions of people who do suspect that it was stolen.
Worst insurrection ever.
More shots fired in Lady Gaga's dognapping.
Professor, I still see no reason why Chuck's posts get approved.
“A few of the protesters, who reached the portal first, violently attacked its doors and windows. The four Capitol guards did nothing to stop the attack. Rather, they walked away to the wall and merely watched the attack.”
The first amazing thing is that a lot of those breaking windows and inciting violence looked a bit like AntiFA, esp how they would walk up to windows, break them, incite Blacks to enter and loot the place, then sneak off, without stealing anything themselves. Time and time again, White guys starting the BLM rioting, but not participating in them. The second amazing thing is that a number of these window breaker instigators have been identified, BUT WERE NEVER ARRESTED.
“I think the shooter did have a plausible reason for shooting Babbitt. I think so because the few protesters who were attacking the portal were indeed about to break through. I do think that the shooter should have first walked out into the empty corridor, confronted the protesters face-to-face and perhaps fired a warning shot. However, the justification for the shooting is not my main interest.”
Nope. Doesn’t work that way. For the shooting to have been legally justified, the officer would have had to have had a reasonable fear of imminent death or great bodily injury of someone FROM HER. Any such fear could not have been reasonable. He was literally twice her size. He was armed. She was not. And he had cohorts standing right next to her, and others, also armed with weapons drawn, in front of him. Sure, the Capital Police (run by Pelosi and Schumer by then) may have, tortuously, allowed the use of lethal force under their ROE to protect the dignity of Pelosi’s antechamber. But it is still a violation of Babbitt’s Constitutional rights, in that she was deprived of her life without due process, or of actual exigent circumstances. She, herself, never threatened anyone else’s life. Not even close.
Nope. Not near sufficient.
If officer Byrd had brained Babbitt with a baton as she charged him or shot her after a warning, I could get there. But he essentially killed her for trespassing. He needed to present an explanation as to why, surrounded by his colleagues, he killed her with his pistol. Did he perceive her to be armed? Did he perceive her to be threatening grievous bodily harm to himself or others?
The answer is obvious. He panicked.
When I first saw the Taliban milling around inside the former president of Afghanistan's office, the first thing I thought of was the image from the January 6 protests and thought to myself, other than looking similar, these are two distinctly different situations.
They were protesters, though, not killers!
And how many people died in this mostly peaceful protest?
Bruce Hayden at 12:57 PM
Doesn’t work that way. For the shooting to have been legally justified, the officer would have had to have had a reasonable fear of imminent death or great bodily injury of someone FROM HER. Any such fear could not have been reasonable. He was literally twice her size. He was armed. She was not. And he had cohorts standing right next to her, and others, also armed with weapons drawn, in front of him.
As I said, I think the shooter should have walked out into the empty corridor, confronted the protesters face-to-face and perhaps fired a warning shot.
That said, I do think a legal justification for the shooting is plausible. (I am not a lawyer.)
Watch he Jayden X video (the first video on this webpage), beginning at about 34:30. There you will see that Ashli Babbitt was just one element of a larger situation. A group of protesters was about to break through the portal. After that happened, it was likely that a mob would invade the Congress area.
Babbitt was the first person coming through the portal. Shooting that one invader did stop the mob invasion into the Congress area.
We can't hear well what was being said. It's likely that the mob was warned that the first person through the portal would be shot. If so, then Babbitt was warned and she ignored the warning.
I would like to know in much more detail what happened in that incident.
In particular, I would like to know the identities, motives and current legal status of the few protesters who were breaking through the portal.
LT Byrd did not have a "Plausible reason" for killing Ashli Babbitt. The lack of outrage about her Murder just shows that all the outrage of Floyd's death was fake. Its just whatever is politically expedient.
What's odd about the whole thing is the way the Conservative Corporate media refused to touch the story for six months. Its only when Trump tweeted "who killed Ashli Babbitt?" in July and Carlson did a story on Fox that they finally covered it in any great depth. Its like someone sent out the message that it was OK to report on it.
Limited blogger: "Marco Rubio's been showing a little spunk lately, could see him making a stand."
Any "spunk" Marco shows is a ruse to attempt to patina himself with something of the grass roots populist "color" since Marco realizes his role in the frameup of Donald Trump might get buried permanently and he wants to ride that wave.....
....but if he ever got in it would represent the 3rd term of Bush + the 1st term of McCain and the hatred of and betrayal of the republican base would be immediate and total.
I don't need your sasse.
Ann's point is a great one. Almost never does a politician show personal courage in a crisis situation. Maybe Guiliani right after 9/11, but I have always been at least a little skeptical of that.
It surprises me because the primary objective of politicians is self promotion and advancement. Any crisis situation is an opportunity for them to get attention and be a "hero." Yet, they always are too scared to step up.
One recent exception was Jill Biden helping to beat back the protester at the Biden appearance during the early part of the campaign. She, of course, is not a politician in the sense of seeking her own office, so maybe she was in a different category. Of course, now, she is sort of president, so maybe she is a politician.
Back in the 60's, Civil Rights advocates showed great amounts of personal courage. But they were not truly politicians. They, for the most part, were sincerely seeking to help people as their primary objective.
'(I left the "Your husband, Donald" part in the otherwise heavily elided quote, because... it surprised me... weirdly.)'
Althouse misses very few opportunities to point out irony.
"an anonymous former official said".
I always stop reading "news" articles at that point. There's no way to distinguish anonymous from making shit up.
“And how many people died in this mostly peaceful protest?“
None of these protesters was a killer. The five people who died were killed either by natural causes, a drug overdose or by murder (of a protester by a Capitol Police Officer.)
Let’s see…
* Friday afternoon news release… ✓
* The story completely eviscerates
narrative pimped by ALL Democrats,
some sorry-ass Republicans and
corporate Media Monkeys w/bylines… ✓
* this important story is mostly ignored
by the American media… ✓
* no one that pushed this malevolent
disinformation will be held accountable
in any way shape or form… ✓
“Sasse !!!”
—- Phil Hartman
The Reuters piece is wrong by claiming DOJ is not charging what it calls “serious” charges. Not once does the story mention obstruction, which also carries a maximum sentence of 20 years, and has been a charge against more than 200 defendants.
Furthermore, Reuters purports to rule out “more serious, politically-loaded charges,” but it never even whispers "terrorism." Under our terrorism laws, charges can be made in court or requested to be used as sentencing enhancements. And that has and will likely continue to happen. For example, the militaristic Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, Boogaloo Bois, et al conspiracies include charges for damage to government buildings exceeding $1,000, which constitutes a crime of terrorism, and Justice has already pursued that issue as terrorism in a number of bail disputes. Thus DOJ is calling the leaders of the militia conspiracies terrorists. But Reuters is "smarter than the average bear" and doesn’t think of domestic terrorism as terrorism.
The Associated Press and most local newspapers have referred to this peaceful protest as an "insurrection" for seven months, even though not one person has been charged with insurrection.
The AP is a wing of the democrat party. Never trust anything they write. Tell your friends.
NEVER TRUST THE ASSOCIATED PRESS.
Revolver News raises some very disturbing questions.
“… the unindicted co-conspirators appear to be much more aggressive and egregious participants in the very so-called “conspiracy” serving as the basis for charging those indicted.”
“Person Two” planned logistics with Caldwell days in advance of 1/6, stayed in the same hotel room for days together, and when Caldwell allegedly “stormed the barricades” into restricted areas outside the U.S. Capitol, Person Two is alleged to have “stormed the barricades” right beside him.
But five months since the acts both co-conspirators allegedly committed, only Caldwell has been charged. Person Two, for some mysterious reason, remains an unindicted co-conspirator.
Person Two is with Caldwell side by side, doing the same actions, going into the same restricted areas of the Capitol, coming out, every step of the way from the beginning of the day until they return to a hotel they share together. But for some strange reason, Person Two, who could not have gotten a plea deal, is not indicted, named, or pursued at all.
Person Three: Consider the following from paragraph 64 of the Caldwell indictment:
On January 1, 2021, CALDWELL wrote to CROWL, “Check with Cap. I recommended the following hotel to her which STILL has rooms (unbelieveble).” CALDWELL then sent a link to the Comfort Inn Ballston, the same hotel that he recommended to others on January 1. CALDWELL continued, “[PERSON TWO] and I are setting up shop there. [PERSON THREE] has a room and is bringing someone. He will be the quick reaction force. Its going to be cold. We need a place to spend the night before minimum. [PERSON ONE] never contacted me so [PERSON TWO] and I are going our way. I will probably do pre-strike on the 5th though there are things going on that day. Maybe can do some night hunting. Oathkeeper friends from North Carolina are taking commercial buses up early in the morning on the 6th and back same night. [PERSON THREE] will have the goodies in case things go bad and we need to get heavy.” [DOJ – Fourth Superseding Indictment]
Indeed, the curious lack of indictments filed against the entire gamut of Persons referenced as playing leadership roles within the Oath Keepers on 1/6 raises red flags. This includes: Person 2, Person 3, Person 10, Person 14, Person 15, Person 16, Person 19 and Person 20, along with many co-conspirators listed only as “an individual.”
For example, while transgender bar owner and Ohio Oath Keeper Jessica Watkins is inside the mezzanine of the U.S. Capitol, she is being directed, encouraged and egged on by “an individual” whose identity the DOJ clearly knows, since the DOJ stipulates the “individual” had “participated in at least one prior Oath Keeper operation:”
There is a great deal more from the indictments and you can read all of it here.
https://www.revolver.news/2021/06/federal-foreknowledge-jan-6-unindicted-co-conspirators-raise-disturbing-questions/
And now, suddenly we have the FBI leak to Reuters that there’s no conspiracy. Perhaps it’s Mission accomplished” as every NYTimes reader is convinced that Republicans are the New Taliban seeking to overthrow the country.
Perhaps the FBI doesn't want to have to provide evidence of their involvement in the riot to the court.
But what if elements of the federal government were active instigators in the most egregious and spectacular aspects of 1/6, amounting to a monumental entrapment scheme used as a pretext to imprison otherwise harmless protestors at the Capitol — and in a much larger sense used to frame the entire MAGA movement as potential domestic terrorists.
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