Daily Archives: January 9, 2022

The surface-level facts of what happened on Jan. 6, 2021 are not very complicated. Trump hosted a well-attended rally in Washington, D.C. to stoke anger over Congress certifying the results of the previous Novembers election. After weeks of telling his supporters that the election had been stolen, he gave a speech near the White House where he told his supporters to fight like hell and said he expected them to head to the Capitol. Some of them did, and some of them were already there, and together the two groups coalesced into a mob that broke into the building, resulting in five deaths and dozens of injuries.

In realty, this is all indisputable, but the American right-wing has been, at best, distantly orbiting reality for a while now, and over the past year conservative media, politicians, and everyday Americans have methodically constructed an alternate history of what happened on Jan. 6, one in which a deadly attempt to overthrow American democracy either wasnt that big of a deal, or it was a big deal but it was perpetrated by a combination of left-wing activists, federal law enforcement, and Democratic politicians anyone but Trump and his supporters, really.

These alternative facts, to borrow a phrase from the early days of the Trump administration, are immutable in the eyes of their adherents. The lack of evidence supporting them is entirely irrelevant. In a way, its the whole point, allowing believers to transmute what happened as they see fit, tailoring it to elude any inconvenient actual facts that may arise. As long as they keep their claims vague and difficult to disprove unequivocally can we ever be totally sure absolutely nothing untoward took place during the 2020 election? theyre as good as gospel.

Conspiracy theories are powerful because they introduce premises that prevent evidence-based falsification, Dolores Albarracn, a University of Pennsylvania psychologist who studies conspiracy theories, tells Rolling Stone. For a realistic style of thinking, if there is no evidence for a belief, the lack of evidence invalidates the belief. Conspiracy theories undermine this logic and make it so that lack of evidence or evidence to the contrary proves the belief.

Its a fancy way of saying that conspiracy theories about Jan. 6 are here to stay. Below is a breakdown of how right-wing media and conservative politicians planted some of the most pernicious among them in the minds of millions.

The pictures, video, and testimony from defendants arrested for breaking into the Capitol dont lie: The mob was made up almost entirely of Trump supporters. The idea that members of antifa infiltrated the crowd to start causing mayhem was pushed early on by a right-wing media apparatus desperate to deflect blame from the president and his supporters.

Fox News host Laura Ingraham did it on the day of the riot. Ingraham tweeted that Trump should call off the rioters, but also suggested that antifa supporters may have been responsible for the violence. Brian Kilmeade of Fox & Friends a day later expressed disbelief that Trump supporters were behind the violence. I do not know Trump supporters that have ever demonstrated violence that I know of in a big situation, he said, tempering his acknowledgement that Trump supporters were involved.

The House committee investigating the attack revealed in December that both Ingraham and Kilmeade on Jan. 6 texted Chief of Staff Mark Meadows urging him to get the president to call off the violence. The text, along with a similar pleas from Sean Hannity, imply that Trump would have been able to influence the violent mob.

Republican politicians pushed the unfounded claim, too. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) took to the House floor on the morning of Jan. 7 to claim that some of the people who breached the Capitol were members of the violent terrorist group antifa. He cited a since debunked and corrected Washington Times article, noting that he didnt know if the reports are true. He made the claim anyway, as did Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), who tweeted on Jan. 6 that the riot has all the hallmarks of Antifa provocation. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) told Lou Dobbs that there is some indication that fascist antifa elements were involved, that they embedded themselves in the Trump protests. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) later said that fake Trump protesters were responsible for the violence.

The list goes on, and despite a total lack of evidence, the belief that left-wing agitators were responsible for the attack became orthodoxy among Trump supporters, and a go-to defense for anyone trying to defend Trump or Republicans in the wake of the insurrection.

Its hard to parse how a siege that left five dead and dozens upon dozens of law enforcement officers injured could be framed as a peaceful protest, but it was.

It started immediately, too. Fox News anchors were tripping over themselves to describe the in-progress riot as peaceful. Its not like its a siege, it doesnt seem. It seems like they are protesting, said Bret Baier, one of the networks relatively respectable news anchors. Another one, Martha MacCallum, said the riot remains peaceful, adding that it was a huge victory for the protesters. Griff Jenkins, who was on the scene, echoed this sentiment. It has been peaceful, everything we have seen so far has been nothing but peaceful, but they are definitely fired up, he said. The chants I heard the most today was, Fight for Trump. That is what many feel they are doing here, protesting, we will see where the day goes. Mike Tobin, Fox News on-the-ground protest correspondent, even said that aside from the things that were broken getting into the Capitol they say there is no vandalism.

These comments may have been made before the full extent of the violence was understood, but the fact that this initial softening of what actually happened was being done by Fox News news side in addition to its propaganda-spewing primetime anchors was crucial in laying the groundwork for conspiracies to take hold, as Angelo Carusone, CEO of the media watchdog group Media Matters, explained to Rolling Stone.

The idea that people like Brett Baier were starting to question this or downplay it was, to me, the real fulcrum point, he says. They softened the ground early on, and I really think that that part is very significant. Its not that I think that the right-wing fever swamps in the rest of the right-wing media would not have done what they did. They certainly would have. But that audience is always going to be lost. Its the second, third, and fourth rings within the conservative circles that really define where the lines and the boundaries are in Republican politics and then in the larger conversation.

The idea that the mob was made up people who were simply protesting persisted throughout right-wing media and among Republicans in Congress. The most shameless promoter of the idea that the riot was no big deal may have been Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.), who said in May that while some were violent, many walked through the Capitol in an orderly fashion staying between the stanchions and ropes, taking videos and pictures. He then likened the deadly siege that left the Capitol ransacked to a normal tourist visit.

Photos from inside the Capitol show a panic-stricken Clyde helping barricade the doors of the House chamber and taking cover behind an officer with a gun drawn and aimed at the barricaded door as rioters tried to muscle their way inside.

Sure, antifa infiltrated the crowd of peaceful Trump supporters and started wreaking havoc, but did you also know that the entire siege was a false flag operation orchestrated by the FBI? It took a little longer for right-wing media to come around to the idea that the whole thing was a Deep State conspiracy, but thats where it is now.

The most notable pusher of the FBI theory has been Tucker Carlson, who in November released a documentary on Fox Nation teasing that the riot was a false flag and a plot against the people. The documentary features Darren Beattie, a former Trump speechwriter who was fired in 2018 after he appeared on a panel with a white nationalist. PolitiFact credits Beattie with originating the false flag idea, citing a purely speculative article published in June by his Revolver News website. Carlson seized on the ideatwo days later, and even invited Beattie onto his show to push it on multiple occasions, according to The Washington Post.

The mainstreaming of the idea that the FBI orchestrated the riot epitomized how quick conspiracy theories could bubble up from the fringes and find their place in national conservative media. There was this cauldron in the fever swamps churning out plausible alternatives, say Carusone. It was antifa. This was a setup. This was the FBI. This was a false flag. You beat that drum that enough and you get from the fever swamps to Steve Bannons program to then Tucker Carlson and Fox News documentary about Jan. 6. Theres a straight line between the primary and principle promoter of that conspiracy theory about the about the FBI and the infiltration, and Tuckers documentary.

Conspiracy theorists in Congress like Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz quickly followed Carlson in pushing the false flag theory, which then spread like wildfire through right-wing circles in the ensuing months. It made its way to Trump himself in December, when he co-signed the idea during an appearance on Candace Owens podcast.Right, it seems like that, Trump said after Owens posited that FBI informants urged people to storm the Capitol. And you have BLM and you had antifa people. I have very little doubt about that and they were antagonizing and they were agitating.

The most important part of all of this, and every other bad thing that happens in this country as a result of the former president, is that Trump bears no responsibility. In reality, Trump was the tip of the spear of disinformation about the election results and spent the months preceding the riot riling up anger in his supporters. He promoted Jan. 6 in December and told supporters: Be there, will be wild! Once theyd arrived, Trump told supporters at the rally to fight like hell to reclaim the country, concluding his speech by saying he expected attendees to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. Were going to the Capitol, he said. Were going to try to give our Republicans, the weak ones, because the strong ones dont need any of our help, were going to try to give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.

Trumps rhetoric is indisputable. So is its impact. Many of the defendants on trial for their role in the riots have pointed their finger at Trump. Trump called us, rioter Danny Rodrigues told investigators in March. Trump called us to D.C. If hes the commander in chief and the leader of our country, then hes calling for help. I thought he was calling for help. I thought we were doing the right thing.

So too have the Capitol Police officers who have sued Trump for physical and emotional damages, the latest lawsuits coming on Tuesday. So too has Sandra Garza, the partner of Brian Sicknick, the officer who died after engaging rioters during the attack. Garza says both she and Sicknick supporter Trump before the attack. No longer. I hold Donald Trump 100 percent responsible for what happened on Jan. 6, she told PBS this week. I think he needs to be in prison.

The texts Ingraham, Hannity, and Kilmeade sent to Meadows on Jan. 6 suggest they believed Trump had something to do with it, too, and at the very least that the rioters were beholden to him. It would be sacrilege, however, for any of them, or anyone else on Fox News or another outlet down the right-wing media food chain, to broadcast that Trump was culpable. He sat and watched the riot unfold on television, something the Jan. 6 committee says it has first-hand evidence of, hearing pleas to intervene from Don Jr. and Ivanka and whomever else, and doing nothing.

It wasnt his fault, though. It was the Democrats.

The American people deserve to know the truth that Nancy Pelosi bears responsibility as Speaker of the House for the tragedy that occurred on Jan. 6, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) said in July. Rather than providing [the Capitol Police] with the support and resources they needed and they deserved, she prioritized her partisan, political optics over their safety, the number-three Republican in the House added of the House speaker. The number-one Republican in the House agreed. If there is a responsibility for this Capitol, on this side, it rests with the Speaker, said Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).

The biggest lie of them all, the whopper that fueled the plan to overturn the election results, that brought Trump and thousands of his supporters to the Ellipse as Congress certified those results, and that inspired many of those supporters to then storm the Capitol in an unprecedented effort to subvert democratic process, is that the election the incumbent president lost by 74 Electoral College votes, over seven millions actual votes, and over four percentage points was somehow stolen. There is not evidence that anything resembling significant fraud occurred, despite audits, lawsuits, and the desperate efforts of Trump and his cronies to uncover something anything to suggest the vote was rigged.

The problem is that millions of Americans simply dont care about the absence of evidence. They wanted Trump to win, Trump is telling them he did win, Republicans who know better arent correcting him, and so theyve joined the Stop the Steal party. Theyve bought all the merchandise, theyve memorized the talking points beaten into the discourse by everyone from Trump to right-wing YouTube hosts, and theyre calling for an authoritarian takeover of the United States to avenge a Democratic coup that never happened.

The party has grown bigger than most could have imagined, and by proxy has absorbed mainstream conservatives. An ABC/Ipsos poll released this week found that a whopping 71 percent of Republicans believe Trump was the rightful winner of the election. Another from the University of Massachusetts found 71 percent of Republicans believe Bidens election was illegitimate. A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll put the number at 58 percent, but its hardly encouraging that a simple rather than overwhelming majority of one of the nations two major parties has bought into what might be the most outlandish, pernicious conspiracy theory in American history. Unfortunately, such is the state of things in the United States in 2022.

It wasnt always like this, though. Carusone, who has been tracking right-wing media misinformation for years, remembers how back in 2009 the only real examples of right-wing media pushing reckless conspiracy theories were Glenn Beck talking about FEMA death camps and Obama hacking into GMs OnStar system. It was such a big deal when it happened that I remember it a decade later, he says. But its happening multiple times a day now. The audience has more kinetic energy and theyre scraping increasingly what used to be the fringes to keep that cauldron swirling.

View post:

A Guide to the Rights Unhinged Conspiracy Theories about Jan. 6 - Rolling Stone

Daryl and Daniel Johnson pleaded guilty on Tuesday to one felony count each of civil disorder.

WASHINGTON A father and son who bragged they were among the first to enter the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6 will face up to 5 years in prison after pleading guilty Tuesday to one felony count each.

Daryl Johnson, of St. Angsar, Iowa, and his son, 29-year-old Daniel Johnson, of Austin, Minnesota, appeared before U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich this week to enter pleas of guilty to civil disorder.

According to a probable cause affidavit filed in federal court, the Johnsons were identified by multiple tipsters, including a St. Angsar police officer who knew the senior Johnson because his father had previously been the towns mayor.

A subsequent investigation by the FBI allegedly turned up videos of the Johnsons rushing the police line inside the riot as part of the crowd that opened the rotunda doors. Investigators also found multiple posts on their social media accounts in which they claimed to have been in attendance.

In one post on Facebook, the FBI says, the younger Johnson wrote that, I was one of the first ones inside the capitol building.

In multiple posts on his page, obtained via a search warrant, Daryl Johnson reportedly claimed damage to the Capitol on January 6 was actually caused by Antifa.

What the media is saying is completely false. It was Antifa causing the damage. I was there! Daniel Johnson reportedly wrote. Trump supporters were restraining the Antifa people.

On Tuesday, the Johnsons said in federal court that they were actually the ones committing civil disorder inside the Capitol. The charge carries a maximum sentence of up to 5 years in prison and a maximum fine of up to $20,000.

The Johnsons arent the first father-son pair arrested in connection to the case. Two Delaware men Kevin Seefried and his son Hunter Seefried were indicted in April on charges of entering a restricted building and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds. A photograph of Kevin Seefried carrying a large Confederate battle flag through the U.S. Capitol building became one of the most recognizable images of the Capitol riot.

A sentencing was scheduled for the Johnsons in front of Friedrich on April 12.

We're tracking all of the arrests, charges and investigations into the January 6 assault on the Capitol. Sign up for ourCapitol Breach Newsletterhere so that you never miss an update.

The rest is here:

Father and son face 5 years in prison for rushing police inside US Capitol - WUSA9.com

It hasbeen almost one year since a mob supportingnow-former President Donald Trump fueled by baseless voter fraud claims stormed the U.S. Capitolon Jan. 6 in an attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.

The attack led to deaths, injuries andmore than700 arrests, and it temporarily halted Congress' certification of President Joe Bidens Electoral College win. In the following months, a flurry of falsehoods and conspiracy theories about the riot were promoted online, where debunked claimscontinue to circulate.

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With the first anniversary of the Capitol riot approaching, heres a roundup of USA TODAYs fact checksrelating to theinsurrection that touch on election misinformation, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's role in the attack, misleading images and videos, claims about politicians, comparisons to past demonstrations and even false claims that reports predicted the attack.

Capitol rioters charged in the Jan. 6 attack have cited the baseless narrative that the 2020 presidential election was stolen by Democrats.The myth waspromoted by Trump, his closest allies and conservative media personalities, all of whom relied on false claimsabout election technology, vote counting, mail-in ballots and voter turnout.

Biden legally won the presidential race by more than 7 million votes, and his victory was certified by the Electoral College. Hand recounts and independent audits across the country did not change the election's outcome and failed to turn upany evidence of widespread wrongdoing by poll workers or voters.But that still didnt stop people from claiming otherwise.

The claim: The 2020 presidential election was 'rigged'

Our rating: False

A mountain of evidence including lawsuits, recounts, forensic audits and partisan reviewshave all affirmed the election results. Officials from both parties have repeatedly debunked claims of widespread voter fraud. With 306 electoral votes, Biden beat Trump in the election. Read more

The claim: Dominion Voting Systems deleted votes for Trump, switched votes to Biden

Our rating: False

There is no evidence Dominion, a private company supplying voting systems in 28 states, deleted or changed votes in the 2020 election, according to a national coalition and election law experts. A few counties experienced minor technology issues on Election Day, but the errors did not affect the vote counts. Read more

The claim: Several key states had more ballots cast than registered voters

Our rating: False

Data and individual state reporting reviewed by USA TODAY shows no state in the U.S. had more than 100% voter turnout in the 2020 election. Posts claiming differently are using improper data sets or flawed data analysis techniques. Read more

The claim: Nevada's presidential election included duplicate voting, dead voters, fake addresses, noncitizens voting andout of state voters

Our rating: False

Claims about widespread voter fraud in Nevada's 2020 election stem from a failed lawsuit, and a district court concluded that no illegal votes were cast and counted. Biden won Nevada's six electoral votes. Read more.

The claim: An audit 'conclusively shows'voter fraud affected Arizona's election outcome

Our rating: False

An audit of Arizona's 2020 election results conducted by cybersecurity firm Cyber Ninjas did not surface any evidence of widespread voter fraud that changed the election's outcome. The review, along with other handrecounts,confirmed Biden won Maricopa County. Read more.

The claim: An investigation found more 'illegal votes'cast in Wisconsin in 2020 than Joe Biden's margin of victory

Our rating: False

A report from the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty investigating the integrity of the 2020 election found no evidence of widespread fraud, and the group's findings were misstated online. A hand recount, audit and lawsuits confirmed Biden's victory in Wisconsin. Read more.

Here are more fact-checksanalyzingwhats true and false about the 2020 electionand voting by mail.

Just hours after rioters breached the Capitol, misinformation about what happened spread rapidly on social media, and a false narrative blaming anti-fascist activists for inciting the violence made its way to the House floor that same evening. Many such claims circulated throughout 2021.

The claim: A facial recognition firm claimed Antifa infiltrated pro-Trump rioters at the Capitol

Our rating: False

Claims that members of Antifa disguised as Trump supporters orchestrated the insurrection are baseless and stem from a rumor that a facial recognition company identified left-wing activistsamong the rioters. The technology firm mentioned in the claims refuted the story, and there is no evidence Antifa was responsible for the attack. Read more

The claim: The shirtless man pictured in the Capitol breach is with Antifa and Black Lives Matter

Our rating: False

Jake Angeli, a man who was pictured at the Capitol shirtless wearing a fur hat with horns, is a well-known Trump and QAnon supporter he is not tied to Black Lives Matter or Antifa. The claim is part of the false larger conspiracytheory that Trumps supporters were not actually behind the riot. Read more

The claim: A "known Antifa member"was paid $70,000 for his video of the riot

Our rating: Partly false

News outlets paid Utah activist John Sullivan roughly $90,000 for video footage he captured during the Capitol riot, but he is not linked to any anti-fascist groups and has denied being associated with the movement. Read more

The claim: FBI operatives organized the attack on the U.S. Capitol

Our rating: False

Theres no evidence unindicted co-conspirators listed in federal charging documents related to the Jan. 6 attack are undercover FBI agents or federal informants. Legal experts say the term cant be used to describe undercover government operatives. Rioters have been identified by authorities as Trump supporters, conspiracy theorists and members of far-right groups. Read more

The claim: CNN employees took part in the riot

Our rating: False

Posts claiming CNN employees were among the Capitol rioters are unfounded. Jade Sacker, mentioned in the claims, is a freelance journalist and has never worked for the cable news outlet. Read more

The claim: A man died froma heart attack after accidentallyusinga stun gun on himself at the Capitol riot

Our rating: False

Kevin Greeson of Alabama died on the Capitol grounds after a heart attack, and his wife told USA TODAY he had a history of high blood pressure. He did not accidentally stun himself.Read more

The claim: The FBI told a Senate committee that the FBI did not recover any guns at the riot

Our rating: Missing context

Jill Sanborn, assistant director of the FBIs counterterrorism division,said the FBI did not recover any firearms at the Capitol riot. But she also noted that she cannot speak for other law enforcement agencies. The Department of Justicecharged rioters with bringing firearms to the Capitol grounds. Read more

Social media users have triedto shift blame by spreading false claims aboutPelosi in the wake of the Capitol attack.

The claim: Pelosi rejected Trump's request for 10,000 National Guard troops to be deployed before Jan. 6

Our rating: False

Trumps claim that Pelosi blocked his formal request for 10,000 National Guard troops ahead of the "Stop the Steal" rally isfalse. The Pentagon said there is no record of the request, and Pelosis office said she was not contacted about deploying the National Guard. Testimony and a Department of Defense memo about Jan. 6 also confirms that. Read more

The claim: Nancy Pelosi was in charge of Capitol Police on Jan. 6

Our rating: False

Pelosi was not in charge of the Capitol Police at the time of the riot. The agency is overseen by the Capitol Police Board, which is made up of the House and Senate sergeants-at-arms and the Capitol architect. Read more.

The claim: Nancy Pelosi refuses to take responsibility for causing the insurrection

Our rating: False

In short, Pelosi wasn't responsible. Capitol Police told USA TODAY that committees from the House and Senate and a Capitol Police Board are responsible for overseeing operations, not Pelosi. Read more

The claim: Pelosi won't let Capitol Police testify about what happened on Jan. 6

Our rating: False

The claim that Pelosi is blocking testimonyis a reversal of what actually happened. Republican lawmakers tried to stop a hearing from taking place, while Democrats pushed for one. Read more

The claim: Special forcestook Nancy Pelosi's laptop during the riot

Our rating: False

A laptop belonging to the House speaker's office was stolen by pro-Trump rioters, not special forces. Read more

Photos and videosof the Capitol riot went viral online. But in many cases, the footage was doctored, outdated or unrelated to Jan. 6.

The claim: Police officer is the man who carrieda Confederate flag during the Capitol riot

Our rating: False

An image purporting to show a police officer carrying a Confederate flag during the attack is false. The man in the photo was identified by the FBI as Kevin Seefried, who was charged in connection with the riot. He is not a police officer.

The claim: Capitol workers threw away an American flag as they prepared for the transition of power

Our rating: Missing context

Capitol employees did not throw out an American flag in preparation for Bidens inauguration. The photo was captured in the aftermath of the riot. Read more

The claim: Video shows Trump family celebrating the riot from a nearby tent

Our rating: False

Days after the riot, a video went viral purporting to show the Trump family celebrating amid the attack. But monitors seen in the clip as well asa timeline of the events on Jan. 6 prove the video was captured before Trump's supporters stormed the Capitol.Read more

The claim: Chuck Norris was at the Capitol riot

Our rating: False

Martial artist and actor Chuck Norris did not take part in the riot. His manager told USA TODAY he was on his ranchin Texas on Jan. 6 and confirmed that a photo on social media of a man resembling Norrisis not actually him. Read more

The claim: Images show pro-Trump rally in Washington, D.C., in January

Our rating: False

Photos of crowds at the 2018 March for Our Lives rally and 2017 Womens March were passed off on social media as pro-Trump demonstrations on Jan. 6. Read more

The claim: Image shows a caravan of Trump supporters traveling to Washington

Our rating: False

A photo purporting to show dozens of vehicles heading to Washington to protest the presidential election results on Jan. 6 was actually taken in San Francisco at a pro-Trump truck rally inOctober 2020. Read more

The claim: A viral video shows a man screaming about being placed on the no-fly listbecause of the riot at the Capitol

Our rating: False

A video shows a man being asked to leave an American Airlines flight for a mask violation, not for being placed on the no-fly list because of the Capitol riot. Read more

The claim: Demonstrators erected a cross in front of the Capitol

Our rating: Missing context

A photo showspro-Trump demonstrators erected a cross in front of the Michigan Capitol in Lansing, not in Washington.Read more

The claim: The insurrection was an event hosted by the Stanford Federalist Society

Our rating: Satire

An image of an event flyer claiming the Capitol riot took place during astudent-run Stanford Federalist Society meeting with guest speakers Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is fake. Read more

A number of hoaxes concerning the whereabouts of politicians during the Capitol riot and their responses circulated online afterthe insurrection.

The claim:Acting Pardon Attorney Rosalind Sargent-Burns said Trump was "strongly considering"pardoning Capitol rioters

Our rating: False

Trump didnt pardon Capitol rioters during his final days in office. At the time, the Justice Department issued a statement saying it was not involved in efforts to pardon people involved with the heinousacts" that took place at the Capitol. Read more

The claim: Rep. Lauren Boebert took a photo with rioters before a tour of Capitol on Jan. 5

Our rating: False

An image claiming to show Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., with rioters at the Capitol a day before the attack was actually captured in December 2019 at the Colorado State Capitol in Denver. She was posing with members of several pro-Trump groups. Read more

The claim: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted that Capitol rioters stole her shoes

Our rating: False

Read this article:

Fact check roundup: Debunking false narratives about the Jan. 6 Capitol riot - USA TODAY

Among those still in the if-everyone-would-only-ignore-Trump-hed-simply-go-away camp, Joe Biden finally realized that the concept wasnt working. Not only was it not working, it was a disaster. And not only has it been a disaster, theres no easy way to fix it.

Some are saying Biden gave the best speech of his presidency Thursday on the anniversary of January 6 OK, a low bar but in this case, there was no need for soaring rhetoric, just plainspoken truth. It was time a year after the Capitol riot/attempted coup and the GOPs continued embrace of the Big Lie for Biden to finally and straightforwardly call out Donald Trump and his followers/enablers for holding a dagger to the throat of American democracy.

In his speech, Biden basically read out an indictment of the former president, which was, in effect, an indictment of the Trump-fully-owned Republican Party and the only plank in its platform, which is to promulgate the Big Lie. For Trump, that is basically the entirety of his message. That is, if you dont include his attacks on the media, antifa, Black Lives Matter, Democrats, Liz Cheney, immigrants, refugees from shithole countries, Adam Schiff and any Republican who dared to vote to impeach him or convict him or simply question the holy writ that is the Big Lie.

Biden called Trump a sore loser loser being for Trump the most damning epithet whose bruised ego matters more to him than our democracy or our constitution. He cant accept he lost.

For Bidens part, he ran on unifying the country and couldnt seem to accept the notion that to still believe in bipartisanship is a suckers game. When nearly three in five Republicans still tell pollsters that they dont think your election was legitimate, its past time to change tactics.

Not a single Republican senator showed up for ceremonies commemorating all that was lost on that January day when the Capitol came under siege. Only one Republican House member the now-exiled-from-her-own-party Liz Cheney, accompanied by her father, Dick showed up. When you see Democrats lining up to praise Dick Cheney, you know the world has gone either upside down or sideways. A few Republican senators did leave January 6 statements, a very few. Where was Mitt Romney, whose life may have been saved as he himself has often expressed by a brave member of the Capitol police? As the New Yorkers Susan Glasser put it of the Republican boycott: Thats why the story of January 6, 2022, is also the story of the elephant not in the room.

Want to get early access to Mikes columns? Click here to become a premium member of The Sun.

Maybe the most telling moment of the day came when Ted Cruz who has called the storming of the Capitol a terrorist attack had to go on Tucker Carlsons Fox News program to apologize for telling that truth. It was more groveling than apologizing, actually, but we already knew who holds the real power in Republican politics. The party line is to say either that it was just another tourist-filled day at the Capitol or that the FBI had stoked the insurrection or that the rioters were really antifa. Even in the era of the Big Lie, those talking points cant all be true at once, but no matter.

Biden mentioned Trump 19 times in his speech but never by name, which must have infuriated the former guy, even as he plots his return to power from Elba-al-Margo. And while most Americans believe the Big Lie is, in fact, a big lie, you can hardly expect Bidens words to have any impact on the Trump cultists or those GOP politicians lacking the spine to stand up either to Trump or to his base or to Tucker Carlson.

Read more of Mike Littwins columns.

But they could change the tone of the conversation, which desperately needs changing. Trump is Trump, the carnival-barking demagogic huckster he always has been. There really isnt much to learn there.

What there is to learn is how Trump managed to get elected in the first place, how more than 70 million Americans voted to re-elect him in 2020, how he has been able to tighten his hold on the GOP even when out of power. Ive seen many attempts at explaining all this, but Im not sure weve hit on the answer.

But without taking on Trump directly, you cant really take on the base of Trump cultists, the true believers who have been manipulated maybe duped is the better word by Trump, Hannity, Carlson, Bannon and the rest.

Kyle Clark, the 9News anchor, drew some national attention when he said that the media fails when applying a double standard to politicians like Lauren Boebert, who is so often so outrageous that her unstinting support for lies, Big and Little, is often overlooked because of her constant assault on the truth.

The real truth is that though Boebert may be an extreme example, shes hardly alone. While most of the responsible media now openly call out the Big Lie, they dont often press those Republicans who only sporadically parrot the lie or those who simply refuse to answer when asked about it. For me, this was the most important part of Bidens speech. He credited those courageous men and women in the Republican Party standing against Trumps lies.

But then he came after the not-so-courageous majority, including those who have passed voting laws in 17 Republican-led states Not to protect the vote, Biden said, but to deny it; not only to suppress the vote, but to subvert it; not to strengthen or protect our democracy, but because the former president lost.

At this moment, Biden added, we must decide: What kind of nation are we going to be?

Thats all thats at stake, I guess. On Friday, Biden came to Colorado to console survivors of the Marshall fire, encouraging them to hang on to one another. On Tuesday, his role changes. He goes to Atlanta to call for passage of two voter-reform bills, which would counteract some of the damage to be done by those red-state, voter-suppression laws. No Senate Republican is expected to support either bill, meaning neither can pass unless all 50 Democratic senators vote to reform the filibuster rules. Biden, a self-described creature of the Senate, has reluctantly joined that cause. But at this point, at least two Democrats have refused to sign on.

Biden doesnt have to call out Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema by name. But he does have to call out those Democrats who worry more about protecting a Senate rule than protecting democracy. Its time. Its past time. How else can Biden legitimately raise the question he asked Thursday: What kind of nation are we going to be?

Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow.

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Littwin: It was late coming, but Biden finally said what had to be said of Trump and his enablers - The Colorado Sun

When the insurrectionists of 6 January rampaged through the Capitol, congressman Andrew Clyde of Georgia helped barricade a door, and he fled when the rest of Congress did. A photograph shows him looking panicky, mouth wide open and arm gesticulating wildly, behind what appears to be a security team member with a gun drawn, defending him. But a few months later he declared: Watching the TV footage of those who entered the Capitol and walked through Statuary Hall showed people in an orderly fashion staying between the stanchions and ropes, taking videos, pictures. You know, if you didnt know the TV footage was a video from 6 January, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit.

Clydes account of 6 January might be a little more preposterous than those of his fellow Republican legislators. But they all joined him in pretending nothing much had happened and objecting to the investigation of the days events. After all, they were partly responsible, most of them. It was elected Republicans who supported and spread the earlier lies that Donald Trump had won the election, the lies that fed the insurrection; and then they lied some more about their own words and actions before, during and after. In the immediate aftermath, the then Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, was angry and shaken, declaring: The mob was fed lies. They were provoked by the president. Then he too began the project of walking it all back.

What has ensued is a cover-up in plain sight. When Trump took office in 2016, Republicans faced a crisis: their party had won, but only by ushering to a minority victory one of historys most extravagantly dishonest men. They had to stand with him or against him, and most chose to stand with him. Others chose to fade away by resigning or going home when their terms were up.

Almost none of them stood up against him. The famously vindictive Trump punished any signs of disloyalty, so they were loyal. And to be loyal meant joining him in corruption and lies. If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed ... and we will deserve it, Lindsey Graham tweeted in the spring of 2016, before becoming one of Trumps most grovelling sycophants.

In a way, the sycophants got stronger: if truth restrains us and links us together, they unchained themselves. We make contracts with each other with words; we share information, make agreements and commitments, hold each other accountable and show who we are. Lies are broken contracts, in which words misrepresent what the speaker knows; they aim to delude, exploit and divide. The liar may get stronger, but the social fabric gets weaker. That strength is precarious, so lies have be piled atop lies to keep accountability at a distance.

Of course, politicians of all stripes are notoriously shifty, and the Republican party had no great reputation for honesty previously. Many of their campaigns long before Trump could politely be called misleading. But after 2016, they clustered around the gaslighter-in-chief like bugs around a streetlight. I often think of what Trump did as disinhibition: the pallid, bashful untruths of yore were replaced by baldfaced outrages. They lost any compunction about openly contradicting themselves, and did so often, never more than with the insurrection of 6 January.

As the mob was smashing its way into the building, congressman Jim Jordan had been on the house floor accusing election officials in six states of corruption. A week later he declared: Ive never said that this election was stolen. But, as CNN noted: Jordan claimed in October that Democrats were working to steal the election and spoke at a Stop the Steal rally in Pennsylvania two days after the election. In December, he said he didnt know how he could be convinced that Trump didnt actually win the election.

During the hours when the mob rampaged through the US Capitol building, House minority leader Kevin McCarthy called up Trump, reportedly furious. The president bears responsibility for the attack, he said shortly thereafter. Then he devoted himself to winning back Trumps favour and playing down what had happened. Pressed on whether he regretted working to overturn President Bidens 2020 victory, Mr McCarthy took the position that he did no such thing, the New York Times reported in April.

Then he worked hard to sabotage the investigation into what had happened, by trying to put two congressmen most loyal to the big lie, Jim Banks and the ever-disruptive champion shouter Jim Jordan, on the committee. The house majority leader, Nancy Pelosi, blocked their appointment. Banks was later caught sending out letters, seeking information from government agencies, claiming he was the ranking Republican on the 6 January committee, of which he was never in fact a member.

By September, McCarthy was full team cover-up: the Guardians Hugo Lowell noted that McCarthy threatened to retaliate against any telecommunications company that complied with the records requests of the congressional committee investigating the 6 January insurrection. Thats not technically lying, but its certainly an attempt to prevent the truth from being known. Theres a lot to cover up, especially if you dont want the committee to find out the extent to which Congress itself was involved in the attack on Congress.

The politicians who fled in fear thereafter threw themselves into denying the threat and protecting its chief instigator. No one did so more slavishly than the then vice-president, Mike Pence, who was pressured before and during 6 January to violate the law and exercise a power he did not possess to change the election outcome. If Vice President @Mike_Pence comes through for us, we will win the Presidency, Trump had tweeted early that day; and then, Mike Pence didnt have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution. At Trumps instigation, the mob was chanting: Hang Mike Pence!

Pence trivialised the event when he told the Christian Broadcasting Network: Im not going to allow the Democrats to use one tragic day in January to distract attention from their failed agenda and the failed policies of the Biden administration. Capitol police officer Aquilino Gonnell, who was seriously injured defending the politicians, told NPR: That one day in January almost cost my life. And we did everything possible to prevent him [Pence] from being hanged and killed in front of his daughter and his wife. And now hes telling us that that one day in January doesnt mean anything. Its pathetic. Its a disgrace.

One of the first lies to explode out of the insurrection was that somehow the attack on the Capitol was the work of Antifa. The very idea of Antifa, as they used it, was an older lie, a transformation of scattered individuals and impromptu groups of antifascists into a cohesive sinister gang that could be blamed for pretty much anything, anywhere. The New York Times described how on 6 January the right was claiming that the insurrection had been led by Antifa, not Trump supporters.

By the end of the day, Fox was promoting it, the claim was all over Twitter, and: Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida had stood on the ransacked House floor and claimed that many rioters were members of the violent terrorist group antifa. The claim, the Times added, has hardened into gospel among hard-line Trump supporters, by voters and sanctified by elected officials in the party

That is, they took the position that the riot, which at the time Republican legislators begged the president to stop, was instead a riot by an essentially imaginary leftwing organisation with no conceivable motive to prevent the confirmation of Bidens victory. Now the investigation is closing in on the role that many in Congress played in the attack on Congress. Having fled their own mobs, they are now trying to flee the truth, and relying on the fact that a significant portion of the country prefers the lies.

The Republicans who helped the failed coup along and then dismissed its import are preparing to do it better next time. The Democratic senator Brian Schatz tweeted on Tuesday: They are organizing the next one, not as a secret conspiracy, but as a central organizing principle for the next election. The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said: Donald Trump has infected, and thats the appropriate word, the Republican party with his big lie and with his desire to stop democracy. We have no choice but to move forward, by which he meant overturn the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation. 6 January was one confrontation; theres another one coming. The lies may implode at some point, but the liars have to be defeated.

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Republicans are laying a path back to power and paving it with lies - The Guardian

After thousands of posts appeared for weeks on a website called TheDonald.win detailing plans for the 6 January attack on the Capitol, including how to form a wall of death to force police to abandon defensive positions; after Gen Mark Milley, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, warned his senior aides of a Reichstag moment like the 1933 burning of the German parliament that Hitler used to seize dictatorial power; after insurrectionists smashed several ground floor windows of the Capitol, the only ones out of 658 they somehow knew were not reinforced, that allowed rioters to pour inside; after marching to the chamber of the House chanting Hang Mike Pence!; after pounding on the locked doors; and as the Capitol police led members in a run through the tunnels under the Capitol for safe passage to the Longworth Building, Congressman Jody Hice, a Republican of Georgia, raced by a Democratic colleague, who told me Hice was screaming into his phone: You screwed it up, yall screwed it all up!

Hice, an evangelical minister, professor of preaching at a Southern Baptist seminary, and radio talkshow host before his election in 2014, has notably declared that freedom of religion should not apply to Muslims and that the Sandy Hook massacre of 26 people at an elementary school by a deranged shooter occurred because liberals were kicking God out of the public square.

He was tasked to present a challenge to Georgias electors before the joint congressional session convened on 6 January to certify the electoral college victory of Joe Biden. Hice performed his assignment as part of the far-rightwing Republican faction, the Freedom Caucus, directed by Congressman Jim Jordan, of Ohio, who was in constant touch that day with Mark Meadows, the Trump chief of staff and former Freedom Caucus member, and a watchful Trump himself. Just as the violent insurrection launched, and paramilitary groups spearheaded medieval style hand-to-hand combat against the police and burst into the Capitol, Hice posted on Instagram a photo of himself headed into the House chamber, with the caption, This is our 1776 moment.

To whom was Hice shouting that yall had screwed it all up? It seems likely it was Meadows. And what had they screwed up? They had screwed up the coup that led to the insurrection.

The insurrection was not the coup itself. It was staged as the coup was failing. The insurrection and the coup were distinct, but the insurrection emerged from the coup. It has been a common conceptual error to consider the insurrection alone to be the coup. The coup, however, was an elaborate plot developed over months to claim that the votes in the key swing states were fraudulent, for Mike Pence as the presiding officer of the joint session of the Congress to declare on that basis that the certification of the presidential election on the constitutionally mandated date could not be done, to force that day to pass into a twilight zone of irresolution, for House Republicans to hold the floor brandishing the endless claims of fraud, to move the decision to the safe harbor of the House of Representatives, voting by states, with a majority of 26 controlled by the Republican party, to deny both the popular vote and the electoral college vote to retain Trump in office, for protests to breakout at federal buildings, and for the president to invoke the Insurrection Act to impose law and order.

Presumably, any gesture to forestall the coup by the joint chiefs would be communicated at once to Trump from his agent, Kash Patel, a former aide to far-right representative Devin Nunes), sworn enemy of the Deep State, embedded as chief of staff to the acting secretary of defense, and presidential orders would be issued to countermand. The rally on 6 January will be wild, Trump promised was a last-ditch attempt to intimidate the vice-president with the threat of violence into fulfilling his indispensable role in the coup, to lend support to the Republicans objecting to certification, and to delay the proceedings into a constitutional no mans land.

The insurrection may also have been intended to provide a pretext for precipitating clashes with anti-Trump demonstrators, following the example of the street violence and multiple knife stabbings perpetrated in Washington by the neo-Nazi Proud Boys chanting 1776 on 12 December, and which would then be an excuse for invoking the Insurrection Act. In the criminal contempt citation of Meadows for his refusal to testify before the select committee investigating the US Capitol attack, the committee noted that Meadows sent an email the day before the assault to an unnamed individual that the national guard would be present to protect pro-Trump people and that many more would be available on standby. From whom would pro-Trump people be protected?

In the midst of the attack, the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, managed to reach a preoccupied Trump, who was riveted viewing the unfolding chaos on television at the White House, closely monitoring whether the coup would finally succeed, taking phone calls from Jim Jordan and a host of collaborators, and fending off urgent pleas to call it off from his daughter Ivanka. Trumps first reply to McCarthy was to repeat the falsehood that it was antifa that had breached the Capitol, according to the Republican representative Jaime Herrera Beutler.

McCarthy argued: Its not Antifa, its Maga. I know. I was there. Well, Kevin, said Trump, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are. Who the fuck do you think you are talking to? McCarthy inquired in an uncharacteristic display of testosterone that soon was replaced with his regular order of servility before Trump and Jordan. The absence of antifa, and McCarthys refusal in the heat of the moment to lend credence to the phantom menace, may have condemned any false-flag thought of invoking the Insurrection Act. Meanwhile, the bayonet-ready national guard idly awaited orders for hours to quell the actual insurrection.

The coup was thwarted by the justice departments rejection of Trumps strong-arm tactics, the Pentagons denunciation of any hint of imposing martial law, the rebuff by state election officials to Trumps claims of fraud, and, finally, Pences refusal to utter his scripted lines. At the 6 January rally, Trump said: I hope Mike is going to do the right thing. I hope so. I hope so. Because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. But Pence had already stated that he would do no such thing. Then, Trump said: And if you dont fight like hell, youre not going to have a country any more So, were going to, were going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. I love Pennsylvania Avenue. And were going to the Capitol The insurrection was on.

The coup was hardly Trumps full-blown brainchild. It was packaged for him. It was adapted, enhanced and intensified from longstanding Republican strategies for voter suppression. The coup was a variation on the theme from a well-worn playbook. Trump eagerly grasped for the plan handed to him.

More than a year before the election of 2020, in August 2019, conservative operatives in closely connected rightwing organizations began preparing a strategy for disputing election results. A Political Process Working Group focused on election law and ballot integrity was launched by Lisa Nelson, the CEO of the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), heavily funded by the Koch brothers dark money syndicate, the Donors Trust.

Nelson is also a member of the secretive Council on National Policy (CNP), composed of more than 400 rightwing Republican leaders, a roster that includes Ginni Thomas, the ubiquitous rightwing zealot and wife of supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, and Leonard Leo, vice-president of the conservative Federalist Society and the Judicial Crisis Network, a $250m dark money operation to pack the federal courts and deny Democratic appointments to the bench, according to the Democratic senator Sheldon Whitehead.

The investigative reporter Anne Nelson, in her book Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right, describes the CNP as a nexus of the manpower and media of the Christian right with the finances of western plutocrats and the strategy of rightwing Republican political operatives.

A board member of the CNP, Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer at the center of a host of rightwing groups, assumed control over the Alec-originated project and moved it forward. She is also a board member of the Bradley Foundation, which is a major funder of conservative organizations, including Alec and the CNP. Most importantly, she has directed the Bradley Foundation to serve as the chief funder of a group of which she is chairman, the Public Interest Legal Foundation (Pilf), a principal conservative organization seeking to purge voter rolls of minorities and immigrants, file suits that accuse local election officials of fraud, and attempt to overturn election results. At a February 2020 meeting of the CNP devoted to election tactics, the Pilf president, J Christian Adams, advised: Be not afraid of the accusations that youre a voter suppressor, youre a racist and so forth.

Mitchell was instrumental in devising the blueprint for the coup. On 10 December 2020, 65 leading members of the CNP signed a succinct step-by-step summary of the completely elaborated plot that went little noticed except on the coup-friendly rightwing website Gateway Pundit:

The evidence overwhelmingly shows officials in key battleground states as the result of a coordinated pressure campaign by Democrats and allied groups violated the constitution, state and federal law in changing mail-in voting rules that resulted in unlawful and invalid certifications of Biden victories. There is no doubt President Donald J Trump is the lawful winner of the presidential election. Joe Biden is not president-elect. Accordingly, state legislatures in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, Nevada and Michigan should exercise their plenary power under the constitution and appoint clean slates of electors to the electoral college to support President Trump. Similarly, both the House and Senate should accept only these clean electoral college slates and object to and reject any competing slates in favor of Vice-President Biden from these states. Conservative leaders and groups should begin mobilizing immediately to contact their state legislators, as well as their representatives in the House and Senate, to demand that clean slates of electors be appointed in the manner laid out in the US constitution.

Mitchell was by then a Trump campaign legal adviser, with direct access to Trump and working on the Georgia challenge to the results. The Trump campaign had filed a lawsuit a week earlier, on 4 December, claiming there were literally tens of thousands of illegal votes. On 30 December she sent the petition to Meadows with 1,800 pages of exhibits of supposed fraud, which Meadows promptly forwarded to the acting attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, who was under tremendous pressure from Trump to intervene on his behalf to throw out the election results.

Pure insanity, the acting deputy attorney general, Richard Donoghue, told Rosen. Meadows pressured Rosen again on 1 January. Can you believe this? Rosen wrote Donoghue. I am not going to respond The next day, Trump called the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, to instruct him to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than [the vote deficit] we have, because we won the state. Cleta Mitchell was on the call with Trump. Well, Cleta, how do you respond to that? Maybe you tell me? asked Trump. She accused Raffensperger of withholding records that would prove there were more than 20,000 fraudulent votes and rigged voting machines. All we have to do, Cleta, is find 11,000-plus votes, said Trump.

On 4 January, Trump brought Pence to the Oval Office to be pressured not to certify the results by a former Chapman University law professor, John Eastman, who was also a director of the Pilf that Mitchell chaired, and had been recruited to play professor to the slow-learning Pence, the Pygmalion of the putsch. Eastman had written a memo, January 6 scenario, laying out precisely how Pence should conduct the stoppage of the electoral college count to create a stalemate that would give the state legislatures more time to weigh in to formally support the alternate slate of electors

Eastmans memo filled in stage directions for Pence that followed the well-developed coup plot. All Pence had to do was repeat the lines he was given: the rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain. His general counsel, Greg Jacob, however, informed him that if he obeyed Trump he would betray his oath to uphold our laws and the constitution of the United States. That was a fools errand.

Trump electors in the swing states had already met on 14 December to prepare to usurp the Biden ones. That day Trump summoned William Barr to the White House to demand his support for claims that the election returns in the swing states were fraudulent. Barr would have undoubtedly been aware of the meeting of the Trump electors rehearsing their part in the coup. Long having done Trumps bidding from consciously lying about the Mueller report on Russian interference in the 2016 election to aid Trump onward, he now reached a line he would not cross and told Trump that his assertions of fraud were bullshit. And then he resigned. He would have no part of the coup. In came Rosen, who was subjected to rounds of coercion.

When Mitchells role was disclosed, the Washington law firm of Foley & Lardner where she was a partner forced her to resign on 5 January, the day before the insurrection. She had neglected to tell her partners of her work for Trump. The Senate judiciary committee, in its report, released on 7 October 2021, Subverting Justice: How the Former President and His Allies Pressured DoJ to Overturn the 2020 Election, recommended that Mitchells activities warrant further investigation.

The sweeping nature of the coup, involving Republican operatives, major Republican donors, organizations and members of the Congress is starkly laid out in documents the House investigating committee has obtained under subpoena.

The production of documents from Meadows revealed a 38-slide PowerPoint presentation entitled Options for 6 JAN, prepared by Phil Waldron, a retired army colonel expert in psychological warfare and proliferator of conspiracy theories who worked with Trumps lawyers. Waldron said he spoke with Meadows maybe eight to 10 times and briefed members of Congress. Besides reiterating the basic elements of the coup VP Pence rejects the electors Waldron added that China and Venezuela had INFLUENCE and CONTROL over US Voting infrastructure in at least 28 States. He urged that all electronic ballots be declared invalid and that Trump should Declare National Security Emergency.

Bernard Kerik, working with Trumps attorney Rudy Giuliani to spin fantasies of fraud, turned over to the House committee under subpoena a document, Strategic Communications Plan, to educate the public on the fraud numbers and to disregard the fraudulent vote count and certify the duly-elected President Trump. Replete with fallacious assertions (Fulton County, GA, video of suitcases of fraudulent ballots), it detailed the extensive reach of the big lie campaign, encompassing Identified Legislative Leaders in each swing state, legal teams in the key states, and ranked social media influencers to spread the message: YOU CANNOT LET AMERICA ITSELF BE STOLEN BY CRIMINALS. Kerik, a convicted felon, guilty of numerous crimes from tax fraud to lying under oath, rose from Giulianis driver to New York City police commissioner and incredibly the minister of the interior of Iraq, before serving a four-year sentence in Rikers Island jail. Like convicted felons Mike Flynn, Steve Bannon and Roger Stone, he was granted a pardon by Trump that allowed him to participate in the coup with impunity.

Though under subpoena, Kerik refused to turn over to the House committee a document entitled DRAFT LETTER FROM POTUS TO SEIZE EVIDENCE IN THE INTEREST OF NATIONAL SECURITY FOR THE 2020 ELECTIONS. The date on Keriks letter, 17 December 2020, was the day that former general Mike Flynn, Trumps disgraced national security adviser, gave an interview to the far-right Newsmax calling on Trump to seize every single one of the voting machines around the country, and take military capabilities in the key states to basically rerun an election. Flynns notions were echoed in the Waldron PowerPoint and in the Kerik letter.

On 18 December, Flynn met at the White House with Trump at which he proposed invoking the National Emergency Act. (Flynn had circulated a call for Limited Martial Law To Hold New Election weeks earlier, on 1 December.) The army secretary, Ryan McCarthy, and the army chief of staff, Gen James McConville, issued a statement on the day Flynn met with Trump disavowing Flynn and any suggestion of martial law. There is no role for the US military in determining the outcome of an American election, they stated.

The criminal citation of Meadows for contempt from the House committee to the justice department notes that he was in nonstop communication throughout the day of January 6 with Kash Patel at the Pentagon, and among other things, Mr Meadows apparently knows if and when Mr Trump was engaged in discussions regarding the national guards response to the Capitol riot. The House resolution also references Meadows contacts with Republican state legislators, private individuals who planned and organized a January 6 rally, and members of Congress prepared to object to the election certification a panoply of people involved in the coup. The committee also released texts from Fox News personalities to Meadows on 6 January imploring him to get Trump to stop the insurrection. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy, wrote an anxious Laura Ingraham. The familiar relationship suggested the intertwining of Fox News as the chief outlet for Trump messaging about the big lie up to the insurrection. But the ties went further.

On 4 January 2022, the House committee requested the voluntary testimony of Sean Hannity as a fact witness. The committee wrote him that it had in its possession dozens of texts from Hannity to Meadows indicating that you had advance knowledge regarding President Trumps and his legal teams planning for January 6th, and that you were expressing concerns and providing advice to the president and certain White House staff regarding that planning. On the evening of 5 January, Hannity texted Meadows: Pence pressure. WH counsel will leave. He also appeared to have had a conversation directly with president on the evening of January 5th (and perhaps at other times) regarding his planning for January 6th. What did Sean Hannity know and when did he know it?

When the riot was finally subdued and the Congress reconvened to certify the election, the House Republicans still rose to object. Hice, with QAnon proponent representative Marjorie Taylor Greene standing at his side, declared: Myself, members of the Georgia delegation and some 74 of my Republican colleagues object to the electoral votes from the state of Georgia on the grounds the election conducted on November 3 was faulty and fraudulent due to unilateral actions by the secretary of state to unlawfully change the states election process.

Of the thousands involved in the Capitol riot, 725 so far have been charged with various crimes. But those sentenced, mostly true believer foot soldiers of the Trump mob, were not the originators of the coup, the most dangerous sedition against the constitutional order since secession. Nor were the leaders of the militias, of the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters, present at the creation.

The 6 January attack was a spawn of the coup; it was its effect, not its alpha and omega. Only those incited to sacrifice themselves in the Picketts Charge of the insurrection have paid the price, but none of those who conceived the coup a year earlier have been brought before a federal grand jury, charged, or apparently are even being investigated by the Department of Justice.

It would be as if only the Watergate burglars were prosecuted and that was the end of the affair. All of the higher-ups involved in the scandal chief of staff Bob Haldeman, his deputy John Ehrlichman, attorney general John Mitchell, the entire cast of complicit characters and President Richard Nixon would have remained untouched in power.

There will be more to know about the coup from the House investigation. The committee has gathered more than 30,000 documents and interviewed more than 300 witnesses. Two, three, many John Deans may testify before the cameras. Criminal referrals will probably be made.

The coup of 2020 gestated within the central organizations of the Republican right, and it was a learning experiment for the Republican party as a whole. Hice has announced he will run in the Republican primary against Raffensperger for Georgia secretary of state. He is only one of the Republicans focused on taking over the states electoral apparatus to ensure that the next time there will be no obstacles. By December, Republicans had proposed 262 bills to politicize, criminalize, or interfere with the non-partisan administration of elections, with 32 becoming law in 17 states, according to the non-profit Protect Democracy group.

The threat of intimidation, coercion and intimidation hangs over American politics. The coup may have failed, but it rolls on.

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The insurrection is only the tip of the iceberg - The Guardian