If the Capitol attack was pre-planned, then it couldn’t have been incited

[HARDCORE]

https://dailytorch.com/2021/01/if-th...esident-trump/

01.15.2021

If the Capitol attack was pre-planned, then it couldn’t have been incited by President Trump

By Robert Romano

The more we learn about the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 following the Save America Rally that coincided with objections being raised in Congress to the results of the Electoral College and the certification of President-elect Joe Biden, the more it appears to have been a pre-planned operation or operations by multiple groups on the right and the left who targeted the rally, the Capitol and even the Republican and Democratic National Committee headquarters.

Specifically, Steven D’Antuono, the head of the FBI field office in Washington, D.C. told reporters on Jan. 12 that “We developed some intelligence that a number of individuals were planning to travel to the D.C. area with intentions to cause violence.”

One such threat made its way into the FBI field office in Norfolk Virginia on Jan. 5, a post on a message board that stated “Be ready to fight. Congress needs to hear glass breaking, doors being kicked in, and blood from their BLM and Pantifa slave soldiers being spilled.

Get violent. Stop calling this a march, or rally, or a protest. Go there ready for war. We get our President or we die. NOTHING else will achieve this goal.”

D’Antuono explained the threat could not be linked to a specific person: “that was a thread on a message board that was not attributable… to an individual person. Like I said, in my statement, we deal with specifics and facts. When my office Washington Field Office received that information, we briefed that within 40 minutes to our federal and state law enforcement partners, that we have [in the] JTTF [Joint Terrorism Task Force] system and was again shared with all our law enforcement partners through that process that we have.”

In addition, in Washington, D.C. pipe bombs were planted at both the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the Democratic National Committee (DNC). According to D’Antuono, “those two pipe bombs that were found, were found both outside the RNC and the DNC offices near the Capitol grounds and look to begin, they were real devices. They had explosive igniters. They had timers. We don’t know obviously exactly why they did not go off, that’s being investigated, they were disabled by Capitol police with the assistance of the ATF. And that is obviously being vetted and investigated. What was the purpose of those devices being planted? Was it a diversionary type of a tactic used by some of these rioters? Or did it have some other type of nefarious purpose? So that is what the ATF [Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms] the FBI, MPD [Metropolitan Police Department] are looking at as we speak right now and looking for those persons that planted those devices.”

So, right off the bat, the FBI did have some intelligence ahead of time that violence was pre-planned targeting the rally, including bombs being planted.

Elsewhere, on Jan. 6 the New York Times reported, “Calls for violence against members of Congress and for pro-Trump movements to retake the Capitol building have been circulating online for months,” adding, “On social media sites used by the far-right, such as Gab and Parler, directions on which streets to take to avoid the police and which tools to bring to help pry open doors were exchanged in comments…”

This reporting from the Times in part led to the ouster of Parler from the Apple and Google app stores, as well as being purged from Amazon Web Services hosting platform for the website.
Journalist Glenn Greenwald on Twitter reported that planning was not isolated to a single website, noting in a tweet on Jan. 11, “Do you know how many of the people arrested in connection with the Capitol invasion were active users of Parler? Zero. The planning was largely done on Facebook.”

In his own report on Substack.com, criticizing the deplatforming of Parler by Amazon, Apple and Google, Greenwald noted, “It is true that one can find postings on Parler that explicitly advocate violence or are otherwise grotesque. But that is even more true of Facebook, Google-owned YouTube, and Twitter. And contrary to what many have been led to believe, Parler’s Terms of Service includes a ban on explicit advocacy of violence, and they employ a team of paid, trained moderators who delete such postings. Those deletions do not happen perfectly or instantaneously — which is why one can find postings that violate those rules — but the same is true of every major Silicon Valley platform. Indeed, a Parler executive told me that of the thirteen people arrested as of Monday for the breach at the Capitol, none appear to be active users of Parler. The Capitol breach was planned far more on Facebook and YouTube.”

Greenwald pointed to Recode.com’s report by Rebecca Heilweil and Shirin Ghaffary, which stated, “Online extremists started planning the chaos of January 6 months ago.” It quoted Avaaz campaign director Fadi Quran, stating, “In D.C., we saw QAnon conspiracists and other militias that would never have grown to this size without being turbo-charged by Facebook and Twitter.”

In addition, one Black Lives Matter activist who has been arrested and charged for breaching the Capitol, John Sullivan, told the Epoch Times “he knew of plans to storm the Capitol” which he had seen in “undergrounds chats and things like that.”

According to the report, “He posted information about the plans on his social media, but didn’t inform the law enforcement,” telling the Epoch Times, “I’m not a snitch.”

So, planning for the Capitol attack included planting bombs at the RNC and DNC, and allegedly occurred in part, based on all this publicly reported information: in chatrooms, on message boards, on Facebook, YouTube, Parler, Gab and other social media outlets.

Meaning, no matter what President Trump said at the rally, there would have been violence at the Capitol.

This has more than simply implications for the imminent impeachment trial for outgoing President Trump in the U.S. Senate — which reportedly will not even begin until after Trump’s term of office has already expired on Jan. 20, if it occurs at all.

To be certain, if the riot at the U.S. Capitol was planned weeks ahead of time, then it wasn’t a spontaneous event that occurred as a result of the speech President Trump gave on Jan. 6.

At the speech, President Trump explicitly urged those protesting the certification of the election results by Congress to “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

Now, it becomes much harder to prove the article of impeachment, incitement of insurrection, where the House alleges the President “willfully made statements that, in context, encouraged — and foreseeably resulted in — lawless action at the Capitol.” In other words, the allegation is that the riot was spontaneous, directly resulting from Trump’s speech.

Now we know that is wrong. The attack was planned well ahead of time. Legitimate questions can be asked about whether there was any coordination between the multiple groups that are being named as having participated in the attack. Law enforcement should pursue every lead, and everyone involved with the riot and engaged in violence including attacking the police should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

They do not represent President Trump, his movement or this country.

Ultimately, it was not the speech that caused the violence, it was those who planned the assault in the weeks leading up to it. And by now, it is clear that the attack was pre-planned. Meaning, the House and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) who pushed this snap impeachment rush to judgment — and those in the Senate still pushing for an unconstitutional post-Jan. 20 trial — all owe President Trump and the American people an apology.

Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government.

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Democrats say case against Trump is solid even if U.S. Capitol attack was pre-planned
By: Alex Swayer - The Washington Times News
Re: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news...-if-capitol-a/

Democratic lawmakers on Sunday said evidence of pre-planning for the U.S. Capitol attack does not undermine their impeachment case that President Trump incited the deadly riot.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat who will be the lead impeachment manager or prosecutor at the Senate trial set to begin as soon as this week, said the case will detail all of the events leading up to the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol building.

“Everything is due to his actions,” Mr. Raskin said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“They built a gallows outside the Capitol of the United States. There was an assassination party hunting for Nancy Pelosi,” he said. “We are going to be able to tell the story of the attack on America.”

Some conservative allies of the president have pointed to evidence of pre-planning to contradict the narrative that Mr. Trump‘s speech at a Jan. 6 rally near the Capitol incited the attack, which is the basis of the article of impeachment the House approved last week with the support of 10 Republicans.

Mr. Trump‘s defenders argue that pipe bombs and other weapons discovered around Capitol Hill before the attack demonstrate that the assault was planned well before the speech.

Police said they found two people armed with explosives, tactical gear and caches of weapons who arrived on or before Jan. 6, according to court documents. The FBI also knew beforehand of plans for a “war” at the Capitol, according to The Washington Post.

Police said they found two people armed with explosives, tactical gear and caches of weapons who arrived on or before Jan. 6, according to court documents. The FBI also knew beforehand of plans for a “war” at the Capitol, according to The Washington Post.

Mr. Trump has not selected a defense team for the trial, according to Trump campaign spokesman Hogan Gidley.

“President Trump has not yet made a determination as to which lawyer or law firm will represent him for the disgraceful attack on our Constitution and democracy, known as the ‘impeachment hoax.’ We will keep you informed,” he said in a statement posted on Twitter.

Details of the president’s defense have not been made public.

Mr. Trump said a review of his speech shows that he was not urging violence.

In the speech to thousands of protesters gathered near the White House, Mr. Trump said, “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, agreed Sunday in an appearance on Fox News Channel. He said the fault for the riots lies with the rioters.

“President Trump never said, ‘Go into the Capitol and try to interrupt a joint session of Congress.’ That was the choice they make — they made. And they need to live with that choice,” he said on “Sunday Morning Futures.”

He added that the president shouldn’t pardon any rioters.

Still, Mr. Trump‘s critics argue that the impetus for the attack was his repeated claim that Democrats “stole” the election for President-elect Joseph R. Biden. Mr. Trump persisted in claiming he won the election despite scores of election lawsuits failing to alter the outcome of the Nov. 3 vote.

Despite the impeachment and being blamed by many for the violence at the Capitol, Mr. Trump remains popular with Republican voters, who do not hold him responsible for the attack, according to polls.

The largely unwavering support for Mr. Trump puts at risk House Republican lawmakers who voted to impeach and raises the stakes for Senate Republicans weighing a conviction vote.

Rep. Peter Meijer, Michigan Republican, said Sunday that his yes vote on impeachment “may very well have” ended his political career.

“But I think it’s also important that we have elected leaders who are not thinking solely about what’s in their individual self-interest, not what is going to be politically expedient, but what we actually need for the country,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.”

On Wednesday, Mr. Trump became the first president to be impeached twice. If the process advances as planned, he also will be the first president to face a Senate trial after leaving office, which raises questions about the constitutionality of the trial.

Because Mr. Trump will no longer be in the White House, the Senate cannot remove him from office. If the Senate musters the two-thirds majority vote to convict, however, they could take a second vote to bar Mr. Trump from running for high office again. That vote would require a simple majority to pass.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, has not divulged when the article of impeachment will be delivered to the Senate and trigger the start of the trial. But the trial is not expected to start before Wednesday, when Mr. Biden is inaugurated as the 46th president and Mr. Trump leaves office.

Senators say they do not know whether there is enough Republican support for a conviction. If all 100 members are present, it would require 17 Republicans to join all the Democrats to find him guilty.

Lawmakers remain shaken by events of Jan. 6, when a pro-Trump mob overran U.S. Capitol Police, rampaged through the building, and broke into the House and Senate chambers.

The attack forced members of Congress to hide in secure locations.

The lockdown delayed for several hours Congress’ confirming of the Electoral College vote that named Mr. Biden as the next president.

Senate Minority Whip Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the chamber’s No. 2 Democrat, recalled Secret Service agents grabbing Vice President Mike Pence out of his chair as he was presiding over the Senate and police officers racing into the chamber with guns to protect the lawmakers.

“That is an image in my mind that’ll never go away, and I hope some of the Republicans feel the same way,” he said.

Mr. Graham and Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas have said a Senate trial after Mr. Trump is no longer president would be unconstitutional.

In a letter to the top Senate Democrat, Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York, Mr. Graham called for the immediate dismissal of the article of impeachment.

Mr. Cotton has said the upper chamber should instead focus on passing more relief measures for the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The Founders designed the impeachment process as a way to remove officeholders from public office — not an inquest against private citizens. The Constitution presupposes an office from which an impeached officeholder can be removed,” Mr. Cotton said in a statement issued last week. “I now oppose impeachment proceedings against a former president.”

“Congress should get on with the people’s business: improving our vaccination efforts, getting kids back to school, and getting workers back on the job.”

Polls show Mr. Trump maintains strong support from the Republican base and his approval rating has remained virtually unchanged since the mob attack.

An NBC News survey published Sunday showed 43% of voters gave Mr. Trump a positive job approval. He had a 45% approval rating before the November election and 44% in 2017 when he first took office.

Eighty-seven percent of Republicans still back the president, down just 2 points from the party support he enjoyed before the November election.

Still, some Republicans elected officials are distancing themselves from Mr. Trump.

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson told “Fox News Sunday” that the president invited people to the rally, used aggressive language and misled his supporters about the 2020 election being stolen.

“His challenge to that was wrong, and it did not serve our nation well,” Mr. Hutchinson said.

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Personal note:

Also not withstanding:
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Trump is in hock to his neck with False Tax Write Off's on this returns. Once out of office he will be in back court again - shortly after that.
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