Dispatches

MORE THAN 30 COPS LINKED TO CAPITOL RIOT.

At least 31 law enforcement officers from 12 states are being investigated after being linked to the Jan. 6 riot at the US Capitol, according to an Associated Press review. Nine of the law enforcement officers are from a Pennsylvania police department; three are Los Angeles police officers; and one is a Los Angeles sheriff’s deputy. An Oklahoma sheriff and New Hampshire police chief also admitted to attending the rally in which former President Donald Trump incited the riot, but the law enforcement officials denied entering the Capitol that day, according to the AP.

“The news agency posed this question in its analysis: ‘How does a department balance an officer’s free speech rights with the blow to public trust that comes from the attendance of law enforcement at an event with far-right militants and white nationalists who went on to assault the seat of American democracy?’ I would argue, it shouldn’t,” Lauren Floyd noted at DailyKos (1/24).

“If they were off-duty, it’s totally free speech,” said Will Aitchison, a lawyer in Portland, Ore., who represents law enforcement officers. “People have the right to express their political views regardless of who’s standing next to them. You just don’t get guilt by association.”

But Ayesha Bell Hardaway, a Case Western Reserve University School of Law professor, told the AP an officer’s presence at such a demonstration with “individuals who proudly profess racist and divisive viewpoints” poses a “credibility issue,” especially after the high-profile police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, who were both unarmed when they died in police encounters. “It calls into question whether those officers are interested in engaging in policing in a way that builds trust and legitimacy in all communities, including communities of color,” Hardaway said.

Rocky Mount, Va., Police Sgt. Thomas Robertson and Officer Jacob Fracker face federal criminal charges related to posting a photo of themselves in the Capitol building during the riot. Robertson reportedly wrote on social media that the “Left are just mad because we actually attacked the government who is the problem … The right IN ONE DAY took the f***ing U.S. Capitol. Keep poking us.”

Robertson and Fracker each face one federal count of knowingly entering or remaining in a restricted building without lawful authority and violently entering or committing disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds.

Robertson and Fracker are still employed by the Rocky Mount Police Department, although suspended without pay, Rocky Mountain officials said in a statement (1/22).

On the other side of the country, five Seattle officers are under investigation by the city’s Office of Police Accountability. Two officers posted photos of themselves on social media while in D.C. and officials are investigating to determine where they were and what they were doing. Three others told supervisors that they went to Washington for the events and are being investigated for what they did while there.

Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick died after being hit by a fire extinguisher while responding to the riot. More than 100 police officers were injured; three people died in medical emergencies; and one rioter was shot and killed when she attempted to breach the Capitol. And union officials that represent Capitol Police told CBS News that at least 38 membrs of the Capitol Police force and about 150 National Guard members have tested positive for COVID since responding to the insurrection.

Malik Aziz, a major with the Dallas Police Department and former executive director of the National Black Police Association, told the AP police have the same rights as other Americans, but knowingly going to a bigoted event should be disqualifying for an officer. “There’s no place in law enforcement for that individual,” Aziz said.

FEDS MULL LETTING NON-VIOLENT CAPITOL RIOTERS GO. Federal law enforcement officials are privately debating whether they should decline to charge some of the individuals who stormed the Capitol, out of concern that hundreds of such cases could swamp the local courthouse, the Washington Post reported (1/23).

Among those roughly 800 people, FBI agents and prosecutors have so far seen a broad mix of behavior — from people dressed for military battle, moving in formation, to wanton vandalism, to simply going with the crowd into the building.

Due to the wide variety of behavior, some federal officials have argued internally that those people who are known only to have committed unlawful entry — and were not engaged in violent, threatening or destructive behavior — should not be charged, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Other agents and prosecutors have pushed back against that suggestion, arguing that it is important to send a forceful message that the kind of political violence and mayhem on display Jan. 6 needs to be punished to the full extent of the law, so as to discourage similar conduct in the future.

The Justice Department has already charged more than 135 individuals with committing crimes in or around the Capitol building, and many more are expected to be charged in the coming weeks and months. By mid-January, the FBI had already received more than 200,000 tips from the public about the riot, in addition to news footage and police officer testimony.

“There is absolute resolve from the Department of Justice to hold all who intentionally engaged in criminal acts at the Capitol accountable,” Justice Department spokesman Marc Raimondi said in an email. “We have consistently made clear that we will follow the facts and evidence and charge individuals accordingly. We remain confident that the U.S. District Court for Washington, D.C., can appropriately handle the docket related to any resulting charges.”

TRUMP SUPPORTERS CONTINUE TO PLOT VIOLENCE AS SECOND IMPEACHMENT TRIAL APPROACHES. Thousands of National Guard troops will remain in Washington, D.C., through the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump, thanks to continuing threats of violence against lawmakers, Laura Clawson noted at DailyKos (1/25). The number of troops will continue to drop from a high of around 25,000 during the Inauguration to below 20,000. It is slated to drop to 5,000 in February.

In addition to the threat of armed protesters returning during the impeachment trial, law enforcement agencies are looking into threats that were mainly posted online and in chat groups and have included plots to attack members of Congress during travel to and from the Capitol complex during the trial, the Associated Press reported, based on information from an unnamed official who “had been briefed on the matter.”

These threats are not hard to imagine. Indeed, one of the alleged Capitol attackers already faces charges for threats against Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and for saying it’s “huntin[g] season” with respect to the officer who fatally shot rioter Ashli Babbitt as she tried to climb through a broken window to get to where lawmakers were evacuating the House chamber.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has been flailing in his response to the Capitol attack, but even he has been very clear about the threat to members of Congress, telling his caucus not to attack any of their colleagues by name because “it’s putting people in jeopardy.” Saying he had reached out personally to some Republicans—we can guess which offenders those might have been—McCarthy emphasized, “Do not raise another member’s name on a television, whether they have a different position or not. Let’s respect one another and you probably won’t understand what you’re doing, and I’m just warning you right now—don’t do it.”

The insurrection Donald Trump incited isn’t going to go away all at once. The threats continue, and they’re not just threats to individual members of Congress—they’re threats of continuing attacks on our democracy, Clawson noted.

GIULIANI CONTINUES TO DOUBLE DOWN ON BIG LIES, SO DOMINION SUES HIM FOR $1.3B. Dominion Voting Systems is suing Donald Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, for what the company characterizes as a “viral disinformation campaign” claiming Dominion was involved in a massive, though unproven, voting fraud.

“Just as Giuliani and his allies intended, the Big Lie went viral on social media as people tweeted, retweeted, and raged that Dominion had stolen their votes. While some lies—little lies—flare up on social media and die with the next news cycle, the Big Lie was different,” the defamation suit, filed in Washington, D.C. District Court (1/25) alleges. “The harm to Dominion’s business and reputation is unprecedented and irreparable because of how fervently millions of people believe it.”

The lies have been astonishing in their audacity, Laura Clawson noted at DailyKos (1/25). Supposedly Dominion-manufactured machines switched votes from Trump to Biden, or deleted vast numbers of votes, because of something having to do with former — and long deceased — Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. One claim has Dominion having deleted 941,000 Trump votes in Pennsylvania to swing the state to Biden. But USA Today fact checked: “Dominion only serves 14 counties in the state, which produced a total of 1.3 million votes — 52%, or 676,000, of which went to Trump. That only leaves 624,000 other votes, fewer than what Trump claims were switched.”

Critically, Dominion’s suit points out that while Giuliani repeatedly made claims in the media about Dominion stealing the election from Trump, he didn’t include those claims in any of the lawsuits he filed trying to overturn election results. This lie was for public consumption, not for legal arguments or providing real proof of any wrongdoing — though fellow Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, who also faces a $1.3 billion Dominion lawsuit, did make claims about the voting machine company in her court cases.

Some conservative news outlets have apologized for their role in spreading conspiracy theories about Dominion in hopes of avoiding lawsuits that could bankrupt them, but Giuliani ignored two letters calling on him to cease and desist and retract his claims. Instead, the lawsuit says, “Giuliani has not retracted his false claims about Dominion, and many of his false and defamatory television and radio appearances and tweets remain available online to a global internet audience. Indeed, to this day, he continues to double down on the Big Lie.”

The company has not ruled out suing, with Dominion’s lawyer telling the New York Times: “Obviously, this lawsuit against the president’s lawyer moves one step closer to the former president and understanding what his role was and wasn’t.” 

WASHINGTON POST: TRUMP TOLD 30,573 LIES AS PRESIDENT. Donald Trump told 30,573 false or misleading claims during his time in office, the Washington Post’s Fact Checker reported (1/23).

“He overstated the ‘carnage’ he was inheriting, then later exaggerated his ‘massive’ crowd and claimed, despite clear evidence to the contrary, that it had not rained during his address. He repeated the rain claim the next day, along with the fabricated notion that he held the ‘all-time record’ for appearing on the cover of Time magazine,” Glenn Kessler, head of the Fact Checker team, wrote.

“And so it went, day after day, week after week, claim after claim, from the most mundane of topics to the most pressing issues.”

Over time, Trump unleashed his falsehoods with increasing frequency and ferocity, often by the scores in a single campaign speech or tweetstorm. What began as a relative trickle of misrepresentations, including 10 on his first day and five on the second, built into a torrent through Trump’s final days as he frenetically spread wild theories that the coronavirus pandemic would disappear ‘like a miracle’ and that the presidential election had been stolen — the claim that inspired Trump supporters to attack Congress on Jan. 6 and prompted his second impeachment.

“The final tally of Trump’s presidency: 30,573 false or misleading claims — with nearly half coming in his final year.”

At his Jan. 6 speech at the Ellipse, in which he incited the attack on the Capitol, Trump made 107 false or misleading claims, almost all about the election.

The aftermath of what Biden and other Democrats now call the “big lie” hovers over Washington as both parties figure out whether there can be a return to a shared set of facts undergirding national debate, or whether one of the major political parties will remain captive to the sorts of conspiracy theories that marked so many of Trump’s final year of claims.

BIDEN URGED TO FIRE POSTAL SERVICE BOARD FOR COMPLICITY IN ‘SABOTAGE.’ US Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ) wrote to President Joe Biden calling on him to fire the entire United States Postal Service (USPS) Board of Governors:

“After several years of unprecedented sabotage, the United States Postal Service is teetering on the brink of collapse. Through the devastating arson of the Trump regime, the USPS Board of Governors sat silent. Their dereliction cannot now be forgotten. Therefore, I urge you to fire the entire Board of Governors and nominate a new slate of leaders to begin the hard work of rebuilding our Postal Service for the next century,” Pascrell writes President Biden.

As DeJoy’s efforts to dismantle mail sorting machines, cut overtime, restrict deliveries, and remove mailboxes slowed mail nationally, Donald Trump himself openly admitted that his administration was withholding funding for the Postal Service to make it harder to process mail-in ballots. Through it all, the Board of Governors did nothing to protect USPS.

While the president does not have the authority under current law to fire DeJoy — a Republican megadonor to Trump who was unanimously appointed by the USPS Board of Governors last May — Biden does have the power to remove postal governors “for cause.” At present, the board consists entirely of Trump appointees — two Democrats and four Republicans.

Pascrell argued (1/25) that “the board members’ refusal to oppose the worst destruction ever inflicted on the Postal Service was a betrayal of their duties and unquestionably constitutes good cause for their removal.”

Pursuant to Title 39, the USPS Board of Governors’ central responsibility is to “represent the public interest” and its members may be removed by the President “for cause.” Pascrell urged President Biden to exercise that legal authority and fire all six sitting members of the Board of Governors for their dereliction and betrayal.

There are currently four vacancies in top leadership positions at USPS, including three governor spots and the deputy postmaster general role. If Biden fills the remaining vacancies — USPS governors must be confirmed by the Senate — Democrats will have a majority on the board and potentially the votes needed to remove DeJoy from office, Jake Johnson wrote at CommonDreams (1/25).

TOM COTTON STRETCHED TRUTH IN ‘ARMY RANGER’ CLAIM. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) has accrued a resume tailor-made for a Republican politician: He leapt from a small-town Arkansas cattle farm to Harvard University and then Harvard Law School; he left a leading New York firm to join the military after George W. Bush’s re-election; he was discharged after nearly eight years and two war-zone deployments as an Army captain and decorated hero — including two commendation medals, a Bronze Star and a Ranger tab, Roger Sollenberger reported at Salon (1/23).

But when Cotton launched his first congressional campaign in 2012, he repeatedly falsified that military record, even as he still served in the Army Reserve.

In his first run for Congress, Cotton leaned heavily on his military service, claiming to have been “a US Army Ranger in Iraq and Afghanistan,” and, in a campaign ad, to have “volunteered to be an Army Ranger.” In reality, Cotton was never part of the 75th Ranger Regiment, the elite unit that plans and conducts joint special military operations as part of the US Army Special Operations Command.

Rather, Cotton attended the Ranger School, a two-month-long, small-unit tactical infantry course that literally anyone in the military is eligible to attend. Soldiers who complete the course earn the right to wear the Ranger tab — a small arch that reads “Ranger” — but in the eyes of the military, that does not make them an actual Army Ranger.

Reached for comment, Cotton spokesperson Caroline Tabler told Salon in an email, “Senator Cotton graduated from Ranger school and is more of a Ranger than a Salon reporter like you will ever be.”

It isn’t a minor or insignificant distinction, Sollenberger noted. Last summer, Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler addressed it during New Hampshire’s Republican Senate primary, which featured two Ranger School alums: Colorado lawyer Bryant “Corky” Messner, and retired Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc. Messner claimed repeatedly that he was a Ranger; Bolduc did not make such claims, and called out his opponent over it.

“Unless you served in a Ranger battalion, I think you’re overstretching your claim,” Bolduc told Messner last spring. “I’m Ranger-qualified, and I always stipulate that. I never served in a Ranger battalion.”

When Kessler asked the Army to evaluate Messner’s claim, a Special Operations Command spokesperson made a distinction: Ranger qualified vs. an Army Ranger.

Kessler gave Messner two “Pinocchios,” the Post’s measure of falsehood. Cotton, who in a fiercely criticized New York Times op-ed last summer advocated for calling in the military to put down Black Lives Matter protests, deserves at least as much.

AZ GOP CENSURES GOV. DUCEY, FLAKE AND McCAIN, SIGNALING FRACTURE IN SWING STATE. The Arizona Republican Party sent a clear signal that its leadership remains loyal to former President Donald Trump when it voted (1/23) to publicly punish Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, former Sen. Jeff Flake and Cindy McCain, all of whom opposed Trump’s efforts to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory, or in the case of Flake and McCain, endorsed the Democrat before the election, CNN reported (1/23).

The decision to censure those three Republicans — in addition to re-electing controversial chairwoman Kelli Ward — solidified the rightward shift of the official party, while also reflecting the deep fractures among Arizona Republicans over the future of the GOP, which suffered bruising defeats at the ballot box in 2020 in this increasingly purple state.

Biden flipped Arizona last fall — the first time a Democrat has carried the state in a presidential election since Bill Clinton won the state in 1996 — and Democrat Mark Kelly defeated Martha McSally in the US Senate race, just two years after McSally lost the state’s other Senate seat to a Democrat.

The three Republicans are being formally censured for what the state party described in its meeting as a variety of “failures.”

The party censured Ducey for imposing emergency rules as COVID-19 gripped Arizona, saying those emergency orders to contain the virus violated the Constitution and amounted to the governor enacting “dictatorial powers.”

McCain, the widow of the late Sen. John McCain, who endorsed Biden during the election, was censured for supporting “leftist causes” and failing to support Trump.

“It is a high honor to be included in a group of Arizonans who have served our state and our nation so well...and who, like my late husband John, have been censured by the AZGOP. I’ll wear this as a badge of honor.”

The late senator was censured in 2014 by the state GOP for what it then described as a liberal record.

TRUMP WAS THE ACCELERANT IN ENCOURAGING HATE AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE. On the day Congress counted the electoral votes that certified President Joe Biden’s victory, Donald Trump opened up the US Capitol to an insurrection, in only the latest episode where he inspired violent acts.

At Trump’s behest, thousands of his supporters descended on Washington, D.C., to dispute the results of the presidential election. He told a crowd rallying south of the White House to “walk down to the Capitol,” adding, “You will never take back our country with weakness.” The Trump supporters climbed the steps of the Capitol, past Capitol police barriers, and busted through its doors and windows. Throughout the day, Trump continued to falsely claim that the election was stolen without any evidence to support this unreality. By mid-afternoon, the Capitol building was breached and one member of the mob had been shot and fatally wounded. A police officer and three others reportedly died.

In a last-minute video message, Trump told the crowd to go home — then told them he loved them and believes they’re “very special.”

Trump’s messaging on Jan. 6 was precisely in line with how he’s historically addressed violence on the part of hate groups and his supporters, Fabiola Cineas wrote at Vox,com (1/9). “He emboldens it.”

As far back as 2015, Trump has been connected to documented acts of violence, with perpetrators claiming that he was even their inspiration. In fact, dozens of people enacted violence in Trump’s name in the years before the Capitol attack, according to a May 2020 report from ABC News that found at least 54 criminal cases where Trump was invoked in direct connection with violent acts, threats of violence or allegations of assault.

In 2016, a white man told officers “Donald Trump will fix them” while being arrested for threatening his Black neighbors with a knife. That same year, a Florida man threatened to burn down a house next to his because a Muslim family purchased it, claiming that Trump’s Muslim ban made it a reason for “concern.” Then there are the more widely known examples, like Cesar Sayoc, who mailed 16 inoperative pipe bombs to Democratic leaders and referred to Trump as a “surrogate father”; and the mass shooting in an El Paso, Texas, Walmart in 2019 that left 23 dead, where the shooter’s manifesto parroted Trump’s rhetoric about immigrants.

In some cases, Trump denounces the violence, but he often walks back such statements, returning to a message of hate and harm. In August, he defended a teenage supporter who shot three people at a Black Lives Matter protest. And at the first presidential debate of the 2020 election, the president shocked many viewers when he was given an opportunity to condemn white supremacists, but declined.

In October, he equivocated on condemnation of the domestic terrorists who allegedly planned to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, after Trump had stoked outrage over the state’s pandemic safety measures. He criticized Whitmer when the kidnapping plot was revealed and fished for compliments.

Trump repeatedly dismissed critics who pointed to his rhetoric as inspiring bigotry and hate crimes. “I think my rhetoric brings people together,” he said last August, four days after the shooting at the Walmart in El Paso. But a nationwide review by ABC News in May 2020 identified at least 54 criminal cases where Trump was invoked in direct connection with violent acts, threats of violence or allegations of assault.

After a Latino gas station attendant in Gainesville, Fla, was suddenly punched in the head by a white man, the victim could be heard on surveillance camera recounting the attacker’s own words: “He said, ‘This is for Trump.’” Charges were filed but the victim stopped pursuing them.

When police questioned a Washington state man about his threats to kill a local Syrian-born man, the suspect told police he wanted the victim to “get out of my country,” adding, “That’s why I like Trump.”

Reviewing police reports and court records, ABC News found that in at least 12 cases perpetrators hailed Trump in the midst or immediate aftermath of physically assaulting innocent victims. In another 18 cases, perpetrators cheered or defended Trump while taunting or threatening others. And in another 10 cases, Trump and his rhetoric were cited in court to explain a defendant’s violent or threatening behavior.

When three Kansas men were on trial for plotting to bomb a largely-Muslim apartment complex in Garden City, Kansas, one of their lawyers told the jury that the men “were concerned about what now-President Trump had to say about the concept of Islamic terrorism.” Another lawyer insisted Trump had become “the voice of a lost and ignored white, working-class set of voters,” and Trump’s rhetoric meant someone “who would often be at a 7 during a normal day, might ‘go to 11.’”

From The Progressive Populist, February 15, 2021

Populist.com