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Author Topic: 1/6 Insurrection Investigation  (Read 127353 times)

Offline Rick Plant

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Re: 1/6 Insurrection Investigation
« Reply #1064 on: September 09, 2022, 07:32:49 AM »
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Defense begins by invoking a certain phrase twice…"caught up in the moment". 


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Re: 1/6 Insurrection Investigation
« Reply #1064 on: September 09, 2022, 07:32:49 AM »


Offline Rick Plant

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Re: 1/6 Insurrection Investigation
« Reply #1065 on: September 09, 2022, 09:05:21 AM »
Two constables, four police chiefs and over 3,000 other Texans were members of the Oath Keepers, report says



More than 3,000 Texans — including four police chiefs, two county sheriffs, two constables and two county commissioners — have been members of the Oath Keepers, a far-right extremist group that played a prominent role in the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, according to an analysis of leaked membership rolls.

The Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism published a report Tuesday after reviewing more than 38,000 names on a massive cache of documents from the Oath Keepers that was leaked to transparency collective Distributed Denial of Secrets and released last year. The documents included chat logs, emails and membership rolls from 2020 and 2021. It’s unclear when the membership lists were last updated.

The ADL’s report analyzed where the members lived and worked and found that Texas had more people listed in the Oath Keepers’ membership rolls than any other state. Texas is the country’s second-most populous state.

Texas also had the most people who were either elected officials, law enforcement officers, military members or first responders, the report found. Of the Texas signups, 33 were law enforcement officers, 10 were members of the military, eight were elected officials and seven were first responders. No federal officials were listed in the membership documents.

At least six law enforcement officers who have been affiliated with the far-right group at some point are currently at the helm of their departments: Howe Police Department Chief Carl Hudman; Tom Bean Police Department Chief Timothy Green; Idalou Police Department Chief Eric Williams; Amarillo ISD Police Department Chief Paul Bourquin; Nueces County Sheriff John Chris Hooper; and Clay County Sheriff Jeff Lyde.

Other people in the Oath Keepers’ membership rolls who currently serve as elected officials in Texas include Ellis County Commissioner Paul D. Perry; Galveston County Commissioner Joseph Thomas Giusti; Collin County Constable Joe Wright; and Faulkey Gully Municipal Utility District board member Mark H. Syzman. Syzman is also a retired U.S. Army Military Police Master Sergeant.

The Oath Keepers asks its members to “defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” The group, fueled by baseless conspiracy theories, claims that the government poses a threat to civil liberties. In reality, former Oath Keepers spokesperson Jason Van Tatenhove — who has since left the group and speaks publicly about its dangers — has said the group is actually “selling the revolution.”

On Jan. 6, 2021, the Oath Keepers descended on the steps of the U.S. Capitol to lead the siege challenging the results of the 2020 presidential election. At least 26 members of the group have since been arrested in connection with the attack.

With the exception of Hood County Constable John D. Shirley and Steven Glenn, an alderman in the North Texas town of Quitman, none of the Texans named by the ADL responded to calls or emails from The Texas Tribune seeking comment Wednesday.

Glenn, who was sworn in as alderman in November 2020 and is seeking reelection this year, said in an email statement that he was with members of the Oath Keepers during a hurricane in Houston helping deliver supplies to residents hit by the floods. He said he has “zero idea of any of (the Oath Keepers’) involvements” since then.

“Shortly after that, I saw exactly what the founder was all about. I cut ties with them immediately,” Glenn wrote in a statement to the Tribune.

Shirley said he publicly resigned from the group in November 2020. Shirley was a member for more than a decade and served as the Oath Keepers’ Texas chapter president, national peace officer liaison and on the group’s board of directors. In February 2020, Shirley submitted a letter to Hood Country Today defending the organization’s mission.

The Oath Keepers’ membership list does not reflect the extent of the members’ involvement in the group. The ADL report said that some may have been introduced to a watered-down version of the group’s mission and many have since left the group. Hundreds tried to cancel their memberships after the Jan. 6 riot, BuzzFeed News reported. But the ADL also points out that the Oath Keepers have always been vocal about its extremist far-right views since its inception in 2009.

“Even for those who claimed to have left the organization when it began to employ more aggressive tactics in 2014, it is important to remember that the Oath Keepers have espoused extremism since their founding, and this fact was not enough to deter these individuals from signing up,” the report notes.

The fringe group has focused on recruiting current and former military, police and first responders. The ADL report says that in written comments provided to the Oath Keepers, some people who joined the group offered to use their positions of power to aid the Oath Keepers in a variety of ways. One member of the Idalou Police Department, outside of Lubbock, said he would use his position to introduce other law enforcement officers to the Oath Keepers’ ideology through presentations, according to the report.

The ADL report does not identify the person or their position in the department. Williams, the Idalou police chief, told PBS Newshour that it had been over a decade since he had been a member or had interaction with the Oath Keepers. Williams denounced the riot of Jan. 6 as “terrible in every way.”

The city of Idalou declined to comment on whether the police department has policies regarding staff’s membership in extremist groups.

Wright, the constable in Collin County, signed up for the organization before he took office for the first time. The ADL noted that he shared his government position during sign up: “Constable elect for Collin County Pct. 4 Constable’s office. Currently a Collin County deputy sheriff.”

When the Oath Keepers’ documents were first leaked in October 2021, Wright told USA Today that he didn’t know much about the group when he joined.

“To be honest, I felt pressured to join it in this county for political support,” Wright said at the time. “The Oath Keepers, if you didn’t support them, you were going to get bad reviews.”

Wright said he did not support the group and had not engaged since.

“I’m not into radical. I’m into doing my job,” he said.

Lyde, the sheriff of Clay County, was also identified as a former member of the Oath Keepers last November. He was indicted by a Clay County grand jury that same month for two charges of official oppression, according to court documents filed last year. Lyde is also facing questions about why he left the Department of Public Safety over a decade ago, in part, for submitting false information on performance reviews.

Hooper, the sheriff of Nueces County, was reported to be a former member of the Oath Keepers last November. He told the Corpus Christi Caller Times that he had not been a member since 2009 and had distanced himself from the organization.

Members of the Oath Keepers listed in the documents also included Texans in other occupations. An attorney with a law firm based in East Texas told the group that he “may be able to assist in legal matters,” the report said.

The ADL did not identify the attorney and declined to share the names of individual law enforcement officers or military personnel identified through their analysis, citing concerns that the report could be used to dox rank-and-file personnel.

Among those arrested in connection with the attack on the Capitol Jan. 6 is Oath Keepers founder and leader Stewart Rhodes, a Texan who was arrested in January and is accused of conspiring to oppose the transfer of presidential power by force.

More than 70 Texans have been charged for their roles in the Jan. 6 insurrection, according to a USA Today database. They include Guy Reffitt who was sentenced to 7 1/4 years in prison last month after prosecutors said he “lit the match” for the riot.

North Texas has been a focal area for the investigation into the riot, with more than a dozen area residents having been charged in the federal investigation into the attack, including Kellye SoRelle, a lawyer for Oath Keepers based in Granbury.

https://www.texastribune.org/2022/09/07/texas-oath-keepers-adl/

Offline Rick Plant

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Re: 1/6 Insurrection Investigation
« Reply #1066 on: September 09, 2022, 09:37:10 PM »
Judge denies Capitol riot defendant Ronald McAbee's request for release from pretrial jail. McAbee is accused of swinging at.. and dragging police officer and messaging associate that he "calls for secession"

Judge's order includes details about injuries of police officer.


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Re: 1/6 Insurrection Investigation
« Reply #1066 on: September 09, 2022, 09:37:10 PM »


Offline Rick Plant

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Re: 1/6 Insurrection Investigation
« Reply #1067 on: September 10, 2022, 05:00:19 AM »
Illinois man pleads guilty to assaulting Reuters journalist during U.S. Capitol riot



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An Illinois man on Friday pleaded guilty to assaulting a Reuters journalist and a police officer during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump.

Shane Jason Woods, 44, of Auburn, pleaded guilty in a federal court hearing in Washington to one felony count of assaulting, resisting or impeding police and one misdemeanor count of striking, beating and wounding within U.S. territory.

Although the two counts combined carry a statutory maximum sentence of nine years in prison, under U.S. sentencing guidelines, Woods would face between 33 to 41 months in prison, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta said.

Last year, Woods became the first defendant to be charged for assaulting a member of the news media during the riot.

A total of 11 people have been charged with assaulting journalists that day, while about 269 have been charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding police officers, according to a Justice Department tally.

In all, more than 870 people have been charged with crimes related to the Capitol attack.

Thousands of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol following a fiery speech in which the then-president falsely claimed his defeat in the November 2020 election was the result of widespread fraud.

In court filings, investigators said Woods was recorded on video wearing a Trump baseball cap and Trump face mask while walking in a restricted area at the Capitol during the riot.

On the recording, he could be seen assaulting a U.S. Capitol Police officer, causing her to trip and fall to the ground. She was surrounded by protesters until another officer came to her rescue.

He was also recorded targeting a Reuters journalist filming the riots, using what federal prosecutors described as a "blindside shoulder-tackle" to knock the journalist to the ground.

"The manner of attack on the cameraman was very similar to the attack" against the officer, an FBI agent wrote in the initial charging documents.

Woods, who participated in Friday's hearing by remote connection, admitted to knocking down both the police officer and the Reuters journalist.

His sentencing was set for Jan. 13 at 1 p.m. ET.

© Reuters

Offline Rick Plant

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Re: 1/6 Insurrection Investigation
« Reply #1068 on: September 11, 2022, 12:40:23 AM »
Stephen Miller subpoenaed by a grand jury investigating January 6



Two more of Donald Trump's top White House advisors have been issued subpoenas by a federal grand jury investigating Jan. 6.

"Brian Jack, the final White House political director under Mr. Trump, and Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s top speechwriter and a senior policy adviser, were among more than a dozen people connected to the former president to receive subpoenas from a federal grand jury this week," The New York Times reported Friday evening.

The newspaper reports Jack remains an advisor the former president and House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).

"The subpoenas seek information in connection with the Save America political action committee and the plan to submit slates of electors pledged to Mr. Trump from swing states that were won by Joseph R. Biden Jr. in the 2020 election. Mr. Trump and his allies promoted the idea that competing slates of electors would justify blocking or delaying certification of Mr. Biden’s Electoral College win during a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021," the newspaper reported.

Miller discussed the fake electors scheme on Fox News in Dec. of 2020.

"The subpoenas were issued to a wide range of people who either worked in the White House or on the Trump campaign, including senior officials like the campaign’s chief financial officer; personal aides to Mr. Trump; and the former chief of staff to Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter who also served as one of his senior advisers," The Times reported. "Among the recipients of subpoenas from a grand jury sitting in Washington are relatively junior aides from the White House and Mr. Trump’s 2020 campaign. While the subpoenas asked for information concerning the Save America PAC, they also sought communications with several pro-Trump lawyers — like Kenneth Chesebro — who helped devise the electors plan."

Read More Here: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/09/us/politics/trump-political-aides-subpoenaed.html

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Re: 1/6 Insurrection Investigation
« Reply #1068 on: September 11, 2022, 12:40:23 AM »


Offline Rick Plant

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Re: 1/6 Insurrection Investigation
« Reply #1069 on: September 11, 2022, 10:12:28 PM »
'Things have just gotten real for Stephen Miller' after grand jury subpoena: legal expert



During an appearance very early on MSNBC on Sunday, former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner predicted that former Donald Trump adviser Stephen Miller will likely be put in the position of either flipping on his former boss or risk perjuring himself before a federal grand jury.

On Friday, CNN reported that Miller -- a close Oval Office confidante of the former president -- was the recipient of a subpoena from a federal grand jury investigating Trump's "Save America PAC."

The report stated, "a federal grand jury is examining the Save America leadership PAC, one of former President Donald Trump's main political and fundraising vehicles, in an expansion of the criminal investigation into the events surrounding the US Capitol attack on January 6, 2021."

According to Kirschner, the abrasive Miller has never received the kind of scrutiny he is about to be subjected to.

"I think one thing we should pay attention to is the difference between a January 6th congressional subpoena, and there have been, I think, more than 1000 witnesses at last count interviewed by the January 6th Congressional committee," Kirschner explained. "The difference is between that kind of a subpoena and a federal grand jury subpoena, which is what now Stephen Miller has had placed in his hands."

"Because you can play some games trying to avoid a congressional subpoena and Congress does not have the same tools to enforce its subpoenas and compel testimony," he added. "But I'll I tell you what: the department of justice does."

"Things have just gotten real for Stephen Miller and anybody else who has a federal grand jury subpoena," he elaborated. "I have to believe at the end of the day he will testify truthfully and if not he'll be looking at a perjury charge or contempt or obstruction of justice charge."

"If he testifies truthfully about what Donald Trump has done, that could spell additional trouble for Trump," he added.

Watch:


Offline Rick Plant

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Re: 1/6 Insurrection Investigation
« Reply #1070 on: September 12, 2022, 04:53:45 PM »
Jan. 6 Committee will soon reveal new evidence uncovered since last public hearing

The Jan. 6 House Select Committee faces some momentous decisions with 16 weeks before it dissolves.

Lawmakers are considering whether to seek Donald Trump's testimony and still hoping to negotiate an interview with Mike Pence, and they still must decide what to do with Republican lawmakers who've defied their subpoenas, as the next round of public hearings are about to be announced, reported Politico.

“Each member of the committee has things that he or she really wants to continue to pursue over the next few weeks, based on the work that we did before the recess,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), a member of the panel. “People want to make sure that we fortify the democracy against coups and insurrections, political violence and other efforts to usurp the will of the people."

The Justice Department investigation of Trump's possession of top-secret materials at Mar-a-Lago has complicated matters, and a federal grand jury has accelerated its investigation into the former president's efforts to overturn the election, which a Georgia special grand jury is also probing.

Those investigations have also put pressure on the select to committee to share its transcripts of witness interviews, and panel chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) has indicated they will release most, if not all, of those publicly, although it's not clear when that would happen.

The committee has not yet agreed when to release its comprehensive final report, and Raskin recently said the panel planned "at least two more blockbuster hearings," including one this month, but all of its work will soon conclude as staffers leave their jobs as part of the normal transition that accompany midterm elections.

https://www.rawstory.com/jan-6-committee-news/

Offline Rick Plant

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Re: 1/6 Insurrection Investigation
« Reply #1071 on: September 12, 2022, 11:24:00 PM »
Oath Keepers founder wouldn’t have taken part in Jan. 6 attack without cover ‘from someone higher up the chain’: son



Perhaps no one is anticipating the trial of the Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, which is scheduled to begin Sept. 27, more than Dakota Adams, his estranged son.

“My opinion on Stewart is that if he ever gets out of prison, he’s going to be a threat to my family,” Adams told Raw Story. “If he gets out, he has a right to unsupervised visitation. I would strap on body armor and follow him around the house with a firearm to ensure that he doesn’t try to kidnap my younger siblings and flee the country.”

Adams, who is 25, legally changed his name to avoid carrying forward his father’s lineage. The eldest of Rhodes’ children, Adams has two other adult siblings and three siblings who are still minors. Adams and other family members have previously detailed years of abuse that they say they experienced at the hands of Rhodes, who founded the far-right Oath Keepers militia group in 2009.

“If anyone would have asked if I would feign a tearful reconciliation to wear a wire and put him in prison, I would have agreed in a heartbeat,” Adams said.

Adams became estranged from Rhodes and drifted from the far-right movement his father helped lead in 2017. That rupture began a process of mourning the loss of his paternal relationship and resenting Rhodes for failing his family, Adams said. But by 2020, the year Rhodes took an extreme turn towards more violent rhetoric and alignment with Trump, Adams said he had “pretty much run out of venom” in his feelings about his father.

Now, as an astute critic of the far-right milieu of the Oath Keepers and someone intimately familiar with Rhodes’ patterns of behavior, Adams is keenly monitoring preparations for the seditious conspiracy trial of Rhodes and eight codefendants, and the next round of hearings by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the US Capitol.

Adams said he is certain that his father wouldn’t have decided on his own to participate in an attack on the US Capitol.

“I believe that Stewart wouldn’t have gone into the 6th without cover or assurances from someone higher up the chain,” Adams told Raw Story. “I believe he was an expendable asset. He’s probably going to go down swinging in his three-ring-circus trial, believing that someone like Trump or DeSantis will come along later and pardon him, and he will rise again like a phoenix.”

The Oath Keepers actions on Jan. 6 — with members breaching the Capitol in two separate “stacks,” with directions to hunt for lawmakers, and others staged across the Potomac River in armed “quick reaction forces” — are a departure from Rhodes’ tactical posture in the past, Adams said.

Rhodes was critical of a proposal by libertarian activist Adam Kokesh in 2013 to stage an armed Second Amendment march into Washington, DC, which would have violated the district’s prohibition against firearms and put participants in the position of deciding whether to defy arrest.

“Stewart’s personal take on that was that it was stupid,” Adams said. “If any shootings took place, they were going to be starting the first battle of the civil war in a kill trough as they came over the bridge over the Potomac River. It would create the perception that they were weak and they were the aggressors, which is the worst way to start a war.”

Similarly, Adams said, Rhodes initially discouraged members from joining the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in response to a call by Ammon Bundy in late 2015.

“Waiting out a siege in the Capitol with Nancy Pelosi as a hostage — all that’s going to do is get you hanged,” Adams said. “I don’t think [Rhodes] would have done it unless he thought he had an out, it was acting on orders from someone else, and he had to be desperate.”

Adams said Rhodes lived with the fear of being indicted for his involvement in the Bundy Ranch standoff in Nevada in 2014 for years, and believed that a Democratic administration increased his odds of arrest.

In 2015, Adams said that Rhodes accepted an invitation to meet two FBI agents at an Appleby’s restaurant in Kalispell, Montana. Rhodes claimed to the family that he laid down a hard line to the agents about the risk of a civil war, but Adams said the meeting marked the end of the Oath Keepers’ participation in armed standoffs, and Rhodes spiraled into a deep depression shortly afterward.

Adams said he believes the Oath Keepers’ increasing alignment with Donald Trump after the 2016 election was a tack by Rhodes to get out from under the thumb of the FBI. While others in the Oath Keepers were preoccupied with purported election fraud in late 2020, Adams observed that many of Rhodes’ posts on the Oath Keepers website, which has been taken down, were paranoid rants about the FBI.

Rhodes’ past dealings with the FBI have made him an object of suspicion within far-right and conservative circles, along with the fact that he remained free until January 2022 — almost a year after the arrest of the first Oath Keepers members in connection with the Jan. 6 attack. Adams rejects the proposal that Rhodes was an asset in a so-called “fedsurrection.”

“I do not think Stewart was acting as a federal asset,” Adams said. “That was all Stewart. That was all the kind of s*** Stewart would do if he was given clearance from some higher authority, that everything was going to be okay, that he would be pardoned.”

While he doesn’t have direct knowledge of the Oath Keepers’ activities after 2017, Adams said he suspects that Rhodes was reporting to either Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security advisor, or Roger Stone, a political strategist and longtime confidant of the former president, on Jan. 6.

Intense speculation has focused on a phone call by Rhodes from a suite in the Phoenix Hotel following the attack on the Capitol in which Rhodes reportedly asked an unidentified individual to let him speak to President Trump. William Todd Wilson, an Oath Keeper who pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy, overheard “Rhodes repeatedly implore the individual to tell President Trump to call upon groups like the Oath Keepers to forcibly oppose the transfer of power,” according to the statement of facts accompanying Wilson’s guilty plea. The unidentified individual denied Rhodes’s request to speak directly with Trump, according to the statement of facts, and after the call ended, Rhodes told the others in the room: “I just want to fight.”

“Whoever Stewart was calling from that hotel room — I would bet, if anyone were taking the odds, that was Michael Flynn or Roger Stone that rebuffed him and refused to compromise Trump,” Adams told Raw Story.

Joe Flynn responded on behalf of his brother, Michael Flynn, to a request for comment from Raw Story.

“Lol you guys are f*****g clowns,” he said in a text message.

An attorney for Stone said his client has never had any dealings with Rhodes.

“Please let me say in no uncertain terms, Mr. Stone has never met, talked to, or otherwise interacted with Mr. Rhodes,” Grant J. Smith said in an email to Raw Story. “Everything you assert below is based on the guesses and conjecture of an estranged son. Unequivocally, Mr. Stone did not participate in anything you have described below. Please don’t report on something as flimsy as your statements below, no matter how tempting it may be.”

A spokesperson for the US Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia declined to comment on the Oath Keepers case.

Kellye SoRelle, the general counsel for the Oath Keepers and someone Rhodes has said he had a romantic relationship with, told Raw Story following her arrest last week: “I hope they get the real perpetrators — Flynn, Byrne, Powell, etc., those behind the Big Lie that set up the conservatives.”

Patrick Byrne, the former Overstock.com CEO; attorney Sidney Powell; and Joe Flynn, speaking on behalf of Michael Flynn, all rejected SoRelle’s characterizations.

Adams said he thinks there’s an outside chance that Rhodes will plead out and agree to turn state’s evidence if he feels that he’s been betrayed or written off by members of Trump’s circle. It would probably take something like Trump hinting during a campaign speech that Rhodes was a federal asset.

“Short of that, I think he’s going to go down swinging,” Adams said. “He is going to play for time, and make a lot of noise, and build his resume for his return. What I would prepare for in the trial is a clown show, full three-ring circus.”

Overall, Adams is feeling bullish about the federal prosecution of the Oath Keepers and the next round of January 6th Committee hearings.

“I think Stewart’s trial is going to be a trial run for indicting Donald Trump, possibly using some of the same logic of Stewart commanding the stack and the QRF; in the same way, [they could argue] Trump orchestrated the mob that attacked the Capitol,” Adams said. “And it’s a stepping stone for indicting Trump’s inner circle, people like Stone and Flynn.

“I think a conviction of Stewart is going to lay the groundwork for going up the chain on the sedition track,” Adams continued. “My personal take is that Stewart’s trial and the second round of January 6th Committee hearings is a prelude for Trump’s arrest. That’s the way you go after an autocrat. You have to take on the public perception battle as much as anything else. You have to attack every dimension simultaneously. Convicting Stewart for seditious conspiracy for running a paramilitary embedded with the mob that attacked the Capitol is one way to do that.”

https://www.rawstory.com/dakota-adams/

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Re: 1/6 Insurrection Investigation
« Reply #1071 on: September 12, 2022, 11:24:00 PM »