Liz Cheney says Trump ignored Ivanka’s calls to stop Capitol riot
Donald Trump has canceled a press conference scheduled for 6 January at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the attack on the Capitol mounted by his supporters, after his Republican allies openly chafed at the idea of relitigating false election claims.
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will lead a day of memorial events planned throughout Washington DC, including lawmakers sharing their experience of the assault and a candlelight vigil at the National Mall.
Documents recently published by the committee revealed how the former president’s allies planned a campaign to intimidate election officials and spread voter fraud falsehoods, while another appeared to call for the seizure of “evidence” in service of his false claims that propelled the attack and his spurious bid to overturn election results.
In recent weeks, the committee has accelerated its probe into the attack, fuelled by conspiracy theories that the 2020 presidential election was rigged, and a violent attempt to reject the votes of millions of Americans.
This week, in a letter asking for his cooperation in the probe, the committee published several text messages from Fox News personality Sean Hannity to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in the days surrounding the attack.
Capitol riots: Officers sue Trump over lasting trauma from broken limbs, concussion and chemical attacks
At least three law enforcement officers have decided to file a lawsuit against former president Donald Trump seeking damages for physical and emotional injuries sustained during the attack.
The officers, in the lawsuit filed on 4 January, said the deadly insurrection attack left them with broken limbs, a concussion, ringing ears, night terrors and depression.
They have alleged that a mob supporting the former president sprayed them with chemicals, hit them with flagpoles and shouted racial slurs as they pushed past the crowd into the halls of Congress last year.
US Capitol Police Officer Marcus Moore and a separate suit from Washington DC Metropolitan Police Department officers DeDevine Carter and Bobby Tabron have filed the lawsuit, alleging that Mr Trump “inflamed, encouraged, incited, directed, and aided and abetted” an assault against the officers.
This was fulled by his baseless voter fraud narrative, they said.
Alex Woodward has the full story here
Arpan Rai6 January 2022 06:56
One year after the Capitol riots, FBI’s hunt for hundreds of suspects still on
The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s task to find who planted the pipe bombs and if there is a connection between the pipe bombs and the riots that gripped the Capitol exactly a year back is still on.
Officials are yet to comb the suspect among hundreds of people being probed by the FBI after last year’s deadly riots. The investigators are yet to fully identify and apprehend 250 people seen on video assaulting the police on the day of insurrection. At least another 100 need to be held for other crimes tied to the riots.
More than 700 people have already been charged with federal crimes linked to the Capitol riots and arrests are being constantly made, underlining how the investigation of the deadly insurrection has been a massive undertaking for the FBI.
Investigators and agents working on the case have been looking at thousands of hours of surveillance video and tracking movements from that time, second by second in every video, to understand who all are behind the attack on officers.
Steven D’Antuono, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s field office in Washington explained: “This investigation takes time because it is a lot of lot of work, a lot of painstaking work that they look at the video kind of frame by frame.”
Arpan Rai6 January 2022 06:17
QAnon Shaman expresses regret, says he tried to calm down the crowd
Jacob Chansley, one of the famous Donald Trump loyalists who participated in the riot last year outside the US Capitol building, and is also known as QAnon Shaman said he wished he could have done things differently on the tragic day.
“In retrospect, one thing I can say that I regret is not working to make sure there was far more peace on that day,” Chansley said, according to a report.
He added: “If I had known that was going to happen, I would have stepped in before the barricades were breached. I actually tried to calm down the crowd on more than one occasion.”
It just didn’t work, QAnon Shaman said.
The insurrector is serving a 41-month prison sentence after being found guilty of obstructing the proceedings of Congress and was speaking over a phone call with his mother.
He went on to become the most immediately recognisable member of the riot groups in a bare-chested, face-painted and horn-headed outfit.
A picture of him posing on the rostrum of the Senate chamber with a spear became one of the most iconic images from that day, and his case soon became one of its most-watched.
He is currently lodged in a federal prison in Oklahoma.
Arpan Rai6 January 2022 05:45
A recap of Capitol riot: What happened on 6 January 2021?
Today marks one year of the failed insurrection led by a pro-Trump mob which caused violence at the US Capitol and stormed the legislative complex in their bid to prevent the Senate from certifying the previous November’s presidential election result and officially confirming Democrat Joe Biden as the winner.
An angry crowd of Mr Trump’s loyalists – Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, QAnon believers, neo-Nazis, local government Republicans and ordinary working folk led on by the former president’s repeated but disingenuous cries of foul play – had crossed the country to be in attendance.
What ensued was the mob’s entrance into the historical landmark building, many of its constituents decked out in ominous homemade combat gear in addition to the red Trump-branded caps and Stars-and-Stripes flags.
Joe Sommerland snapshots the events here in this report
Arpan Rai6 January 2022 05:12
From the QAnon Shaman to zip-tie guy: The most notable Capitol rioters and what happened to them
As US marks the first anniversary of the 6 January insurrection at the Capitol looming, more than 700 people have been arrested for their alleged part in the most serious breach of the building since the War of 1812.
Many of the accused are facing only minor charges, but others are in far more serious trouble – and among those already sentenced are some of the most familiar faces from the abundant footage of the day’s events.
As the hard work of identifying, arresting and prosecuting those involved in the riot continues, here’s what’s happened so far to some of the day’s most notorious figures.
Andrew Naughtie has all details in this report
Arpan Rai6 January 2022 04:30
What happened on January 6?
One year ago, a mob of hundreds of people breached the halls of Congress inside the US Capitol, interrupting the certification of Electoral College votes in a violent, failed attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
The Independent’s Joe Sommerlad revisits the events surrounding the attack and how it unfolded:
Alex Woodward6 January 2022 04:15
Twitter assembles a team for Capitol riot anniversary, on watch for tweets and accounts that can provoke violence
Twitter on Tuesday said it has convened a team to prepare the micro-blogging site for addressing any harmful content related to the 6 January riots at the US Capitol building.
The precautionary measures are being taken one year after the riots on 6 January last year, in which at least five people were killed and hundreds, including police officers, were injured.
Twitter said a cross-functional working group has been convened and includes members across its site integrity and trust and safety team. The team will be on a watch for risks such as tweets and accounts that could provoke violence.
It did not specify the number of people involved in the operation.
Trending topics and search results for harmful content will also be on the team’s radar, Twitter said, adding that the company is making efforts to expand upon its work to monitor the platform at the time of major global events.
Social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook came under the scanner shortly after for enabling extremists and pro-Trump camp to organise the mass-scale violence.
Arpan Rai6 January 2022 04:08
Hawley claims Democrats want to ‘consolidate power’ as GOP state lawmakers mount election obstruction
“The politics of fear that the Democratic Party has been pushing on this country for a whole year now – it’s the only thing they have to offer the country,” he told Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Tuesday night. “And what they’re trying to do with it is consolidate their power.”
Alex Woodward6 January 2022 03:45
In a sobering Jan 6 essay, Jimmy Carter warns American democracy ‘has become dangerously fragile’
Former president Jimmy Carter has warned against a relentless and powerful disinformation campaign to sow distrust — a rising tolerance for political violence —has left the nation teetering “on the brink of a widening abyss”
A year after the Capitol riots and violence which gripped the nation, Mr Carter writes that following a pro-Trump assault at the historical building, failed attempt to reject the 2020 presidential election, despite a “brief hope” that the violence would shock the nation’s consciousness into action, the false “stolen election” narrative that fuelled the attack is as present as ever.
“I now fear that what we have fought so hard to achieve globally – the right to free, fair elections, unhindered by strongman politicians who seek nothing more than to grow their own power – has become dangerously fragile at home,” he writes.
Alex Woodward reports on this here
Arpan Rai6 January 2022 03:34
On the Capitol rioters and the banality of extremism
More than 700 people have been charged with federal crimes and dozens of others are wanted by law enforcement for their role in the Captitol riots.
Headlines have been dominated by a few figures – the so-called QAnon Shaman, a Texas real estate agent who flew to Washington DC on a private plane, and cases involving far-right groups the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers militia.
But those cases may be obscuring an alarming fact about those who stormed the Capitol that day to halt the process of democracy:
“They are not interesting,” says Seamus Hughes, deputy director of the George Washington University’s Program on Extremism. “You’ve got construction workers and yoga instructors. They come from a cross-section of America.”
The Independent’s Richard Hall examines the state of extremism in the US:
Alex Woodward6 January 2022 03:15
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