Tag: Capitol riot

Prosecutors Ask for January 6 Conspiracy Figure Ray Epps to Receive 6-Month Prison Sentence

Just the News
January Six Riot

Federal prosecutors are asking the court to sentence Ray Epps, the defendant at the center of Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot conspiracies, to six months in prison. 

In a 29-page court filing Tuesday, prosecutors asked the court to sentence Epps to six months in prison, which they said is the “high end” of the applicable sentencing guidelines. Epps, a retired 62-year-old former Marine and former Arizona Oath Keeper leader, pleaded guilty in September to disorderly conduct in a restricted building, a misdemeanor, and agreed to pay $500 in restitution as part of a plea agreement.

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Three Years Later, Fewer Americans Think Trump Was Responsible for Capitol Riot: Poll

Wisconsin Daily Star Staff
January 6

Fewer Democrats and Republicans today than in 2021 think that former President Donald Trump was responsible for the events of Jan. 6 of that year, at the U.S. Capitol, according to a new poll published on Wednesday.

Trump was impeached for a second time by the House of Representatives on Jan. 13, 2021, for “incitement of insurrection” after, on Jan. 6, a mob of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol building to disrupt the counting of electoral votes for the 2020 presidential election, following a “Stop the Steal” rally that Trump hosted at the Ellipse. Despite being uniformly blamed by Democrats for the event, fewer Americans in both parties think that Trump was responsible for the events at the Capitol building, according to a poll conducted by the University of Maryland for The Washington Post, published Tuesday.

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Speaker Mike Johnson to Post More than 40,000 Hours of January 6 Footage Online

Just the News
January Six Riots

House Speaker Mike Johnson on Friday announced that he planned to post nearly all of the Capitol Hill security footage from the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot online for the public to view.

“When I ran for Speaker, I promised to make accessible to the American people the 44,000 hours of video from Capitol Hill security taken on January 6, 2021,” he said in a statement obtained by Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman. “Truth and transparency are critical.”

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Jan. 6 Defendant Appeals to Supreme Court in Case that Could Upend Hundreds of Riot Charges

Just the News

Jan. 6 defendant Edward Jacob Lang is asking the Supreme Court to hear his challenge against one of the 11 charges he was indicted on – obstruction of an official proceeding – in a case that could upend legal proceedings against hundreds of other defendants indicted on charges related to the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot. 

The obstruction charge could be levied against “anyone who attends at a public demonstration gone awry,” attorneys for Lang wrote in an appeal to the Supreme Court last week. The proceeding for which the charge was brought refers to the event where Congress certifies the Electoral College votes to confirm the president.

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Whistleblower: Top FBI Official Made ‘Chilling’ Threat to Agents Questioning January 6 Cases

Just the News

A top official with the FBI has filed a protected disclosure to the Office of the Inspector General alleging that FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate told the bureau’s internal critics of its Jan. 6-related cases to seek employment elsewhere and offered to personally address his subordinates’ agents concerns.

In a sworn affidavit, the 15-year veteran FBI special agent alleges that, during a routine meeting in February 2021, the deputy director addressed internal concerns that the bureau had not taken the same approach to its investigations into the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot as it did with the 2020 riots and protests related to the death of George Floyd.

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House Speaker Releases Thousands of Hours of January 6 Surveillance Video to Tucker Carlson: Report

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According to an exclusive posted on Axios today, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has turned over the full trove of surveillance video captured by Capitol police security cameras on January 6 to Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

“Carlson TV producers were on Capitol Hill last week to begin digging through the trove, which includes multiple camera angles from all over Capitol grounds,” Mike Allen reported. “Excerpts will begin airing in the coming weeks.”

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January 6 Committee Hired Consultant Who May Have Conflict of Interest

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The Jan. 6 Committee hired an investigative consultant who could have a major “conflict of interest,” watchdogs told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Brian Young is a senior financial investigator at the consultancy Polar Solutions Inc and a contractor for the Jan. 6 Committee, according to his LinkedIn profile and an internal congressional document obtained by the DCNF. But he is also married to House Deputy Sergeant-at-Arms (SAA) Kim E. Campbell, the second most senior official in the SAA, which like the U.S. Capitol Police is being probed by the committee for security failures in connection to the Capitol riot.

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Ohio U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan: January 6 Committee ‘Lied to the American People’

Susan Berry, PhD

U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) said members of the House Democrats’ select committee who claim to be investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol “altered evidence” of a text exchange between him and former White House Chief-of-Staff Mark Meadows.

On Sunday Jordan referred to the primetime presentation hearing focused on the riot, for which Democrats hired former president of ABC News James Goldston to produce, as nothing but a partisan effort that has already been shown to include doctored “evidence.”

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Julie Kelly Commentary: Justice Department Threatens Oath-Keepers with Life in Prison

Wisconsin Daily Star Staff

In a letter obtained by American Greatness, the U.S. Department of Justice is threatening defendants charged with seditious conspiracy in the sprawling Oath Keepers case to accept plea deals or face life in prison.

Matthew Graves, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia handling every prosecution related to the events of January 6, 2021, imposed a May 6 deadline for the remaining defendants to accept plea deals. Three men have pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy; nine others, including Oath Keepers’ founder Stewart Rhodes, have rejected government attempts to reach a plea.

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Hidden Video Reportedly Captures New York Times Reporter Calling January 6 Coverage an ‘Overreaction’

Wisconsin Daily Star Staff

A national security correspondent for The New York Times said the media’s coverage of the Capitol Riot was “overblown” and that the events of Jan. 6, 2021 were “no big deal,” according to undercover video released Tuesday by Project Veritas.

NYT correspondent Matthew Rosenberg and his colleagues have described the reported presence of FBI plants among the rioters outside of the U.S. Capitol a year earlier as a “reimagining” of the “attack.” But in the Project Veritas video, which appears to have been recorded without his knowledge, Rosenberg paints a different picture and claims that “there were a ton of FBI informants amongst the people who attacked the capitol.”

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Commentary: More Trouble for the FBI in the Whitmer Kidnapping Case

Wisconsin Daily Star Staff
Gretchen Whitmer

The media went wild last week after Joe Biden’s Justice Department finally produced a criminal indictment to support the claim that January 6 was an “insurrection” planned by militiamen loyal to Donald Trump: Eleven members of the Oath Keepers, including its founder, Stewart Rhodes, face the rarely used charge of seditious conspiracy for their brief and nonviolent involvement at the Capitol protest that day.

Journalists luxuriated in the news, jeering those of us who had correctly noted that the Justice Department had failed to charge anyone with insurrection or sedition for more than a year.

But the press does not share the same zeal in covering another politically charged investigation: the imploding criminal case against five men accused of plotting to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020. The kidnapping narrative shares many similarities with their preferred telling of January 6, not the least of which is that alleged militias incited by Trump attempted to carry out a domestic terror attack.

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Justice Accuses Bannon Lawyers of Trying to Turn Case from Legal Proceedings to Media Circus

Wisconsin Daily Star Staff
Steve Bannon

The Justice Department is accusing lawyers for Trump ally Steve Bannon of filing “frivolous” legal complaints to create media hype around the defense of the criminal charges their client faces for refusing to comply with a Democrat-led House committee’s demand that he comply with its Jan. 6 probe.

The agency filed a 10-page document Sunday night in which prosecutors say Bannon attorney Evan Corcoran has repeatedly rebuffed their efforts to negotiate an evidence-sharing agreement, a standard part of the process in criminal trials, according to Politico.

Bannon was a White House political adviser for President Trump. He refused to comply with the subpoenas issued by the select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot demand he testify and supply documents related to the incident, amid speculation he helped plan the incident.

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Department of Justice Issues Stinging Rebuke of Biden’s Hope of Capitol Riot Prosecutions

Wisconsin Daily Star Staff

The U.S. Department of Justice this week issued a rare and pointed clapback against President Joe Biden after the latter expressed a desire to see prosecutions in connection with the Jan. 6 congressional investigation.

Asked on Friday what should happen to individuals who defy the subpoenas of the Jan. 6 commission, Biden said, “I hope that the committee goes after them and holds them accountable criminally.”

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January 6 Commission Chairman Once Sympathized with Black Secessionist Group that Killed Police Officers

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Rep. Bennie Thompson, the Mississippi Democrat who chairs the congressional commission investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, has been a vocal critic of an event he deems an insurrection and offered his sympathy to the police officers injured that day. He’s even gone as far as to sue former President Donald Trump for responsibility for the melee.

But as a young African-American alderman in a small Mississippi community in 1971, Thompson placed himself on the opposite side, openly sympathizing with a secessionist group known as the Republic of New Africa and participating in a news conference blaming law enforcement for instigating clashes with the group that led to the killings of a police officer and the wounding of an FBI agent. Thompson’s official biography makes no reference to the separatist RNA.

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Commentary: New January 6 Stories That Complicate the Media Narrative

Wisconsin Daily Star Staff

The Associated Press reported in August that Robert Reeder, a Maryland man, pleaded guilty to “parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building.” He argued for leniency because, “he is a registered Democrat who wasn’t a supporter of former President Donald Trump.” So why did he join the incursion into the Capitol building? Because, he says, he was an “accidental tourist” with nothing better to do.

But an online group that calls itself Sedition Hunters recently tweeted a picture it says shows that same “accidental tourist” attacking a police officer. Curiously, the “accidental tourist,” who didn’t support Donald Trump, happened to be wearing a red “MAGA”-style hat. His attorney argued in court, “Mr. Reeder is not politically active, is not and has never been a member of any right-wing or anti-government or extremist group and has, unfortunately, been publicly grouped with many others (whose) views he abhors.”

The story reminds one of John Sullivan, a Black Lives Matter activist who infiltrated the January 6 incursion to encourage violence, bully police officers, and generally stoke mayhem. While many of the trespassers remain locked up without bail, Sullivan mysteriously received pre-trial release.

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Commentary: Jacob Chansley Pleads Guilty to Obstruction, Remains in Jail

Wisconsin Daily Star Staff

Jacob Chansley, arguably the most iconic figure of the January 6 protest at the U.S. Capitol, today pleaded guilty to one count of obstruction of an official proceeding.

Chansley, 33, turned himself in to law enforcement and was arrested on January 9. A grand jury indicted Chansley two days later on six nonviolent counts including obstruction, civil disorder, and “parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building.” The remaining counts will be dropped.

Judge Royce Lamberth accepted Chansely’s plea agreement with Joe Biden’s Justice Department, which continues to arrest and charge Americans for even minor involvement in the Capitol protest. Nearly 200 defendants face the obstruction charge, a felony added to mostly misdemeanor cases. (I explained the charge here in March.)

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