The attack on democracy by insurrectionists last week was planned on social media platform Parler, which is was the Facebook for Criminals before Amazon yanked it off its servers for violating community standards.  Apparently, Amazon takes a dim view of threatening mass murder and overthrow of governments, and now that Parler is offline, extremists are being forced back into the dark web, the cozy home for racists and child pornographers.

All that is good, but here’s what’s really good…before Parler was taken offline, hackers (who the press calls researchers) scraped personal data on approximately 12 million users, a lot of whom are white supremacists, anti-government types, Trumpists, and armed insurgents.  What’s REALLY good?  After promising anonymity and more “freedom”, Parler actually was more intrusive than even Facebook.  Like Facebook, Parler followed people around, but even required users to upload their DRIVER’S LICENSE to become a “verified person”.  Also all videos posted to the site captured actual GPS coordinates for the video.  The result?  Thousands of the rioters who carried their phones (all of them) incriminated themselves as Parler captured who they were, where they were, and what they did.  Apparently the hackers captured up to 70 terabytes (that’s a lot) of data including said driver’s licenses, geolocations, deleted messages, and something like 1.1 million videos that included GPS locations.

The FBI has a LOT of doors to knock on now, and that’s a good thing.

Remember Trump whining a few weeks ago about Melania not getting any magazine covers during his infestation of the WH?  Well THIS is going to REALLY piss him off.  I give you the February 2021 cover of Vogue:

Boom.

It’s becoming pretty clear now that the attack on the Capitol on Wednesday was not just some spontaneous demonstration by wild eyed Trumpists that got out of hand.  Evidence is emerging of a coordinated attack on our government with the intent of insurrectionists to not only stop the Electoral College vote certification, but to also kidnap and even kill US officials to take control of the US government and hand it to Trump in a coup.  Fortunately the coup failed and our democracy endured, but that’s not the end of the story, not by a long shot.

Despite the rightwing media blitz of bullshit that the rioters were “infiltrated by Antifa and BLM”, well known Nazis, white supremacists, Qanon nutbags, and radical gun nuts were at the front of the line.  One such radical is retired Air Force Lt. Colonel Larry Rendell Brock, Jr. who’s family and friends have described him as increasingly unhinged and radical.  He was photographed in the well of the Senate chamber on Wednesday wearing body armor, a military issue combat helmet and carrying zip tie handcuffs.  He was also photographed enter Nancy Pelosi’s office and then quietly pushing past the mob and out.  Here he is in the chamber:

Other disturbing videos and photos have been posted online of other radicals carrying zip ties and weapons.  The video of the shocking scene of radicals smashing doors and the ultimate shooting of a Trump radical was the entrance to the Speaker’s lobby just outside of the House chamber.  The person shot and killed was trying to climb through the window of the door.  Her name was Ashli Babbitt, another Air Force vet, Qanon conspiracy nut, and extremist who’d become more and more radicalized.  The target of the violence?  House members who were evacuating through the lobby down a secure elevator.  The intent is clear.

Even worse, it is now pretty apparent that someone, or some persons, at the Pentagon either overtly or tacitly supported this attempted coup by confusing or delaying military and Capitol Police response.  As we talked about yesterday, governor of Maryland, Larry Hogan, announced yesterday that he was denied clearance numerous times to deploy National Guard troops to the Capitol.  Dithering/stonewalling from the Pentagon caused loss of control at the Capitol resulting in numerous injuries and 5 deaths including a Capitol Hill Police officer who was beaten to death with a fire extinguisher.

On top of all this evidence, security experts in allied countries are now speaking out about the apparent conspiracy to support the attempted coup by Trump.  These experts, speaking anonymously, said what we all know, that keeping a building like the Capitol secure is not a secret.  The techniques that keep bad actors out of secure buildings all over the world are the same, and well known by security experts who share information and regularly train together.  One NATO official interviewed said to Business Insider, “Today I am briefing my government that we believe with a reasonable level of certainty that Donald Trump attempted a coup that failed when the system did not buckle.  I can’t believe this happened.”  Now THAT, kids, is a scary but also very likely correct conclusion.

In the coming days I believe that there will be, and should be, criminal conspiracy charges against individuals in US government agencies including in the Pentagon, Homeland Security, and even the White House.  Then, we’ll have to grapple with the conclusion that millions of Americans still support the person who tried to steal our government from us.  I’m not hopeful we can pull out of this.

Republican Larry Hogan, governor or Maryland, announced today that the Pentagon refused repeated requests from him to mobilize the Maryland National Guard on Wednesday to give relief to Congress in the Capitol that was being inundated by insurrectionist Trumpists determined to kidnap/kill members of Congress and which sacked the Capitol in the process.  The Pentagon has been totally unresponsive to questions from Congress and the press since the incident.  Remember that after the election, Trump fired Secretary of Defense Mark Esper right after the election, installing sycophant Chris Miller and other Trump loyalists.  There’s little doubt that criminal investigations will begin on January 21.

Breaking – Twitter has just announced that it has banned Trump permanently due to his continued abuse of their terms of service.  Their statement: “After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence,” Twitter’s official “Safety” account tweeted.  That’s only about 5 years late.

Today was the second time that the US Capitol was assaulted in US history.  The last time was 1812.  Trump, along with his enablers, including Giuliani, Flynn, Gohmert, Hawley, and especially Cruz are DIRECTLY responsible for the violence today.  All of the major social media platforms froze Trump’s accounts today for “repeated and severe violations” of their Civic Integrity policies.  This action, which is way too little, way too late is at least something, but it is NOT enough.  The time is now long past for removal of Trump from office with the 25th Amendment.

There are 14 days now until the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.  We simply can’t trust Trump to preserve our republic for those 14 days, and it’s now time for Pence to lead the cabinet in a vote to immediately remove him from office before he does something REALLY stupid like starting a war or inciting more insurrection.  Do it now.  I mean NOW.

Then, the federal government should pursue, and arrest and charge, every single individual who trespassed into OUR Capitol building and defiled both chambers or our legislative branch.  This nonsense has to stop, and I mean NOW.