Yesterday the DOJ announced the arrest and charging of 3 insurrectionist leaders who planned and led the attack on the Capitol.  In an extensive 23 page indictment, 3 individuals were named, Thomas Caldwell, Donovan Crowl, and Jessica Watkins, associated with extremist groups including Oathkeepers, Proud Boys, and the Three Percenters.  The charges detailed how they forcibly entered the Capitol, assaulted officers, destroyed property, interfered with Congress, and pursued members of Congress.  One particular chilling part of the indictment describes FB messages Caldwell was receiving from co-conspirators that were actually guiding him down flights of stairs and through tunnels as he pursued fleeing members of Congress.  In messages between other co-conspirators, they even talked about “Paul” who has “the goodies in case things go bad and we need to get heavy.”  And stupidly, they put a lot of this communication and evidence of their lawbreaking up on social media for all to see.  Unbelievable.

It’s becoming very clear that the attack on the Capitol wasn’t just a demonstration that got out of hand.  The attack was planned among conspirators in multiple states in multiple extremist groups.  Their military training, radical rhetoric, and threats made it clear they intended to capture, and even kill members of Congress whom they had decided had somehow committed “treason”.  The evidence is also becoming clear that they had help from the inside of the Capitol.  Who that is, we don’t know yet, but I predict we will.

The feds must continue investigating, arresting, trying and convicting as many of these conspirators.  These extremists are gun nuts who advocate unlicensed and unregulated ownership of all firearms.  Many are convicted felons who are excluded from owning guns, by law.  Even though many of these radicals are not allowed to own guns, they can still get them through private sales and black markets, but the feds must continue pursuing these criminals and enforcing the law.  The Congress in collusion with George W, let the genie out of the bottle in 2004 when they let the Assault Weapons ban expire.  Millions of weapons of war have flooded into the market feeding the violent tendencies of extremists groups that have proliferated all over the country.  The only tool we have remaining is charging, convicting, and jailing thousands of these gun nuts who threaten our democratic republic.

This is at least a start.

UPDATE 2: The Boston Globe is reporting that Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley and her husband retreated to her office during the attack and staff barricaded and bolted the door.  When she went to her panic button (every office has one) she found that it had been ripped out.  Capitol Hill Police moved her several times to keep her away from the mob.

UPDATE 1:  New Jersey Rep. Mikie Sherrill told constituents on a live stream last night that she witnessed certain representatives actually giving tours of the Capitol on January 5th that she’s now realized were actually reconnaissance for the attack the following day.  She didn’t name them publicly, but is going to make sure that they are brought to justice along with other complicit representatives as well as Trump.  She does know what she’s talking about, being a Navy helicopter pilot and member of flag staff for a decade.  This story just piles more evidence on the emerging narrative that the attack was most certainly carefully planned and executed from the highest levels of the government.

ORIGINAL STORY: Seth Abramson, a NYTimes bestselling author and analyst for several networks, has compiled over 250 reports on last Wednesday and a seriously disturbing pattern is emerging about what events led to an invasion of the Capitol.  The punch line is that this entire sordid episode was planned and executed with the specific intent of disrupting the certification of the Electoral Vote long enough for violent extremists to actually stop the certification.  I won’t post the entire thread here, but you can read it here on Threadreader.  It is required reading to begin to understand what happened on January 6th.

To set the scene, here were the main players:

Trump
Giuliani
Rep. Biggs (R-AZ)
Rep. Gosar (R-AZ)
Rep. Brooks (R-AL)
Sen. Tuberville (R-AL)
Arizona Proud Boys
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall

Assisted by:

Ali Alexander, far-right activist
Roger Stone, friend and advisor to the president
Paul Manafort, former Trump campaign manager
Donald Trump Jr., son of the president

Roger Stone is in the center of this conspiracy (sound familiar?), is close to the Proud Boys, and coordinated the effort.  Alexander originally organized a “Stop the Steal” rally for January 6.  Stone had coined the term.  The event was eventually combined with another event, “Save America” which had been organized by a Trump dark money group.  Since the election, Trump has raised over $300 million from loyalists for “election defense” but much of the money apparently went to Stone and Manafort to organize the insurrection.  Stone recruited Biggs, Gosar, and Brooks in the house to object to the Arizona electoral vote, and got Tuberville to join in the Senate.

Here’s the money line:  THE ONLY REASON THEY WERE TO OBJECT TO THE ELECTORAL VOTE WAS TO DELAY THE CERTIFICATION LONG ENOUGH TO GIVE THE MOB, LED BY THE PROUD BOYS, TIME TO BREACH THE CAPITOL AND STOP THE CERTIFICATION COMPLETELY. 

Here are the Arizona Proud Boys at the Capitol.  They wore the orange hats to distinguish members during the invasion:

That, boys and girls, is chilling.  Seth Abramson has compiled public data that reveals a narrative that the President of the United States, one US Senator, three US Congressmen, a state attorney general, Trump’s insane attorney, two convicted felons, Trump’s shitbag son, and a violent far right group of extremists hatched a plan IN THE WHITE HOUSE to actually overturn a free and fair election, overthrow the US government, and hand it to Donald Trump, Dictator.  Apparently, idiots like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley were unwitting accomplices to the overthrow plot just trying to stay on the Crazy Train to 2024.

Read Abramson’s thread.  It will give you cold chills about how close the United States government actually came to collapsing on Wednesday, January 6, 2021.

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.

First, here’s the good news – since the election, CNN is beating Fox News in average viewers.  Now the bad news – Fox and CNN both are losing to Newsmax.  Why?  Fox isn’t “Trumpy” enough for the red hats, but still unwatchable for normal people.  Newsmax and an even worse OAN have taken over the alt-right folks who are abandoning Fox in droves as more of their anchors have acknowledged that Trump has no chance of stealing the election from Biden.  If you’ve never watched Newsmax and OAN, don’t bother.  By way of description, if Fox News is manure, Newsmax and OAN are nuclear waste.  They have created a Superfund site of toxic and deadly conspiracy theories, gross exaggerations, and freeform lying.  And Trumpists lap it up. Since the election CNN has averaged 1.73 million viewers, more than double a year ago. Fox News Channel averaged 1.56 million and MSNBC 1.53 million viewers.  More important, Newsmax, a safe haven for delusional Trumpists to hide from gravity and arithmetic, Newsmax beat Fox for the first time ever.  Newsmax commentators, even today, continue to peddle the lies that Trump is going to prevail over Biden.

Newsmax and OAN (as well as some remaining Fox programming) engage in prodigious lying, creating toxic propaganda that has now made it impossible for normal people to engage their viewers in any kind of productive debate.  In recent days, I’ve attempted discourse with several people, and it’s like arguing with an audio recording that’s running backwards.  These folks have bought in to the Dominion fairytale, the suitcases full of ballots narrative, and even the new “Office of the President-Elect” story ignoring the decades of the use of that term.  Even talking to these folks is exhausting because you simply can’t make any progress.

Even though Trump will soon be hiding at Mar a Lago and fighting criminal and civil charges in New York, the damage he inflicted and made recovery of our democracy even more remote.  I personally don’t see a route to recovery.

Some of our Salon customers believe I’m a conspiracy theorist, so to fuel that conclusion here’s another one.  Hear me out…There have been rumors flying around for over a year that Trump was going to replace Pantywaist Pence with Nikki Haley.  That’s been fed by weird tweets from Haley herself and recently commentary by Paul Begala predicting Trump is going to do just that.  Everyone in Trumpworld has been lamely trying to slap that one down, but I’ve never been convinced that Trump is NOT going to take Pence out.

It’s no secret that Pence is a toad of the first order, adding no political capital to Trump’s dwindling account.  He’s a Yes Man of the worst order, complete with his longing looks of Trump adoration and his aggrieved voice whenever he’s burdened with explaining Trump’s latest soiling of the carpets in the WH.  Now, Trump has put him in charge of the Coronavirus response, a job that he is totally unsuited (not to mention unqualified) for.  Pence’s response so far has been predictably awful, from mixed messaging to photos of a room full of white men deciding the fates of over 300 million Americans.  The effort is going to fail, and, in fact, has probably already failed.  There is almost certainly going to be an rapid increase in cases and bad news of larger outbreaks.  When that happens, guess who’s going to be the patsy?  That’s right, Mike Pence.  Trump will have “no choice” but to remove him as VP for incompetence and get a more “beautiful” and “fantastic” and “best qualified ever” candidate which will just so happen to be Haley.  It will be a cynical effort to save his suburban mom voting block.

Call me crazy…