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.

Mitch McConnell signaled the end of the Trump presidency today by telling associates that he’s “pleased” that the Dems are impeaching Trump and that impeachment will make it easier to purge him from the party.  Said associates immediately leaked the comment to the press.  That’s McConnell’s way of communicating to Trump to pack his shit and get out. Clearly the money stream is drying up due to Trump’s attempted coup last week, and McConnell now sees him as a liability.  Folks, it’s over.

Looking into my Crystal Bourbon Bottle, I predict that Trump will be gone by Friday.  Republican resistance to the impeachment effort in the house is tepid at best, coming mostly from Drooler Caucus, and even McCarthy is backing away from Trump.  Having lost McConnell’s support Trump is toast.  Now it’s just a matter of how Trump leaves, and I predict he will try to resign rather than face a conviction and removal from the Senate.  The thing is, though, to purge Trump, they’ll have to convict, then vote again to disqualify him from holding any other federal offices.

“Turn out the lights, the party’s over…”

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.