THE NATION, indeed, the world, watched the storming of
Congress on January 6 with horror. Who gave all these men and women, the
racists, the dupes, the misguided patriots and the seriously unbalanced, the
idea that storming Capitol Hill might be fun?
Republican Sen. Mike Rounds of
South Dakota admitted this week, “When the story of this last 90
days is told, they will clearly lay out that the president of the United
States misled very, very good, honest, patriotic Americans by telling them
time and again that the election was stolen.”
“I believe that history will hold him accountable,” Rounds
added.
____________________
“Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.”
President Trump
____________________
Asked to comment on the possibility of impeachment, Rounds cited Section 2383 of Title 18 of the U.S. code, “Rebellion
or insurrection,” as the law that prosecutors could use against Trump. If
impeachment proceedings were brought, and even if the Senate did not vote to
impeach, the president still might be in trouble if criminal proceedings
charging “incitement to riot” were brought. That “by itself would...stop him from
running for election to a public office again.”
*
WHO WERE the misled? Doug Jensen of Iowa was one. He could be
seen in an oft-aired video as he and others forced a
police officer to retreat up several flights of steps. Jensen was one of the
first to be identified and charged – with a total of six felony counts.
According to the Des Moines Register, in Facebook posts, now deleted, many
of Jensen’s images supported President Donald Trump and QAnon.
Another member of the mob was Christine Priola of Cleveland,
Ohio, and a former educator.
Trump supporters had no other choice than to try to insist it
wasn’t really “their kind” who led the attack on democracy – and led it in the
name of the President of the United States. On Fox News one evening, we had a
rare Sarah Palin sighting. You couldn’t put anything past that lady who
once announced famously that she could see Russia from her backyard.
Speaking to Martha MacCallum, on the night of the attack, the
former governor of Alaska argued that it was unclear who instigated the violence.
“There’s so much frustration out there that some misguided very, very
wrong-headed yahoos are out there causing this mayhem,” Ms. Sarah explained.
Then she dropped the hammer. “Keep in mind we don’t know who
all were the instigators in this, of these, horrible things that happened today,”
she told McCallum. “I think a lot of it is the Antifa folks,” she added, citing
“pictures” she had seen.
Even Rudy Giuliani, who had helped stir up the mob, woke up
on January 7, and realized he would be wise to say something. “The violence at the Capitol was shameful,”
he tweeted at 6:55 a.m. “Our movement values respect for law and order and for
the police.”
Yet, the arrests kept piling up. A picture of who these people
were came into sharp focus. One of the first to be arrested was Nick Ochs,
founder of the Hawaiian branch of the Proud Boys, who got a pair of cuffs. So
did Joshua Pruitt, identified in a November video reciting an oath to the group.
Ochs, who was charged with one count of unlawful entry into
restricted buildings or grounds, paid a $5,000 bail and was released ahead of
his next court date.
The BBC picked up the story overseas and kept readers
informed on developments in the former Thirteen Colonies.
Nick Ochs was arrested at an
airport in Honolulu, Hawaii, by the FBI, as he returned home from Washington
DC.
He’s accused of unlawful entry
of restricted buildings or grounds, after he posted a picture smoking a
cigarette inside the Capitol building, tweeting: “Hello from the Capital lol”.
Mr Ochs describes himself as a “Proud
Boy Elder from Hawaii”. The Proud Boys is an anti-immigrant and all male
far-right group founded in 2016.
President Trump addressed this
group specifically in the first presidential debate. In response to a question
about white supremacists and militias he said: “Proud Boys, stand back and stand
by.”
Ochs ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for a seat in Hawaii’s state legislature last year.
Roger Stone, a key Trump adviser, felon, and fellow Proud Boy, endorsed the
Ochs campaign.
There was no possible way to deny who was responsible for the
violence because these people were a rock solid part of the Trump base.
ABC News,
Channel 22, WJCL refused to pull punches, and reported on developments as
any news organization should:
The insurrectionist mob that showed up at the
president’s behest and stormed the U.S. Capitol was overwhelmingly made up of
longtime Trump supporters, including Republican Party officials, GOP political
donors, far-right militants, white supremacists, members of the military and adherents
of the QAnon myth that the government is secretly controlled by a cabal of
Satan-worshiping pedophile cannibals. Records show that some were heavily
armed and included convicted criminals, such as a Florida man recently
released from prison for attempted murder.
Michael Thomas Curzio was arrested in relation
to the riots less than two years after he was released
from a Florida prison in 2019 after serving an eight-year sentence for
attempted murder. Court records from Florida show that he shot the boyfriend of
his former girlfriend in a fight at her home.
Other alleged participants in the riot included Nicholas
Rodean, who actually wore his work ID during the melee. The BBC reported that
the none-to-bright Maryland man had been fired from his job.
Another participant was Republican lawmaker Derrick Evans, only
recently elected to a seat in the West Virginia House of Delegates. His political
career came to an untimely end after prosecutors charged him with a variety of
offenses.
Evans resigned his seat.
Photographic evidence led to the arrests of additional
insurrectionists. Andrew Williams, a Florida firefighter, was shown wearing a
Trump hat and pointing to a broken placard bearing Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s name.
Josiah Colt was pictured dangling from the Senate balcony,
before dropping to the floor and taking a seat at the dais. In a widely
circulated video on Facebook, the Idaho man claims he was the first person to sit in the House
Speaker’s chair and calls House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a “traitor.”
(He was actually seated in the Vice President’s chair, in the
Senate chamber, but you still get the idea.)
He explained why he took part in the attack to CBS2 News: “I
love America, I love the people, I didn’t hurt anyone and I didn’t cause any
damage in the Chamber. I got caught up in the moment and when I saw the door to
the Chamber open, I walked in, hopped down, and sat on the chair. I said my
peace then I helped a gentleman get to safety that was injured then left.”
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