EVEN WORSE, federal prosecutors in Arizona alleged that some of the rioters who attacked Congress
on January 6, had plans “to capture and assassinate elected officials.”
Explaining their decision to ask a judge to block bail for
Jacob Chansley, photographed dressed in Viking garb during the uprising, they
noted that Chansley, a QAnon conspiracy theorist, was still a threat to others.
And himself.
____________________
“My client had heard the oft-repeated words of Donald J. Trump. The words and invitation of a president are supposed to mean something.”
Albert Watkins, attorney
____________________
Inside the Senate chamber, Chansley could be seen in one
video leaving a note at the Vice President’s desk, warning, “It’s only a matter
of time, justice is coming.”
In seeking to deny bail, prosecutors warned, “Strong
evidence, including Chansley’s own words and actions at the Capitol, supports
that the intent of the Capitol rioters was to capture and assassinate elected
officials in the United States government.” Charges against the defendant “involve
active participation in an insurrection attempting to violently overthrow
the United States government.” They told the judge that “the insurrection
is still in progress.”
In another kick to the pseudo-Viking’s shins, authorities
noted that he suffered from drug abuse and mental illness, a fitting leader for
any QAnon crew. “Chansley,” they explained, “has spoken openly about his belief
that he is an alien, a higher being, and he is here on Earth to ascend to
another reality.”
Nevertheless, Chansley’s lawyer had a great idea. His client should receive a pardon from
President Trump. Albert Watkins explained: “My client had heard the oft-repeated words of Donald
J. Trump. The words and invitation of a president are supposed to mean
something.”
Such
as, let’s go to the Capitol and “fight like hell,” as Trump had suggested
during his speech that day, and maybe lynch Vice President Pence.
“Given
the peaceful and compliant fashion in which Mr. Chansley comported himself
[inside the Capitol building],” Watkins added, “it would be appropriate and
honorable for the president to pardon Mr. Chansley and other like-minded,
peaceful individuals who accepted the president’s invitation with honorable
intentions.”
Plus,
he might as well have said, “My client is crazy; and so is the President of the
United States.”
We know with almost mathematical precision who primed these
people to riot. The president, of course, was the worst, dinning it into
followers’ ears for 63 days straight.
The election was stolen. The election was stolen. The
election was stolen, not only from him, but from them.
Worse, the people who stole the election hated America. If
his loyal supporters wouldn’t fight, they wouldn’t have a country anymore.
Patriots had to fight back.
This riot didn’t just suddenly erupt. Right-wing firebrands and
the President of the United States had been firing up the mob for months, if
not years. At an evening “Rally to Save America” in Washington D.C. on January
5, a succession of two-bit orators fired up an angry, pro-Trump crowd.
“It is time for war,” one speaker
declared.
“We’re not backing down
anymore,” a member of the audience with fresh stitches on his head assured a
reporter on the scene. “This is our country.”
(It’s all of ours. It’s our country, even if
we can’t stand Trump.)
Many of the greatest haters
were there. Alex Jones warmed up the material for a potential mob. Gen. Flynn
spoke. Roger Stone, the seven-time felon, was embraced for his unflinching
loyalty to President Trump. Flynn told members of the audience he knew they were
ready to “bleed” for freedom. Speaking as if to members of Congress, he warned,
“The members of the House of Representatives, the members of the United States
Senate, those of you who are feeling weak tonight, those of you that don’t have
the moral fiber in your body, get some tonight.” Tomorrow, he added, “we the people” would
march. We “want you to know we will not stand for a lie.”
The next day, Trump spoke at
the rally for more than an hour, amplifying the fury he had helped build for the
last nine weeks. He told his loyalists they had no other option than to fight, “Because
you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and
you have to be strong.”
The election had been stolen.
Stolen. Stolen.
So they marched. Men and women like retired firefighter
Robert Sanford, 55, marched. In the aftermath of the riot, Sanford was arrested for hurling a fire extinguisher at the head of a
Capitol Hill police officer. “It was a split second decision,” his attorney alibied.
His client regretted what he had done. “Everyone was in a mob mentality,” his lawyer
added by way of excuse.
Sanford went to Washington to
hear the president speak. “Trump says, ‘We’re going to the Capitol.’ Next thing
you know, thousands of people are walking,” Sanford’s attorney explained. “When
he got down there, things got crazy.”
Sanford “got crazy” too.
He was turned in by a tipster who said he had
been a friend for years. According to the F.B.I., Sanford told agents he had traveled
to D.C. by bus, with a group of like-minded folk. He listened to Trump’s
speech, “and then had followed the President’s instructions and gone to
the Capitol.”
He also claimed that he thought the officer he
attacked, dressed in black, was a member of Antifa.
Some of the rioters needed
more encouragement to get a little crazy and try to overturn the government of
the country they insisted they loved.
Two guys who started out
crazy, when they settled in to listen to the president’s January 6 diatribe,
and then joined the riot, were also arrested within days. The Daily Beast
provided this report:
Two men who were arrested for
allegedly bringing an AR-15 and a samurai sword to a Philadelphia vote-count
center in
November face a motion to have their bail revoked after prosecutors accused
them of participating in the Jan. 6 riot at the nation’s Capitol.
Antonio Lamotta and Joshua Macias were
first arrested on November 5, after they allegedly drove from Virginia to
Philadelphia in a Hummer festooned with a QAnon decal.
The men, who allegedly brought a rifle, ammunition, and a sword with them, were
vocal proponents of conspiracy theories that falsely claim
President-elect Joe Biden cheated to win the election.
After the Philadelphia incident, the pair
appear to have promptly rejoined their Virginia-based political clique. There,
they previously acted as volunteer bodyguards for Amanda Chase, a far-right
state senator and gubernatorial candidate, who attended the [Jan. 6] rally
preceding the riot.
The night before the attack on the
Capitol, Macias appeared in a Facebook Live video with Chase and the head of the civil
war-endorsing militia the Oath Keepers. The video participants boasted of being in D.C. for
the Jan. 6 pro-Trump event, and encouraged others to attend.
I wondered whether or not the Daily
Beast might be overstating that “civil war-endorsing” bit. So I did a
little more digging. It turns out the Oath Keepers are in fact ready for war. In an interview with The Atlantic earlier
this year, the group’s founder, Stewart Rhodes, made clear he believed a
hard line defense of Donald Trump was the only solution to impending
tyranny.
“Let’s
not fuck around. We’ve descended into civil war,” Rhodes [said]…Leading up to
the election, Rhodes put out a call for his followers to protect the country
against what he believes to be an “insurrection” and an attempt to undermine
Trump. “Our POTUS will not go down without a fight,” reads a recent Oath Keepers email blast. “He WILL NOT concede. This election was stolen
from We The People. We will prevail but we need your help! Or we will lose our
democracy.”
In a similar vein, Robert Keith Packer of Virginia heard the
president’s call for help. Packer showed up for Trump’s speech and the running
of the bulls on Capitol Hill, dressed in a t-shirt emblazoned “Camp Auschwitz.”
(Anti-Semitism ran strong in the veins of many in this mob.
It’s a core precept for many followers of QAnon.)
According to CNN, Virginia court records show that Packer “has
a criminal history that includes three convictions for driving under the
influence and a felony conviction for forging public records.”
Next
up, we had Adam Johnson of Florida, 36, seen famously walking away from the riot
with Nancy Pelosi’s podium as souvenir. According to TMZ, Mr. Johnson
has a wife and five kids. Normally, he’s a stay-at-home dad. The Sarasota
Herald-Tribune described Johnson as a
man who hadn’t voted in years, but a true Trump fan, and reported that he was
currently “sitting in the Pinellas County jail.” Dad suddenly found himself looking
at a possible prison sentence of sixteen years.
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