Category: Veterans – Patriotism

Representatives Andy Biggs (R., Ariz.), Mo Brooks (R., Ala.), and Paul Gosar (R., Ariz.) are denying any involvement in organizing last week’s rioting at the U.S. Capitol after a protest organizer claimed he “schemed” with them to put “maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting.”

Right-wing activist Ali Alexander’s claim that he had colluded with the congressmen came in a since-deleted video on Periscope unearthed by the Project on Government Oversight.

He said weeks before the storming of the Capitol that he was planning something big for January 6, the date Congress met to tally the electoral votes and affirm President-elect Joe Biden’s win.

Alexander planned to “change the hearts and the minds of Republicans who were in that body, hearing our loud roar from outside,” he said.

Meanwhile, Representative Mikie Sherrill (D., N.J.) on Tuesday claimed she saw members of Congress leading people through the U.S. Capitol on “reconnaissance” tours one day before supporters of President Trump stormed the building, though she did not name the members or explain how she knew she was witnessing a so-called reconnaissance tour.

“We can’t have a democracy if members of Congress are actively helping the president overturn the elections results,” she said. “Not only do I intend to see that the president is removed and never runs for office again and doesn’t have access to classified material, I also intend to see that those members of Congress who abetted him; those members of Congress who had groups coming through the Capitol that I saw on Jan. 5 – a reconnaissance for the next day; those members of Congress that incited this violent crowd; those members of Congress that attempted to help our president undermine our democracy; I’m going to see they are held accountable, and if necessary, ensure that they don’t serve in Congress.”

Sherill did not say whether the “groups” were Trump supporters or offer any additional information on the “reconnaissance.”

National Review has reached out to Sherrill for comment.

A spokesman for Biggs told the Washington Post that the congressman had never been in touch with Alexander or other protestors and denied involvement in organizing a rally on January 6.

“Congressman Biggs is not aware of hearing of or meeting Mr. Alexander at any point — let alone working with him to organize some part of a planned protest,” the statement said.

Brooks on Wednesday also denied having any responsibility for the unrest, saying he would not have encouraged any action that could undermine Republican efforts to block the certification of Biden’s victory.

“I take great offense at anyone who suggests I am so politically inexperienced as to want to torpedo my honest and accurate election system effort I spent months fighting on,” Brooks wrote.

However, the Washington Post notes that videos and posts on social media suggest ties between Alexander, who is a felon, and all three congressmen.

Gosar called Alexander “a true patriot” on Twitter and the pair both spoke at a “Stop the Steal” rally in Phoenix last month.

At the same event, Alexander played a video message from Biggs, who called him a “friend” and “hero.”

“When it comes to January 6, I will be right down there in the well of the House with my friend from Alabama representative Mo Brooks,” Biggs said in the recording.

A spokesperson for Biggs told CNN that the congressman recorded the video at the request of Gosar’s staff.

While Alexander has expressed regret over the rioting, saying in a video on Periscope that he wishes people had not entered the Capitol or even gone on the steps, ahead of the unrest he seemed to endorse stopping the certification of the votes by any means.

If Democrats stopped an objection from Republicans, “everyone can guess what me and 500,000 others will do to that building,” he wrote on Twitter in December, according to the Daily Beast. “1776 is *always* an option.”

At a rally on the eve of the vote, Alexander led a “Victory or death!” chant.

However, he told the Washington Post that he had “remained peaceful” during the siege and claimed his earlier speeches “mentioned peace” and were being misrepresented.

In a video posted shortly after the Capitol riots on January 6, while Alexander claimed the majority of protestors were peaceful and commended those who did not enter the building, he added, “I don’t disavow this. I do not denounce this.”

Simultaneously, the crowd continues to chant ‘USA!’ as chaos ensues all around them.

As the public continues to learn more about the Trump supporters who took over the U.S. Capitol last Wednesday, new footage has emerged that shows a rioter hitting an officer in the head with a fire extinguisher during the melee.

According to the New York Post, the clip obtained by Storyful shows a sea of MAGA supporters aggressively pushing past a barricade as U.S. Capitol Police tries in futility to keep them corralled on the west side of the building.

“They broke through, it’s on!” one man is heard yelling at the beginning of the video.

You can see a rioter forcefully throwing an officer over the barricade with little no remorse. A few moments later, another rioter is seen hurling a fire extinguisher directly at a group of officers before striking one on the helmet.

Simultaneously, the crowd continues to chant “USA!” as chaos ensues all around them.

“There’s a guy, like, dying over there,” a witness can be heard yelling on the clip. “They’re trying to hold him up.”

It has yet to be confirmed if the man in the video was Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick. But two law enforcement sources informed the Associated Press that Sicknick died at a hospital Thursday after being hit in the head with a fire extinguisher. A source has reported that authorities have now launched a probe into Sicknick’s death.

“The entire USCP Department expresses its deepest sympathies to Officer Sicknick’s family and friends on their loss, and mourns the loss of a friend and colleague,” the department said in an official press release which also acknowledges he was injured “while physically engaging with protesters.”

Four other people succumbed to fatal injuries during the siege, including a California woman shot by Capitol Police and three others who experienced medical emergencies.

An inside job?

As we previously reported, last week, a Washington D.C police officer came forward to make stunning allegations about off-duty police officers and even some members of the military being among the rioters who took part in Wednesday’s siege.

“If these people can storm the Capitol building with no regard to punishment, you have to wonder how much they abuse their powers when they put on their uniforms,” the officer making the allegations wrote in a public Facebook post.

He went on to allege that the officers in question covertly flashed their badges and identification cards at on-duty officers as they joined in on the attempt to overrun the U.S. Capitol.

Despite other accounts corroborating this assertion and numerous videos circulating on social media of officers fraternizing with the rioters – at times even stopping to take selfies with them – D.C. Police Chief Robert Contee maintained that the department was unprepared for the violence.

Thursday, Contee said in a press conference that there was “no intelligence that suggested there would be a breach of the U.S. Capitol.”

Image via Getty

One lead organizer of last week’s “Stop the Steal” rally that morphed into an attack against the U.S. Capitol claims that GOP congressmen Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs of Arizona, and congressman Mo Brooks of Alabama all participated in planning of the Jan. 6 catastrophe.

As CNN points out, Arizona resident and pro-Trump activist Ali Alexander implicated the three members of the House of Representatives during a December livestream on Periscope, where he told followers the four of them had been “planning something big.”

“I’m the guy who came up with the idea of January 6 when I was talking with Congressman Gosar, Congressman Andy Biggs, and Congressman Mo Brooks. So we’re the four guys who came up with a January 6 event — #DoNotCertify — and it was to build momentum and pressure, and then on the day change hearts and minds of congresspeoples who weren’t yet decided, or saw everyone outside and said, ‘I can’t be on the other side of that mob,’” Alexander said in a livestream on Dec. 29.

Biggs, who is chair of the House Freedom Caucus, denied associating with Alexander.

“Congressman Biggs is not aware of hearing of or meeting Mr. Alexander at any point — let alone working with him to organize some part of a planned protest,” his spokesperson told CNN. “He did not have any contact with protestors or rioters, nor did he ever encourage or foster the rally or protests. He was focused on his research and arguments to work within the confines of the law and established precedent to restore integrity to our elections, and to ensure that all Americans — regardless of party affiliation — can again have complete trust in our elections systems.”

The Arizona Republican Party, which Gosar and Biggs belong to, faced backlash last month after promoting one of Alexander’s tweets and asking republicans if they were willing to die to overturn the legitimate outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

Since the violent riot that resulted in five deaths, Alexander’s social media accounts have been suspended by social media platforms across the board.

Following the attack, democratic House members pushed to have republicans involved in the Wednesday riot removed from office, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and newly-elected Cori Bush.

“I believe the Republican members of Congress who have incited this domestic terror attack through their attempts to overturn the election must face consequences,” Bush wrote introducing a bill that would expel members like Gosar, Biggs, and Brooks. “They have broken their sacred Oath of Office.”

No one likes to admit they were fooled. It’s tough to admit we were wrong. Now, many evangelicals are seeing President Donald Trump for who he is, but more need to see what he has done to us.

It’s time for an evangelical reckoning.

I’m an evangelical, like about a quarter of the United States population. Evangelicals believe in the good news of the Gospel — that Jesus died on the cross, for our sins, and in our place — and we need to tell the world about that.

But that’s not what most people are talking about today. You see, white evangelicals embraced the president, some begrudgingly and some enthusiastically, because he addressed many of their concerns.

Many evangelicals and leaders invested money, time and conviction toward the promise of making America great again. In turn, Donald Trump made good on these investments from an evangelical perspective. Most evangelicals (me included) are grateful for the Supreme Court justices he appointed and for some of the religious liberty concerns he addressed. His anti-abortion stances surprised many (again, me included), and for that I was thankful.

Nevertheless, most of that is in jeopardy now because Trump is who many of us warned other evangelicals that he was.

We reap what Trump has sown

He has burned down the Republican Party, emboldened white supremacists, mainstreamed conspiracy theorists and more.

Yet of greater concern for me is the trail of destruction he has left within the evangelical movement. Tempted by power and trapped within a culture war theology, too many evangelicals tied their fate to a man who embodied neither their faith nor their vision of political character.

Social media isn’t always true: Evangelicals, we need to address the QAnoners in our midst

As a result, we are finally witnessing an evangelical reckoning.

For years we’ve been talking about a coming evangelical reckoning. A flood of books, articles and conferences — many of which I wrote and participated in — have warned of the approaching storm clouds for the evangelical movement.

This reckoning is here.

Americans (and the world) have the right to ask us some hard questions. Some of us were vocal, often and early, about the dangers of Trumpism. It was costly. As we sort through the coming months and years, we must be clear on three reasons why we have arrived at this point:

►First, far too many tolerated egregious behavior. The past half-decade has offered near daily examples of people co-opting the Gospel for sinful ends. Racism, nationalism, sexism and a host of other sins have found purchase within the evangelical movement in both overt and subtle expressions. Many have been able to dismiss these examples as outliers that did not truly represent the evangelical movement. We have long since exhausted this excuse.

As evangelicals, we have to stop saying this isn’t who we are. This is who we are; these are our besetting sins. However, this isn’t who we have to be.

►Second, far too many failed to live up to their promise of speaking truth to power. During the 2016 election, and at many points since, many evangelicals justified their full-throated support by promising to be a check on Trump’s character. What has become apparent is that this promise was hollow. Too few were willing to speak out regularly and often couched their criticism so much it lacked any weight. When evangelicals finally had access to the White House, they seemed unable or unwilling to use their prophetic voice to speak truth to power.

Watergate figure, and later evangelical leader, Chuck Colson once said:

That was us.

►Finally, all of us have failed to foster healthy political discipleship. The foundation of our reckoning was laid far before Trump. Committed to reaching the world, the evangelical movement has emphasized the evangelistic and pietistic elements of the mission. However, it has failed to connect this mission to justice and politics.

The result of this discipleship failure has led us to a place where not only our people but also many of our leaders were easily fooled and co-opted by a movement that ended with the storming of the U.S. Capitol.

What comes next

At the root of these three causes lies our inability to live up to our calling as evangelicals: to righteously, prophetically and compassionately proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the world. Our reckoning is not because we have lost worldly power but because of what we betrayed to attain and sustain it in the first place.

I have been working on a book on evangelicalism for three years, and it has been one of the most frustrating projects in my life. At its core, the problem is not in diagnosing the illness but in prescribing the cure. Where do we go? What do we do? How can the evangelical movement navigate this reckoning?

In listening and praying, I’ve found myself coming back to Martin Luther’s words: “Toward those who have been misled, we are to show ourselves parentally affectionate, so that they may perceive that we seek not their destruction but their salvation.”

I don’t believe that everyone who voted for Trump was fooled or foolish. And Trump voters are not Trump. They are not responsible for all of his actions over the past four years, but they are responsible for the ways they responded and for their own hearts.

If the evangelical movement is to flourish in the coming generations, we must face (and even embrace) this reckoning. As leaders and members, we must acknowledge our failings but also understand the habits and idols that drew us to Trump in the first place.

That we have failed and been fooled is disheartening but not surprising. The true test will be how we respond when our idols are revealed.

Will we look inside and repent when needed, or will we double down? Every political and cultural instinct will pull us to the latter, but God calls us to the former. Into this temptation we hear the words of Jesus: “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?” (Matthew 16:26).

We have reached a reckoning. What comes next will reveal where our trust truly lies.

Ed Stetzer is a dean and professor at Wheaton College, where he also leads the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center.