Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara isn’t an embarrassment to the force. He’s an embodiment.
By Neil Steinberg
Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara speaks of the support from President Donald Trump and local officials during a Southside Trump Rally at Firewater Saloon at 3910 W 111th St in Mount Greenwood, Sunday, Nov. 1, 2020. | Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times
Saturday morning: coffee, sunshine and an email with the subject, “John Catanzara, Chicago FOP President, IMMEDIATE REMOVAL FROM OFFICE.”
Hmmm, thought I, must be from a retired police officer.
It was, Richard W. Sanchez Sr., “CPD Retired.” I knew it!
In retirement, Chicago police officers go through this marvelous metamorphosis. They serve for decades, mute caterpillars of the silent brotherhood. Then they disappear into their retirement cocoons, to emerge in the sunshine of Florida or Arizona or, in this case, Valparaiso, Indiana, as these glorious butterflies of opinion, their colorful views on display for the world to admire.
Not Catanzara, of course. As you know, he is the bigmouth president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7, the one CPD job where the gag comes off. He’s made it his personal mission to remind the public at every opportunity just how touchy and reactionary police officers can be, how passionately devoted to serving and protecting themselves.
Self-regard and bottomless grievance make them the ideal Trump fan demographic. One of the least surprising fallouts from Wednesday’s storming of the Capitol is how many police officers from around the country joined the mob. Wonder why Catanzara wasn’t there; maybe he was busy, talking.
While you and I and every decent person were slack-jawed in horror at the sight of the mob sacking the seat of democracy, someone at WBEZ had the presence of mind to stick an open mike in front of Catanzara’s eternally flapping yap, and he justified away.
“There’s no, obviously, violence in this crowd,” he began.
Not so obvious to the Capitol police officer, Brian D. Sicknick, who was killed. Nor to the cops injured trying to hold off the attack.
Reaction from the thinking community was swift, and Catanzara issued the typical half apology, satisfying no one, including my retiree, who demanded the national union fire him. No. 4 of his six bullet points was: “I believe John Catanzara has committed ‘a gross dereliction of his duty’ by siding with the insurrectionist mob and stating it with craven zeal.”
Maybe all this COVID lockdown business is getting to me. But I phoned Sanchez up to sound him out about why he wrote the email.
“I felt I had to say something, I had to voice my opinion,” Sanchez said. “A leader is supposed to put the fires out, supposed to be the calm in the storm, supposed to lead. He wants to put gas on the fire. … This guy, he is the worst thing that could have happened to the FOP.”
Yet elected by the rank and file, yes? The mass of good officers we always invoke, like a kind of benediction, every time one busts into the wrong house or shoots a Black kid scratching his ear. How come?
“A lot of people who should have voted didn’t, including myself,” he said.
But isn’t Catanzara a perfect representative of the CPD? Particularly his shoot-off-his-mouth-first, assess-the-situation-later defense of the riot? That’s unofficial police procedure, is it not?
”Police officers around the country are feeling that everybody is against them,” Sanchez said. “Believe me, I’m not condoning any wrongdoing.”
Too much of that already. And for the record I do regularly bump into solid, professional Chicago police officers just trying to do their jobs and get home at night.
“Most police officers want to help people,” Sanchez agreed. “I believe most police officers want to be good police officers, they don’t go out there, wake up in the morning, ‘Hey, I’m going kick somebody’s ass, going to lock somebody up because I don’t like how they look.’ That’s not how it is.”
Life is good in retirement. Being able to say what you think without fear is only the beginning.
“Out here, we have a little bit of property, keeps you busy,” he said. “It’s like living in a big park.”
Though retired for eight years, Sanchez still cares about FOP leadership.
“We can’t have people in his position who believe conspiracy theories and preach violence and say it’s all right,” said Sanchez. “If he misspoke, he isn’t watching. And if he can’t take the time to watch before he speaks, what kind of leader is that?”
The kind the FOP elected, that’s who. Maybe the kind it deserves. Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.
Study: Wildfires produced up to half of pollution in US West
FILE – In this Sept. 9, 2020, file photo, the San Francisco skyline in the distance behind Crissy Field is barely visible due to smoke from wildfires burning across California. Researchers say smoke from wildfires accounted for up to half of all small particle air pollution in parts of the western U.S. in recent years (AP Photo/Eric Risberg, File).
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — Wildfire smoke accounted for up to half of all health-damaging small particle air pollution in the western U.S. in recent years as warming temperatures fueled more destructive blazes, according to a study released Monday.
Even as pollution emissions declined from other sources including vehicle exhaust and power plants, the amount from fires increased sharply, said researchers at Stanford University and the University of California, San Diego.
The findings underscore the growing public health threat posed by climate change as it contributes to catastrophic wildfires such as those that charred huge areas of California and the Pacific Northwest in 2020. Nationwide, wildfires were the source of up to 25% of small particle pollution in some years, the researchers said.
“From a climate perspective, wildfires should be the first things on our minds for many of us in the U.S.,” said Marshall Burke, an associate professor of earth system science at Stanford and lead author of the study.
“Most people do not see sea-level rise. Most people do not ever see hurricanes. Many, many people will see wildfire smoke from climate change,” Burke added. The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The researchers used satellite images of smoke plumes and government air quality data to model how much pollution was generated nationwide by fires from 2016 to 2018 compared to a decade earlier. Their results were in line with previous studies of smoke emissions across earlier time periods and more limited geographic areas.
Air pollution experts say that residents of the West Coast and Northern Rockies in particular should expect major smoke events from wildfires to become more frequent.
There’s little doubt air quality regulations helped decrease other sources of pollution even as wildfire smoke increased, said Loretta Mickley, an atmospheric chemist at Harvard University. But it’s difficult to separate how much of the increase in smoke pollution is driven by climate change versus the forest fuel buildup, she added.
Mickley and researchers from Colorado State University also cautioned that fires can vary significantly from year to year because of weather changes, making it hard to identify trends over relatively short periods such as the decade examined in the new study.
An AP analysis of data from government monitoring stations found that at least 38 million people in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana were exposed to unhealthy levels of wildfire smoke for at least five days in 2020. Major cities in Oregon suffered the highest pollution levels they had ever recorded.
Smoke particles from those wildfires were blamed for health problems ranging from difficulty breathing to a projected spike in premature deaths, according to health authorities and researchers.
Fires across the West emitted more than a million tons of particulate pollution in 2012, 2015 and 2017, and almost as much in 2018.
Scientists studying long-term health problems have found correlations between smoke exposure and decreased lung function, weakened immune systems and higher rates of flu.
The new study matches up with previous research documenting the increasing proportion of pollution that comes from wildfire smoke, said Dan Jaffe, a wildfire pollution expert at the University of Washington. Jaffe added that it also raises significant questions about how to better manage forests and the role that prescribed burns might play.
“We have been making tremendous progress on improving pollution in this country, but at the same time we have this other part of the puzzle that has not been under control,” Jaffe said. “We’re now at the point where we have to think about how to manage the planet a whole lot more carefully than we’ve done.”
What to know about Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, who died from injuries after pro-Trump riot
Grace Hauck, USA TODAY January 8, 2021
A U.S. Capitol Police officer died Thursday after he was injured in a pro-trump riot, the fifth person to die in relation to Wednesday’s attack on the Capitol building.
Thursday evening, Capitol Police officer Brian D. Sicknick died from injuries. He joined the force in July 2008 and was part of the department’s First Responders Unit, officials said.
Flags were at half-staff in front of the Capitol building Friday morning. Sicknick’s death is being investigated as a homicide by federal and local authorities – a development that raises the stakes of the investigation into possible crimes committed during the violent security breach.
Brian D. Sicknick, 42, the youngest of three sons, was from South River, New Jersey. He graduated in 1997 from Middlesex County Technical Vocational High School and joined the New Jersey Air National Guard that year.
Sicknick “wanted to be a police officer his entire life,” his brother, Ken Sicknick, said in a statement. He “served his country honorably” and made his family “very proud,” Sicknick said.
“Brian is a hero and that is what we would like people to remember.”
Sicknick deployed to Saudi Arabia in 1999 in support of Operation Southern Watch. After 9/11 he served in Kyrgyzstan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, the Iraq war. And he was honorably discharged in 2003, according to Lt. Col. Barbara Brown, a spokeswoman for the New Jersey National Guard.
Public records indicate Sicknick currently lived in Springfield, Virginia.
What happened to the officer Brian Sicknick?
Sicknick died “due to injuries sustained while on duty,” U.S. Capitol Police said in a statement. On Wednesday, he “was injured while physically engaging with protesters,” police said. He returned to his division office and collapsed, then was taken to a local hospital where he died around 9:30 p.m. Thursday.
Sicknick was hit in the head with a fire extinguisher, according to two law enforcement officials who spoke to the Associated Press.
“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 a statement.
Will there be charges?
U.S. Capitol Police said Sicknick’s death will be investigated by the homicide branch of the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department. Any criminal charges related to Sicknick’s death will be federal because the events leading up to it happened on federal property, an official with knowledge of the matter said.
U.S. Reps. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., and Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, released a statement late Thursday calling for the “mob who attacked the People’s House” to be held accountable.
“Our hearts break over the senseless death of United States Capitol Police Officer Brian D. Sicknick, who was injured in the line of duty during yesterday’s violent assault on the Capitol,” they said in a statement. “Our prayers are with his family, friends, and colleagues on the force.”
They added: “This tragic loss should remind all of us of the bravery of the law enforcement officers who protected us, our colleagues, congressional staff, the press corps, and other essential workers yesterday.”
The chaos has already led to at least 55 criminal cases filed by the Justice Department against rioters who were charged with unlawful entry, gun violations, theft, assault and others. One man was arrested after officers found a military-style semi-automatic rifle and 11 Molotov cocktails in his possession, said acting U.S. Attorney Michael Sherwin.
More charges are expected in the coming weeks. Sherwin also made clear that no charges, including sedition, rioting and insurrection, are off the table.
Meanwhile, Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund will resign later this month. The top law enforcement officials in charge of protect the House and Senate have also resigned.
Contributing: Kristine Phillips, Kevin Johnson, Cara Richardson and Trevor Hughes, USA TODAY; Michael L. Diamond and Susan Loyer, MyCentralJersey.com
On Wednesday, I listened as sirens blared outside my Washington apartment, within walking distance of the Capitol. Along with the rest of America, I watched the most astounding images on television and social media of violent instigators.
But just as disturbing were the images of the U.S. Capitol Police treating white militants with kid gloves, even as these agitators — dare I say, domestic terrorists — broke into the building, smashed windows and physically assaulted the police.
I could ask you to imagine how these agitators might be treated if they were Black. But we don’t have to imagine what we already know.
The Capitol Police are not exactly known for their restraint. In 2013, a Black woman named Miriam Carey made a U-turn near the White House and the police fired at her 26 times, killing her. Her baby daughter was in the backseat and survived.
We know the history of this country, from slavery to Reconstruction to Jim Crow, when the law, legal institutions and state-sanctioned violence conspired to control and dominate Black people. In contrast, white people did not have to be dominated in the same way; the same institutions appeased white people when they got angry.
Black protesters must be controlled. White supremacists must be appeased.
Perhaps even more disconcerting than the response we saw Wednesday is the knowledge that the anti-democracy vigilantes made no secret of their intentions. And did anyone doubt that President Donald Trump would encourage the hordes? He who told the Proud Boys to “stand by?” Yet, the Capitol Police didn’t staff up on Wednesday, didn’t hold a perimeter, and, once overwhelmed, had to plead to other law enforcement agencies around the region for assistance.
And why? As a Black man from a Black community who has seen all that American racism has to offer, I can say it’s most likely because the police just don’t inherently see white people as violent. They don’t see what I saw yesterday: a planned attack on the democratic foundation of our country and our people, encouraged by a president who refuses to accept that millions of people — many of them Black, Latino, Asian, Native and immigrant — voted for a progressive future for our families.
On Wednesday, we saw an insurrection unfold on national television spearheaded by angry white militants. It was eerily reminiscent of the violence that has accompanied every progressive advancement in this country, from Reconstruction to the civil rights movement to the election of President Barack Obama, to the election of his vice president.
Wednesday was supposed to be a day of celebration, a day to rejoice over the win of the Rev. Raphael Warnock, the heir to the work of Martin Luther King Jr. and Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga.
Warnock’s Senate victory was the result of years of investment in the changing electorate in Georgia, with Black-led organizations like the New Georgia Project Action Fund leading the way.
People of color organizing and pushing their friends and family to go out and vote flipped the Senate. Black women, especially, helped to make Warnock the first Black senator to represent Georgia, as well as the first Black senator elected in the South as a Democrat. Democrat Jon Ossoff will be the first Jewish Senator to represent a Southern state since the 1880s.
But instead of celebrating our increasingly multiracial democracy or marking this as a moment when we bend the arc of history a little more toward justice, our story was again occluded by the backlash and violence that progress engenders.
We must push through. This presidential election was held during a pandemic — some people literally risked their lives to vote. We the people have spoken; this is our country. And in our country, we have a peaceful transfer of power. And anyone who stands in the way of that should resign or be removed.
Despite the chaos, Congress confirmed the Electoral College victory of President-elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. It is a monumental step that allows us to continue to acknowledge, not just our racist past, but a racist legacy that reverberates so strongly that white people can attack the building that embodies our democracy and face little, if any, force.
Derrick Evans, who was sworn into West Virginia’s House of delegates last month, wore a black helmet as he forced his way into the building among a crush of rioters, live streaming the whole episode on the internet.
Referring to himself in third person, he then shouts: “Derrick Evans is in the Capitol!”
Other footage shows him warning people not to vandalize anything, as he wandered around the Capitol Rotunda, where historical paintings depict the republic’s founding.
But despite what it looks like, Mr Evans has released a statement saying that he was not a part of the mob, and was in fact “simply there as an independent member of the media to film history.”
Who he was working for is not clear, and why he deleted the footage if it was filmed in good journalistic faith is also not known.
In a statement on Facebook on Wednesday evening, Mr. Evans said that he has “traveled across the country to film many different events,” and that earlier he had “had the opportunity to film at another event in DC.”
“I want to assure you all that I did not have any negative interactions with law enforcement nor did I participate in any destruction that may have occurred,” he wrote. “I was simply there as an independent member of the media to film history.”
West Virginia locals have not bought his excuse and around 10,000 people have signed an online petition calling for him to be removed from office.
The speaker of the West Virginia House of Delegates, Roger Hanshaw, said he could be facing something more serious.
In a statement on Wednesday night Mr Hanshaw said that he had “not spoken to Delegate Evans about today’s events,” though he said he saw what was posted on social media.
He added that “storming government buildings and participating in a violent intentional disruption of one of our nation’s most fundamental political institutions is a crime that should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
What China is saying about the pro-Trump insurrection at the US Capitol
REUTERS/LEAH MILLIS.
Beijing usually leaps at the opportunity to highlight when liberal democracies stumble, and use those moments to bolster its claims that its authoritarian model is superior. The pro-Trump mob storming of the US Capitol on Jan. 6 provided the perfect opportunity.
Much of the media coverage focused on connecting the reaction to the mob with the US’s support of the Hong Kong protests, and the apparent hypocrisy of the US political establishment and media in supporting protests in another country but not their own (that comparison is disingenuous given Hong Kong’s protests were a fight for free and fair democratic procedures, while the Trump protests were a denial of them.)
The Global Times, a hawkish Chinese state-owned tabloid, was among the first to draw parallels between the insurrection at the Capitol and Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests. In a tweet today (Jan. 7), the newspaper cited White House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s description of the Hong Kong demonstrations in June 2019 as “a beautiful sight to behold,” and asked whether she felt the same of the pro-Trump mob.
The outlet also offered a side-by-side comparison of scenes from the Hong Kong protests, such as when activists stormed the city’s legislature in July 2019, with the flag-waving, pro-Trump mob inside the Capitol.
The insurrection was featured on the front page of the Global Times’ Chinese website, accompanied with headlines such as (link in Chinese) “An iconic humiliation! The madness of the Capitol [incident] has dragged the US’s standing [as a democracy] into its Waterloo!”
Hua Chunying, a Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman, said today (link in Chinese) that China hopes the US will return soon to peace and stability. She also commented US media coverage and political responses to the pro-Trump demonstrations versus the Hong Kong protests, equating the two. “What words did they use on Hong Kong, and what words did they use [on storming of the Capitol]?…such a difference and the reasons behind it is worth us reflecting on seriously,” said Hua.
Xiakedao, a social media account run by the overseas edition of the People’s Daily, the Party’s largest mouthpiece, also zeroed in on Pelosi’s “beautiful sight” remark. The term has become a buzzword among Chinese internet users, who used it to mock the US democratic system, which they say only supports social unrest in other places, but not in its own country.
“The US Congress at the moment…what did Pelosi say before?” Xiakedao posted today, alongside nine pictures showing the pro-Trump mob breaching the building, as well as lawmakers hiding under their seats.
China’s Communist Youth League, a Party-affiliated political organization for Chinese youngsters, posted photos of the mob holding up pro-Trump banners in front of the Capitol, and captioned it with “a world-famous painting.”
As of noon on Thursday, the hashtag #Trump supporters stormed into the Capitol Hill had generated nearly 500 million views on Weibo. Many users said the riots marked the beginning of a deeper divide in the US, with some even asking if it might culminate in a second Civil War.
It is a familiar tactic for Beijing to utilize flashpoints in democracies to justify its own approach to governance. The country’s blanket censorship of foreign websites means most of the country relies on domestic, often state-owned, media for information, allowing the authorities to promote a narrative that a one-party state can provide far more stability than the chaos of a democracy.
Six Republican lawmakers among rioters as police release photos of wanted
Gustaf Kilander January 7, 2021
DC police release photos of alleged members of Trump mob (DC Police).
At least six Republican state legislators took part in events surrounding the storming of the US Capitol. West Virginia Delegate Derrick Evans posted a video of himself entering the building but later deleted it, The New York Times reported.
Tennessee state lawmaker Terri Lynn Weaver told the Tennessean that she was “in the thick of it” during the rally before the storming of the Capitol. She said there was “Just a whole heck of a lot of patriots here”. She later tweeted a picture of the mob at the base of the Capitol, saying: “Epic and historic day gathering with fellow Patriots from all over the nation DC.”
Virginia state Senator Amanda Chase denied that any violence had taken place, despite the overwhelming evidence, and later accused the police of murder after the shooting of a California woman inside the Capitol. “A veteran who was brutally murdered by Capitol Police today,” Chase wrote on Facebook.
“These were not rioters and looters; these were Patriots who love their country and do not want to see our great republic turn into a socialist country. I was there with the people; I know. Don’t believe the fake media narrative,” she wrote.
Pennsylvania State Senator Doug Mastriano made sure that a busload of people could be in DC. He said in a video that he didn’t participate in the clashes with police, The Hill reported.
Michigan State Representative Matt Maddock was also at the scene, according to The Hill.
This comes as the FBI and DC Police released images of people wanted on federal charges for violently storming the US Capitol. They are trying to track down 36 people after 68 were already arrested after violent clashes with police as the Trump -supporting mob broke into the Capitol, forcing members of Congress to evacuate and seek shelter in undisclosed locations. Four rioters died and 56 officers were injured in the ensuing chaos. One officer remains in hospital after being beaten and tased by the mob.
Charges include inciting a riot and weapons violations. Rioters scaled the Capitol building, defaced statues, committed countless acts of vandalism and fought with police.
The suspects include Holocaust deniers, White supremacists, and conspiracy theorists.
Several of them have already been identified online, such as 32-year-old Jake Angeli, sometimes called the “QAnon Shaman” according to the Arizona Republic. Shirtless and wearing horns and a fur, the Trump-supporting QAnon conspiracy theorist was seen in numerous images from the Capitol on Wednesday.
An unnamed man was fired from his job at a Maryland marketing firm after wearing his company badge while storming the Capitol.
But many have yet to be identified. Former Deputy Director of the FBI Danny Coulson told Fox News that: “It didn’t just happen,” asserting that inciters of the riot were to blame. “There were people there that came to do it and generated it and caused this horrible mayhem,” he said.
Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen said in a statement: “The Department of Justice is committed to ensuring that those responsible for this attack on our Government and the rule of law face the full consequences of their actions under the law.”
“Some participants in yesterday’s violence will be charged today, and we will continue to methodically assess evidence, charge crimes and make arrests in the coming days and weeks to ensure that those responsible are held accountable under the law.”
“We still have a significant amount of work ahead of us to identify and hold each and every one of the violent mob accountable for their violent actions,” Metropolitan Police Department chief Robert Contee said.
WASHINGTON — A violent, armed mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol building Wednesday, entering the House and Senate chambers and forcing legislators and staff to take shelter. The astonishing turn of events came an hour after President Trump exhorted a Washington rally to protest the congressional certification of the Electoral College vote, a process that would seal President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.
The unprecedented violent protest brought a halt to the debate on the futile attempt by some Republican lawmakers to decertify the results from a number of states.
After a “Stop the Steal” rally that police say was attended by 25,000 to 35,000 people, thousands of angry Trump supporters surrounded the Capitol building, bounded up the steps and set up barricades using a ladder. Standing on top of an entrance, one man looked down and said, “This is epic. We’re taking the Capitol back.”
Protesters overpowered Capitol Police, smashed windows and forced open doors, then streamed into the building where both chambers of Congress were debating whether to certify the Electoral College votes in Arizona.
The surprise intrusion caught lawmakers off guard, sending many scurrying for safety.
“The president invited us here, and we’re not leaving,” another protester shouted.
Multiple shots were fired, and CNN reported that a female protester identified as Ashli Babbit was killed after being shot in the chest. Capitol Police also reported that three other people had died of medical complications stemming from the clashes and that several officers had been injured. Washington Police Chief Peter Newsham said protesters deployed “chemical irritants on police” as they stormed the Capitol, the Associated Press reported.
Protesters supporting Trump break into the U.S. Capitol. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Vice President Mike Pence, who was presiding over the proceedings in the Senate, was taken to a secure location by the Secret Service out of fear for his safety.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris were also placed in secure locations. With the Capitol complex in lockdown, Trump issued a belated plea for calm.
Notably, Trump did not instruct his supporters to disperse, and his tweet was met with angry responses from Democrats and some Republicans who said the president’s words had led to the day’s developments.
Minutes later, Pelosi and Sen. Chuck Schumer issued a joint statement.
“We are calling on President Trump to demand that all protesters leave the U.S. Capitol and Capitol grounds immediately,” the statement read.
With Trump steering clear of television cameras since attending his rally earlier in the day, Biden delivered a stern message.
Trump supporters take over the steps of the Capitol on Wednesday. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images)
“I call on this mob to pull back and allow democracy to go forward,” Biden said, adding, “I call on President Trump to go on national television now to fulfill his oath and defend the Constitution and demand an end to this siege.”
By the time the president strengthened his calls for cooperation with the police, his protesters, many of whom were armed and had not passed through a metal detector, had already broken through a police barricade and entered the Capitol’s Statuary Hall. An improvised explosive device was found on the Capitol grounds, NBC News reported, and at least two IEDs were discovered on the 300 and 400 blocks of Canal Street, according to a law enforcement document obtained by Yahoo News.
An improvised explosive device recovered in Washington on Wednesday.
Approximately 1,100 members of the National Guard were activated to help put down what Democrats said was a coup attempt. In a statement to the press, Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller said he had spoken with Pence, Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Schumer about the plan.
“We have fully activated the D.C. National Guard to assist federal and local law enforcement as they work to peacefully address the situation. We are prepared to provide additional support as necessary and appropriate as requested by local authorities,” Miller said in his statement.
The Department of Homeland Security set up a virtual situation room to facilitate interagency communication and coordination, a DHS spokesperson told Yahoo News.
Yet with the former heads of the Justice and Defense departments fired or having resigned after clashes with Trump, the statements from their replacements came hours after the mob had descended.
“The violence at our Nation’s Capitol Building is an intolerable attack on a fundamental institution of our democracy. From the outset, the Department of Justice has been working in close coordination with the Capitol Police and federal partners from the Interior Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and the National Guard, as well as the Metropolitan Police and other local authorities,” Acting Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen said in a statement. “Earlier this afternoon, the Department of Justice sent hundreds of federal law enforcement officers and agents from the FBI, ATF, and the U.S. Marshals Service to assist the Capitol Police in addressing this unacceptable situation, and we intend to enforce the laws of our land.”
A member of a pro-Trump mob bashes an entrance of the Capitol in an attempt to gain access. (Jon Cherry/Getty Images)
With the siege continuing, Trump finally relented, issuing a video from the White House that, while it urged his supporters to leave the Capitol, also seemed to justify their behavior.
“I know your pain, I know your hurt,” Trump told his supporters. “We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election and everyone knows it, especially the other side.”
Trump’s remarks were littered with false and unsubstantiated claims of election fraud, and social media companies quickly flagged the video on their platforms as containing disputed information. In fact, it was those same claims that inspired a mob of his supporters to travel to Washington to protest in the first place.
“This was a fraudulent election, but we can’t play into the hands of these people,” Trump added.
Ultimately, Twitter and Facebook concluded that they had reached an inflection point, deciding for the first time to remove messages, including the video, from Trump’s accounts. Facebook added an additional punishment, banning Trump from posting for 24 hours, a move that was quickly followed by Instagram.
Snapchat blocked Trump from making new posts and Twitter also locked Trump’s account for 12 hours.
At least one prominent Democratic Senator said Twitter’s penalty was not stern enough.
Pence, who had been criticized by Trump and his followers for not attempting to overturn the results of the Electoral College vote – something the vice president does not have the power to do – issued his own statement as the violence continued.
“The violence and destruction taking place at the US Capitol Must Stop and it Must Stop Now. Anyone involved must respect Law Enforcement officers and immediately leave the building,” Pence tweeted. “Peaceful protest is the right of every American but this attack on our Capitol will not be tolerated and those involved will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
Trump had urged his followers to travel to Washington to attend the rally, and he addressed them at the Washington Ellipse shortly before Congress began the electoral vote count.
A protester inside the Senate chamber after the Capitol was breached. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
“We’re going to walk down, and I’ll be there with you,” Trump said, adding, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much some of them.”
Instead, Trump returned to the White House while many in the crowd did just as he asked and began laying siege to the Capitol. Several buildings were evacuated as protesters clashed with police.
As the chaos unfolded, instead of issuing a call for calm and urging his supporters to cooperate with Capitol Police, Trump lashed out at Pence in a tweet deleted by Twitter. Minutes later, the president issued a second tweet urging the same supporters he’d whipped up into a frenzy over bogus claims of election fraud to “Stay peaceful!”
As members of Congress took shelter in the basement of the Capitol, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser announced a 6 p.m. ET curfew.
Armed protesters stormed the Senate chamber and the offices of several lawmakers, with one climbing the dais and proclaiming, “Trump won that election!”
While some of the Trump supporters inside the Capitol said their intention was to stay there overnight, others began dispersing as darkness fell. One man with a megaphone called out to the mob that the National Guard was coming and that the group “needed to go to CNN and MSNBC instead, because that’s where it all started.”
At the “Stop the Steal” rally, Trump had gone after the news media with particular vigor, and soon his supporters had attacked a news crew.
A woman leaving the Capitol in tears said she had been sprayed with Mace by the police when she attempted to force her way inside the building. Asked why she wanted to get in, the woman, who identified herself as Elizabeth from Knoxville, Tenn., said, “We’re storming the Capitol, it’s a revolution!”
Predictably, some of Trump’s backers in Congress blamed the violence on left-wing provocateurs from antifa.
Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., meanwhile, announced she was introducing a new set of articles of impeachment against Trump.
Other Democrats also called for Trump to face swift consequences for what transpired Wednesday.
“He must be impeached and removed from office immediately,” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said in a statement.
Trump’s predecessor also pointed the finger at the 45th president.
“History will rightly remember today’s violence at the Capitol, incited by a sitting president who has continued to baselessly lie about the outcome of a lawful election, as a moment of great dishonor and shame for our nation,” former President Barack Obama said in a written statement.
Former President Bill Clinton also had harsh words for the current White House occupant.
“The match was lit by Donald Trump and his most ardent enablers, including many in Congress, to overturn the results of an election he lost,” Clinton said in a statement.
Democrats weren’t the only ones lashing out at the soon-to-be-former president, however.
“Today, the United States Capitol — the world’s greatest symbol of self-government — was ransacked while the leader of the free world cowered behind his keyboard — tweeting against his Vice President for fulfilling the duties of his oath to the Constitution,” Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., said in a written statement. “Lies have consequences. This violence was the inevitable and ugly outcome of the President’s addiction to constantly stoking division.”
Without mentioning Trump by name, former Republican President George W. Bush put the blame for the event on those who had fostered “falsehoods and false hopes” about the election results.
“The violent assault on the Capitol — and disruption of a Constitutionally mandated meeting of Congress — was undertaken by people whose passions have been inflamed by falsehoods and false hopes,” Bush said in a statement.
As Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, gathered other lawmakers at a secure location, he was equally pointed in who was to blame.
“This is what the president has caused today, this insurrection,” Romney said, according to the New York Times.
National Guard troops clear a street from protestors outside the Capitol. (Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images)
Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., also didn’t mince words.
“The President bears responsibility for today’s events by promoting the unfounded conspiracy theories that have led to this point,” Burr said in a statement. “It is past time to accept the will of the American voters and to allow our nation to move forward.”
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., also urged Trump to move on from the election.
“It’s past time for the president to accept the results of the election, quit misleading the American people, and repudiate mob violence,” Cotton said in a statement. “And the senators and representatives who fanned the flames by encouraging the president … should withdraw those objections.”
Longtime Trump ally and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie issued another scathing assessment of Trump’s role in the melee to ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos.
“Those people today who had been lied to consistently by the president about a fraudulent election acted out, and acted out not just on their own George, but through his encouragement, and I did listen carefully to what he said this morning at that rally,” Christie said.
In the afternoon, hours after the mob took control of the Capitol, rumors swirled in Washington about the 25th Amendment, which contains a provision whereby the vice president and a majority of the cabinet can rule that a president has become incapable of doing his job, could be used to remove Trump from office.
Momentum for the 25th Amendment built throughout the day until all the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee wrote a letter to Pence asking him to invoke it, saying “President Trump revealed that he is not mentally sound and is unable to process and accept the results of the 2020 election.”
Numerous officials inside the Trump administration were said to be considering resigning in disgust. The first person to make that announcement was first lady Melania Trump’s chief of staff, Stephanie Grisham. The second was White House deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews.
White House social secretary Rickie Niceta and deputy national security advisor Matt Pottinger has resigned in the wake of the riot at the Capitol.
At 5:56 p.m., nearly four and a half hours after the insurrection had begun, the sergeant-at-arms announced that the Capitol had been cleared of the mob, eliciting cheers from the lawmakers who had remained inside the building. One hundred and thirty-six National Guard troops took up positions on the Capitol grounds, according to an update sent to law enforcement and obtained by Yahoo News.
While thousands of Trump supporters took part in the violence at the Capitol, by 9:30 p.m, Washington police said they had made slightly more than 52 arrests, most on charges of violating curfew.
But the incident itself would have broader repercussions. For starters, some of the Republicans who said they would protest the certification of the Electoral College vote announced they had reconsidered in light of the attack on the Capitol.
As the Senate resumed its business, outgoing Majority Leader Mitch McConnell spoke sternly about the mob.
“The United States Senate will not be intimidated,” he said, adding, “They tried to obstruct our democracy. They failed.”
Schumer, the man in line to lead the Senate, was more precise. “This mob was in good part President Trump’s doing,” the New York Democrat said.
One by one, Senate Republicans who had planned to protest the Electoral College certification, including James Lankford of Oklahoma and Kelly Loeffler of Georgia, stepped forward to say they were dropping their objections.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) speaks during a Senate debate session to ratify the 2020 presidential election at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. (Photo by congress.gov via Getty Images)
One of the president’s most dependable supporters, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, delivered an especially stinging rebuke of the plan to deny certification.
“If you’re a conservative, this is the most offensive concept in the world — that a single person could disenfranchise 155 million people,” Graham said, adding, “Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are lawfully elected.”
Back at the White House, Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani continued to pressure senators to protest the certification. When the vote came up to challenge the electors in Arizona, Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., Roger Marshall, R-Ks., Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., Ted Cruz, R-Tex., and John Kennedy, R-La., obliged, less than half of those who initially committed to doing so.
Georgia, the next state challenged by members of the House, did not receive the support of a single Senator, killing debate before it began. The same pattern held in Michigan and Nevada.
But Sen. Hawley joined the challenge to Pennsylvania’s electoral votes put forth by Republican House members, delaying Biden’s inevitable victory even further.
As was clear before they began, the final votes on the challenges, however, did not go in Trump’s favor, and when Hawley was asked by CNN’s Manju Raju whether Trump bore responsibility for the violence in Washington on Wednesday, even he gave an answer the president was sure to dislike.
“I don’t think urging people to come to the Capitol was a good idea,” he said.
A bigger question that remains, however, is what lasting damage the mob takeover will have on the party of the man who beckoned his supporters to Washington to stage Wednesday’s uprising.
Caitlin Dickson contributed reporting to this story.
Analysis: Trump’s rage ignites mob assault on democracy
Jonathan Lemire January 6, 2021
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President Donald Trump speaks during a rally protesting the electoral college certification of Joe Biden as President, Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
NEW YORK (AP) — The riotous mob that laid siege to the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday was the product of the destructive forces that President Donald Trump has been stirring for years, culminating in the disruption of a democratic ritual that would formally end his unconstitutional bid to stay in power.
The scene that unfolded — pushing through police barricades, breaking windows, then occupying seats of power — was one that Americans are accustomed to watching in distant lands with authoritarian regimes.
But the violence, which included gunshots fired in the Capitol, one death, and an armed occupation of the Senate floor, was born from the man who swore an oath to protect the very democratic traditions that rioters tried to undo in his name.
The rioters chose to storm the Capitol, a building symbolic as a citadel of democracy, and stirred echoes of the the angst and blood of the Civil War era. Only this time it was instigated by a duly elected president unwilling to honor the foundational creed of a peaceful transfer of power.
“This is an attempted coup d’état incited by the President of the United States,” said presidential historian Michael Beschloss. “We are in an unprecedented moment when a president who is willing to conspire with mobs to bring down his own government. This is totally against the idea of democracy for which the nation has stood for over two centuries.”
The certification of the Electoral College votes that formalizes President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, a Constitutionally-enshrined ceremony typically designed to show American democracy’s strength, was disrupted within hours of Trump’s incendiary demand for action in a speech to his supporters, as he implored them to “fight” to stop the “steal” of the election and march on the Capitol.
“After this, we’re going to walk down — and I’ll be there with you — we’re going to walk down, we’re going to walk down to the Capitol,” Trump said, “and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.”
As his presidency enters its final days, Trump’s speech was a valedictory that seethed with anger, and roused those who took it as a call to insurrection. Rioters overran and overmatched Capitol security forces, breaking windows, stealing mementos and mocking the institution with photos showing them in seats of power.
One in the mob seized House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s dais, another her office. A sea of red “Make America Great Again” hats stormed through Statuary Hall, a part of the Capitol familiar to tourists. One man carried a Confederate flag under the same rotunda where Abraham Lincoln — and, just last year, the congressman and civil rights hero John Lewis — had lain in state. A noose was photographed not far from the Capitol’s west front.
And the inauguration stand where Biden will put his hand on a Bible in two weeks was used by U.S. Capitol Police to fire pepper spray into the violent crowd.
Few escaped Trump’s rage — not even his most loyal lieutenant, Vice President Mike Pence, who had, for once, said he could not honor the president’s wishes that he overturn the electoral vote count because there was no legal authority for him to do so.
At his rally on the Ellipse, Trump said he would be “very disappointed” in his vice president, who a short time later had to be whisked to safety by the Secret Service when the Capitol’s barriers were breached.
But the groundwork for the violence was laid far before the rally, which also included a call from the president’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, for a “trial by combat” to settle accusations of election fraud.
Trump, who has long shied away from committing to a peaceful transfer of power, spent the better part of 2020 declaring that the election was “rigged” while making baseless accusations of widespread voter fraud that numerous federal courts and his former attorney general said did not exist.
The president was enabled by dozens of his fellow Republicans, who said they were willing to object to the count, a maneuver they knew would delay but not change the outcome.
Even when it became clear he had lost the election, Trump refused to acknowledge reality, insisting repeatedly that he had won in a landslide. He lost to Biden by 7 million votes.
But his supporters were more than willing to accept his effort to subvert the verdict of voters.
Just weeks ago, he tweeted: “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!” And even after the siege began, and members of his own party — including some trapped in the Capitol and hiding for their lives — begged him to forcibly condemn the act of domestic terrorism, Trump refused.
He spent most of the afternoon in his private dining room off the Oval Office, watching the violence in Washington on a large mounted television, though most of his attention was fixated on Pence’s disloyalty.
He reluctantly taped a video in which he called for “peace” and told the rioters to “go home,” but he bracketed his request with further false claims of election fraud and told the insurrectionists: “We love you. You’re very special.”
In a tweet, rather than directly criticizing the mob, he offered an apologia for them. “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long.” And he encouraged them to “remember” the day as though it would someday be seen as a celebration rather than a riot.
The post was later removed by Twitter.
His words were a remarkable contrast to the man who defeated him and one who came before him.
“At their best, the words of a president can inspire. At their worst, they can incite,” said Biden in an address to the nation from Delaware. “The work of the moment and the work of the next four years must be the restoration of democracy and the recovery of respect for the rule of law, and the renewal of a politics that’s about solving problems — not stoking the flames of hate and chaos.” He implored Trump to “step up.” Trump did not.
George W. Bush, the most recent Republican president, declared that the “Insurrection could do grave damage to our nation and reputation.”
“The violent assault on the Capitol — and disruption of a Constitutionally-mandated meeting of Congress — was undertaken by people whose passions have been inflamed by falsehoods and false hopes,” Bush said.
Trump has long been slow to condemn violent extremism, refusing to denounce white supremacists, cheering armed protesters at the Michigan state capitol last spring and telling the far right Proud Boys to “Stand back and stand by.”
The U.S. Capitol was breached in 1814, when the British attacked it and set it on fire during the War of 1812, according to the U.S. Capitol Historical Society. And the moment of internal strife, one fueled by the president, “can only be reminiscent of the Civil War,” according to presidential historian Julian Zelizer.
“This is an attack on the government,” said Zelizer, who teaches at Princeton University “The president has been stoking divisions and he called for this protest, he called for this chaos. We have never been here before.”
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Lemire has covered the White House and politics for The Associated Press since 2013.
Eric Alterman on Holding Trump Enablers Accountable
By Eric Alterman January 8, 2021
Sen. Josh Hawley greeting protesters in the east side of the Capitol before riots began. (Photo by Francis Chung, E&E Daily, Twitter)
I’ve been forced to write about Donald Trump an awful lot during the past five years and the problem I always face when writing in a limited space, like this one, is which of his countless horrific qualities to focus on. The same thing happens when I need to address the consequences of the policies of his administration. There are so many terrible ones, so many victims and so many enablers. I always found myself asking, “Who deserves a thousand words today?”
Not today. I don’t dispute the genuine horror, outrage and sadness genuinely patriotic people feel at seeing the desecration of one of the most potent symbols of American democracy. I share those feelings. But another part of me is glad about it. Finally, Trumpism has clarified itself. It’s not about “economic insecurity.” It’s not about globalization. It’s not about being “forgotten,” “disdained by elites,” or “fear of the future.” It’s just about hatred: hatred of anyone and anything who is not a white, Christian, right-wing, American-born American. Any other attempt to defend or explain Trump’s appeal is a lie and a dangerous one at that because it’s a lie that perpetuates all the other lies that have allowed him and his minions to conduct a rampage against America and all that it stands for; the same rampage that finally found its physical manifestation in the insurrectional riot we saw on Wednesday.
What made all this possible? Obviously, there is Trump himself. His entire life, beginning with his real estate career, his TV celebrity, his presidential campaign and then of course, his presidency, had been built on a foundation of easily disprovable falsehood. And somehow, it worked. Trump apparently told the right kind of lies; the kinds of lies that were in the interests of the powerful people allied with him to pretend to believe. As for his victims, who cared? If they had any power in the first place, they would not have been victims. As far as Trump was concerned, lying worked. It pumped up his ego and got him what he wanted. After all, he got elected president of the United States without having any appreciable qualifications. It’s not much of a mystery as to why he kept it up.
The more compelling question for our future is who were the people who bought into his lies, pretended to believe (or at least excuse) them and benefitted as a result? These, after all, are the people who betrayed their country and will still be around when Trump is either serving time or living in exile. Second, of course, was the structure of enablement his lies enjoyed. The Trump administration was one big bribe. The rich got their massive tax cuts and extremely relaxed enforcement of financial crimes. Evangelicals got their Federalist Society–appointed judges and extreme Zionism put into practice. Racists, Nazis and nationalists got their attacks on everyone who did not look and “think” like them. (These people came cheap.) Cops got to beat up and sometimes murder people with impunity. Corporations were free to pollute their communities and disempower their workers. The right-wing press got to give their “middle finger” as National Review editor Rich Lowry named it, at the rest of us and the mainstream media got ratings, subscriptions and stock prices they could not have imagined five years earlier. Remember CBS CEO Les Moonves speaking about Trump’s candidacy, before Moonves lost his job following numerous claims of sexual misconduct? He may have been speaking for the entire industry when he said: “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.”
All this added up to an irresistible bargain for all of them to embrace Trump’s lies and pass them along to the voters, viewers, stockholders, churchgoers, whomever. The net result was the creation of an entire world of unreality in which nearly half the country lived and most of the rest of it agreed to indulge. Trump-supporting Kentucky Republican, Thomas Massie, sounds like he’s making complete sense when he says, “Trump has a 94 percent approval rating among my Republican electorate—I’ve actually polled it twice,” Massie said. “Those are people that vote in the primaries in Kentucky’s Fourth District … I’m going to have a lot of explaining to do.” The poor fellow…
Almost all the mainstream media commentators expressed profound shock at the sight of Trump’s most devoted followers attacking Congress on Wednesday. It played out as a “Drunk History” parody version of the Bolsheviks’ 1917 storming of the Tsar’s winter palace. Didn’t these people know a wink when they saw one? Didn’t they understand, as Selena Zito lectured the rest of us back in September, 2016 (in the Atlantic, no less,) that while, “the press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally?” Apparently, not. These people have been fed a diet of literally nothing but political lies for decades now in the fantasy “propaganda loop” that right-wing billionaires like Rupert Murdoch, Sheldon Adelson, the Koch brothers and Rebekah Mercer have created for them. Donald Trump was just the Frankenstein monster that (we now see) pushed things a little too far. But give credit where it’s due. Trump’s 30,000 or so presidential lies were built on a mountain of lies that came before him, thanks to Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, both George Bushes (but especially the second one) and all of the politicians and pundits who embraced and enabled them.
Viewed from a certain perspective, one is almost tempted to feel sorry for these clowns — or “very special” people as Trump called them — in the Viking hats and the “Camp Auschwitz” sweatshirts. They had become, what Hannah Arendt called, “the ideal subject of a totalitarian state”; that is, the person “for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (that is, the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (that is, the standards of thought) no longer exist.” Too bad, however, that — just like with Covid deniers — their purposeful ignorance combined with their maniacal aggressiveness is endangering the rest of us to the point of that (My God!) even Mitch McConnell recognized as a potential “death spiral” for democracy and said enough was finally enough.
The obvious question for which there is just as obviously no clear answer yet is, “Are we too far gone to save ourselves?” As posed by the punditocracy, it takes some form of, “How much of the Republican Party will remain in thrall to this guy that we now all suddenly discovered is a dangerous lunatic?” This question is always followed by references to rhetorical flamethrowers, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and the total of 179 lawmakers who, even after what they saw on Wednesday, still refused to recognize the rightful president-elect of the United States. (This is coupled with a running count of which rats are jumping from their sinking ship. ) But the Congressional Republican Party is just the head of an extremely pugnacious and poisonous snake. The reptilian structure it grows out of has strangled so many of institutions that make democracy possible and infected so many of the people who shape and influence it, one has a hard time imagining where we will find the resources to nurse the body politic back even to a semblance of good health.
One thing is for certain, however: we have no choice but to try. There is no “moving on” or “looking to the future” without first facing the truth. And that means legally holding responsible everyone who helped to create the criminal syndicate that took over our government and morally, everyone who supported it. They were not just “playing politics,” this time around. They were toying with treason. And that’s just how they need to be treated if we are to restore a semblance of functional democracy to our system and personal honor to our politics.
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