Tag: Storming of the US Capitol (Jan, 2021)

5 Takeaways From Mike Pence’s CNN Town Hall

Some Republican presidential candidates have been reluctant to give specifics on their positions regarding abortion policy, or have modulated how they approach it depending on the audience. Mr. Pence seemed eager to discuss the subject, but he faces stiff competition for the voters who are often most moved by the issue. White evangelical voters ultimately […]

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Man Charged With Spraying Police With Insecticide on Jan. 6

The owner of a Long Island funeral home was charged on Wednesday with spraying an insecticide at police officers guarding the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The man, Peter G. Moloney, 58, was the latest rioter to be arrested in the Justice Department’s sprawling investigation of the mob attack. He was also accused of attacking […]

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Mike Pence Hasn’t Grown Less Conservative, but Republicans Have Shifted

Mike Pence is the most conservative candidate competing for the presidency. The former vice president wants abortion banned from the point of conception. He’s the only major candidate calling for cuts to Social Security and Medicare. And he has the most hawkish foreign policy, especially on confronting Russia. Being the most conservative used to matter […]

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Mark Meadows Testified to Grand Jury in Trump Special Counsel Investigation

Mark Meadows, the final White House chief of staff under President Donald J. Trump and a potentially key figure in inquiries related to Mr. Trump, has testified before a federal grand jury hearing evidence in the investigations being led by the special counsel’s office, according to two people briefed on the matter. Mr. Meadows is […]

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Democrats Want Trump? They’re Out of Their Minds

So I flinch at thoughts and remarks like those of Senator Debbie Stabenow, the Michigan Democrat, who told Politico in late April: “Trump’s obviously an extremely dangerous person who would be very dangerous for the country. But I’m confident that President Biden could beat him.” She added that “politically, for us, it’s helpful if former […]

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Men Have Lost Their Way. Josh Hawley Has Thoughts About How to Save Them.

For Schlesinger, who would go on to work as an adviser to President John F. Kennedy, the answer was not to reassert some John Wayne macho attitude to counter growing female empowerment but to rebuild a sense of individual identity to fight back against the stifling bureaucracy and economic centralization of postwar America. In other […]

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The Politics of Delusion Have Taken Hold

Persily wrote, however, that his analysis falls into a second school of thought: I do not think most of affective polarization is driven by a misunderstanding of facts. Indeed, I think many in this field make the mistake of thinking that the line to be policed is the line between truth and falsehood. Rather, I […]

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Sedition Sentence for Oath Keepers’ Stewart Rhodes Marks Moment of Accountability

A few hours after Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers militia, was sentenced on Thursday to 18 years in prison for his role in a seditious conspiracy to instigate the pro-Trump violence of Jan. 6, Matthew M. Graves, the federal prosecutor who has overseen the government’s investigation of the Capitol attack, released a […]

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Sedition Sentence for Oath Keepers Leader Marks Moment of Accountability

A few hours after Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers militia, was sentenced on Thursday to 18 years in prison for his role in a seditious conspiracy to instigate the pro-Trump violence of Jan. 6, Matthew M. Graves, the federal prosecutor who has overseen the government’s investigation of the Capitol attack, released a […]

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How Seditious Conspiracy Is Different From Insurrection and Treason

At the heart of the case against Stewart Rhodes, the Oath Keepers leader who was sentenced on Thursday to the longest prison term yet in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, was a rare and serious charge: seditious conspiracy. Although people have sometimes colloquially used terms like sedition, insurrection, domestic terrorism and […]

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Stewart Rhodes, Oath Keepers Leader, Sentenced to 18 Years in Jan. 6 Case

Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the far-right Oath Keepers militia, was sentenced on Thursday to 18 years in prison for his conviction on seditious conspiracy charges for the role he played in helping to mobilize the pro-Trump attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The sentence, handed down in Federal District Court in Washington, […]

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Trump Lawyers Seek Meeting With Garland Over Special Counsel Inquiries

Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump sent a letter on Tuesday requesting a meeting with Attorney General Merrick B. Garland related to the special counsel investigations into Mr. Trump’s conduct. The letter cited no specifics but asserted that Mr. Trump was being treated unfairly by the Justice Department through the investigations led by the […]

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F.B.I. Violated Surveillance Program Rules, Court Ruling Says

F.B.I. analysts improperly used a warrantless surveillance program to search for information about hundreds of Americans who came under scrutiny in connection with two politically charged episodes of civil unrest: the protests after the 2020 police killing of George Floyd and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, a newly declassified court ruling shows. […]

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Pence Looks Toward 2024 Run, Using Reagan’s Playbook, Not Trump’s

Former Vice President Mike Pence is expected to soon declare a long-shot campaign for the White House against the president under whom he served, pitching himself as a “classical conservative” who would return the Republican Party to its pre-Trump roots, according to people close to Mr. Pence. Mr. Pence is working to carve out space […]

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No Playing Ostrich With Trump

WASHINGTON — My brothers Michael and Martin attended baseball’s opening day at the old Griffith Stadium in April 1951, with the Senators (as our team was then called) playing the Yankees. President Harry Truman had been invited to throw out the first pitch, and the stadium erupted in boos; Truman had just fired the extremely […]

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No Playing Ostrich With Trump

WASHINGTON — My brothers Michael and Martin attended baseball’s opening day at the old Griffith Stadium in April 1951, with the Senators (as our team was then called) playing the Yankees. President Harry Truman had been invited to throw out the first pitch, and the stadium erupted in boos; Truman had just fired the extremely […]

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Trump Town Hall Shows His Second-Term Plan: Shattering Even More Norms

In little over an hour, Donald J. Trump suggested the United States should default on its debts for the first time in history, injected doubt over the country’s commitment to defending Ukraine from Russia’s invasion, dangled pardons for most of the Capitol rioters convicted of crimes, and refused to say he would abide by the […]

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What We Learned About Trump’s Policies in Contentious Town Hall

Among the barrage of falsehoods and bluster, former President Donald J. Trump laid markers down on several major and divisive issues at the CNN town-hall meeting on Wednesday night. Mr. Trump spoke of several actions he might take if re-elected, at times with a specificity he often dodges in speeches and friendlier interviews. He also […]

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Trump’s ‘Stupid,’ ‘Stupid’ Town Hall

In the prelude to last weekend’s coronation of King Charles III, Helen Lewis visited and considered royals less fussed over. “One peculiarity of European aristocrats is that their names pile up, like snowdrifts,” she observed. “It’s lunchtime in Tirana, the capital of Albania, and I am about to meet Leka Anwar Zog Reza Baudouin Msiziwe […]

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Five Takeaways From Trump’s Unruly CNN Town Hall

Donald Trump is still Donald Trump. His 70 minutes onstage in New Hampshire served as a vivid reminder that the former president has only one speed, and that his second act mirrors his first. He is, as ever, a celebrity performance artist and, even out of office, remains the center of gravity in American politics. CNN’s […]

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Representative Nancy Mace Is Trying to Change the Republican Party

It was just after Representative Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina, had fired off a blunt text to the No. 3 House G.O.P. leader — featuring two f-bombs and four demands that needed to be met to gain her vote for the party’s debt limit plan — that she experienced a momentary flash of dread. “Now […]

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Tucker Carlson’s Dark and Malign Influence Over the Christian Right

On April 25, the far-right network Newsmax hosted a fascinating and revealing conversation about Tucker Carlson with Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, one of America’s leading Christian conservative advocacy organizations. Perkins scorned Fox News’s decision to fire Carlson, and — incredibly — also attacked Fox’s decision to fire Bill O’Reilly. These terminations […]

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Peter Schwartz Gets 14 Years for Jan. 6 Police Attacks, Longest Sentence So Far

A Pennsylvania welder who attacked police officers at the Capitol with a chair and then chemical spray was sentenced on Friday to slightly more than 14 years in prison, the most severe penalty handed down so far in connection with the events of Jan. 6, 2021. At a hearing in Federal District Court in Washington, […]

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After Jan. 6 Sedition Convictions, Far-Right Threats Remain

The guilty verdicts on Thursday against four leaders of the Proud Boys on charges of seditious conspiracy were arguably the most significant victory the Justice Department has won so far in its vast investigation of the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Prosecutors took a victory lap, with Attorney General Merrick B. Garland […]

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Four Proud Boys Convicted of Sedition in Key Jan. 6 Case

Four members of the Proud Boys, including their former leader Enrique Tarrio, were convicted on Thursday of seditious conspiracy for plotting to keep President Donald J. Trump in power after his election defeat by leading a violent mob in attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The jurors in the case failed to reach a […]

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Former F.B.I. Agent Charged in Jan. 6 Riot

WASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors have charged a former F.B.I. agent with illegally entering the Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot and said he had called police officers Nazis as he encouraged a mob of Trump loyalists to kill them. The former agent, Jared L. Wise, was arrested on Monday and faces four misdemeanor counts, including […]

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Prosecutors in Jan. 6 Case Step up Inquiry Into Trump Fund-Raising

As they investigate former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, federal prosecutors have also been drilling down on whether Mr. Trump and a range of political aides knew that he had lost the race but still raised money off claims that they were fighting widespread fraud in the vote results, according […]

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Campaign, Interrupted: Pence May Run, but He Can’t Hide From Trump’s Legal Woes

Former Vice President Mike Pence, seemingly in his element as he addressed a gathering of evangelical Christians in Iowa this month, was speaking of “the greatest honor of my life,” serving in “an administration that turned this country around” by rebuilding the military, securing the southern border, and unleashing “American energy.” “But most importantly, most […]

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Tucker Carlson Isn’t Going Anywhere

And when Mr. Trump wasn’t willing to go as far as Mr. Carlson, Mr. Carlson wasn’t afraid to call Mr. Trump out. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder in the summer of 2020, he lambasted Mr. Trump for not cracking down harder on Black Lives Matter protesters in Washington and elsewhere. “If you can’t […]

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Pence Testifies Before Grand Jury on Trump’s Efforts to Retain Power

Former Vice President Mike Pence appeared on Thursday before the grand jury hearing evidence about former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to cling to power after he lost the 2020 election, a person briefed on the matter said. Mr. Pence’s appearance behind closed doors at the Federal District Court in Washington came after he was […]

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Justice for Donald Trump Depends on Who Seeks It

In advance of Mr. Trump’s New York indictment, his former adviser Roger Stone reminded people to keep their protests “civil” and “legal.” Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said she would “be pointing at people to be arrested if they’re being violent.” Many (but not all) of the Trump-backed candidates who lost in November conceded their elections […]

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