I think you hit the key word with “magical”, it’s magical thinking, with the wish that Trump or JFK Jr. will show up at the last minute and make the court stop being mean to them.
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I don’t think this has been posted yet…
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It specifies that federal U.S. attorneys will get a $2.63 billion overall budget, an increase of $212 million—or 9 percent—from fiscal year 2022, in order to “further support prosecutions related to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and domestic terrorism cases,” according to a House Democratic fact sheet.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, meanwhile, will get an $11.3 billion budget for the coming year. That’s an increase of $570 million, or 5 percent, from last year, which House Democrats say is “for efforts to investigate extremist violence and domestic terrorism.” The figure is also a 5 percent increase from what Biden had asked for in his own 2023 budget request to Congress
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The New Yorker just published an edition of the January Sixth Committee’s report. The intro by David Remnick is a good overview and summary of the committee’s strategies and activities.
Excerpt:
The report includes many comical instances of would-be witnesses claiming their Fifth Amendment rights and refusing to answer questions as benign as where they went to college. And so it was often the junior staffers in the Administration, with far less to spend on legal fees and with their futures at risk, who stepped forward to describe what they had seen and heard. The most memorable such episode came on June 28th, when Cassidy Hutchinson, the earnest young aide to Meadows, testified live before the committee. Hutchinson had already been deposed four times, for a total of more than twenty hours. Liz Cheney, as the vice-chair, began the session by announcing that Hutchinson had received an ominous phone call from someone in Trump’s circle saying, “He wants me to let you know he’s thinking about you. He knows you’re loyal. And you’re going to do the right thing when you go in for your deposition.” Cheney bluntly referred to this as tantamount to witness tampering. When the report and its accompanying materials were finally released, we learned that Hutchinson told the committee that a former Trump White House lawyer named Stefan Passantino, who represented her early in the process, had instructed her to feign a faulty memory and “focus on protecting the President.” She said Passantino made it plain that he would help find her “a really good job in Trump world” so long as she protected “the family.” Hutchinson also testified that an aide to Meadows, Ben Williamson, had passed along a message from Meadows that he “knows that you’ll do the right thing tomorrow and that you’re going to protect him and the boss.”
But Hutchinson, who had been a loyal staffer in the Trump White House, privy to countless conversations in and around the offices of the President and the chief of staff, would not be intimidated. She found new counsel and thwarted the thuggish attempts to gain her silence, delivering some of the most damning testimony of the investigation. She described conversations, some secondhand, that made it plain that Trump knew full well that he had lost the election but would stop at nothing to keep power. Because of her preternatural calm before the microphone, the uninflected, more-in-sadness-than-in-anger tone of her delivery, Hutchinson was often compared to John Dean, the White House counsel under Richard Nixon, who emerged from the Watergate hearings as the most memorable and decisive witness.
But the nature of Hutchinson’s testimony, in keeping with the era, was distinctly more lurid than Dean’s. She recalled how Trump hurled his lunch against the wall, splattering ketchup everywhere, when he learned that Attorney General William Barr had publicly declared that there was, in fact, no evidence of election fraud. On other occasions, she said, the President pulled out “the tablecloth to let all the contents of the table go onto the floor and likely break or go everywhere.” She recounted the names of the many Trumpists—including Meadows, Giuliani, Matt Gaetz, and Louie Gohmert—who had requested that Trump grant them pardons in connection with the Capitol attack. She said that, three days before the insurrection, the White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, told Trump that, if he carried out his plan to march to the Capitol with the crowds, “we’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable.” Hutchinson testified that on January 6th Cipollone told Meadows, “They’re literally calling for the Vice President to be effing hung.” As she recalled, “Mark had responded something to the effect of ‘You heard him, Pat. He thinks Mike deserves it. He doesn’t think they’re doing anything wrong.’ ”
Finally, Hutchinson made it clear just how much Trump had wanted to join the insurrectionists on Capitol Hill. Trump was so incensed with his Secret Service detail for refusing to take him there, she testified, that he lunged at the agent driving his car and struggled for the wheel. The report corroborates Hutchinson’s testimony, saying that the “vast majority” of its law-enforcement sources described a “furious interaction” between the President and his security contingent in his S.U.V. The sources said that Trump was “furious,” “insistent,” “profane,” and “heated.” The committee concluded that Trump had hoped to lead the effort to overturn the election either from inside the House chamber or from a stage outside the building.
Hutchinson was equally forthright about Trump’s disregard for public safety. Despite being told that many of the supporters who came out to see him speak on January 6th were armed, she said, Trump insisted that the Secret Service remove the “mags”—the metal detectors. He was not terribly concerned that someone might be killed or injured, so long as it wasn’t him. “I don’t fucking care that they have weapons,” he said, according to Hutchinson. “They’re not here to hurt me.”
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“In response, Moorish Americans in the group declared the property “protected under the consular jurisdiction of Morocco,” created an entry fee, and said they’d provide security under Moroccan authority. Documents with mysterious symbols were filed claiming Bell’s property was covered in an 1836 treaty between the U.S. and Morocco“
They need to have Morocco take the issue up with the State Department.
Or maybe with Night Court.
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eta
A strange footnote:
In the final days of the 117th Congress, the top Democrat and Republican on the Senate Rules Committee introduced legislation to make it easier for Congress to remove the Architect of the Capitol from office. The legislation would allow for the dismissal of the Architect by “impeachment or joint resolution of Congress” in cases of “permanent disability, inefficiency, neglect of duty, malfeasance; or a felony or conduct involving moral turpitude.”
Blanton oversees a workforce of nearly 2,000 and is also part of the US Capitol Police Board. He was the only member of the board who did not resign or lose his or her position after the security failures at the January 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol attack…
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With the R’s controlling one House - I wonder how much they’ll be allowed to do given they report to leadership.
On the plus side- Biden won’t obstruct calling in the National Guard from Maryland.
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Looks like Eastman will serve his term in the State Legislature - plaintiff decided not to appeal to the AK state supreme court. Probably(?) the best outcome of no good outcomes to the case (David Eastman getting his comeuppance notwithstanding, he’s disqualification would put another R in his seat who would actually make the State House R’s more functional)
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Attorney General Merrick B. Garland made the following statement:
“Two years ago, the United States Capitol was attacked as lawmakers met to affirm the results of a presidential election. Perpetrators attacked police officers, targeted and assaulted members of the media, and interfered with a fundamental element of our democracy: the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next.
“Since then, countless agents, investigators, prosecutors, analysts, and others across the Justice Department have participated in one of the largest, most complex, and most resource-intensive investigations in our history. I am extremely grateful for the dedication, professionalism, and integrity with which they have done this work. This investigation has resulted in the arrest of more than 950 defendants for their alleged roles in the attack. We have secured convictions for a wide range of criminal conduct on January 6 as well as in the days and weeks leading up to the attack. Our work is far from over.
“We will never forget the sacrifice of the law enforcement officers who defended the members of Congress and others inside the Capitol that day. And we will never forget the five officers who responded selflessly on January 6 and who have since lost their lives: Officer Brian Sicknick, Officer Howard Liebengood, Officer Jeffrey Smith, Officer Gunther Hashida, and Officer Kyle DeFreytag.
“The Justice Department remains committed to honoring them. We remain committed to ensuring accountability for those criminally responsible for the January 6 assault on our democracy. And we remain committed to doing everything in our power to prevent this from ever happening again.”
Based on the public court documents, below is a snapshot of the investigation as of Wednesday, Jan. 4, 2023. Complete versions of most of the public court documents used to compile these statistics are available on the Capitol Breach Investigation Resource Page at Capitol Breach Cases | USAO-DC | Department of Justice.
Arrests made: More than 950 defendants have been arrested in nearly all 50 states and the District of Columbia. (This includes those charged in both District and Superior Court).
Criminal charges:
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More than 284 defendants have been charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers or employees, including approximately 99 individuals who have been charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer.
- Approximately 140 police officers were assaulted Jan. 6 at the Capitol, including about 80 from the U.S. Capitol Police and about 60 from the Metropolitan Police Department.
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Approximately 11 individuals have been arrested on a series of charges that relate to assaulting a member of the media, or destroying their equipment, on January 6.
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Approximately 860 defendants have been charged with entering or remaining in a restricted federal building or grounds. Of those, 91 defendants have been charged with entering a restricted area with a dangerous or deadly weapon.
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Approximately 59 defendants have been charged with destruction of government property, and approximately 36 defendants have been charged with theft of government property.
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More than 295 defendants have been charged with corruptly obstructing, influencing, or impeding an official proceeding, or attempting to do so.
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Approximately 50 defendants have been charged with conspiracy, either: (a) conspiracy to obstruct a congressional proceeding, (b) conspiracy to obstruct law enforcement during a civil disorder, (c) conspiracy to injure an officer, (d) seditious conspiracy, or (e) some combination of the four.
Pleas:
- Approximately 484 individuals have pleaded guilty to a variety of federal charges, many of whom faced or will face incarceration at sentencing.
- Approximately 119 have pleaded guilty to felonies. Another 364 have pleaded guilty to misdemeanors.
- A total of 52 of those who have pleaded guilty to felonies have pleaded to federal charges of assaulting law enforcement officers. An additional 22 individuals have pleaded guilty to felony obstruction of law enforcement during a civil disorder. Of these 74 defendants, 41 have now been sentenced to prison terms of up to 90 months.
- Four of those who have pleaded guilty to felonies have pleaded guilty to the federal charge of seditious conspiracy.
Trials:
- 40 individuals have been found guilty at contested trials, including three who were found guilty in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. Another 10 individuals have been convicted following an agreed-upon set of facts. 16 of these 50 defendants were found guilty of assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers, a felony, including one who has been sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Sentencings:
- Approximately 351 federal defendants have had their cases adjudicated and received sentences for their criminal activity on January 6. Approximately 192 have been sentenced to periods of incarceration. Approximately 87 defendants have been sentenced to a period of home detention, including approximately 14 who also were sentenced to a period of incarceration.
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That’s a lot of words for saying “I still see no reason to prosecute Preznit Trump.”
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This is a good summary. What would make it great is a mention of how many arrests are still pending. No need to be explicit about who or what positions they hold… just an estimated figure will do.
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Any day now…
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Members of Congress, the Administration, the Oval Office and Supreme Court members or family members:
0 Charges, Arrests, Prosecutions
Villagers gonna Villager.
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“I chose today to announce my bid for the House of Representatives because it is an important anniversary in US history. While my name will indelibly be part of it, we should also use as a chance to remind ourselves about why democracy is so important and how easily it can be threatened,”
IDK seems like there should be a law prohibiting ANY Jan 06 participant from holding office.
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