Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2021/01/13/congress-office-panic-buttons-torn-out-prior-to-capitol-attack-and-other-disturbing-details-about-capitol-riot-emerge.html
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The GOP is about to be destroyed. The FBI investigation will fuel TV shows for 50 years.
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That would be nice, but history informs this situation, and I am not holding my breath.
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Exactly. These people should be tried and convicted. And they should be expelled from Congress.
But I’m not holding my breath.
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If they had panic buttons but they were removed yes something very fucked-up happened there and somebody needs to pay.
Every day that passes since that happened more bullshit surfaces
It’s almost like things are bubbling up from a swamp, you could say…
IMPEACH SWAMP THING
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Being the cowardly lot that they are the FBI will lean on one or more of these creeps and they’ll sing a sad song for the coward in chief. Lots of Banana republics have former dictators in prison, no reason we shouldn’t. Hell the state of Illinois used to have a governor’s suite at dept. of corrections, I think we had to double bunk them for a while. I might be wrong on that.
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On the bright side, I bet the people they ferried around and gave operational knowledge to in preparation are so peeing-themselves scared of prison that they will turn on their organizers instantly. These don’t strike me as hard cases. They wanna get back to their plush asshole lives asap.
I am cautiously optimistic that the perp-walk for this will feature some noteworthy names.
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Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
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November 3: Arizona! 
January 13: Arizona… 
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My wife is certain that Trump will pardon all these people. And as a lawyer, she is also certain that the presidential power to pardon is inviolable. I asked - but what about treason? No. She said at some point it MIGHT go to the Supreme Court and with the current bunch that is there…who really knows.
If this happens it shows a glaring hole in the separation of powers.
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- Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill, NJ said she saw GOP “colleagues leading groups on “reconnaissance” tours of the building” a day before the riot.
- “One freshman lawmaker, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), is also facing criticism for tweeting about the location of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) while the Capitol was under siege,” reports The Washington Post .
One “GOP colleague” who lead reconnaissance tours is also Lauren Boebert. (She even posted a picture of the group, which contained identifiable individuals who breached the capitol building.) Now she’s complaining about - and refusing to comply with - the new metal detector policy, saying that it wouldn’t have stopped the rioters from entering. Of course, that’s not the point - the point is to stop her. She carries a gun (probably illegally) and her colleagues are afraid of her, specifically, doing them physical harm.
Any member of congress who talks about “getting past it,” or “unity” at this point is either a disingenuous seditionist trying to avoid the consequences of their actions, or a fucking idiot. (Or, you know, both.) It’s still happening, the seditionists are still inside the building.
So far they’ve been freely giving information not just to save their own skins, but because they don’t recognize what they’re confessing to themselves. A lot of naivety about the legal system and their role in everything.
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My opinion is that P45 isn’t the least bit loyal to his followers. The only way he would pardon all of them is if it didn’t come at any cost to him. I’m sure it would just be another thing that would be investigated if he tried to pardon his followers and it would only put at risk his children’s and possibly his own pardons validity. No way will he risk that.
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She’s right. In fact, one of the reasons the pardon power was written so broadly was specifically for cases of treason:
The contentious history of U.S. presidential pardons
FTA:
“At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Alexander Hamilton proposed the president be given the power to pardon those who have committed crimes or reduce their sentences, later explaining that pardons might help “restore the tranquillity of the commonwealth” in times of rebellion.”
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Considering how many participants in the mob were members of/had support from military and law enforcement I would be surprised if the FBI didn’t turn out to have some level of complicity in the insurrection too.
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If I were arguing the case in front of the supreme court I would raise the issue of a president hiring an assassin to eliminate supreme court justices and then pardoning the assassin. I don’t think it has anything to do with the crime being treason, it has to do with the president being the instigator. The ability to pardon accomplices means there is no law.
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She’s been in office for less than a month and was elected partially because of her QAnon and conspiracy theory beliefs. It really would not surprise me if she’s been groomed from the start to be an inside mole for the [movement].
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I’m not sure Trump will pardon them.
He doesn’t care about people that aren’t useful to him, and he definitely doesn’t care about people when caring will hurt him.
He can pardon them, but that will surely result in loss of basically all remaining R support for him. Right now they can hide behind “no firm connection”, and “that speech wasn’t a call to violence”.
It is far less clear that he can pardon himself, and I think he knows that after sending violent insurrectionists intent on hanging Pence to the capital building that Pence isn’t going to pardon him either. So if he pardons the insurrectionists he leaves himself as the only target.
(self pardon isn’t specifically excluded, a lot turns on either the construction of the phrase “Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States” - “grant” is something you give someone else, or it relies on the supreme court deciding that obviously allowing self pardons places the president above the law and that might not be what the founders had intended)
Trump may self pardon anyway, despite having asked about it many times and being told repeatedly that it won’t work. He may self pardon and not assume it shields him from what would happen if he pardons the insurrectionists.
Then again Trump frequently does things he has been told won’t work, and he frequently also gets away with it. So he may well do both things.
At that point he does make himself the only target (and the other insurrectionists can’t dodge court questions on the grounds that answers may incriminate themselves as they have been pardoned and no incrimination is possible), and I think after parading everyone there will be substantial apatite to hold someone accountable. Even if it means both proving he is an insurrectionist and getting a supreme court ruling on the legitimacy of self pardons.
Also surely the other insurrectionists have committed state crimes and also have civil exposure.
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Sweet, they got the airlocks installed already?
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NPR’s Nina Totenberg has an interesting piece about Trump’s ability to self-pardon. One of her arguments is that he will most certainly try but one of the side effects is it will force Biden’s DOJ to actually prosecute him in order to get the case in front of SCOTUS. Otherwise it will just continue to leave the issue hanging encouraging future President’s to go even further than Trump has.
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Besides, a pardon is a tacit admission that a person has done something pardonable. I’d love to see these people explain away their mysterious pardon from the debate stage during their re-election bid.
And why would he pardon them, anyway? They no doubt made promises to him, and they have failed to deliver on them. This guy doesn’t even pay people for successful completion of projects.
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