Who Were the Rioters at the Capitol?

             Rioters attacked the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021, while members of Congress were certifying the presidential election. Several rioters were wearing MAGA hats and patriotic colors and were carrying American flags and Trump flags. Trump was blamed for inciting his supporters to attack the Capitol. However, there are problems with timing and distance. Trump supporters would have to have done time travel to listen to Trump’s speech and be at the Capitol when the perimeters were breached.

            There are also questions about why the Capitol’s perimeters were so easy to breach. U.S Capitol Police and the city officials were aware that Trump had invited his supporters to Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021. They had plenty of time to prepare properly to secure the building. Rioters had few problems getting past security, and videos showed police moving barriers and waving protesters past them.

            I have heard that both the FBI and the Pentagon offered help in securing the building, but their offers were declined. I have also read that the Police Chief asked for help, and the security officers in both the House and Senate denied it. Maybe they thought that they had enough police, but they obviously did not. The simple fact is that there were not enough Capitol Police officers in the building or at the entrances to it.

            Republicans and conservatives have been condemning violence in the nation since Memorial Day and all summer. Stores were looted, and cities were burned. Police stations were taken over, businesses were destroyed, and people were killed. Yet, media claimed that the “protests” about George Floyd’s death were “mostly peaceful” – even when we could see buildings burning behind them. Democrats and liberals encouraged the riots until the appearance of rioters that resembled Trump supporters.

            Americans know that Black Lives Matter protests and Antifa actions were often violent. If either of the groups had announced that they were going to the nation’s capital to protest, there could have been more police available to protect against them. However, pro-Trump gatherings have been mostly peaceful, and this history might have the Capitol Police to relax. This was obviously a mistake.

            Lora Rie and Steven P. Bucci wrote about the attack on the Capitol. They said that Washington, D.C., “has dozens of law enforcement agencies, each with different jurisdictions.” However, only one agency reports to congressional leaders – the Capitol Police. 

The day of the riot, Capitol Police was worked with the District of Columbia’s Metropolitan Police Department, the U.S. Secret Service (a division of the Department of Homeland Security), and U.S. Park Police (a division of the Interior Department), as it commonly does, to make our public spaces secure, accessible, and protect the process of democracy.

Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, who resigned Thursday effective Jan. 16, stated that the Capitol attack was unlike anything he had ever experienced in his 30 years of law enforcement in Washington. Rioters attacked Capitol Police officers and other uniformed law enforcement officers with metal pipes, chemical irritants, and other weapons.

“They were determined to enter into the Capitol Building by causing great damage,” Sund said.

            There were more than fifty officers from the Capitol Police and Metropolitan Police Departments who were injured in the attack. A few of them were injured so badly that they were hospitalized, and at least one who died from his injuries. The officers walk a fine line between allowing Americans to enjoy their First Amendment rights and securing the nation’s capital. As more information about the attack becomes available, it appears to be witnessing that the attack was done by “bad actors” and not the normally peaceful Trump supporters.

Sund’s description of the clashes with Capitol Police sounds familiar because it is. The tactics used in the riot last week resemble those used in riots that occurred in multiple cities throughout 2020. Law enforcement officers and buildings around the U.S. have been attacked with pipes, rocket-grade fireworks, and other dangerous weapons since May by Antifa and Black Lives Matter criminals.

The difference is the 2020 riots occurred in the dark of night and most of the mainstream media showed little of the rioters’ violence, downplaying the attacks as “peaceful protests.”

Slowly, information is coming forward that bad actors at prior riots were involved at the Capitol riot as well. Some rioters wore the typical black bloc garb and helmets, others donned Trump paraphernalia to blend in. At a minimum, Wednesday’s assault on the Capitol was fully informed by the lessons of previous actions.

The rioters had watched the tactics and techniques of the Antifa criminals (which included violence, weapons, and destruction) and the nearly non-existent legal repercussions meted out by liberal city and state governments (the vast majority of criminals who were arrested were released without charges), as well as the validation the earlier rioters received (such as having streets named for them).

            Hopefully, the Capitol Police Department learned their lesson and will be better prepared in the future to deal with large crowds. Also, maybe Americans will learn that things are not always what they seem to be at first.

Does Donald Trump Deserve to Be Impeached Again?

             The topic of discussion for this Constitution Monday is impeachment of the President of the United States. Article II, Section 4 states: The President … shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

            After more than two years of the Russian Collusion delusion and no recommendation for impeachment in the Mueller Report, the U.S. House of Representatives led by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi impeached Donald Trump for a telephone call to Ukraine. The House impeached him for “abuse of power and obstruction of Congress on December 18, 2019,” and the vote fell along party lines. With this vote, Trump joined Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton as the only presidents ever impeached. None of the three left office because the Senate did not convict any of them.

            A little more than a year has passed, and Democrats are calling for another impeachment of Donald Trump. The given reason for the calls for impeachment is that Trump called for an attack on the U.S. Capitol when he invited his followers to Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021. Trump spoke to the crowd of hundreds of thousands to two million people, and a “mob” of so-called Trump supporters attacked the Capitol about the same time. Trump is being blamed for the violence at the Capitol, but Allan J. Favish, a Los Angeles attorney, stated that the timing is wrong to blame Trump. Here is his reasoning.

Trump's speech can be seen here courtesy of NTD.  The speech lasted about 1 hour and 12 minutes.  At 18:10 into the video, Trump says, "I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol Building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."  The Hill omitted that quote from its article, which is consistent with the rest of the mainstream media's coverage of the speech.  In this article by ABC News, a full transcript of the speech is provided.  However, in the first part of the article, in which the speech is described, this quote is omitted, and other quotes from the speech are given that lead the reader to conclude that Trump was inciting the crowd to violence.  The best video of the entire event before the lawbreaking began is from Right Side Broadcasting Network, which shows the crowd and the stage and loudspeaker system. 

To the best of my knowledge, neither the Democrats calling for Trump's impeachment nor the mainstream media have specifically told us who was incited to break into the Capitol by Trump's speech.  The speech began at noon Eastern time on January 6, 2021, as seen from the time stamp on this video broadcast of the speech on C-SPAN2.  Given the speech's length of about 1 hour and 12 minutes, it ended at about 1:12 P.M. Eastern Standard Time (EST).

As noted in the ABC News article, Trump's speech was delivered from the Ellipse across the street from the south lawn of the White House.  From the location of the speech to the Capitol is a little more than a mile and a half. 

According to tweets by Washington Post reporters, barricades were first breached at the Capitol at about 1:00 P.M. EST.  Post reporter Rebecca Tan tweeted this video at 1:00 P.M.  The tweet was retweeted by Post reporter Mike DeBonis at 1:06 P.M.  Note that the time stamp on tweets is based on the location of the person viewing the tweet, as explained in this article in Adweek.

 

Based on this information, it appears that the breakdown of the barricades began at least 12 minutes before Trump's speech ended, by people who were over a mile and a half away from Trump.  Although the loudspeaker system was massive, it is doubtful that the people bringing down the barricades could hear Trump from the loudspeaker system.  Extremely vivid videos of the prelude to and a breach of barricades and entry into the Capitol Building are here and here on a YouTube channel that identifies "independent photojournalist Jon Farina" as the videographer.  It does not appear that people in the crowd was listening to Trump's speech over their phones.  The phones are mostly seen when being used to take pictures and videos.  The videos show plenty of faces of people who should be arrested for defying the law.  But where is the evidence that they were incited to do it by Trump's speech? (Emphasis added.)

            IF the times and distance given by Favish are correct, there is no way that people listening to the speech could have been the same people who broke into the Capitol. Favish wrote that the barricades were breached twelve minutes before Trump’s speech ended, and I do not believe that his supporters would have left the Ellipse until he finished speaking.        

After the speech ended, they still had the mile-and-a-half walk to the Capitol that would take some time – at least 20-30 minutes – in a crowd of people. This means that Trump could not have incited his followers to attack the Capitol. If they were close enough to hear his words, they were too far from the Capitol Building to attack at given the times and distance.

            We can all see that people dressed in MAGA hats and patriotic colors attacked the Capitol. They may have traveled to Washington, D.C., because of Trump’s invitation to his supporters. However, none of this means that they are Trump’s supporters. It seems to be more correlation than causation. The simple fact is that they had to hear the speech before it could incite them to riot. Plus, Trump spoke of them “peacefully and patriotically” making their voices heard, not attacking the Capitol, causing damage, and assaulting members of Congress.