N.E. Brigand wrote: ↑Thu Jan 13, 2022 7:53 pm
The
Washington Post reports that Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers militia group, has been arrested and charged for his role in the January 6th insurrection and that the eleven charges includes "seditious conspiracy." I believe Rhodes had not previously been charged in connection with Jan. 6. The
Post adds that ten other individuals, nine of them who had previously faced other charges related to the insurrection, have had seditious conspiracy added to the charges against them in connection with Rhodes. (I believe they are the people in military garb filed in a "stack" filing their way up the Capitol steps.) The actual charging documents are not yet public though. (Edit:
Here is the Dept. of Justice press release on the case, with links to the charging documents.)
The other Oath Keeper who, along with Rhodes, was newly charged one week ago is Edward Vallejo of Arizona. He wasn't actually at the Capitol during the attack. Rather, he
was allegedly part of a "quick reaction force" stationed a few miles away in Arlington, Virginia with weapons that they planned to bring to the fight if Donald Trump invoked the Insurrection Act. Video of Oath Keepers loading guns, ammunition, and supplies (meant to last 30 days, per a text Vallejo sent) into their hotel rooms had been included in previous indictments of Oath Keepers members six months ago or more. In a detention hearing today, prosecutors noted that during the attack, Vallejo sent a text reading, "We have taken the Capitol." Also he tried (but failed) to launch a drone for
renaissance reconnaissance that day.
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One weird item in last week's Oath Keepers indictments is that the group seems to have been inspired in part by a video titled
Step By Step Procedure, How We Won When Milosevic Stole Our Elections about the 2000 popular uprising in Serbia. A
Talking Points Memo reporter
spoke with the video's creator, who claims he never intended to stoke violence, even though in the video he says, "This is what you must put in their hearts: They must feel fear. And while they are counting fake ballots, they must think about, are they going to get out of there alive? Yes, I’m calling you for violence, if that is the only way. Who cares? Yes, I do. Here: taboo, broken."
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The Daily Beast has a
story identifying a donor who seems to have contributed millions of dollars to the efforts to overturn the 2020 election: Dick Uihlein, the billionaire founder and CEO of Uline, a shipping supplies company based in Wisconsin (we regularly get their catalogs here at the office). Already known as a staunch Republican donor, new tax filings by Uihlein's foundation reveal that about $4 million of the more than $16 million donated in 2020 by the foundation (the article says this effectively means donated by Uihlein himself) went to groups who pushed the "Big Lie."
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The Guardian reports on testimony to the House Select Committee from Stephanie Grisham, who served as the White House press secretary in 2019-2020 (during those ten months, she didn't hold a single press briefing, which is some kind of record: as of today, the first anniversary of Joe Biden taking office, the White House press secretary's office has conducted 170 press briefings in one year) and then as the chief of staff and press secretary to first lady Melania Trump before resigning on January 6. Grisham has reportedly testified that "Donald Trump hosted secret meetings in the White House residence in days before" the insurrection, and that the meetings were scheduled by Mark Meadows; she also identified White House ushers who she said should be able to provide the Committee with the names of the meeting participants. Grisham addtionally testified that the Secret Service would have documents concerning Trump's plans for that day. Not that the Committee should have needed her to tell them that, but it would still be important to know why Trump told the crowd at the Ellipse that he would be joining them at the Capitol yet never actually went there.
(I can no longer read the phrase "secret meeting" without hearing it in the voice of Sean Bean in
The Martian.)
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CNN today
has reporting on what had been hinted over the past couple weeks: it was indeed the Trump campaign (and Rudy Giuliani specifically) who led the efforts in seven states to draw up alternate fake slates of Trump electors (some of whom now ought to be at risk of being charged for forgery) submitted to Congress (presumably in order so that Mike Pence, if only he'd gone along with the scheme, could declare either (a) that those phony slates were legitimate and therefore Trump would be the victor in those states or (b) that there were two slates from each state and that therefore both should be tossed, which would make Trump the victor by dint of having a majority of votes in the other 43 states). CNN says that Giuliani worked hand in hand "with Christina Bobb, a correspondent for the pro-Trump propaganda network One America News." Other outlets has previously identified Bobb as one of the people in the Trump campaign's "war room" in the Willard Hotel on Jan. 6.
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The Select Committee has requested testimony from Ivanka Trump, in a long letter that notes, among other things, that she is reported to have acted as a go-between for members of Congress trying to get her father to quell the Insurrection. One possibly new
piece of information in the letter is that the Committee has heard from Gen. Keith Kellogg, who was then Vice President Pence's National Security Advisor, and who was present when President Trump tried to pressure Pence -- and that Ivanka Trump was also there.
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The
Washington Post has published this graphic attempting to illustrate the varying degrees to which different people were involved in an effort, organized or otherwise, to overturn the election results on that day:
As others have observed, what's missing here (so far?), is the connection between those red dots at the top to Alex Jones, Roger Stone, and Rudy Giuliani (and their associates) --although some of them are theoretically encompassed by the circles at the bottom -- and thus to Donald Trump.
Edited to fix medieval typo.
