Intelligence for Jan. 6

Reading some sources today that are trying to say that Jan. 6 happened because Dems let it happen, and their goal was to make Trump and his supporters look really bad. It could have been prevented. People like Pelosi and the intelligence community had the info but decided not to act because they benefited more if it went forward. 

There are some problems with that, but I decided to look into the intelligence and try to sort through it.

Tucker Carlson interview with the disgraced chief of capitol police who was forced to resign one day later. He seems to think he was set up. He's got some good points, but there's a lot questionable there. Transcript of his testimony to the Jan. 6 committee. 

Long piece about the Oathkeepers. I'm particularly wondering what their plan or plans were and how much was known about it in advance. They were highly involved in the Stop the Steal rhetoric and protests, emphasizing that they were willing to due Trump's bidding and defeat the deep state. Rhodes used rhethoric like "if we don't, there will be no more republic." They did appear to have a plan to infiltrate Congress and intimidate the elected officials and stop the peaceful, orderly transfer of power based on the certified election results. It wasn't a good plan or a successful plan, but it was a plan, and that is sedition. Testimony here. 

Just Security timeline of the intelligence failure. Very meaty with tons of links. In-depth reporting from WaPo on the intelligence failure. NBC news on the intelligence failure. 

Government Accountability Office (GAO) archive on what they gathered on the intelligence. Only two of 10 agencies correctly forecast that the capitol or Congress was going to be targeted.

Image: Live 5 news

Update 12/15/24. Here's a report from an Inspector General on the FBI response to Jan. 6. Inspector Horowitz is largely position on the FBI and mentioned only one oversight. 

Here's raw data (comments) from FBI agents about the FBI response. Many comments have a conservative bent that the reaction to Jan. 6 was much greater than to the race riots during the previous summer. Also a lot of comments on how the crisis teams could have done better. Either way, lots of on-the-ground response.

Continuing saga of how Trump tried to steal his second term, plus Jan. 6 committee reports

Much of the plan is now known, though it actually was fairly open in late 2020. Once the lawsuits failed, Trump hoped somehow to discredit the certified slates of electors and throw the vote into the House. Luttig, a traditional Republican judge, lays out the plan. It didn't work because Mike Pence, as president of the Senate, didn't go along with it. 

Former Attorney General Barr testified that Trump was 'detached from reality' when it came to the election results. 

Since that plan failed, Trumpie Republicans are working on 2.0 of the plan, which involves Republican legislatures ignoring the vote totals in their states and choosing pro-Republican electors. 

The biggest revelations for me (so far) was how hard Trump pushed the DOJ and how hard the DOJ pushed back. But this was somewhat apparent at the time. Enough of it leaked within days. DOJ officials testifying at the Jan. 6 hearings. Transcript of that day's hearings. Reconstruction of that very important day, Jan. 3. Very important: the lying letter that Jeffrey Clark wanted to send out just days before Jan. 6. 

Highlights of Pence Day at the hearings, plus the danger was greater than it appeared. The prospect of 'wild' demonstrations was viewed as leverage. All the evidence that Trump was warned he was doing illegal shit, but he ignored it. 

More to be added as I find it or remember to add it. Publish now, continue adding. 

Image: wttw.com

Extras. Three video summaries of key points in the riots: the role of the Proud Boys, demonstrators breaching line after line, and bodycam footage of police being attacked. 

Truth Social, supposedly the no-censorship twitter platform, has suspended accounts for posting about the Jan. 6 committee reports. 

A group led by the Kraken lady Sidney Powell may be paying for the defense of some OathKeepers. Prosecutors are concerned that they aren't getting informed consent or client-centered representation. Whose goals are the priority? That's worth asking. 

The Jan. 6 committee was very well organized with excellent pacing and focus in their presentations. A critique of how they've done that. 

From the excellent Jan. 6 hearings, a beautiful, smart, serious White House staffer tells a lot of the inside stories of Jan. 6, but certainly not all of them. Trump's support is shaken. A longer piece of how she broke from the Trump circle.

After Elon Musk was forced to follow through and buy twitter, he reinstated Trump's twitter account. Now some of that history is available to see again, but some is strangely gone. The tweet where Trump blasted Mike Pence for cowardice? Gone. 

Here's a list of his Jan. 6 tweets.Two important tweets from Jan. 6. The two final tweets from Jan. 8 that got his account permanently suspended until Musk became owner. Yes, he deserved to be suspended because he was starting on the incitement again. Trump's tweet slamming Pence is gone, but his post on that material is still available on Facebook. The audience is so different between twitter and Facebook. Mostly negative on twitter, mostly supportive with a lot of religious references on Facebook. And a fun look at Junior being clueless about his own father. 

Some of Trump's illegal fake electors still have roles in government or elections.

A bunch of stories based on releases of the final days of the committee. Some in the inner circle were dismayed. A timeline of the 187 minutes that Trump wasn't calling off the riots. Many bits of interest from WaPo folks pouring over the releases. And some bigger ones also. WaPo's view of the 187 minutes. 

Some clarification on what the capitol police leadership were facing. 

Because I don't know where else to put this: the story of a Trump loyalist trying to do major troop withdrawals, but he's only 30 years old and doesn't know how to write up a presidential order. He also doesn't know it takes more than writing it and getting a signature. Lots of top-level officials saying I don't know about this. Do you know about this? FUNNY.

The Georgia indictment.

Was I prepared for what happened at the Capitol?

I knew Jan. 6 was going to be a big day. As with the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, the fans were planning to turn out. This wasn't going to be a flop. It was going to be major. 

I wrote to a friend that I was going to make a shopping run in the evening unless things went 'batshit crazy.' That's what I wrote Tuesday, Jan. 5. 

By Jan. 7 or later, I was trying to recapture what my expectations were. Here's what I've been able to reconstruct.

Background on rallies

There had been a very large Trump rally on Nov. 14 that was overwhelmingly peaceful. It could have been like that, but I didn't think it would stay that calm. After all, Trump had been gearing up the rhetoric, and appeared to be getting more reckless instead of more resigned. The prior Saturday, Trump called the Secretary of State of Georgia to pressure him to find 17,800 votes and give the election to Trump. This was nuts for a number of reasons. 

1. The Secretary of State had been vocal about the issues, how he had investigated them, and how very little fraud was found. This included a hand recount and a second machine recount.
2. It was too late. The vote results had been certified by all the powers in Georgia, so it was official.
3. The Electors had already met and voted. 
4. There wasn't any time for reversing the certification and having a new certification giving the votes to Trump. 

Getting desperate?

So it was clear that Trump wasn't bowing to the inevitable. On Monday, Jan. 4, he floated the idea that Mike Pence would do the right thing and throw out Biden votes. Again, Trump ignored the evidence that Mike Pence would do no such thing. The idea had already been floated, and Pence was clearly not embracing it. 

So Wednesday was the day that Congress would certify the votes from the Electors, and Joe Biden would officially be the next president. 

Trump seemed to hope that he had a way to prevent that, but was there a legal route left to do that? All legal routes, except a very farfetched one, had been exhausted. The farfetched legal route was that Electoral College votes would be challenged in Congress, the challenges debated, both houses of Congress would throw out enough votes so that Biden didn't meet the 270 vote threshold, and then both houses of Congress would vote to declare Trump the winner. 

Did Trump really believe he and his mass rally of supporters could influence Congress to that degree? Maybe Trump believed, maybe he didn't. 

Maybe Trump didn't care about whether the route was legal or not. Maybe he would have been happy to have his mob take hostages and demand that Congress award the presidency to Trump. Certainly some of the mob were planning to do that. It's ironic because they also claimed to be fighting for the Constitution at the same time they were clearly using force and violence to exert their will upon Congress. That's not very constitutional. 

So what did I really expect? 

I expected Trump supporters to surround Capitol Hill. I expected a lot of shouting and grandstanding. I didn't expect that they would break in and have mobs roaming through the Capitol. But my definition of 'batshit crazy' was mobs holding hostages and demanding that Congress declare Trump president. Also possibly kidnapping members of Congress from their homes, on the way to the Capitol, or family members of Congress people. I didn't think it was likely to go that far, but it was on my radar. 

And Trump's mobs got 80% of the way there. However, they didn't take hostages, and they didn't get to make demands based on holding hostages. They probably would have done this, but the Capitol police weren't going to allow them to do that. The police would shoot to kill before they would allow hostages to be taken. So it was the strength of the police, and their willingness to use deadly force, that prevented the worst batshit scenario. 

But not just the police. The mobs weren't armed for the most part, and they weren't planning to use deadly force. The use of force by the police drew a line that the mob wasn't willing to cross. The next time there's a mob like this, they will most likely know in advance that they are have to cross that line. 

Cyborg with zipties for distinguished members of Congress

Image: cbsnews.com

Trump tries to overthrow Congress

[Under construction. Published unfinished to get it in the timeline.]

 As much as I fucking hate Trump, I'm not sure I saw this coming, but I should have. 

Trump has been spinning lies about his huge victory for months, winding his supporters up with false tales of illegal ballots on a huge scale. It shouldn't be surprising that they exploded. 

The definitive accounts of what happened haven't been written yet. In a nutshell, Trump called for his supporters to come to Washington DC on the day that Congress was due to certify Joe Biden as the next president. Many heeded that call. I haven't seen estimates but it was more than 20,000 but not have a million. They came wound up and ready to spring. Many already planned to storm the Capitol and force Congress to certify another term for Trump. 

After a morning of speeches near the White House, Trump sent his supporters to the US Capitol to "fight like hell and if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore."

Some of his supporters were already there, but when the huge contingent arrived, they broke through a series of makeshift barriers of moveable metal bike racks and chicken wire. They continued to push, fighting with the greatly outnumbered Capitol police. The mobs got to many sides of the Capitol, and proceeded to break in through doors and windows wherever police didn't put up extremely stiff resistance. 

The weaponry for each side. For the police: some with almost no weapons or shielding, not even helmets. Some with riot gear, shields, gas masks, batons, tear gas, pepper spray, flashbangs and rubber bullets. For the rioters, some with almost no weapons or shielding, not even helmets. Some with riot gear, shields, gas masks, batons, pepper spray, bats, flag poles, sharpened flag poles, fire extinguishers, and anything at hand that could be thrown. 

The capitol police were outnumbered by such an extent that breaches were bound to happen, and they did. The number of rioters who gained access isn't clear yet. I've seen estimates of 200, but I think it was many more than that. The mobs went looking particularly for Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence. Some planned only to make their case verbally, others planned to kill and enforce their will that Trump should be given a second term. 

With the level of violence and lack of respect for the law, this has to be called an insurrection and/or an attempted coup. 

Luckily it failed. Security was strong enough to escort the members of Congress to safe areas, presumably in the basement. No one in Congress, on the staff, or among the police were taken as hostage or prisoner. Had some rioter been able to take hostages, the outcome might have been different. 

As it was, about three hours after the assault started, reinforcements arrived and started clearing out the Capitol, driving the rioters out, then away from the doors on all sides, then away from the Capitol and out of the city. One rioter (a woman veteran) was shot dead inside the Capitol. One police officer died from his injuries the next day. One woman rioter was crushed in the crowds. Two other rioters died from medical issues on the grounds. 

That evening, even before all the rioters were driven out of the city, Congress resumed its session. From 8:00pm until 3:45am roughly, they debated per their rules of order and finished the largely ceremonial task of certifying the next president. So all the violence and mayhem was in vain. 

Not completely in vain. It was opened the eyes of a lot of people. The level of importance is hard to gauge right now. Two days later, when Trump continued to claim the election was stolen, he was permanently thrown off of Twitter, which had been his prime mode of communication and his podium for bullying. He was also suspended from youtube. Though he hasn't lost all his means of communication, he was so curtailed that he couldn't fight anymore. He ended up leaving his term in near silence and isolation. And disgrace. Posts about impeachment to come. 

Image: rferl.org

Extras. One former GOP senator saw this coming and said the GOP must separate from Trump and form a new party. Video here, print here. Tom Cotton, a very conservative GOP senator, called out his colleagues for going too far and serving up lies. 

Mitch McConnell played along for way too long. So he allowed the authoritarianism to flourish. 

Texts urging Trump to stop the madness on Jan. 6. Brief and very telling.

Antifa did it. Retired General McInerney, who lied about the server farm in Frankfurt where votes were manipulated, lies again about Antifa spearheading violence at the Capitol. The guy hasn't met a lie he won't speak. More important evidence that it was Antifa! Some patriots dispute it was Antifa because it was them and it was glorious. Senator Ron Johnson thinks it was FBI agents/provocateurs. 

Trump wanted a big send-off for himself from his fans. Since he doesn't have many fans in government anymore, that means the usual rally sort of thing. The military is apparently declining to give him the usual send-off. (He didn't get it. White House aides, staff, and family saw him off in small contingents at the White House and the military base. The base also supplied a podium and a band, but not ranks of troops to see him off.)

Moving testimony from a Capitol police officer who was crushed and assaulted during the riot. That wasn't all that happened to him that day. 

How many national guards were sent into Washington to quell the coup attempt? 340 guards were already working around DC before the riot at the Capitol. 1100 were called up that day. 6200 were mobilized that evening to help with tasks in the next days up through the inauguration--in case there was another coup attempt. These are numbers from the National Guard website. 

Ben Shapiro reams out the rioters on 1/7/21 for staging an insurrection and an assault on the seat of US government. It's 8/2/26 and he hasn't taken this video down, so he deserves a bit of credit for that. Here's a reference to the video in case Shapiro becomes a pussy and takes it down.