Mich Statehouse insurrection

see meckler TPP

SEE MILITIA

SEE JAN 6 Maddock sent buses

SEE MICH

TRUMP TWT LIBERATE MICH 2 DAYS AFTER ONE?

april 15 Operation Gridlock maddock devos

precursor dry run to jan 6 // Jericho marches?

FACEBOOK ADS?

THREE WAVES / MOTIVES: ANTI-GUN CONTROL/AR15 2) MASK COVID STAY AT HOME (PROTO VAXX?) AND 3) STOP THE STEAL

KOCH DEVOS MONEY

NOTE CNP 3 PRONG, ONE COVID DR S GOLD

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: Gretchen Whitmer kidnap ringleader, Adam Fox, sentenced ...}:

_BBC_

https://www.bbc.com › world-us-canada-64103685](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64103685)

Dec 27, 2022 — Adam Fox is sentenced to 16 years for planning to abduct Gretchen Whitmer from her holiday home.

The ringleader of a plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer has been sentenced to 16 years in prison.

Adam Fox, 39, appeared in front of US District Court Judge Richard Jonker in Grand Rapids on Tuesday.

Earlier this year he was found guilty of planning to abduct Ms Whitmer from her holiday home with other militiamen.

The group targeted the Democratic governor in 2020 because they were opposed to Covid rules she imposed early in the pandemic.

Two convicted in Michigan governor kidnap plot case

As well as conspiring to abduct Ms Whitmer, Fox was sentenced for planning to use a weapon of mass destruction to blow up a bridge after the kidnapping, to make it easier to escape.

Fox and his co-defendant Barry Croft Jr, 47, were found guilty by a federal court in August. Croft, who is also a member of the Three Percenters militia group, is due to be sentenced on Wednesday.

In August, a jury determined that the two men were guilty of conspiring to obtain weapons of mass destruction - a bomb - to blow up a bridge in order to thwart a police response to the planned kidnapping.

Croft, a native of Delaware, was also convicted on a separate explosives charge.

Fox and others planned to kidnap Ms Whitmer at gunpoint, and take her to stand "trial" on bogus treason charges.

The militia group's kidnap plot was largely motivated by their opposition to public health measures during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.

However, prosecutors said Fox had hoped to spark a "second American revolution" and push the US into armed conflict ahead of what proved to be a contentious presidential race in November 2020.

Although Fox was described by prosecutors as the brains behind the plot, Judge Jonker said he did not stand out as a "natural leader".

Reuters

Other members of the group, some pictured here, were found guilty of gang membership and firearms violations

However, the district court judge recognised that "a lot of fuel" had been necessary to fund conspiracies like the plot to kidnap the governor and Fox had been able to provide that fuel.

Prosecutors had pushed for a life sentence, but Judge Jonker said that would not be necessary to act as a deterrent. However, he added that a "significant sentence" was required.

Fox's lawyer Christopher Gibbons had argued that government descriptions of his client had been "calculated to frighten the public".

"These histrionic descriptions of Adam Fox do not rationally address his actual conduct and they do not accurately reflect either his actual intentions or his actual capabilities," he said.

Back in August, lawyers representing Fox and Croft suggested the pair had been incapable of mounting such a plot.

They argued the men had been entrapped - or improperly induced into the crime - by an undercover FBI operation.

"In America, the FBI is not supposed to create domestic terrorists so that the FBI can arrest them," Mr Gibbons had said.

In October, three other men were convicted of supporting the plot to kidnap Ms Whitmer.

A jury found Joseph Morrison, 28, his father-in-law Pete Musico, 44, and Paul Bellar, 23, guilty of gang membership, firearms violations and providing material to support terrorism.

## Two convicted in Michigan governor kidnap plot case

## Three convicted over Michigan governor kidnap plot

Coronavirus lockdown measures

FBI

Michigan

United States

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NO LNX NYT

‘Its Own Domestic Army’: How the G.O.P. Allied Itself With Militants

Actions taken by paramilitary groups in Michigan last year, emboldened by President Donald J. Trump, signaled a profound shift in Republican politics and a national crisis in the making.

An intrusion by militia groups into the Michigan Statehouse last April now seems a harbinger of the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol.

By David D. Kirkpatrick and Mike McIntire

Feb. 8, 2021

LANSING, Mich. — Dozens of heavily armed militiamen crowded into the Michigan Statehouse last April to protest a stay-at-home order by the Democratic governor to slow the pandemic. Chanting and stomping their feet, they halted legislative business, tried to force their way onto the floor and brandished rifles from the gallery over lawmakers below.

Initially, Republican leaders had some misgivings about their new allies. “The optics weren’t good. Next time tell them not to bring guns,” complained Mike Shirkey, the State Senate majority leader, according to one of the protest organizers. But Michigan’s highest-ranking Republican came around after the planners threatened to return with weapons and “militia guys signing autographs and passing out blow-up AR-15s to the kiddies on the Capitol lawn.”

“To his credit,” Jason Howland, the organizer, wrote in a social media post, Mr. Shirkey agreed to help the cause and “spoke at our next event.”

Following signals from President Donald J. Trump — who had tweeted “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” after an earlier show of force in Lansing — Michigan’s Republican Party last year welcomed the support of newly emboldened paramilitary groups and other vigilantes. Prominent party members formed bonds with militias or gave tacit approval to armed activists using intimidation in a series of rallies and confrontations around the state. That intrusion into the Statehouse now looks like a portent of the assault halfway across the country months later at the United States Capitol.

As the Senate on Tuesday begins the impeachment trial of Mr. Trump on charges of inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol rioting, what happened in Michigan helps explain how, under his influence, party leaders aligned themselves with a culture of militancy to pursue political goals.

Michigan has a long tradition of tolerating self-described private militias, which are unusually common in the state. But it is also a critical electoral battleground that draws close attention from top party leaders, and the Republican alliance with paramilitary groups shows how difficult it may be for the national party to extricate itself from the shadow of the former president and his appeal to this aggressive segment of its base.

“We knew there would be violence,” said Representative Elissa Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat, about the Jan. 6 assault. Endorsing tactics like militiamen with assault rifles frightening state lawmakers “normalizes violence,” she told journalists last week, “and Michigan, unfortunately, has seen quite a bit of that.”

Six Trump supporters from Michigan have been arrested in connection with the storming of the Capitol. One, a former Marine accused of beating a Capitol Police officer with a hockey stick, had previously joined armed militiamen in a protest organized by Michigan Republicans to try to disrupt ballot counting in Detroit.

The chief organizer of that protest, Meshawn Maddock, on Saturday was elected co-chair of the state Republican Party — one of four die-hard Trump loyalists who won top posts.

Ms. Maddock helped fill 19 buses to Washington for the Jan. 6 rally and defended the April armed intrusion into the Michigan Capitol. When Representative Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan Democrat, suggested at the time that Black demonstrators would never be allowed to threaten legislators like that, Ms. Maddock wrote on Twitter, “Please show us the ‘threat’?”

“Oh that’s right you think anyone armed is threatening,” she continued. “It’s a right for a reason and the reason is YOU.”

The lead organizer of the April 30 armed protest, Ryan Kelley, a local Republican official, last week announced a bid for governor. “Becoming too closely aligned with militias — is that a bad thing?” he said in an interview. Londa Gatt, a pro-Trump activist close to him was named last month to a leadership position in a statewide Republican women’s group. She welcomed militias and Proud Boys at protests, posting on the social media site Parler: “While BLM destroy/murder people the Proud Boys are true patriots.” Prosecutors have accused members of the Proud Boys of playing a leading role in the Jan. 6 assault.

Two weeks after the Statehouse protest, Mr. Shirkey, the Republican leader, appeared at a rally by the same organizers, onstage with a militia member who would later be accused of conspiring to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

“Stand up and test that assertion of authority by the government,” Mr. Shirkey told the militiamen. “We need you now more than ever.”

After the riot in Washington, some argue such endorsements endanger the future of the party. “It is like the Republican Party has its own domestic army,” said Jeff Timmer, a former executive director of the Michigan party and a vocal Trump critic.

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A self-described militia group in Michigan during a training exercise.Credit...Mark Peterson/Corbis, via Getty Images

A Long History

A quarter-century before the mob rampaged through the U.S. Capitol, a paramilitary leader from Michigan sat in the same building and delivered an early warning shot.

Norman Olson, founder of the Michigan Militia, appeared in June 1995 before a Senate committee investigating the growth of the anti-government movement after the Oklahoma City bombing that April. Dressed in military fatigues with a “Commander Olson” patch on his shirt, he spoke with contempt.

“We stand against oppression and tyranny in government,” Mr. Olson said, “and many of us are coming to the conclusion that you best represent that corruption and tyranny.”

For many Americans, it was jarring to listen to self-appointed defenders of the Constitution justify taking up arms in a paranoid vision of government overreach. But back in Michigan they were used to it.

Roughly a dozen to 18 armed groups are scattered across Michigan in mostly rural counties, their membership fluctuating with political and economic currents. Estimates of active members statewide are generally in the hundreds.

The state’s lenient gun laws — it is permissible to openly carry a firearm in public — also make it a welcoming place for other armed extremists. Members of the Proud Boys or Boogaloo movement routinely showed up at protests in Michigan last year and sometimes got into fights with Black Lives Matter activists.

For many of the more traditional militias, however, socializing is often as much a priority as drilling. Firearms training is mixed with camping and family outings — last fall, members of the Southeast Michigan Volunteer Militia gathered for a picnic in a park where children tossed beanbags, mothers grilled cheeseburgers and AR-15 rifles leaned against lawn chairs. Some have websites where they sell T-shirts and carry ads for gun shops.

But woven through Michigan’s militia timeline is a persistent strand of menace. In the early 20th century, the Black Legion, a paramilitary group that included public officials in Detroit and elsewhere, began as an offshoot of the Ku Klux Klan and was linked to numerous acts of murder and terrorism.

Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, who killed 168 people in the Oklahoma City bombing, were reported to have associated with militia members in Michigan, though Mr. Olson said they had been turned away because of their violent rhetoric. In the aftermath, militias were largely exiled to the fringes of conspiracy politics, preparing for imagined threats from the New World Order.

But in recent years, as the Republican Party has drifted further to the right, these groups have gradually found a home there, said JoEllen Vinyard, an emeritus professor of history at Eastern Michigan University who has studied political extremism. Much of their cooperation is centered on defending gun ownership, she said.

“I think there is a fair amount of sympathy in the Republican Party for these people that wasn’t there in the past,” Dr. Vinyard said. “It’s a much closer relationship now.”

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Operation Gridlock jammed the roads around the statehouse in Lansing to protest the governor’s stay-at-home order.Credit...Matthew Dae Smith/Lansing State Journal, via Associated Press

The Covid-19 Revolt

If Michigan Republicans and militant groups had increasingly found themselves sharing the same ideological space, their common ground became literal last year, as an escalating series of events drew them together for protests and rallies. They began with objections to the governor’s lockdown orders.

Republicans have controlled both houses of the Michigan Legislature for a decade and held the governor’s mansion for the eight years before Ms. Whitmer took office in 2019. Mr. Trump’s brash nationalism had alienated moderate Republicans and independents while pushing the party to the right.

By last April 1, Covid-19 had killed more than 300 people in Michigan, primarily in Detroit, and Ms. Whitmer ordered all nonessential businesses closed. Ms. Maddock wasted no time rallying opposition, calling for a protest on April 15.

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Meshawn Maddock, a Trump loyalist who was just elected co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party.Credit...Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

A national advisory board member of the Women for Trump wing of the president’s re-election campaign, she appeared often with Mr. Trump and his surrogates on their many visits to Michigan. Her husband, Matt Maddock, the owner of a bail bond business who has boasted of personally apprehending bail jumpers, is a state lawmaker from a Detroit suburb.

In the first major protest in the country against stay-at-home orders, thousands of cars, trucks and even a few cement mixers jammed the streets around the Statehouse in Lansing, in what Ms. Maddock called Operation Gridlock. About 150 demonstrators left their vehicles to chant “lock her up” from the Capitol lawn — redirecting the 2016 battle cry about Hillary Clinton against Ms. Whitmer. A few waved Confederate flags. About a dozen heavily armed members of the Michigan Liberty Militia turned up as well.

Ms. Maddock declared Michigan a “tyranny” that night on the Fox News Channel, though she later distanced herself from the armed men. “Of course the militia is disappointing to me, the Confederate flag — look, they’re just idiots,” she later told Bridge Michigan, a nonprofit news organization.

Mr. Trump tweeted “LIBERATE MICHIGAN” two days later, and Ms. Maddock’s protest inspired a wave of others around the country.

When local armed groups in Michigan began discussing more demonstrations, most Republicans shunned them at first. “They were scared of the word ‘militia,’” recalled Phil Robinson, a member of the Liberty Militia.

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Ryan Kelley, the lead organizer of the April 30 armed protest, is now running for governor. “Becoming too closely aligned with militias — is that a bad thing?” he said in an interview.Credit...Elaine Cromie for The New York Times

But his group found eager promoters in Mr. Kelley, a real estate broker and Republican planning commissioner in a suburb of Grand Rapids, and Mr. Howland, a local sales consultant who had been posting online videos minimizing the pandemic. They called the stay-at-home restrictions “unconstitutional” and formed the American Patriot Council “to restore and sustain a constitutional government,” Mr. Kelley said in an interview.

As the Legislature met on April 30 to vote on extending the governor’s restrictions, Mr. Kelley and his militia allies convened hundreds of protesters, including scores of armed men, some with assault weapons. One demonstrator hung a noose from the back of his pickup. Another held a sign warning that “tyrants get the rope.” Dozens entered the Capitol, some angrily demanding entrance to the lower chamber.

“We were harassed and intimidated so that we would not do our jobs,” said Representative Donna Lasinski, leader of the Democratic minority. Lawmakers were terrified, she added.

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Matt Maddock, a Republican state lawmaker.Credit...Seth Herald/Reuters

Mr. Maddock, the Republican legislator and Ms. Maddock’s husband, recognized some of the intruders and left the House floor to confer with them. “I like being around people with guns,” he later told The Detroit News.

Mr. Trump sided with them, too. “The Governor of Michigan should give a little, and put out the fire,” he tweeted. “These are very good people.”

Other Republicans also came to accept the presence of armed activists. Ms. Gatt, who took part in protests organized by Mr. Kelley and Ms. Maddock, said she felt “intimidated by the militia when I first started getting involved,” but soon changed her mind.

“I was able to see that they are patriots that love their country like the rest of us,” she said, adding that they are “all Republicans.”

Mr. Shirkey, the Senate leader, was initially more cautious. The founder of a manufacturing company who is known for singing hymns from the podium, Mr. Shirkey issued a statement on April 30 criticizing “intimidation and the threat of physical harm” and calling the armed protesters “a bunch of jackasses.”

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Mike Shirkey, the State Senate majority leader and Michigan’s highest-ranking Republican.Credit...Junfu Han/Detroit Free Press, via Associated Press

Yet he had mingled with them in the gallery. Surrounded by militiamen about two weeks later in Grand Rapids, at an event also organized by Mr. Howland and Mr. Kelley, the senator said in a speech that they had taken him to task for his “jackasses” comment and he effectively retracted it.

He also met privately in his office that month with a handful of militia leaders — to establish a “code of conduct,” he explained in an interview. “Do you tell your people to make sure that there’s not a live round in a chamber?” he said, recounting the conversation. “That’d be a good start.”

In May, armed men stood watch for days outside a barbershop in Owosso, defending the proprietor from the police so he could cut hair in defiance of the lockdown.

Ms. Maddock, following suit, then arranged for hairdressers to offer their services on the Capitol lawn, again watched over by armed men.

The state G.O.P. quickly jumped into the fight. In June, a nonprofit group linked to the Republican Party began providing more than $600,000 to a new advocacy group run in part by Ms. Maddock that was dedicated to fighting coronavirus restrictions. A charity tied to Mr. Shirkey kicked in $500,000.

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Trump supporters rallying in Allendale in October.Credit...Joshua Rashaad McFadden for The New York Times

Racial Tensions Erupt

Critics argued that race was an unstated factor in the battle over the stay-at-home order. The Republicans who rallied against the rules were mostly white residents of rural areas and outer suburbs. But more than 40 percent of the deaths in Michigan early on were among African-Americans, concentrated in Detroit, who made up less than 15 percent of the state’s population.

Those tensions spilled into the open last summer when police killings of African-Americans set off protests around the country.

The Black Lives Matter protests in Michigan were rarely violent or destructive, and the largest took place in Detroit. But Republicans in the rest of the state reacted with alarm to the flashes of violence elsewhere around the country, and President Trump reinforced their fears with his warnings about “antifa.”

Calls to stand up to the feared rioters brought the party and its militant allies even closer together.

“Liberals look for trouble and civil unrest and conservatives PREPARE for it,” Gary Eisen, a Republican state legislator and owner of a concealed-weapon training business, wrote on his Facebook page. “I thought maybe I would load up a few more mags,” he added, later saying he had been joking.

In June, about 50 militiamen called together by Mr. Kelley squared off against a few dozen Black Lives Matter protesters over a statue of a Confederate soldier in his town, Allendale. “There were children there, and militia members were pointing guns at people,” said Ali Bates, 20, an activist with the Black Lives Matter movement.

Mr. Kelley said he feared what was coming to Allendale. “Statues all over the country were getting torn down, people were lighting things on fire, there were riots everywhere,” Mr. Kelley said in an interview, echoing Mr. Trump. “You are not going to come here and destroy public property.”

He accused Democrats of encouraging violence. “The Democrats have got antifa; they have got BLM,” he said. “The Democrats championed all of this stuff from a leadership level.”

More prominent Michigan Republicans portrayed the Black Lives Matter movement as a looming threat, too. Ms. Maddock told the news site MLive.com that the “destruction” caused by the protests was “absolutely devastating” and “inexcusable.”

Armed militiamen responded by turning up at some protests as vigilante guards. In August, dozens of Proud Boys marched in Kalamazoo, Mich., the site of several Black Lives Matter demonstrations, saying they wanted to support the police. They took pepper spray and used it in fist fights with activists.

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Members of the Proud Boys clashed with Black Lives Matter activists in Kalamazoo in August.Credit...MLive Media Group, via Associated Press

At the peak of the protests against police violence, though, Mr. Kelley’s American Patriot Council still aimed its sharpest attacks at Governor Whitmer and her stay-at-home order. It released public letters urging the federal authorities to arrest her for violating the Constitution by issuing a stay-at-home order. “Whitmer needs to go to prison,” Mr. Kelley declared in a video he posted on Facebook in early October that was later taken down. “She is a threat to our Republic.”

A few days later, federal agents arrested more than a dozen Michigan militiamen, charging them in a plot to kidnap the governor, put her on trial and possibly execute her.

At least two of the suspects had participated in the April 30 protest at the Capitol, as well as the gathering with Mr. Shirkey in Grand Rapids. Prosecutors said that the men had tried to recruit other conspirators at an American Patriot Council rally. (Mr. Kelley and Mr. Shirkey denied any knowledge of the plot.)

It was the culmination of months of mobilization by armed groups, accompanied by increasingly threatening language, and Mr. Trump declined to condemn the plotters. “People are entitled to say, ‘Maybe it was a problem, maybe it wasn’t,’” he declared at a rally in Michigan.

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Trump supporters outside a ballot-counting facility in Detroit the day after the election.Credit...Jeff Kowalsky/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

‘Stop the Steal’

Hours after the Nov. 3 election, Ms. Maddock wrote on Facebook: “35k ballots showed up out of nowhere at 3 AM. Need help.” She urged Trump supporters to rush to “monitor the vote” at a ballot-counting center in Detroit. “Report to room 260 STAT.”

As the counting showed Mr. Trump had lost the pivotal state, Michigan Republicans began a two-month campaign to overturn the result and keep him in power, channeling the momentum of the previous year’s battles over Black Lives Matter and Covid-19.

Mr. Kelley, with Mr. Howland and their armed militia allies, showed up for a rowdy protest outside the ballot counting. Later that month Mr. Kelley told a rally outside the Statehouse that the coronavirus was a ruse to persuade the public to “believe Joe Biden won the election,” The Lansing State Journal reported. One woman held a sign saying “ARREST THE VOTE COUNTERS.”

When attempts to stop the counting failed, Ms. Maddock in December led 16 Republican electors trying to push into the Michigan Capitol to disrupt the casting of Democratic votes in the Electoral College. During a “Stop the Steal” news conference in Washington the next day, she vowed to “keep fighting.”

Marching toward the Capitol on Jan. 6, she tweeted that the throngs were “the most incredible crowd and sea of people I have ever walked with.”

She also pushed back on Twitter against an observer urging Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, to take control of his party. “That’s where you’re very wrong,” she said. “It’s Trump’s party now.”

Ms. Maddock has condemned the violence and said she took no part. “When it comes to militias or the Proud Boys, I have no connection whatsoever to them,” she wrote in an email.

Mr. Kelley and Mr. Howland were filmed outside the U.S. Capitol during the riot. Both men said they did not break any laws, and argued that the event was not “an insurrection” because the participants were patriots. “I was there to support the sitting president,” Mr. Kelley said.

Ms. Gatt, the Republican activist, had posted a video on Facebook of herself in Washington for a rally in December talking with members of the Proud Boys, saying: “I hang out with the Michigan Proud Boys.”

During the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, she climbed scaffolding set up for the inauguration: “I made it to the top of the Capitol,” she bragged on Facebook.

Mr. Shirkey, the Michigan Senate leader who came around to work with the militias, declined to follow the movement behind Mr. Trump all the way to the end. Summoned to the White House in November, Mr. Shirkey refused the president’s entreaties to try to annul his Michigan defeat.

But in an interview last week, the lawmaker said he nonetheless empathized with the mob that attacked Congress.

“It was people feeling oppressed, and depressed, responding to what they thought was government just stealing their lives from them,” he said. “And I’m not endorsing and supporting their actions, but I understand where they come from.”

David D. Kirkpatrick is an international correspondent based in London and the author of "Into the Hands of the Soldiers: Freedom and Chaos in Egypt and the Middle East." In 2020 he shared a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on covert Russian interference in other governments and as the Cairo bureau chief from 2011 to 2015 he led coverage of the Arab Spring uprisings.

Mike McIntire is a reporter with the investigations unit. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, and has written in depth on campaign finance, gun violence and corruption in college sports.

A version of this article appears in print on Feb. 9, 2021, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: G.O.P.’s Embrace of Michigan Militias Set Up Stark Political Shift.

See more on: Republican Party, Gretchen Whitmer, Donald Trump

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ai ggl

Adam Fox is known for his involvement in the plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020. He was a resident of Wyoming, Michigan, which is a suburb of Grand Rapids. The case was filed in the U.S. District Court of Western Michigan, which is located in Grand Rapids.

Fox was one of the alleged ringleaders in the kidnapping plot, which prosecutors said was motivated by distrust of the government and anger over COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. He was convicted of conspiracy to kidnap and conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction in August 2022 and subsequently sentenced to 16 years in prison.

The plot involved members of paramilitary groups, including the Wolverine Watchmen militia. Prosecutors argued that some members of the Wolverine Watchmen, who were convicted in a separate state trial, provided material support for the plot orchestrated by Fox. Fox reportedly reached out to a Michigan-based anti-government group and discussed plans to attack the State Capitol and try Whitmer for treason. He allegedly met with militia group leadership at a Second Amendment rally at the state capitol in June 2020 and asked to combine forces. Fox and others allegedly participated in tactical training and firearms training, and at one point, attempted to construct an improvised explosive device.

The alleged plot was thwarted when the FBI, with the help of informants, infiltrated the group and made arrests in October 2020.

Regarding a direct connection to a "Trump militia" in Grand Rapids, some members of the Wolverine Watchmen militia group had "pro-Trump stances," although the group was generally antigovernment and not solely associated with Trump. One of the men charged in the plot reportedly called Trump a "tyrant" in a social media video. Trump did comment on the case, saying that the kidnapping plan was a "fake deal". However, the main focus of the case and the investigations surrounding Adam Fox and the plot to kidnap Governor Whitmer revolved around anti-government extremism and paramilitary groups.

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CNP Action, Inc.

According to CNP's website, "CNP Action, Inc. is the 501(c)(4) sister organization of the Council for National Policy. Founded in 1987, CNP Action, Inc. serves as an advocate for conservative principles such as limited government, free economic enterprise, traditional values and a strong national defense. It promotes issues or specific pieces of legislation through regular Action Sessions and publications."^[21] Beginning in April 2020, this organization began involved with strategies to reopen U.S. states despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.^[22][23]

CNP Action Organized "Pro-Trump" Doctors To Legitimate Reopening Efforts

Associated Press reported on a May 2020 conference call between CNP Action and a senior staffer for Trump's reelection campaign, originally obtained by Center for Media and Democracy. In the leaked meeting, these operatives discussed "recruiting 'extremely pro-Trump' doctors to go on television to prescribe reviving the U.S. economy as quickly as possible" despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.^[22] When asked about these efforts by AP, Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh asserted he took no issue with contradicting the government's infectious disease experts. Murtaugh explained, "Our job at the campaign is to reflect President Trump’s point of view... We are his campaign. There is no difference between us and him."^[22]

CNP Action Helped Coordinate COVID-19 Lockdown Protests

In April 2020, CNP Action "hosted weekly conference calls to coordinate coronavirus response tactics", working together with organizations including FreedomWorks, Open the States, ReOpen PA, The Save Our Country Task Force, and Tea Party Patriots.^[23] The stated goal of Tea Party Patriots was to "share the stories of people who have been affected by the lockdowns, to show that we must be concerned with both sides of this crisis."^[23]

CNP also shared information through email about attending in-person events, including an Eagle Forum-organized car protest at the Alabama Capitol Building and a lockdown protest at the Pennsylvania state capitol.^[23]

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David Koch died in August 2019, but his brother Charles carried on. A man with no particular religious profile, Koch embarked on a “charm offensive,” distancing himself from Trump and his fundamentalist allies, presenting himself to the media as a “unifier” (and scrubbing the CNP’s Free Enterprise Award from his profile). But his funding activities told a different story. The Center for Media and Democracy’s Alec Kotch has recorded millions of dollars in grants from Koch and affiliates such as the Donors Trust to organizations run by leading members of the CNP. Theseinclude ALEC, as well as the State Policy Network, the Leadership Institute, the Heritage Foundation, Judicial Watch, and Turning Point USA. Some of these groups would play important roles in attempts to disrupt the electoral process in the months ahead.

The Washington Post’s April story on the “100 business leaders” initiative made no mention of the CNP, despite the fact that among the leading figures, Moore was on the CNP board of governors, Nelson was a member, and Martin and Brandon were officers. Moore warned the Post that the disaffection of “the right” presented a growing threat to public order, neglecting to mention the ways the CNP was stoking the flames. “There’s a massive movement on the right now, growing exponentially,” he said. “In the next two weeks, you’ll see protests in the streets by conservatives; you’ll see a big pushback against the lockdown in some states. People are at the boiling point.”

The “boiling point” materialized over the next two weeks, as Moore forecast, with the assistance of another CNP-linked effort called Convention of States, led by Mark Meckler, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots and CNP Gold Circle member.He told the *Post* his group would function as a “clearinghouse where all these guys can find each other” and praised “spontaneous citizen groups self-organizing on the Internet and protesting what they perceive to be government overreach.” Earlier that week, The New York Times reported that the coalition’s members were mobilizing their networks for state-level rallies, filing lawsuits, and commissioning polls, all to counter the lockdowns. “Nonprofit groups including FreedomWorks and Tea Party Patriots have used their social media accounts and text and email lists to spread the word about the protests across the country.”The most publicized events occurred at the Michigan statehouse on April 15 and May 1, when armed protesters invaded the state Capitol, but these were far from the only ones.

The new “businessmen’s group,” previewed in The Washington Post as “100 business executives,” officially debuted on April 27, billed as the “Save Our Country Coalition.” It called for a series of measures to reopen the economy, flying in the face of expert medical recommendations for curbing the epidemic, whose U.S. death toll now approached 55,000. The CNP was heavily represented among the group’s leadership, including stalwarts such as Richard Viguerie, Ed Meese, and Kenneth Blackwell, as well as rising stars Adam Brandon, Jenny Beth Martin, and Lisa Nelson.

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mark fucking meckler(note ~ lockdown was CNP 3 prong strategy)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/inside-the-conservative-networks-backing-anti-quarantine-protests/2020/04/22/da75c81e-83fe-11ea-a3eb-e9fc93160703_story.html

wapo no lnx

Politics

The anti-quarantine protests seem spontaneous. But behind the scenes, a powerful network is helping.

Protests with honking horns, anti-shutdown signs and angry Americans continued in Maryland, Texas and Wisconsin on April 18. (The Washington Post)]

Isaac Stanley-Becker

and Tony Romm

April 22, 2020

The ads on Facebook sounded populist and passionate: “The people are rising up against these insane shutdowns,” they said. “We’re fighting back to demand that our elected officials reopen America.”

But the posts, funded by an initiative called Convention of States, were not the product of a grass-roots uprising alone. Instead, they represented one salvo in a wide-ranging and well-

financed conservative campaign to undermine restrictions that medical experts say are necessary to contain the coronavirus — but that protesters call overkill and whose economic fallout could damage President Trump’s political prospects.

A network of right-leaning individuals and groups, aided by nimble online outfits, has helped incubate the fervor erupting in state capitals across the country. The activism is often organic and the frustration deeply felt, but it is also being amplified, and in some cases coordinated, by longtime conservative activists, whose robust operations were initially set up with help from Republican megadonors.

Protesters assemble near the Texas State Capitol during a recent demonstration April 18 in Austin.

]

The Convention of States project launched in 2015 with a high-dollar donation from the family foundation of Robert Mercer, a billionaire hedge fund manager and Republican patron. It boasts past support from two members of the Trump administration — Ken Cuccinelli, acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and Ben Carson, secretary of housing and urban development.

It also trumpets a prior endorsement from Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Floridaand a close Trump ally who is pursuing an aggressive plan to reopen his state’s economy. A spokesman for Carson declined to comment. Cuccinelli and DeSantis did not respond to requests for comment.

The initiative, aimed at curtailing federal power, is now leveraging its sweeping national network and digital arsenal to help stitch together scattered demonstrations across the country, making opposition to stay-at-home orders appear more widespread than is suggested by polling.

“We’re providing a digital platform for people to plan and communicate about what they’re doing,” said Eric O’Keefe, board president of Citizens for Self-Governance, the parent organization of the Convention of States project.

A longtime associate of the conservative activist Koch family, O’Keefe helped manage David Koch’s 1980 bid for the White House when he served as the No. 2 on the Libertarian ticket.

“To shut down our rural counties because of what’s going on in New York City, or in some sense Milwaukee, is draconian,” saidO’Keefe, who lives in Wisconsin.

Polls suggest most Americans support local directives encouraging them to stay at home as covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, ravages the country, killing more than 44,000 people in the United States so far. Public health officials, including epidemiologists advising Trump’s White House, agree that sweeping restrictions represent the most effective mitigation strategy in the absence of a vaccine, which could be more than a year away.

White House aides, outside groups launch effort to reopen economy

Still, some activists insist that states should lift controls on commercial activity and public assembly, citing the effects of mass closures on businesses. They have been encouraged at times by Trump, whose attorney general, William P. Barr, said in an interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt on Tuesday that the Justice Department would consider supporting lawsuits against restrictions that go “too far.”

Further afield, the protests have been encouraged by some of the president’s allies outside the White House, including Stephen Moore,once considered for a top post at the Federal Reserve.

The swelling frustration on the right coincides with major policy changes in some states, especially those with Republican governors. Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee have begun relaxing their restrictions in recent days after bowing to pressure and imposing far-reaching guidelines.

The protests are reminiscent in some ways of the tea party movement and the demonstrations against the Affordable Care Act that erupted in 2010, which also involved a mix of homegrown activism and shrewd behind-the-scenes funding.

For the Convention of States, public health is an unusual focus.It was founded to push for a convention that would add a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution. That same anti-government impulse is now animating the group’s campaign against coronavirus precautions.

“Heavy-handed government orders that interfere with our most basic liberties will do more harm than good,” read its Facebook ads, which had been viewed as many as 36,000 times as of Tuesday evening.

Asking for a $5 donation “to support our fight,” the paid posts are part of an online blitz called “Open the States,” which also includes newly created websites, a data-collecting petition and an ominous video about the economic effects of the lockdown.

The group’s president, Mark Meckler, said his aim was to act as a “clearinghouse where these guys can all find each other” — a role he learned as co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots. FreedomWorks, a libertarian advocacy group also active in the tea party movement, is seeking to play a similar function, creating an online calendar of protests.

“The major need back in 2009 was no different than it is today — some easy centralizing point to list events, to allow people to communicate with each other,” he said.

Meckler, who draws a salary of about $250,000 from the Convention of States parent group, a tax-exempt nonprofit organization, according to filings with the Internal Revenue Service, hailed the “spontaneous citizen groups self-organizing on the Internet and protesting what they perceive to be government overreach.”

So far, the protests against stay-at-home orders in states including Washington and Pennsylvania have captured headlines and drawn rebukes from some governors and epidemiologists. Experts say a sudden, widespread reopening of the country is likely to worsen the outbreak, overwhelming hospitals and killing tens of thousands.

The protesters so far have not aimed their ire at Trump, though it is his administration’s experts whose guidelines underlie many of the states’ actions.

Trump’s public comments — including his recent tweets calling for supporters to “liberate” states including Michigan, a coronavirus hot spot — have catalyzed some of the broader public reaction. Following those tweets, tens of thousands of people joined Facebook groups calling for protests in states including Pennsylvania and Ohio, where the efforts are coordinated by a trio of brothers who typically focus their efforts on fighting gun control.

Pro-gun activists using Facebook groups to push anti-quarantine protests

In recent days, conservatives have set their sights on Wisconsin, where a few dozen protesters turned out at the Capitol to air their frustrations with Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, after he extended his state’s stay-at-home order until late May. Ahead of the demonstration, Moore, the Trump ally, revealed on a live stream that he was “working with a group” in the state with the goal of trying “to shut down the capital.”

Moore, who served as a Trump campaign adviser in 2016, said he had located a big donor to aid in the effort, though he never elaborated. “I told him about this, and he said, ‘Steve, I promise to pay the bail and legal fees for anyone who gets arrested,’?” Moore said in the video. He likened his quest to the civil rights movement, adding, “We need to be the Rosa Parks here and protest against these government injustices.”

Moore, who has also worked at the right-leaning Heritage Foundation, did not respond to a request for comment.

In Michigan, among those organizing “Operation Gridlock” was Meshawn Maddock, who sits on the Trump campaign’s advisory board and is a prominent figure in the “Women for Trump”coalition. Funds to promote the demonstrations on Facebook came from the Michigan Freedom Fund, which is headed by Greg McNeilly, a longtime adviser to the family of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

McNeilly said the money used to advance the anti-quarantine protests came from “grass-roots fundraising efforts” and had “nothing to do with any DeVos work.”

Many of the seemingly scattered, spontaneous outbursts of citizen activism reflect deeply interwoven networks of conservative and libertarian nonprofit organizations. One of the most vocal groups opposing the lockdown in Texas is an Austin-based conservative think tank called the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which also hails the demonstrations nationwide.

“Some Americans are angry,” its director wrote in an op-ed promoted on Facebook and placed in the local media, telling readers in Texas about the achievements of protesters in Michigan.

The board vice chairman of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, oil executive Tim Dunn, is also a founding board member of the group promoting the Convention of States initiative. And the foundation’s former president, Brooke Rollins,now works as an assistant to Trump in the Office of American Innovation.

Neither Dunn nor Rollins responded to requests for comment.

The John Hancock Committee for the States — the name used in IRS filings by the group behind the Convention of States — gave more than $100,000 to the Texas Public Policy Foundation in 2011.

The Convention of States project, meanwhile, has received backing from DonorsTrust, a tax-exempt financial conduit for right-wing causes that does not disclose its contributors. The same fund has helped bankroll the Idaho Freedom Foundation, which is encouraging protests of a stay-at-home order imposed by the state’s Republican governor, Brad Little.

“Disobey Idaho,” say its Facebook ads, which use an image of the “Join or Die” snake woodcut emblematic of the Revolutionary War and later adopted by the tea party movement.

In 2014, the year before it launched theConvention of States initiative, Citizens for Self-Governance received $500,000 from the Mercer Family Foundation,a donation Meckler said helped jump-start the campaign. Mercer declined to comment.

While groups and individual activists associated with the Koch brothers have boosted this far-flung network, Emily Seidel, the chief executive of the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity advocacy group, sought to distance the organization from the protest activity, which she said was “not the best way” to “get people back to work.”

“Instead, we are working directly with policymakers, to bring business leaders and public health officials together to help develop standards to safely reopen the economy without jeopardizing public health,” Seidel said.

But others see linkages to groups pushing anti-quarantine uprisings.

“The involvement of the Koch institutional apparatus in groups supporting these protests is clear to me,” said Robert J. Brulle, a sociologist at Drexel University whose research has focused on climate lobbying. “The presence of allies on the board usually means that they are deeply engaged in the organization and most likely a funder.”

Brulle said the blowback against the coronavirus precautions carries echoes of efforts to deny climate change, both of which rely on hostility toward government action.

“These are extreme right-wing efforts to delegitimize government,” he said. “It’s an anti-government crusade.”

{{===

10/21

after former President Donald Trump urged supporters Friday to attend a rally on the steps of the Michigan Capitol building in Lansing next week in order to demand an audit of the 2020 election in which Trump was soundly defeated by President Joe Biden, at least one top Democrat in the state warns that the ongoing Republican obsession with what has become known as the "Big Lie" is a threat that cannot be ignored.

In his statement on Friday, Trump declared:

Big Michigan Rally coming up on Oct. 12th, on the Capitol steps in Lansing, where Patriots will demand a Forensic Audit of the 2020 Presidential Election Scam.The Voter Fraud is beyond what anyone can believe. Anyone who cares about our Great Country should attend, because unless we look to the past and fix what happened, we won't have a future or a Country.

While Tuesday's rally is being organized by the Election Integrity Fund & Force—a non-profit in the state that claims its goal is to curb "attempts to subvert the integrity of our elections"—Trump's promotion of it and his attendance, says state House Democratic Leader Donna Lasinski (D-Scio Township), is as much about the former president's political future as it is about the GOP effort to sow continued doubt over Biden's victory in 2020.

"This is the same inflammatory rhetoric that brought men armed with assault rifles to these very steps last year and endangered the lives of our lawmakers and staff," warned Lasinski Friday night as she referenced events in April of 2020 when armed right-wing protesters stormed the State House as they objected to Covid-19 public health efforts.

"This childish, petulant behavior is not only embarrassingly unbecoming of a former president, it's downright dangerous," Lasinski added. "Efforts like this to undermine faith in our democracy are no longer just about overturning the 2020 election, they're about eroding trust and laying the groundwork to overturn the next election."

While right-wing extremists and GOP apologists for the former president "are stuck in the past reliving Trump's loss," Lasinksi said her party, both in Lansing and in the nation's capital, remain focused on the nation's future by "beating back Covid-19 and bringing billions in relief funding home from D.C. to deliver support for working families."

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/vaccinated-2655082656/

mich budget vax mandate

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Extreme partisan gerrymandering once again saved Michigan Republicans — despite Biden's statewide win

Jeff Singer Daily Kos

June 28, 2021

Daily Kos Elections has calculated the 2020 presidential results for every state Senate and state House district in Michigan, where the GOP's gerrymandered maps will be replaced next year...

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https://www.thedailybeast.com/michigan-anti-vax-leader-ron-armstrong-turned-lockdown-rage-into-money-maker

no lnx

CORONAVIRUS

Anti-Vax Leader Turned Lockdown Rage Into Money Maker

SIGNS OF THE TIMES

Ron Armstrong’s business raked in tens of thousands of dollars from his battle with Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. He’s not done yet.

William Bredderman

Researcher

Updated Nov. 23, 2021 1:00AM ET / Published Nov. 22, 2021

Ron Armstrong’s battle against COVID-19 restrictions has made him one of the best-known anti-mask, anti-vaccine, anti-quarantine figures in Michigan. It’s also turned into a financial bonanza for his company, which makes tabletop displays and has taken in tens of thousands of dollars from the activist groups he created.

:{:{}:

In addition, two political candidates who were endorsed by his organizations have paid Armstrong’s company thousands more. Armstrong’s spokesman noted he’s broken no laws, but a good-government watchdog says the whole thing stinks.

:{:{}:

“This speaks to the gaping holes in Michigan's campaign finance law,” said Simon Schuster, executive director of the nonpartisan Michigan Campaign Finance Network. “As a result we see people can use their positions of power or place in political movements to benefit themselves.”

Through his groups Unlock Michigan and Stand Up Michigan, Armstrong is spearheading another effort to curtail the state’s capacity to react to epidemics just as it faces the worst COVID-19 outbreak in the country and a glut of patients threatens to overwhelm hospitals from the Upper Peninsula to Detroit. And a spokesman for Unlock Michigan signaled the flow of cash to Armstrong has just begun.

“It’ll show up in campaign finance reports whenever that’s publicly available,” said GOP operative Fred Wszolek. "It’ll be disclosed when it needs to be disclosed.”

[Anti-Vaxxers’ $1M in Forgiven PPP Loans Spark Dem Questions

SHOTS FIRED

William Bredderman]

As the fight over Michigan’s COVID-19 lockdown measures turned increasingly bitter last summer and fall, distinctive maroon and white signs sprouted on lawns and grassy strips across the Midwestern state.

“End Whitmer’s Endless Shutdown!” they cried. They bore the insignia of Unlock Michigan, a petition campaign aimed at curtailing Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s emergency powers that collected more than half a million signatures.

State campaign finance filings reveal the provenance of the signs, along with Unlock Michigan flags and tabletop displays that clustered last year at public events and near government buildings: the initiative paid just shy of $38,000 to Armstrong Display Concepts in the tiny town of Newaygo.

:{:{}:

The firm—which obtained a Paycheck Protection Program loan in January to cover 12 employees—raked in an additional $7,578.58 from the campaigns of Judge Brock Swartzle and Mary Kelly, candidates for state Supreme Court who received endorsements from Unlock Michigan and from Stand Up Michigan.

These expenditures came despite records showing no history of Armstrong Display Concepts ever providing services to any other state or federal campaign. The company website shows it manufactures a product called the “Ultralight X,” a presentation board that folds up to look like a briefcase.

Stand Up Michigan also blanketed the state in yard signs for the past year and a half, but its financial disclosures to the Internal Revenue Service are not yet available to view, and so it is impossible to see whether it too has done business with Armstrong. However, the trademark application for the group’s Paul Revere-style logo is in Armstrong’s name, and he is the only publicly listed contact.

[This Fave Mainstream Media Source Is Funded by Anti-Vaxxers

FIT TO PRINT?

William Bredderman]

:{:{}:

Neither Armstrong nor his company responded to requests for comment. Neither did retired prosecutor Mary Kelly, one of the two failed contenders for Michigan’s highest bench whose campaigns pumped cash into Armstrong’s business.

But Wszolek, who also worked on the election of Appeals Court Judge Brock Swartzle, the other unsuccessful state Supreme Court aspirant, said Armstrong’s company was a “competitive low-bidder”—though he refused to say how many bids the campaigns received.

“I don’t have to tell you anything,” Wszolek said. “He delivered fantastic product at a fantastic price.”

Schuster called the payments from the judicial candidates to a firm with no experience in politics prior to last year “damning.”

“This reads like something that is too much of a coincidence,” he told The Daily Beast. “It risks besmirching the intent and reputation of these organizations when central figures in these movements are benefiting from these activities.”

Unlock Michigan has now embarked on its “2.0” effort: a new petition drive to change state laws so as to prevent any epidemic order from lasting more than 28 days, a proposal that has public health authorities panicked.

Earlier this year, Armstrong headlined a mask-burning event in Grand Rapids, as well as a “Freedom Festival” in Livingston County in June and an anti-vaccine mandate rally in Lansing in August. Each locality—and Grand Rapids in particular—has seen its COVID-19 caseload spike in recent weeks.

Meanwhile, his Unlock Michigan co-chair, Meshawn Maddock, ascended into the leadership of the state Republican Party in January, weeks after she personally spearheaded a bus trip from the state to violent pro-Trump protests in Washington, D.C.

Also in April, Armstrong’s Stand Up Michigan co-founder Garrett Soldano launched a campaign for governor.

Schuster complained that the COVID-19 policy wars have turned the state into a warzone where such right-wing dark money groups like Armstrong’s battle similarly opaque organizations aligned with Whitmer.

“These are matters that have consequence in people’s everyday lives,” he said. “And because we don’t know who is fueling these fights, we don’t have transparency.”

William Bredderman

Researcher

@WillBredderman

william.bredderman@thedailybeast.com

---

https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/michigan-gop/

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why so much militia? 1st failed state? big cities black emergency mgrs?

https://www.alternet.org/2021/03/republican-paramilitaries/

no lnx

ron Johnson said recently that he wasn't scared when, on January 6, armed insurgents sacked and looted the United States Capitol. They "love this country," the Wisconsin Republican said. But "had the tables been turned and President Trump won the election and tens of thousands of Black Lives Matter and antifa [stormed the seat of government], I might have been a little concerned." [// trump jan 6 turn off the mags]

That statement was disturbing not only for the implicit racism it carried, but for the stunning confirmation of what's becoming clear to those of us who are paying attention. The Republican Party has a paramilitary problem, and it isn't new.

During his 2016 campaign, Donald Trump alleged, without proof, that the electoral system was fraudulent, raising concerns about the impact that his false accusations would have in the event of his defeat. His unexpected victory opened the door to the far-right fringe and legitimized efforts that contributed to strengthening the ties between them. Many feared that this close relationship would be critical in the 2020 presidential election cycle, with rising domestic tensions and the role that paramilitaries would play in addition to Trump's false claims about the election.

It has been clear for some time now that the Republican Party had a more-than-welcoming attitude toward certain paramilitary groups.The deadly events in Charlottesville in 2017, although fundamentally led by white supremacists called by the former president "very fine people," also had protection services provided by paramilitaries. The following year, more signs of backing for their man in the White House came from Trump-supporting paramilitary groups targeting Muslims. In Oregon, a walkout staged by Republican state senators, in 2019, gained support from paramilitary groups that made credible threats against a planned rally.

For almost three decades, these paramilitaries (thought to be in the hundreds across the country) have viewed the government as the adversary. With a friend residing in the White House, however, these groups experienced an identity crisis. This need for an enemy explains the shift into targeting immigrants and religious minorities. It wasn't just to please their man. It was to embrace a cause allowing them to grow.

After Trump won, there was an increase in the number of paramilitary groups, but the GOP has been no stranger to them. In 2017, a local chapter of the Republican Party in Oregon passed a resolution allowing paramilitaries (the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters, for instance) to provide security at the local party events. These groups are part of the Patriot Movement, a loose far-right network affiliated with the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and armed confrontations in Nevada and Oregon in 2016.

The Republican Party seems to be very comfortable with these groups around, as we have seen in Nevada, Oregon, Michigan, and other states. However, this is not a recent venture, since the accounts of strengthening ties can be traced back even before Trump won the election in 2016. The openness about their common interests is perhaps new, but it's not surprising. Alarms were sounded when state Senate Majority Leader, Republican Mike Shirkey of Michigan, participated in a rally organized by paramilitaries that stormed the Michigan Capitol back in April 2020 alongside a member of a group involved in the planned kidnapping of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

Though Michigan has a history of paramilitaries, the state GOP had tied itself to them, especially since the election as party co-chair of Meshawn Maddock. She organized a protest to interrupt ballot counting in Detroit, where paramilitaries were present.

Johnson's statement is outrageous, not only for the racism, but also for the approval of white armed groups as opposed to unarmed groups as well as the acknowledgement that he didn't feel threatened by them since they were exercising their freedom. Compare that to his comments about BLM and Antifa, but that's another discussion.

The connections the Republican Party has with paramilitaries are not ambiguous, yet the ongoing investigation into the Capitol attack will likely provide more evidence of the extremely disturbing behavior of the formerly conservative party. Ties between not only Trump and his associates, like Roger Stone, whose security detail included members of the Oath Keepers, but the GOP at state and local levels, should bring into the discussion how one of the major parties in the country is going to stand for democracy while leading a double-life with paramilitaries bent on racial supremacy.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

'Cancel culture' is a reactionary fraud and liberals need to stop ... ›

Is the Republican Party fascist? An expert explains the 7 themes that ... ›

Paramilitary 'Oath Keepers' leader says she waited for Trump to ... ›

Going to get ugly'::{ Trump supporter uses his work email to threaten ‘mass execution of public officials’}:

Eric Dolan Raw Story

Michigan state Rep. Laurie Pohutsky (D) on Tuesday called out a supporter of President Donald Trump who sent a threatening email to lawmakers.

"This was sent to my offi....

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trms: can't rule out violence

michigan House Republican punished for hinting at violent Electoral College disruption

Alex Henderson

December 14, 2020

During a Monday morning appearance on Michigan's WPHM-AM, far-right Republican Gary Eisen — who serves in the Michigan House of Representatives — hinted that he would take actions to disrupt the meeting of the Electoral College. And the Michigan

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/michigan-election/

hunter kos

the Detroit Free Press** reports that the Michigan House and Senate buildings will be closed both to staffers and the public on Monday as the state's electors to the Electoral College meet to cast their votes for the state's presidential winner, Joe Biden. The Capitol was already expected to be closed to the public during the Electoral College meeting; this new, expanded closure also includes the building's legislative staff.

While neither Michigan State Police nor a spokesperson for the House Speaker's office would explain the reason for the closure, other than it being due to "security concerns," State Rep. Kevin Hertel tweeted that it was :{due to "credible threats" that "have been made as Michigan's electors" meet.}:

The state has been a hotspot of fascist militia activity. Michigan legislators has been the subject of armed protests by the far right and the Michigan governor, a Democrat, was the intended victim of a domestic terrorism plot in which members of a far-right group sought to kidnap and possibly execute her over the state's pandemic safety measures.

Only a week ago, armed rightwing protesters with the intellect of flatwormsdemonstrated at the house of Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson over rabid Republican conspiracy theories claiming Joe Biden's win over Donald Trump was fraudulent and/or a conspiracy.

There is no word on what security measures are in place as a response to the apparent "credible" threats aimed at disrupting the electors' official vote. Michigan state Republicans, however, have repeatedly encouraged the state's violent conspiracy theorists, most recently by inviting Trump "lawyers" Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis to present their election conspiracy claims to the Republican-led House.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/michigan-republicans-struggle-with-recognition-of-their-own-roles-in-fueling-militia-kidnap-plot

david n kos

discovering that terrorists can look like the guys next door is a jarring thing, especially if that's not how you've been conditioned to think of such matters. In Michigan this week, cognitive dissonance has been thick on the ground—especially as public officials who came too close to the plotters and their incendiary rhetoric have tried to wrestle with the consequences of last week's**arrests of 13 Michigan militiamenwho schemed to kidnap and assassinate Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

A local sheriff who had appeared onstage at an anti-Whitmer rally this spring suggested to a TV interviewer that maybe the plotters—some of whom he knows personally—were just trying to make a citizens arrest. A Republican state legislative candidate opined that the arrests were "a totally bogus sham." And the state's Republican Speaker of the House, who has helped stoke the incendiary "tyranny" rhetoric that fueled the plotters, chastised Whitmer for pointing out the connection between the plotters' actions and the rhetoric used by Donald Trump and Michigan Republicans. [vid rally w. da bois and dar]

Dar Leaf, the sheriff of Barry County—where two of theaccused domestic terrorists, William and Michael Null, reside and were arrested by the FBI Thursday—told a Grand Rapids interviewer that he believed the men might have been within their rights.

"It's just a charge, and they say a 'plot to kidnap' and you got to remember that. Are they trying to kidnap? Because a lot of people are angry with the governor, and they want her arrested. So are they trying to arrest or was it a kidnap attempt? Because you can still in Michigan if it's a felony, make a felony arrest," Leaf told Fox17 reporter Aaron Parshegian.

He added: "The two gentlemen that I know of from my county, were they involved in that? I don't know. They're innocent till proven guilty. And we really, really should be careful, trying to try them in the media."

The evidence unveiled by the FBI included multiple instances of surveillance of Whitmer's summer home, where the militiamen—who called themselves the Wolverine Watchmen—planned to abduct her, as well as multiple instances in which the men discussed killing her. The evidence also showed that not only had the men originally planned a paramilitary assault on the state Capitol, they also made plans to kill law-enforcement officers. The discussion of a "citizens arrest" of Whitmer was largely rhetorical.

Leaf's comments created an uproar. Shortly after the interview aired, Michigan's attorney general, Dana Nessel, ripped into him on Twitter:

As Michigan's top law enforcement official, let me make this abundantly clear-Persons who are not sworn, licensed members of a law enforcement agency cannot and should not "arrest" government offficials with whom they have disagreements. These comments are dangerous.

Leaf tried to defend the remarks subsequently by insisting that he only wanted to ensure that men weren't being "tried in the media."

"I don't want anybody to think I'm sympathetic towards these charges, right, these are very, very serious charges," he said. "What I don't want is I don't want us to be trying it in the media and we mess it up in the justice system somewhere, 'cause they can't get a fair trial."

Leaf told MLive: "The governor has the right to govern and also the right to be safe." Yet he went on to criticize officials like Whitmer and Nessel for blaming people like Trump and himself for creating an atmosphere empowering fringe groups.Leaf said the militia movement "has been brewing for quite some time" over what he described as "a gradual and growing loss of rights."

In fact, as Jen Hayden explored earlier, Leaf is a member of a law-enforcement organization closely aligned with the "Patriot" militia movement with which the plotters identified. He also was an outspoken critic of Whitmer's anti-COVID-19 pandemic orders.

At aMay 18 "Michigan Patriots Rally" held at Rosa Parks Circle in Grand Rapids, Leaf had appeared onstage with several militiamen, including Michael Null. In his speech, he compared Whitmer's stay-at-home orders to being held unlawfully under house arrest. Leaf had also described Owosso barber Karl Manke—who had defied the governor's order by opening his shop—a "little version of Rosa Parks."

Meanwhile,Republican legislative candidate Paul Smith of Sterling Heights angrily denounced the arrests on Twitter.

"What a totally bogus sham," Smith commented. "These citizens never did anything illegal. Law enforcement is employed to punish people who COMMIT crimes, not people The Governess simply HATES. You can legally hurt Whitmer by voting out her minions."

State Republican leaders were appalled, and announced they had withdrawn financial and other support for Smith's candidacy, calling the remarks "conspiracy theories and hateful remarks."

"If you can't denounce the evil plans and actions of these white nationalists, we don't want you in our caucus," Republican House Speaker Lee Chatfield said. "In fact, if there's any 'Republican' who thinks like this guy, we don't want your vote either. We don't support domestic terrorism."

Chatfield, however, also chastised Whitmer for her remarks laying some of the blame at Trump's feet that week: "Just last week, the president of the United States stood before the American people and refused to condemn white supremacists and hate groups like these two Michigan militia groups," Whitmer said, adding that extremists had "heard the president's words not as a rebuke but as a rallying cry—as a call to action."

In a Twitter thread, Chatfield criticized Whitmer, claiming she had kept the investigation under wraps: "Why weren't we warned of the plot to take hostages at the Capitol? The plot by these terrorists was against us too. Why weren't House sergeants warned? You knew and we weren't even given a warning. We had people working in the building and their lives matter too." However, it was the FBI, and not Whitmer, who had overseen the sharing of information with potential victims.

Chatfield also suggested that she shared in the blame: "Hatred and violence are wrong, and that's why I've continually denounced it," he wrote. "And I agree, it's time to tone the partisan rhetoric and 'the heat down.' Will you do the same for President Trump? Will the [lieutenant governor] do it to the entire GOP? We have to make this decision together."

However, Chatfield and other leading Michigan Republicans, had played their own not-insignificant roles in whipping up anti-Whitmer hysteria, as Michigan journalist Joshua Pugh pointed out on Twitter. When"Patriot" protesters had locked down Lansing with an anti-Whitmer protest on April 15 that featured Confederate flags and incendiary rhetoric, Chatfield had greeted them by waving a flag out his window and tweeting out encouragement.

Republican Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey had been even more incendiary.On the floor of the Senate during a subsequent Lansing protest—during which armed militia members were watching from the gallery above—Shirkey had called the governor a tyrant: "If she does not recognize the end of the emergency declaration, we have no other choice but to act," he said, not clarifying what kind of action he intended.

After Thursday's arrests, Shirkey was defiant: "This is no time to be weak in our commitment to freedom," Shirkey told a "Let MI People Go" rally at the Capitol. "We need to be strong…and not be afraid of those who are taking our freedoms away from us."

Shirkey also told the crowd at Thursday's rally that they were not the same people involved in the plot to kill the governor. However, the**Detroit Free Press** identified several of the arrestees as participants at the earlier protests against Whitmer's orders.

In Barry County, Leaf's remarks sparked calls for his resignation. Local residents organized a protest demanding he step down or face a recall movement—but that protest was called off when organizers became concerned about the safety of participants amid the likelihood of armed right-wing counter-protesters.

"Whereas I truly believe in the statement we were trying to make, I cannot in good conscience compromise the safety of my fellow Barry County residents," organizer Olivia Bennett wrote on the event's Facebook page.

"I have come to this conclusion for a couple reasons. First, there were many concerns about confrontational counter protesters. Second, this protest garnered enough attention this weekend that crowd size was a concern given short notice, security, and capacity at the commissioners' meeting."

Bennett tried to clarify that she and other protesters aren't suggesting the sheriff was a participant. "We are not accusing him of having known about the kidnapping plot and we are not accusing him of being a part of it at all," Bennett told MLive. "What I am suggesting is his actions and his words embolden people who would attempt to do such things."

---

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/michigan-sheriff-implies-that-extremists-arrested-in-plot-to-kidnap-gretchen-whitmer-were-merely-trying-to-arrest-her/

vid

On Thursday, the FBI announced that six men were facing federal charges in connection with an alleged plot to kidnap and possibly kill Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced that seven of their allies were facing weapons charges at the state level.

And in a new local sheriff who had appeared at a rally with some of the suspects made an awkward effort to defend them, implying that perhaps they were merely trying to "arrest" Whitmer rather than kidnap her.

According to the FBI, far-right extremists (including members of the Wolverine Watchmen, a militia group) planned to kidnap Whitmer and take her to Wisconsin, where they would conduct a "trial" for treason. The militia members were furious with Whitmer for the social distancing restrictions that she ordered in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. And if they found Whitmer guilty of treason, the FBI said, she would be executed.

But when Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf was interviewed by Fox 17 (a Fox affiliate in Grand Rapids, Michigan), he implied that what the extremists had in mind was not a terrorist plot, but merely a citizens' arrest.

Two of the men facing charges are brothers Michael and William Null, who have been accused of providing support for terrorist acts. Fox 17 aired video that showed Leaf standing alongside William Null at a demonstration in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where both of them protested against Whitmer's stay-at-home order. Leaf was a guest speaker at that event.

Leaf, discussing the Null brothers, told Fox 17, "We can't convict them in the news media here. They do have a right to a fair trial."

Leaf was asked if he had any "regrets" about standing alongside a man who is "now being charged in a plot to kidnap the governor."

He responded, "Well, it's just a charge. And they say a plot to kidnap, and you gotta remember: are they trying to kidnap — because a lot of people are angry with the governor, and they want her arrested. So, are they trying to arrest, or was it a kidnapping attempt? Because in Michigan, if it's a felony, you can make a felony arrest."

Leaf added, "It doesn't say, if you're elected to office, that you're exempt from that arrest. I have to look at it from that angle, and I'm hoping that's more what it is. In fact, these guys are innocent until proven guilty. So, I'm not even sure if they had any part in it."

Leaf's comments are drawing a lot of responses on social media. Twitter user George Schwab, @CpkGeo, posted, "That sheriff needs to go NOW!," and another Twitter user, Eric Brown, @EricBrown1911, wrote, "Words cannot describe the lengths at which people go through to justify ignorance and stupidity."

Detroit-based attorney William Maze, @TheDUILawyer, tweeted, "Insane. But Sheriff Dar Leaf is a member of the far right Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA) and has links on his page to 'Posse,' which can only refer to the right wing hate group Posse Comitatus."

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/gop-groups-in-michigan-sue-to-overturn-late-ballot-ruling/

dETROIT —Three GOP-led groups are making urgent appeals in state court to gain the legal standing needed to appeal and overturn a recent ruling requiring clerks to count late ballots and making changes to the rules governing ballot collection. The Michigan Supreme Court on Friday issued an order that expedites consideration of the requests to intervene and ordered a ruling in at least one of the cases by Wednesday. The potential challenges from the GOP-led Legislature, the Republican National Convention and the Michigan Republican Party stemmed from a Sept. 18 ruling by state Court of Claims Ju......

AFTER KASICH OHIO FLIPPED

Thursday, The Detroit News reported that former Gov. Rick Snyder (R-MI) announced he would be voting for Joe Biden in November — blasting President Donald Trump as a “bully.”

“As a proud nerd, I had to deal with bullies over many years,” wrote Snyder in an op-ed for the USA TODAY network. “It is tragedy watching our world suffer from one.”

Snyder is best known for being the governor who presided over the Flint water crisis, where thousands of people were exposed to lead after the city switched water supplies on the demand of state-appointed emergency managers.

“Other Michigan Republicans endorsing Biden include former Congressman Joe Schwarz, former Congressman Dave Trott, former Michigan Chamber of Commerce legal counsel Bob LaBrant, Sterling Heights Mayor Michael Taylor and former state Reps. Doug Hart, Mikey Knight and David Maturen, according to Biden’s website,” said the report.

an 520

Moore says he knows the armed protesters at the Liberate Michigan protests — and they’re frauds

RETALIATION, WITHHOLD FED DISASTER $ B/C MAIL IN BALLOTS

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/republican-corruption-and-carelessness-led-to-devastation-in-michigan-does-trump-even-care

Trump spent another week feuding with a Democratic governor, this time as Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer dealt with historic levels of rainfall which led to the collapse of a pair of privately-owned dams in the state. Instead of momentarily pausing his politics of petty revenge, Trump made matters worse, as is his wont. }}:

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https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/us/politics/michigan-state-capitol.html

no lnx

In Michigan, a Dress Rehearsal for the Chaos at the Capitol on Wednesday

In April, armed protesters crowded into the State Capitol in Michigan. Frightened lawmakers saw echoes of that day in Wednesday’s deadly riot at the Capitol in Washington.

A militia group stands in front of the governor’s office after armed protesters occupied the State Capitol building during a vote to approve the extension of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home order in Lansing, Mich., in April.

By Kathleen Gray

Jan. 9, 2021

LANSING, Mich. — First came the “Unlock Michigan” protest. More than 1,000 cars, many draped with flags supporting President Trump, drove around the Michigan State Capitol, blaring their horns and decrying Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s coronavirus lockdown orders. Hundreds of others, many armed with military-style weapons, milled about on the lawn.

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Two weeks later, on April 30, the dissent escalated. Gun-toting protesters rushed the State Capitol, not long after Mr. Trump tweeted “Liberate Michigan.” They demanded entry into the House of Representatives’ chamber, chanting “Let Us In.”

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A handful of them, wearing camouflage fatigues with semiautomatic rifles slung over their shoulders, watched ominously from the gallery above the Senate chamber as the elected officials did their work. The lawmakers passed bills and resolutions and gave angry floor speeches about the extraordinary show of force looking down at them. At least two of the protesters were among 14 people later charged in a failed plot to kidnap Ms. Whitmer and bomb the state Capitol.

On Wednesday, as a mob of pro-Trump loyalists breached the U.S. Capitol in Washington after an angry rally focused on overturning the election President Trump had lost, Michigan State Senator Sylvia Santana watched in stunned — but not surprised — horror.

She had worn a bulletproof vest onto the state’s Senate floor back in April, and now was watching a similarly frightening episode unfold in Washington.

“Michigan was the precursor for what happened,” she said in an interview on Thursday. “The same feeling that I had Wednesday was the same feeling I had back in April, when I feared that I might not make it back home to my family. Those are the same feelings I felt on the Senate floor that day with those men up in the gallery with large weapons looming over us and knowing that they could get trigger happy at any time.”

She was not alone.

State Senator Erika Geiss, a Democrat from Taylor, Mich., who now keeps a bulletproof vest at her desk, watched the events in Washington with the same sense of recognition and dread.

“What I saw on Wednesday really made me feel like what happened here this past spring and summer was a dress rehearsal for what happened” in Washington, she said. “It was the same energy that was present at the Capitol in Michigan. It was just palpable coming through the television screen.”

Amy Cooter, an expert on domestic terror groups and a lecturer at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, said it was not difficult to draw a line straight from those early rallies in Michigan to Washington — and even earlier, to Charlottesville, Va., when white supremacists marched through the streets in 2017, chanting racist and anti-Semitic slogans and clashing with counter protesters. And “given the general lack of consequences” in Michigan last spring, “this becomes normalized and legitimate and made it easier to scale up” to what unfolded in Washington.

But State Representative Beau LaFave, a Republican from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, said it’s a stretch to connect those dots. “There were a lot of angry people at both things, but nobody did any damage or hurt anyone in Michigan,” he said. “They were angry and yelling, but they didn’t punch any cops, and they didn’t do any damage inside the building.”

[[Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 Hearings

Card 1 of 9

Making a case against Trump. The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack is laying out a comprehensive narrative of President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Here are the main themes that have emerged so far from eight public hearings:

An unsettling narrative. During the first hearing, the committee described in vivid detail what it characterized as an attempted coup orchestrated by the former president that culminated in the assault on the Capitol. At the heart of the gripping story were three main players: Mr. Trump, the Proud Boys and a Capitol Police officer.

Creating election lies. In its second hearing, the panel showed how Mr. Trump ignored aides and advisers as he declared victory prematurely and relentlessly pressed claims of fraud he was told were wrong. “He’s become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff,” William P. Barr, the former attorney general, said of Mr. Trump during a videotaped interview.

Pressuring Pence. Mr. Trump continued pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to go along with a plan to overturn his loss even after he was told it was illegal, according to testimony laid out by the panel during the third hearing. The committee showed how Mr. Trump’s actions led his supporters to storm the Capitol, sending Mr. Pence fleeing for his life.

Fake elector plan. The committee used its fourth hearing to detail how Mr. Trump was personally involved in a scheme to put forward fake electors. The panel also presented fresh details on how the former president leaned on state officials to invalidate his defeat, opening them up to violent threats when they refused.

Strong arming the Justice Dept. During the fifth hearing, the panel explored Mr. Trump’s wide-ranging and relentless scheme to misuse the Justice Department to keep himself in power. The panel also presented evidence that at least half a dozen Republican members of Congress sought pre-emptive pardons.

The surprise hearing. Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide, delivered explosive testimony during the panel’s sixth session, saying that the president knew the crowd on Jan. 6 was armed, but wanted to loosen security. She also painted Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, as disengaged and unwilling to act as rioters approached the Capitol.

Planning a march. Mr. Trump planned to lead a march to the Capitol on Jan. 6 but wanted it to look spontaneous, the committee revealed during its seventh hearing. Representative Liz Cheney also said that Mr. Trump had reached out to a witness in the panel’s investigation, and that the committee had informed the Justice Department of the approach.

A “complete dereliction” of duty. In the final public hearing of the summer, the panel accused the former president of dereliction of duty for failing to act to stop the Capitol assault. The committee documented how, over 187 minutes, Mr. Trump had ignored pleas to call off the mob and then refused to say the election was over even a day after the attack.]]

Indeed, while the protest in April was loud and tense, it did not get violent, although one person was arrested after an altercation between two men outside. But the rhetoric in the crowds at protests in April and May was heated. One protester carried a sign that read, “Tyrants Get the Rope,” and another carried an American flag that had a doll made to look like Ms. Whitmer hanging from it.

Meshawn Maddock, head of the national organization, Women for Trump, and in line to become the vice-chair of the state’s Republican Party, helped organize that “Unlock Michigan” rally in April and recently organized busloads of Michiganders to travel to Washington. Photos and videos from the rally in the nation’s capital filled her social media pages and, while walking toward the U.S. Capitol, she praised the “most incredible crowd and sea of people I’ve ever worked with.”

While she attended the rally outside the Ellipse, she said she was not at the Capitol when the mob of Trump supporters stormed the building, and she later condemned the violence.

On Wednesday, while Ms. Maddock was in Washington, several hundred people gathered outside Michigan’s statehouse to protest the election certification happening nearly 600 miles away. The statehouse was closed, though, to comply with Covid rules that it be shuttered when the Legislature is not in session. The rally, which featured Trump flags and hats and a handful of men armed with weapons, remained peaceful — and pointed. One protester waved a Trump flag that had four bobblehead dolls hanging from it: Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.

Michigan is an open carry state, so it is not unusual to see armed individuals walking the halls of the state Capitol. The Capitol Commission, the body that sets rules and approves maintenance projects for the building, debated banning guns in the Capitol after that April protest, but no action has been taken.

[Image

Militia members wait inside the Senate chamber at the Capitol building during the “American Patriot Rally on Capitol Lawn” protest in Lansing, Mich., in April.

John Truscott, a member of the commission, recalled an incident in the early 1990s, when some welfare rights advocates stormed the Capitol and burned flags in the building’s Rotunda to protest budget cuts during former Gov. John Engler’s State of the State speech.

“It seems so quaint now,” he said of the 1990s protest. “That group had spotlights and bullhorns and were throwing snowballs at the windows. I don’t think anyone was prepared for what we saw [in Washington.] We’ll be discussing these things going forward.”

The need for a discussion was heightened Thursday when a bomb threat was called into the Capitol shortly before 7 a.m. Though closed to the public, state employees who were in the building were evacuated while it was swept by Michigan State Police, who found no bomb but later charged a 48-year-old man with making the threat.

Senate majority leader Mike Shirkey, a Republican from Clarklake, Mich., said he is amenable to banning open carry in the Capitol, but would not want to prohibit all guns there.

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Michigan is not the only state where guns are welcome at the Statehouse.

In Texas, where the embrace of guns dates back to the state’s frontier culture, firearms are often visible in protests and other public gatherings. Texans with a state-issued permit can carry handguns either concealed or openly and no licenses are required to openly carry shotguns or rifles.

Several pistols and rifles, including at least one AR-15,were visible among more than 200 protesters, predominantly supporters of Mr. Trump, who converged in a largely peaceful demonstration near the State Capitol in Austin on Wednesday as the chaos unfolded in Washington.

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State law enforcement officers ultimately banned the protesters from the State Capitol grounds out of concern that the Texas demonstrations would turn ugly. Anyone licensed to carry guns in Texas can tote them anywhere inside the Texas Capitol by showing their permit to a Department of Public Safety trooper at the Capitol entrance.

But the combination of the April incident and the invasion of the Capitol in Washington has left nerves particularly raw for many Michigan legislators.

State Senator Dayna Polehanki, asuburban Detroit Democrat, bought extra work supplies during the Christmas break — a police helmet, gas mask and can of macethat she said she will store along with her bulletproof vest at her desk in the Senate chamber. She posted pictures of the armed men in the Senate gallery in April that went viral and has been calling for more substantive gun bans and safety policies in the building ever since. Her resolve only grew after Wednesday’s riot in Washington.

She said that after seeing what happened in Washington, “I can’t say with certainty that it wouldn’t happen here too. Those insurrectionists won the day. The difference here is that guns are welcome in our Capitol.”

Image

Demonstrators rally in April against Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home order due to the coronavirus outbreak in downtown Lansing, Mich.

David Montgomery contributed reporting from Austin, Texas.

Our Coverage of the Jan. 6 Investigations

The Justice Department Investigation

Questions About Trump’s Role: Federal prosecutors have directly asked witnesses about former President Donald J. Trump’s involvement in efforts to reverse his election loss, a person familiar with the matter said. The revelation suggests that the Justice Department’s criminal investigation has moved into a more aggressive and politically fraught phase.

Top Pence Aides Testify: Two top aides to former Vice President Mike Pence — Marc Short, Mr. Pence’s chief of staff, and Greg Jacob, his counsel — testified to a federal grand jury investigating the Jan. 6 attack. They are the highest-ranking Trump officials known to have cooperated with the Justice Department’s inquiry.

The House Investigation

The Hearings: Over eight sessions, the House panel set out a powerful account of Mr. Trump's efforts to overturn the election. But it’s unclear if that will be enough to achieve any legal and political goals.

Biden’s Comments: In rare remarks on the House investigation, President Biden denounced Mr. Trump’s refusal to decisively intervene to stop the attack on the Capitol, declaring that his predecessor “lacked the courage to act.”

Related Inquiries and Developments

Fake Electors Plan: Previously undisclosed emails provide an inside look at the desperate and often slapdash efforts by allies of Mr. Trump to reverse his election defeat by promoting “fake” electors.

Georgia Investigation: Prosecutors in Georgia have been investigating whether Mr. Trump and his allies criminally interfered with the 2020 election there, in a case that could pose the most immediate legal threat to the former president.

Bannon Trial: Stephen K. Bannon, a former aide to Mr. Trump, was convicted of two counts of contempt of Congress, months after he defied a subpoena to answer questions from the House committee as part of its Jan. 6 investigation.

Secret Service Text Messages: The disclosure that text messages sent and received by Secret Service agents around the time of the Capitol attack were erased has prompted subpoenas from the Jan. 6 House committee and a potential criminal investigation.

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Armed protesters enter Michigan's state capitol ... - YouTubehttps://www.youtube.com › watch

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