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January 6 Is Unknowable

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Dunbar’s number is a term that describes a presumed cognitive limit to the number of people with whom an individual can maintain social relationships. It’s a way of thinking about limits to our ability to understand a network. People argue about what the actual number is, though 150 is a good standard.

Using that figure, the number of people arrested in the January 6 attack is, thus far, 4 2/3 Dunbar numbers, with two more Dunbar numbers of assault suspects identified in FBI wanted photos. By my count, one Dunbar number of suspects are charged with assault. There were one Dunbar number of police victims from that day. There have been, Attorney General Garland revealed last night, one Dunbar number of prosecutors working on the investigation. One Dunbar number of Congresspeople backed challenges to the vote certification last year, and a significant subset of those people further enabled the insurrectionists in more substantive ways. The January 6 Select Committee has interviewed two Dunbar number of witnesses about the event, a group that barely overlaps with the suspects already charged.

I think about Dunbar’s number a lot, particularly as I review the DC court calendar each morning to review which court hearings I should call into on a given day. I can rattle off the names of the January 6 defendants in all the major conspiracy cases and some less obvious key defendants about whom I’ve got real questions. But for other hearings with a 2021 docket number (the January 6 defendants make up the majority of defendants in DC last year), I need to refer back to my master list to see whether those are January 6 defendants, and if so, whether the hearing might be of import. There are five January 6 defendants with the last name Brown, five with some version of the last name Kelly (all quite interesting), three Martins, and seven Williamses, so it’s not just recognizing the name, but trying to remember whether a particular Brown is one of the really interesting ones.

Court filings are the way I go about understanding January 6. Sedition Hunters, by contrast, have worked via faces in photos, from which they effectively create dossiers on suspects of interest.

From their home offices, couches, kitchen tables, bedrooms and garages, these independent investigators have played a remarkable role in archiving and preserving digital evidence. Often operating under the “Sedition Hunters” moniker, they’ve archived more than 2,000 Facebook accounts, over 1,125 YouTube channels, 500-plus Instagram accounts, nearly 1,000 Twitter feeds, more than 100 Rumble profiles and over 250 TikTok accounts. They’ve gathered more than 4.1 terabytes ― 4,100 gigabytes ― of data, enough to fill dozens of new iPhones with standard-issue storage.

Both approaches have come to a similar understanding of the attack: that the Proud Boys led a multi-pronged assault on the building, one that is most easily seen on the coordinated assault from the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, America Firsters, and Alex Jones on the East door. That assault on the East door appears after 22:30 on NYT’s Day of Rage on the riot, which remains the most accessible way for people to try to understand the riot. That assault on the East door, because of Pied Piper Alex Jones’ role in providing bodies, leads directly back to Trump’s request that Jones lead rally attendees from the Ellipse to the Capitol. And there are militia and localized networks that are also critical to understanding how all those bodies worked in concert on January 6. Here’s a summary of the Sedition Hunters’ understanding, which is well worth reviewing in depth.

But even though what we’re seeing is quite similar, there are gaps. Because I’m working from dockets, I’m aware of only the most important people who have yet to be arrested, whereas the Sedition Hunters have a long list, including assault suspects, prominent participants, and militia members, who remain at large. Meanwhile, I’ve identified a handful of defendants whose accomplices on January 6 are obviously of great interest to DOJ, but the Sedition Hunters aren’t always able to reverse engineer who those accomplices are based off their work.

And dockets are only useful for certain kinds of information. I track each arrest affidavit and statement of offense closely. I try to keep a close eye on changes in legal teams and developments (like continuances) that deviate from the norm, which are often the first sign that a case is getting interesting. You learn the most from detention hearings and sentencing memos. But for defendants charged by indictment and released pre-trial, the government can hide most of what it knows. And that’s assuming DOJ makes an arrest or unseals it, which it might not do if someone cooperates from the start.

The government has announced nine cooperation deals (one four months after it happened), and the subject of cooperation for two of them — Jon Schaffer and Klete Keller (whom I often get confused with the five Kellys) — is not known. It wasn’t clear that Jacob Hiles was the defendant who had gotten Capitol Police cop Michael Riley indicted until Hiles’ sentencing memo. And Hiles is not the only one being charged with a misdemeanor who cooperated to end up that way. It’s often not clear whether a delayed misdemeanor charge reflects really good lawyering or cooperation (and in the case of Brandon Straka, it seems to have been really good lawyer that nevertheless resulted in some key disclosures to DOJ).

There is a growing list of Person Ones described in court filings, Stewart Rhodes, Enrique Tarrio, Aaron Whallon-Wolkind, Alex Jones, and Morton Irvine Smith, all of whom were clearly involved in January 6 but haven’t been charged yet. Roger Stone never got referred to as Person One, but he is all over the Oath Keepers’ court filings. DOJ hasn’t named people like Mo Brooks and Rudy Giuliani when they include them in Statements of Offense, but they’re in there. So are other people who spoke on January 5.

It turns out that one means of accessing the January 6 is my forté, documents, and that of citizen researchers, collaborative research. But partly because Merrick Garland referred Michael Sherwin for an Office of Professional Responsibility investigation for publicly commenting on the investigation improperly, the normal way things get reported — by quoting sources — largely isn’t yet accessible for the criminal side of the investigation. That leads to misleading reporting like the famous Reuters article that didn’t understand the role of crimes of terrorism or a WaPo piece yesterday that unbelievably quoted Jonathan Turley claiming, “There’s no grand conspiracy that the FBI found, despite arresting hundreds of people, investigating thousands,” without labeling him as the former President’s impeachment lawyer, which is the only way Turley would be marginally competent to make such a claim. There are defense attorneys talking to the press — but the chattiest defense lawyers are the ones setting new standards for bullshit claims. The ones I’ve heard from are themselves drowning in their attempts to understand the larger investigation, both because of the sheer amount of discovery and because that discovery doesn’t tell them what is going on legally with one of the other Dunbar numbers of defendants. But in general, the ordinary sources for typical reporting aren’t talking, leading to a lot more mystery about the event.

One thing I find most striking from those who were present is their blindness. I’m haunted by something Daniel Hodges said in his testimony to the January 6 Committee: that the men and women who fought insurrectionists for hours in the Tunnel through which Joe Biden would walk to take the Oath of Office two weeks later had no idea, during that fight, that the Capitol had already been breached, and then cleared, as they continued to fight a battle of inches.

It was a battle of inches, with one side pushing the other a few and then the other side regaining their ground. At the time I (and I suspect many others in the hallway) did not know that the terrorists had gained entry to the building by breaking in doors and windows elsewhere, so we believed ours to be the last line of defense before the terrorists had true access to the building, and potentially our elected representatives.

There are similar accounts from other direct witnesses — like this chilling piece from Matt Fuller — who huddled feet away from where Ashli Babbitt was killed without knowing what was happening. Grace Segers, in her second telling of surviving that day, describes how there was no way to tell maintenance workers (there must be ten Dunbar numbers of support staff who were there that day) to take cover from the mobsters.

I have spent the better part of the year working full time, with few days off, trying to understand (and help others understand) January 6. I’ve got a clear (though undoubtedly partial) vision of how it all works — how the tactical developments in the assault on the Capitol connect directly back to actions Donald Trump took. Zoe Tillman, one of a handful of other journalists who is attempting to track all these cases (while parenting a toddler and covering other major judicial developments) has a piece attempting to do so with a summary of the numbers. But both those methods are inadequate to the task.

But thus far, that clear vision remains largely unknowable via the normal ways the general public learns. That’s why, I think, people like Lawrence Tribe are so panicked: because even beginning to understand this thing is, quite literally, a full time job, even for those of us with the luxury of living an ocean away. In Tribe’s case, he has manufactured neglect out of what he hasn’t done the work to know. To have something that poses such an obvious risk to American democracy remain so unknowable, so mysterious — to not be able to make sense of the mob that threatens democracy — makes it far more terrifying.

I know a whole lot about what is knowable about the January 6 investigation. But one thing I keep realizing is that it remains unknowable.

DOJ’s Approximate January 6 Conspiracies

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Amid the clamor for Merrick Garland to say something about the January 6 investigation, DOJ has announced he will give a speech, tomorrow, to mark Thursday’s year anniversary of the assault on the Capitol.

Meanwhile, late last year, DOJ released a one-year summary of the investigation. It’s similar to periodical reports the DC US Attorney’s Office has released before, including that its numbers generally skew high. It includes DC Superior Court arrests, in addition to federal arrests, to come up with “more than 725 defendants;” (GWU’s count, which those of us tracking this closely consider the canonical list, shows 704 arrests). DOJ appears to mix assault and civil disorder arrests to come up with 225 in some way interfering with cops; my own count, while low, counts fewer than 150 people charged with assault. DOJ’s summary boasts that 275 people have been charged with obstruction, a number that includes those who’ve been permitted to plead down to misdemeanors.

One number, however, is low: DOJ claims that,

Approximately 40 defendants have been charged with conspiracy, either: (a) conspiracy to obstruct a congressional proceeding, (b) conspiracy to obstruct law enforcement during a civil disorder, (c) conspiracy to injure an officer, or (d) some combination of the three.

By my count, this number is at least 25% off the known count. There are 39 people currently charged in the top-line militia conspiracies, plus five people cooperating against them.

There are at least another 13 people charged in smaller conspiracies (though the Texas “Patriot” conspiracy has not been indicted yet), with two more people cooperating in those cases.

It’s most likely DOJ got this number so badly wrong because it is overworked and some of these (like the Texas one and the status of Danny Rodriguez co-conspirator “Swedish Scarf”) aren’t fully unsealed.

But it’s also likely that these numbers are not what they seem.

That’s because in (at least) the larger conspiracies, there have been a lot of plea discussions going on behind the scenes, if not hidden cooperators. Certainly in the wake of five decisions upholding the obstruction application (including in the main Oath Keeper conspiracy, in the Ronnie Sandlin conspiracy, and by Tim Kelly, who is presiding over three of the Proud Boy conspiracies), we should expect some movement. I expect there will be some consolidation in the Proud Boy cases. The Texas case and some other Proud Boy defendants have to be indicted.

Importantly, too, these conspiracies all link up to other key players. For example, Roger Stone, Ali Alexander, and Alex Jones coordinated closely with the Proud Boy and Oath Keeper conspirators. The state-level conspiracies are most interesting for local power brokers and the elected officials with whom these conspirators networked — like Ted Cruz in the case of the Texas alleged conspirators or Morton Irvine Smith in the SoCal 3%er.

The utility of conspiracy charges lies in the way they can turn associates against each other and network others into the crime. Prosecutors love to use secrecy and paranoia to increase that utility.

And so while DOJ is undoubtedly overwhelmed, it may also be the case that DOJ would like to keep potential co-conspirators guessing about what’s really behind them.

The Pied Piper of Insurrection, and Other Challenges in Charging the January 6 Organizer-Inciters

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In a post laying out what I called my “taxonomy” of the DOJ investigation of the January 6 crime scene, I noted that the next step in holding those who orchestrated January 6 responsible was to start holding the “organizer-inciters” responsible.

 I have argued that DOJ is very close to rolling out more details of the plot to seize the Capitol, a plot that was implemented (at the Capitol) by the Proud Boys in coordination with other militia-tied people. I have also argued that one goal of the misdemeanor arrests has been to obtain evidence showing that speeches inciting violence, attacks on Mike Pence, or directing crowds to (in effect) trespass brought about violence, the targeting of Mike Pence, and the breach of the Capitol.

If I’m right about these two observations, it means that the investigation has reached a step where the next logical move would be to charge those who incited violence or directed certain movement. The next logical step would be to hold those who caused the obstruction accountable for the obstruction they cultivated.

This is why I focused on Alex Jones in this post: because there is a great deal of evidence that Alex Jones, the guy whom Trump personally ordered to lead mobs to the Capitol, was part of the plot led by his former employee, Joe Biggs, to breach a second front of the Capitol. If this investigation is going to move further, people like Alex Jones and other people who helped organize and incite the riot, will be the next step.

Though you might not know it from the coverage, DOJ has charged several people who played a key role in creating and mobilizing the mob that seized the Capitol. This is where, however, the obscurity of the investigation and First Amendment protections raise real questions about whether DOJ will be able to move up the chain of responsibility.

I’d like to look at the prospects of accountability at three nodes of organizer inciters:

  • Walkaway founder Brandon Straka
  • SoCal anti-maskers Russell Taylor and Alan Hostetter
  • Alex Jones, Owen Shroyer, and Ali Alexander

The import of January 5 in January 6

Before I do so, though, a word about January 5. Though the general outline of the January 6 attack kicked off in November 2020 and was fine-tuned in December (the MAGA events in both months were critical both as dry runs and for networking among participants), the final outline of plans took place in the days before the riot. There seems to have been an intra-militia meeting planned on January 3 in Quarrysville, Pennsylvania where groups, “[got] our comms on point with multiple other patriot groups.”

After Proud Boy Enrique Tarrio got arrested on January 4, the Proud Boys frantically tried to regroup. As late as 9PM on January 5, Joe Biggs and Ethan Nordean were meeting with some unnamed group, out of which came their plan for the 6th.

There were rallies organized for January 5 at which a number of leaders gave incendiary speeches. There’s some reason to believe that members of what I’ve called a “disorganized militia” conspiracy, Ronnie Sandlin, Nate DeGrave, and Josiah Colt, learned key details of the plan for the next day at that event, which allowed them to be tactically important in the breach. Other disorganized attendees, like Jenny Cudd, came away from those Janaury 5 speeches persuaded a revolution was inevitable.

On January 5, 2021, Ms. Cudd stated the following in a video on social media: “a lot of . . . the speakers this evening were calling for a revolution. Now I don’t know what y’all think about a revolution, but I’m all for it. . . . Nobody actually wants war, nobody wants bloodshed, but the government works for us and unfortunately it appears that they have forgotten that, quite a lot. So, if a revolution is what it takes then so be it. Um, I don’t know if that is going to kick off tomorrow or not, we shall see what the powers that be choose to do with their powers and we shall see what it is that happens in Congress tomorrow at our United States Capitol. So, um either way I think that either our side or the other side is going to start a revolution.”

As Robert Costa and Bob Woodward have described, Trump ratcheted up the pressure as the mobs formed the night of January 5 by falsely claiming that Mike Pence agreed he could ignore the true vote counts.

Yet, even in spite of the import of January 5 to what happened on January 6, DOJ has included remarkably few details about what January 6 defendants did that day.

The organizer-inciters called for revolution on January 5

The three organizer-inciters are a notable exception. As I noted in this post, DOJ focused on the January 5 speeches of Straka, Shroyer, and Taylor in their arrest affidavits. Straka’s described how he called for revolution on January 5.

STRAKA was introduced by name and brought onto stage. STRAKA spoke for about five minutes during which time he repeatedly referred to the attendees as “Patriots” and referenced the “revolution” multiple times. STRAKA told the attendees to “fight back” and ended by saying, “We are sending a message to the Democrats, we are not going away, you’ve got a problem!”

The SoCal 3%er conspiracy described how Russell Taylor called for violence.

[T]hese anti-Americans have made the fatal mistake, and they have brought out the Patriot’s fury onto these streets and they did so without knowing that we will not return to our peaceful way of life until this election is made right, our freedoms are restored, and American is preserved.

And Owen Shroyer’s arrest affidavit described him calling for revolution, too.

Americans are ready to fight. We’re not exactly sure what that’s going to look like perhaps in a couple of weeks if we can’t stop this certification of the fraudulent election . . . we are the new revolution! We are going to restore and we are going to save the republic!

But the treatment of these three organizer-inciters, both in their charges, and the development of their prosecution so far, has been very different.

Brandon Straka

Originally, Brandon Straka was charged with trespassing and 18 USC 231, civil disorder, for egging on rioters as they stripped a cop of his shield.

At around the 3:45 mark of the video, an officer from the United States Capitol Police holding a protective shield could be seen in the crowd. As individuals pushed past the officer toward the entrance of the U.S. Capitol, the officer held his shield up in the air. At around the 3:59 mark of the video, STRAKA stated, “Take it away from him.” STRAKA and others in the crowd then yelled, “Take the shield!”

As several people in the crowd grabbed the officer’s shield, STRAKA yelled, “Take it! Take it!” The crowd successfully pulled the shield away from the officer as the officer appeared to be trying to move back toward the entrance of the building.

After his early arrest, his case was continued without indictment several times, first in February, then in May, then in August, each time invoking fairly standard boilerplate about a plea. “The government and counsel for the defendant have conferred, and are continuing to communicate in an effort to resolve this matter.” In September, Straka was finally charged, with just the less serious of the two trespassing misdemeanors. After a tweak in October reflecting that he never entered the Capitol itself, he pled guilty on October 6. His statement of offense says only this about January 5:

Brandon Straka flew to Washington D.C. to speak at a rally protesting the election results on January 5 and January 6, 2021.

It focuses entirely on his role in egging on rioters at the Capitol.

This plea could be one of the ones in which someone cooperating was able to plead to a misdemeanor (the only confirmed one of which, so far, was Jacob Hiles, who cooperated in the prosecution of Michael Riley). After all, he could provide valuable information not just on the plans for January 5, but also explain what he learned about why the scheduled rally on January 6, at which he was also supposed to speak, got canceled. And in fact, he posted the kind of self-justification in advance of pleading that might reflect cooperation.

[O]n Facebook this week he addressed 357,000 followers as “Dear Patriots,” thanked them for their patience, and urged them to tune out “negative press . . . likely coming down the pike” as he took the first meaningful step toward concluding “the perils of the situation I am in.”

“Hang on tight,” Straka wrote on the site, where he has asked for financial support and plugged a forthcoming “grand relaunch” of his campaign. “Let it come, and let it go. It means nothing. It’s just pointless noise. The best is yet to come. We’re almost there.”

But his plea agreement includes the boilerplate cooperation language that generally gets taken out when someone has already cooperated, which is one reason to believe his plea may just reflect good lawyering.

We may find out whether his plea included a cooperation component when we see the filings regarding his sentencing. He was originally supposed to be sentenced on Friday December 17, but that got bumped back (as many things are, these days) to December 22. His sentencing memos were due on December 15. But unless something happened with PACER overnight, they’re not there (PACER was particularly unreliable yesterday on account of the AWS outage, but the filings could also be sealed).

Update: The two sides have asked for 30 more days to make sense of some stuff that has recently come up.

On December 8, 2021, the defendant provided counsel for the government with information that may impact the government’s sentencing recommendation. Additionally, the government is requesting additional time to investigate information provided in the Final Pre- Sentence Report. Because the government’s sentencing recommendation may be impacted based on the newly discovered information, the government and defendant request a 30-day continuance of this case so that the information can be properly evaluated.

The government is currently ordered to file its sentencing memorandum and any video evidence in support of its memorandum on December 17, 2021. The government respectfully requests that this deadline be extended based upon the reasons stated.

3%er SoCal Conspiracy

Calling the indictment against Alan Hostetter et al the “3%er SoCal conspiracy” is actually a misnomer, because it has more to do with how two men calling for violence helped organize Southern Californians largely mobilized around anti-mask politics.

The indictment provides evidence that some of the men charged–Erik Warner, Tony Martinez, Derek Kinnison, and possibly Ronald Mele– are 3%ers. Though the indictment shows Hostetter invoking the language of 3%ers in one place, he is the head of the American Phoenix anti-mask group and his anti-mask activism is one of the places Hostetter met Russell Taylor (the other is the QAnon conference in Arizona in October 2020). Hostetter and Taylor repurporsed a Telegram chat Hostetter was already using to sow violence to organize Southern Californians to travel to DC for the rally, then created a new one on January 1 called “The California Patriots-DC Brigade.”

Much of the conspiracy involves the planning of alleged conspirators for the trip, including discussions of how to bring weapons to DC.

Just one of these men, Warner, entered the Capitol; the rest skirmished around the West Terrace. Not all of the January 6 defendants whose arrest documents show them to be members of the California Patriots-DC Brigade Telegram chat are included as part of this conspiracy; Jeffrey Scott Brown and Ben Martin, who were each charged individually, are described to have been part of the chat, and it’s likely that Gina Bisignano and Danny Rodriguez and his co-conspirators were also part of that chat (among others). In addition, there’s a Person One described in the indictment, whom Hostetter has identified as big GOP donor Morton Irvine Smith, who wasn’t charged, though Irvine Smith’s actions appear distinguishable from Hostetter’s only in that he didn’t climb onto the West Terrace on January 6. So it’s not entirely clear why DOJ included the six people they did in this conspiracy.

As I laid out before, in addition to being charged individually with obstructing the vote count, the men were charged with conspiracy under the obstruction statute rather than the conspiracy statute, as most other January 6 conspiracies were charged (though a Patriot-3%er two person conspiracy unsealed the other day uses 1512(k) as well). Taylor was charged for civil disorder for an interaction with cops and his trespassing charges were enhanced because he was armed with a knife. Warner and Kinnison are separately charged for efforts to hide the Telegram chat.

In other words, this conspiracy ties together two guys publicly calling for violence with members of a militia who discussed arming themselves.

Hostetter says he wants no part of it, though. After getting permission to represent himself in October, earlier this month the former cop filed a motion to dismiss the entire indictment because of alleged government misconduct. The entire thing is the kind of batshit conspiracy theory you’d expect from Tucker Carlson or Glenn Greenwald, spinning what appears to have been inappropriate coddling of him by an Orange County Sheriff’s Sergeant into an FBI plot (that started in spring 2020) to get him, involving Yale’s Secret Society Skull and Bones, the Freemasons, Scientologists, Mormons, and a talented artist named Bandit who likes to mock him. (Read this thread if you want to laugh along.) In the wild yarn Hostetter spins, he argues both Irvine Smith and Taylor must be FBI informants and therefore he can’t be held accountable for any of the actions they induced him to take.

He asks to be severed from the other defendants and/or have his case thrown out because, he claims, he “has never knowingly met, nor has he ever knowingly communicated with, four of the co-defendants,” the 3%ers, and according to his feverish conspiracy theory, Taylor is an FBI informant who set him up (Taylor is Mormon, which is where that part of Hostetter’s conspiracy theory stems from). In a filing asserting as fact that, “the election of 2020 was actually stolen from a duly elected President whom was elected in one of the biggest landslide victories in the history of our country,” Hostetter complains that his actions to prevent the vote count of the actual winner do not amount to a crime.

On January 6, 2021 defendant did not commit one act of violence. Defendant did not commit one act of vandalism. Defendant never entered the U.S. Capitol Building. Defendant never conspired with anyone to do anything illegal, immoral or unethical. The government has not provided anything, that defendant has yet seen in discovery, that contradicts these claims by defendant. Yet, defendant is charged with federal felonies that could result in his imprisonment for up to twenty years.

Particularly given the scope of Dabney Friedrich’s ruling on the application of obstruction, with its caveats regarding whether legal activities can be deemed part of an effort to obstruct the vote count, Hostetter’s claims may have some success (Royce Lamberth is presiding over the case).

His motion to dismiss doesn’t, however, mention a number of overt acts described in the conspiracy to obstruct the vote count:

  • His participation in the November 14, 2020 MAGA event in DC
  • His own November 27, 2020 call to execute “traitors”
  • A December 12, 2020 Stop the Steal rally in Huntington Beach
  • His own calls for people to travel to DC starting on December 19, 2020

Rather than addressing most of the overt acts alleged against him, Hostetter provides what appear to be cover stories for two key December 2020 events in this timeline.

After Taylor and Hostetter spoke at an Orange County event on December 15, they met with Irvine Smith the next day, and Taylor gave both axes.

On December 15, 2020, defendant and co-defendant Russell Taylor both spoke at an Orange County Board of Supervisor’s Meeting. This was only three weeks prior to January 6th. As usual at the Board Meeting, the topics to be discussed related to Orange County issues to include Covid-19 related issues, which is what we typically spoke out about. For some reason, while Taylor was speaking during this particular board meeting, he made the following comment to the Board which was completely unrelated to any of the topics on the agenda: “Week after week, I and others are with thousands in the street all up and down the state of California. You know what they are saying? Revolution. Storm the Capitol.”

[snip]

On December 16th, the day following Taylor’s comments to the Orange County Board of Supervisors, co-defendant Russell Taylor met defendant and “Person One” Morton Irvine Smith at a Mexican restaurant in San Clemente, CA called “El Ranchito.” Taylor was the organizer of this meeting and had requested, planned and organized it a few days prior. While at the restaurant, Taylor told defendant and Irvine Smith that he had purchased gifts for them. Taylor reached under the table and pulled out two boxes and gave them to defendant and Irvine Smith.

Inside these boxes were the axes that have been referred to in the indictment as proof of defendant’s nefarious intent to attack the Capitol using the axe as a weapon of some sort. Until receiving this “gift,” defendant had never personally owned an axe in his life. As he gifted it to us, Taylor described the axe metaphorically as a “battle axe” representing the battles we had already fought in support of freedom and the many battles yet to come.

Upon leaving the restaurant, either (informant) Taylor or (informant) Irvine Smith requested one of the restaurant employees take our photograph in front of the restaurant holding the axes. Defendant liked the photograph and thought it looked quite masculine and “tough” so he posted the photograph to Instagram with a somewhat provocative comment attached to the photograph. Defendant’s comment was, “The time has come when good people may have to act badly, but not wrongly.” Defendant continued in this post with, “Thank you @russ.taylor for the gift of the #thebattleaxe representing the many battles yet to come.”

Defendant had read this quote about good people possibly having to act “badly but not wrongly” in a meme very close in time to when Taylor gifted the axe to him. Defendant had no thought whatsoever about January 6 or the U.S. Capitol when creating this Instagram post. Defendant had been making public speeches regarding the fact that the U.S. was and had been “at war” with the Chinese Communist Party and domestic enemies for approximately 8 months prior to receiving this axe from Russell Taylor

Hostetter posted the photo not as a call for war, he claims, but because it made him look manly. And his caption to the photograph wasn’t a prospective call to war on January 6 in response to Taylor’s call for revolution, but to the prior 8 months of political unrest.

Particularly given Hostetter’s description of the December 16 meeting, which he helpfully tells us was actually planned, “a few days prior” (and so possibly the same day that Irvine Smith, but not Hostetter, returned from the DC MAGA March), I find the description Hostetter gives for his involvement in the January 5 event of interest. He learned of it from Irvine Smith at around the same time as that same December 16 meeting at El Ranchito and before — the indictment alleges but Hostetter ignores — he started recruiting people to attend the event.

January 5, 2021: Defendant’s non-profit organization, American Phoenix Project (APP), cohosted a rally with a group called Virgina Women for Trump. The VWT group was headed by Alice Butler-Short, a well-known and well-connected woman in the DC area.

This event, and APP’s ability to co-host it was brought to defendant’s attention in mid-December after informant Morton Irvine Smith returned to California after attending the December 12, 2020 Stop the Steal rally in Washington DC. Defendant did not attend this event. Irvine Smith claimed to have met Ms. Butler-Short for the first time at this 12/12/2020 event and the two of them agreed to APP becoming involved in co-hosting the event together.

Irvine Smith arranged for defendant to participate in a conference call with Ms. Butler-Short and two members of another group identified as Jericho March as they were a nationally known group also supporting election integrity. Once this conference call was completed, defendant told Irvine Smith that he was not interested in having American Phoenix Project co-host the event as it was too far away from California to be able to properly assist in putting it together and defendant had also gotten a bad vibe / feeling from some of the other participants in the conference call.

Irvine Smith was highly disappointed and notified defendant that he, Irvine Smith, would then just continue to help Butler-Short on his own time as they had developed a good relationship and he wanted to be personally helpful to her. Within a week or two, Irvine Smith notified defendant that Butler-Short had lined up some very big-name and popular conservative speakers for the event to include Roger Stone, Alex Jones, General Michael Flynn’s brother Joe Flynn, among several others. Irvine Smith notified defendant that ButlerShort was continuing to hold out the invitation for APP to co-host this event with her group, to include flying the APP banner at the event. Irvine Smith told defendant the only thing Butler-Short requested of APP was to help her with finding security staff to cordon off an area in front of the Supreme Court because it was a “first come, first served” policy as far as finding a location to set up a stage and microphone.

[snip]

After hearing from Irvine Smith about the high-quality speakers involved and the relative ease with which APP could co-host such a high-profile event, defendant agreed to co-host the event under the APP banner. Were it not for the individual efforts of Morton Irvine Smith, neither defendant nor APP would have been involved with this event at all.

Irvine Smith’s role in getting him this gig certainly raises more questions about why he wasn’t charged, but it doesn’t change Hostetter’s own exposure.

Hostetter adds to the questions about Irvine Smith’s treatment by revealing that Irvine Smith was not searched until the day before this indictment (Hostetter also makes much of what appears to be FBI’s choice to image Irvine Smith’s devices rather than seizing them).

On 1/27/2021 when Taylor and defendant had search warrants served on them, Irvine Smith did not. It wasn’t until nearly five months later, on June 9, 2021 that Irvine Smith finally had a search warrant served on him. This was one day before defendant’s indictment was unsealed. The timing of Irvine Smith’s “raid” is transparently obvious and laughable. It was intended to “clean him up” as an informant.

Hostetter’s questions about Irvine Smith, who funded much of his actions, are as justified as questions from the Oath Keepers about Stewart Rhodes not being charged yet. But I expect this crazypants motion to be dismissed and the conspiracy prosecution to continue to hang on whether all six members of the conspiracy entered into an agreement to help stop the vote count on January 6.

But Hostetter’s motion does suggest that the conspiracy indictment uses the involvement of the 3%ers as a way to raise the stakes of both Hostetter and Taylor’s own public calls for violence. That is, DOJ seems to have charged these organizer-inciters (but not the guy funding it all, yet) by exploiting their ties to an organized militia.

Alex Jones, Owen Shroyer, and Ali Alexander

The way that DOJ appears to have used militia ties to charge organizer-inciters Alan Hostetter and Russell Taylor makes their treatment of far more important organizer-inciters, Alex Jones, Owen Shroyer, and Ali Alexander, more interesting.

Ignore for a moment Ali Alexander’s crucial role in setting up explicitly violent protests.

It is a fact that the guy leading the coup, Donald Trump, asked Alex Jones (personally, as Jones tells it) to lead the mobs Trump had incited at the Ellipse down the Mall to the Capitol. As Jones was doing this, his former employee, Joe Biggs, was kicking off the entire riot. It is also a fact that Jones lured rioters like Stacie Getsinger to the East side of the building, to where Biggs and the Oath Keepers were also gathering, by promising a second speech from Trump.

There’s reason to believe that Jones and Biggs remained in contact that day, evidence of which DOJ would presumably have from Biggs’ phone, if not his phone provider (based on whether the contact was via telephony or messaging app). If it was the latter, getting it may have taken a while. While DOJ obtained Ethan Nordean’s phone when they searched his house (because his spouse provided the FBI the password), and obtained the content of Biggs’ Google account quickly (which included some videos shared with his co-travellers), it may have taken until July 14 to exploit Biggs’ phone (this Cellebrite report must pertain to Biggs because it is not designated Highly Sensitive to him). While the content of any calls Biggs had with his former boss would not be captured, some of it is also likely available from videos shot of him. If his co-travellers wanted a cooperation deal they might be able to provide Biggs’ side of any contacts with Jones too, though several of Biggs’ co-travelers are represented by John Pierce, who may be serving as a kind of firewall for Biggs or even Enrique Tarrio.

Nevertheless, if DOJ has in its possession evidence that one of the guys accused of masterminding the plan to breach the Capitol from two sides was in contact during that process with Jones, who lured unwitting rioters to the second breach by lying to them, then DOJ would appear to have far more evidence tying Jones to militia violence than they used to charge Hostetter in a conspiracy with 3%ers. And Jones got just as far inside the restricted area of the Capitol — to the top of the steps on the East side — as Hostetter did.

Of course, two things have made it harder to charge Jones: he is a media figure, one who very quickly disseminated a cover story claiming his intent for joining the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers at the site of the second breach was to de-escalate the situation, not to escalate it.

DOJ has been chipping away at both those defenses. It already arrested two of Jones’ employees, videographer Sam Montoya and on-air personality Owen Shroyer.

DOJ arrested Montoya for trespassing on April 13 and charged him with misdemeanors on April 30. The arrest warrant cited a number of things Montoya said that were captured on his own footage making it clear he viewed himself as part of the mob.

We’re gonna crawl, we’re gonna climb. We’re gonna do whatever it takes, we’re gonna do whatever it takes to MAGA. Here we go, y’all. Here we go, y’all. Look at this, look at this. I don’t even know what’s going on right now. I don’t wanna get shot, I’ll be honest, but I don’t wanna lose my country. And that’s more important to me than—than getting shot.

And DOJ noted that Montoya had no press credentials for Congress (a really shitty distinction for an event where legitimate journalists chased mobsters inside).

At times during the video, Montoya describes himself to others inside the Capitol Building as a “reporter” or “journalist” as he attempts to get through crowds. The director of the Congressional press galleries within the Senate Press office did a name check on Samuel Christopher Montoya and confirmed that no one by that name has Congressional press credentials as an individual or via any other organizations.

Montoya’s case has been continued on his own initiative since then. Given the discovery notices he has gotten — from AUSA Candice Wong — he had been treated as part of the mob most closely involved in the scene at Ashli Babbitt’s shooting. On December 10, Montoya got discovery from the Statutory Hall Connector that other defendants in that group did not get, and a different prosecutor, Alexis Loeb, took over his case. Loeb’s January 6 caseload is eclectic, but in October she started taking over the case of Proud Boys Joshua Pruitt, and Nicholas Ochs and Nicholas DeCarlo, and she has always been in charge of the prosecution of the pair that played a key role in opening the East doors from the inside, George Tenney and Darrell Youngers.

In August, Shroyer was arrested. His arrest was opportunistic, relying on the fact that he had a still-unsatisfied Deferred Prosecution Agreement arising from his attempts to disrupt Trump’s first impeachment making his loud presence inside the restricted are of the Capitol uniquely illegal. He filed a motion to dismiss his case, which was basically the cover story about de-escalation that Jones offered up immediately after the riot and Ali Alexander prepared to deliver to Congress last week. In a filing debunking that cover story, the government noted that calling for revolution — as Shroyer and Jones did from the top of the East steps — does not amount to de-escalation.

Even assuming the defendant’s argument is true and the defendant received permission to go to the Capitol steps for the limited purpose of deescalating the situation, the defendant did not even do that. Quite the opposite. Despite the defendant’s arguments today that “Shroyer did nothing but offer his assistance to calm the crowd and urge them to leave United States Capitol grounds,” Dkt. 8-1 at 14, the defendant himself said otherwise in an open-source video recorded on August 21, 2021: “From the minute we got on the Capitol, the Capitol area, you [referring to Person One] started telling people to stand down, and the second we got on there, you got up on stacks of chairs, you said, ‘We can’t do this, stand down, don’t go in.’ … And I’m silent during all of this” (emphasis added).11 Moreover, as seen in other videos and described above, the defendant forced his way to the top of Capitol Building’s east steps with Person One and others and led hundreds of other rioters in multiple “USA!” and “1776!” chants with his megaphone. Harkening to the last time Americans overthrew their government in a revolution while standing on the Capitol steps where elected representatives are certifying a Presidential Election you disagree with does not qualify as deescalation.

Shroyer let the due date to reply to this debunking, November 22, pass without filing anything. A status conference that had originally been scheduled for Tuesday, December 14 has been rescheduled for Monday December 20.

As I said in my taxonomy post, the government seems to be very close to being able to demonstrate how that the breach of the second front worked, an effort on which the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and Alex Jones seemed to coordinate.

Doing so will be very important in demonstrating how the militia conspiracies worked. But if DOJ finds a way to charge Alex Jones for his role as the Pied Piper of insurrection, the organizer-inciter who provided the bodies needed to fill that second breach, it would bring the January 6 investigation up to an order issued directly by the former President.

The investigation of three InfoWars figures — Montoya, Shroyer, and Jones — who all have legitimate claims to be media figures happens even as DC judges are getting more insistent that DOJ adhere to Merrick Garland’s own media guidelines. In November, for example, Chief Judge Beryl Howell required prosecutors to acknowledge the media guidelines if they sought orders and warrants targeting news media.

Of course, Alexander has no such press protection, and his decision to go mouth off to Congress for seven hours last week may prove as self-destructive as the similar decision by his mentor, Roger Stone, four years ago.

The government seems to have a pretty good case about how the multi-front breach of the Capitol worked. The question is whether First Amendment protections will shield those who made that breach possible from prosecution.

DOJ Already Debunked the Lies Ali Alexander Is about to Tell Congress

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For all the whinging about the pace of the various investigations into January 6, DOJ’s investigation has already gotten further into the Roger Stone side of the investigation than the Mueller investigation had by the time Stone testified to the House Intelligence Committee on September 26, 2017. At that point, almost fourteen months into the investigation into which of Trump’s rat-fuckers were coordinating with Russia, Mueller had obtained warrants targeting just Stone’s Twitter and Hotmail accounts.

As Stone acolyte Ali Alexander testifies before the January 6 Committee today, by comparison, just 11 months into the investigation, DOJ is already more than 100 days past the arrest of one of the men Stone and Alexander worked closely with on sowing insurrection, Owen Shroyer.

That makes the feat Ali Alexander is going to try to pull off when he testifies today to the January 6 Commission that much more fraught than what Stone tried four years ago. That’s because DOJ has already debunked some of the lies he plans to tell Congress.

In his prepared statement, which the NYT obtained, Alexander (who was originally subpoenaed because of the way he used covers to obtain multiple permits around the Capitol and incited violence in advance, neither of which he addresses in his statement) claims that he was attempting to de-escalate the riot after it started.

There are a number of videos of my associates and me arriving at the Capitol on January 6 after the violence had begun but in the early stages of the lawbreaking. In those videos, our group can be seen working with police to try to end the violence and lawbreaking. We can be seen yelling and screaming at people to STOP trying to enter the Capitol and STOP violent lawbreaking in general.

I believe those videos have been provided to the committee. If they have not, I will be happy to share them.

While I was actively trying to de-escalate events at the Capitol and end the violence and lawlessness, it’s important to note that certain people were nowhere to be found, including Amy Kremer, Kylie Kremer, and Katrina Pierson; essentially, the Women for America First leadership of the Ellipse Rally that was originally titled the “March for Trump” in their National Park Service permit application. Press reports suggest they may have had their feet up drinking donor-funded champagne in a War Room in the Willard. I don’t know where they were. But they weren’t working with police trying to de-escalate the chaos like I was.

It is my belief there may not have been a problem had that same leadership at the Ellipse event not intentionally removed instructions from the program that were supposed to be included to provide clarity on exactly where to go following the Ellipse event. When I protested the removal of those instructions, I was barred from participating as an organizer at the Ellipse event that preceded the Capitol riot. Ultimately, I was a VIP guest at the Ellipse event.

As a result, civil authority collapsed before the Ellipse Rally was over, before I arrived, and before my event was scheduled to begin.

To clarify: My permitted event at Lot 8 never took place. The “One NationUnderGod”event that Stop the Steal was a part of did not start the chaos. The chaos was well underway before our event was scheduled to begin.

We never held our event. We weren’t allowed to. [bold my emphasis, underline Alexander’s]

When Shroyer attempted to make this very same argument in a motion to dismiss in October, he at least included one (but not the most damning) video along with his argument. Here, having received a subpoena asking for such items, Alexander vaguely waves at videos he assumes the Committee has already received.

As the government’s response to Shroyer’s motion laid out, as Shroyer and Jones and Alexander led mobs to the Capitol even after “civil authority” had, according to Alexander, already “collapsed,” the InfoWars personalities were further riling up the mob.

After hearing that people may have breached the Capitol, [Shroyer], [Alex Jones],  and others began leading this large crowd down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Capitol Building.4 The defendant is encircled in red below with a megaphone, at the front of the crowd.

En route, [Shroyer] continued shouting to the crowd walking behind and around him through his megaphone: “The traitors and communists that have betrayed us know we’re coming. We’re coming for all you commie traitors and communists that have stabbed us in the back. You’ve stabbed us in the back one too many times!” He continued, “We will not accept the fake election of that child-molesting Joe Biden, that Chinese Communist agent Joe Biden, we know where he belongs and it’s not the White House!” The defendant then led chants of “Stop the steal!” and “1776!”—an apparent reference to the “first” American Revolution and a renewed need to overthrow the government.

4 See Dkt. 1 at 4 n.5 (citing https://banned.video/watch?id=5ff634c2f23a18318ceb19f1 (last accessed on November 12, 2021)); see also Dkt. 1 at 6 n.8 (citing https://banned.video/watch?id=5 ff6148af23a18318ce99233 (last accessed on November 12, 2021)). [yellow circle marking Alexander added]

Then Jones, Shroyer, and Alexander gave a speech inside the restricted area of the Capitol (but not at one of the areas for which Alexander had a permit).

After the Joint Session got underway at 1:00 p.m., Shroyer entered the Capitol Grounds. He first positioned himself with others on the west side of the Capitol Building, within both the restricted area on January 6 and the broader Capitol Grounds boundaries on the defendant’s DPA map seen above. There, he stood on stacks of chairs and other equipment with [Jones] and led a crowd of hundreds of individuals on the Capitol grounds in chants of “USA! USA! USA!”6 [Shroyer] is encircled in red below on the Capitol grounds soon after leading these chants with a megaphone.

[yellow circle marking Alexander added]

The government doesn’t note it, but January 6 trespasser Stacie Getsinger did on Facebook: while at that non-permitted spot, Jones promised the mob that if they followed him to the East side of the Capitol, they’d get to hear Trump speak again.

Only after promising the mob they’d get to hear Trump did Jones’ handlers attempt to get sanction to go to the East side of the building by promising to de-escalate the riot that they had intentionally led more people to. As the government interprets the video that Shroyer himself provided, when Jones’ bodyguard offered to help de-escalate, the cop pointed northeast, which happens to be where Alexander had a permit and a stage already set up, at the “Lot 8” that Alexander claims they weren’t permitted to use.

INDIVIDUAL: I’m with [Jones], man. I’m telling you right now, he just tried to deescalate this stuff. If we can talk to someone and get him up there, we can get them to back off.

OFFICER: Take it over to the east, the east front’s the problem now. *Pointing east.*

INDIVIDUAL: This is the problem? *Pointing east.*

OFFICER: East front is the problem now.

INDIVIDUAL: Ok, so we need to get him up there and tell people to …

OFFICER: The east front is the problem now.

INDIVIDUAL: Alright, is there a way that we can get him to a position …

OFFICER: Through the hole, through the hole that you guys breached right there *Pointing northeast away from the Capitol Building.*

INDIVIDUAL: We didn’t breach anything.

OFFICER: Well, the whole group that was with you guys.

INDIVIDUAL: We’re just trying to help.

OFFICER: Out through there, all the way out there, take him up there. *Pointing northeast, away from the Capitol Building.* [my emphasis]

That is, this cop specifically told Jones and his entourage, including Alexander, to go to the area where Alexander had a permit (albeit for dozens, not thousands, of people). Instead of going in that direction, they instead circled around close to the Capitol, stepping over barricades and an “Area Closed” sign.

As the defendant and his group curved around the Capitol Building, the body-camera individual stated, “Here’s an opening right here.” The defendant and his group then walked toward where the body-camera individual pointed, passing downed and moved temporary barricades and stepping over at least one fallen sign that appeared to read “Area Closed,” as seen below circled in red.

When Jones’ bodyguard again asked for sanction to trespass in the area where they didn’t have a permit, the cops walked away.

The body-camera individual continued to yell that [Jones] could deescalate the situation, begging them to let Person One speak to the crowd. The two officers speaking then walked away and out of sight. The body-camera individual exhorted, “Nah, that’s not good, dude. That’s not good. That’s fucked. That’s fucked. No way. No fucking way. No way.”

After being told to pull the crowd away towards where Alexander had a permit, but instead deciding to go speak where he didn’t, Jones’ bodyguard acknowledged they might get in trouble for doing so.

The body-camera individual then walked back toward the defendant’s group and asked, “Just get him up there? Hey, Tim, just get him up there? Just do it? But we know we might catch a bang or two.”

And then, after the entourage joined former Jones’ staffer Joe Biggs and the advance guard of the Oath Keepers at the top of the East steps, Jones and Shroyer — still with Alexander present — called for revolution.

Once the defendant and others nearly reached the top, he began to use his megaphone to lead the large crowd in various chants, including “USA!” and “1776!”—again, a reference to revolution.

While, before Jones lured more mobs to the East side of the building, he did call people to stand down, once he got to the East steps, he further riled the crowd. As the government notes sardonically, calling for revolution “does not qualify as deescalation.”

Even assuming the defendant’s argument is true and the defendant received permission to go to the Capitol steps for the limited purpose of deescalating the situation, the defendant did not even do that. Quite the opposite. Despite the defendant’s arguments today that “Shroyer did nothing but offer his assistance to calm the crowd and urge them to leave United States Capitol grounds,” Dkt. 8-1 at 14, the defendant himself said otherwise in an open-source video recorded on August 21, 2021: “From the minute we got on the Capitol, the Capitol area, you [referring to Person One] started telling people to stand down, and the second we got on there, you got up on stacks of chairs, you said, ‘We can’t do this, stand down, don’t go in.’ … And I’m silent during all of this” (emphasis added).11 Moreover, as seen in other videos and described above, the defendant forced his way to the top of Capitol Building’s east steps with Person One and others and led hundreds of other rioters in multiple “USA!” and “1776!” chants with his megaphone. Harkening to the last time Americans overthrew their government in a revolution while standing on the Capitol steps where elected representatives are certifying a Presidential Election you disagree with does not qualify as deescalation.

Had Ali Alexander and Alex Jones taken the crowd they had led to the riot, like Pied Pipers, to Demonstration Area 8 (per the permits that BuzzFeed liberated), which is roughly where the cops directed them to go, and which is where they had a stage and a sound system, they might have prevented, or at least mitigated, the breach of the East front.

Instead, Alexander’s entourage joined their militia allies on the East steps and incited revolution, just moments before some of those militia members forcibly opened a second breach into the Capitol.

Alexander’s real goal, in testifying to the committee (rather than pleading the Fifth, which would be the smart thing to do) may be to learn what the Committee knows, while pretending that his cooperation — which has taken two months, not two weeks — is voluntary, not legally mandated.

In closing, I want to reiterate my posture of compliance. Over the past few weeks, I have spent more than 100 hours personally searching through my archives looking for relevant and responsive documentation to this committee’s requests. I’ve probably spent another 100 hours preparing to answer your questions. I have hired attorneys and computer consultants to be as responsive as possible and provide as much as I could find within the short amount of time I had to produce documents.

I did all of this despite not being accused of a crime. I did all of this despite being a private citizen with Constitutional rights protecting me from unreasonable searches and seizures and without a warrant entitling anyone to the documents I’ve voluntarily provided. It’s prevented me from working. It’s prevented me from sleeping, at times. It’s been extremely difficult and burdensome.

But I am voluntarily here to do the patriotic thing.

If this committee thinks of anything I haven’t turned over to which you believe I may have access, I ask you please to let me know and help refresh my memory. [bold my emphasis, italics Alexander’s emphasis]

When Stone tried to avoid telling the truth to Adam Schiff four years ago, when he actually hadn’t yet received a subpoena, it still led to his prosecution for multiple false statements. Here, Alexander is simply pretending he hasn’t been subpoenaed to appear.

Alexander will be represented today by, among others, Paul Kamenar, the lawyer who — after Roger Stone learned that his former aide had provided damaging information to the FBI — appealed Andrew Miller’s subpoena to testify to Mueller’s grand jury to the DC Circuit, thereby stalling until after the Mueller Report was done. Immediately after the trial was done, Stone hired Kamenar, presumably to learn what Miller had said in subsequent FBI interviews.

That raises real questions about whether Alexander is repeating Stone’s colossally stupid approach to the Russian investigation for his own benefit, or for Stone’s.

A Taxonomy of the [Visible] January 6 “Crime Scene” Investigation

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In preparation for a post about how DOJ might or might not make the move beyond prosecuting pawns who breached the Capitol to those who incited them to come to the Capitol, I want to describe a taxonomy of the January 6 “crime scene” investigation — which I mean to encompass the investigation as it has worked up from the people who actually stormed the Capitol. This is my understanding of how the many already-charged defendants fit together.

DOJ has arrested close to 700 people (probably more than that once you consider cases that haven’t been unsealed). Those defendants generally fit into the following categories, all of which are non-exclusive, meaning lots of people fall into more than one category:

  • Militia conspirators and militia associates
  • Assault defendants
  • Mobilized local networks
  • Other felony defendants
  • Misdemeanants
  • Organizer inciters

In my discussion below, these are all allegations, most of the felony defendants have pled not guilty, and are presumed innocent.

Militia conspirators and militia associates

The most newsworthy prosecutions, thus far, are the militia conspiracies, though not all militia members have been charged as part of a conspiracy.

There are 17 people facing charges in the Oath Keeper conspiracy, plus four cooperators, as well as another cooperator and two more Oath Keepers not charged in the conspiracy.

There are 17 Proud Boys currently charged in various conspiracies, including four, thus far, charged in what I call the Leader conspiracy. I suspect in the near future there will be consolidation of the core Proud Boy cases. In addition, there are a significant number of Proud Boys charged either in group indictments (such as the five men who followed Joe Biggs around that day), or individually, some with assault (such as Christopher Worrell, David Dempsey, and Dan “Milkshake” Scott), and some with just trespassing (such as Lisa Homer or Micajah Jackson).

There is one conspiracy indictment against mostly 3%ers, along with Guy Reffitt, who was individually charged, and a few others whose 3% ties are less well-established in charging papers.

All of which is to say that a small but significant minority of the January 6 defendants have some tie to an organized militia group.

That’s important, because the government is very close to showing that there was a plan — led at the Capitol by the Proud Boys, but seemingly coordinated closely with some members of the Oath Keepers. The plan entailed initiating a breach, surrounding the Capitol, opening up multiple additional fronts (of which the East appears to be the most important), and inciting the “normies” to do some of the worst violence and destruction, making the Capitol uninhabitable during the hours when Congress was supposed to be making Joe Biden President. Until about 4PM — when cops began to secure the Capitol and DOD moved closer to sending in the National Guard — the plan met with enormous success (though I wouldn’t be surprised if the conspirators hoped that a normie might attack a member of Congress, giving Trump cause to invoke harsher measures).

People complain that DOJ has been doing nothing in the 11 months since the riot. But this has been a central focus of DOJ’s effort: understanding how this plan worked, and then assembling enough evidence and cooperating witnesses to be able to lay out several intersecting conspiracies that will show not just that these groups wanted to prevent the certification of the vote (what they’re currently charged with), but pursued a plan to lead a mob attack on the Capitol to ensure that happened.

Proving these interlocking conspiracies would be vital to moving up from the militias, because it shows the premeditation involved in the assault on the Capitol. DOJ hasn’t rolled this out yet, but they seem to be very very close.

Assault defendants

Close to 150 people have been charged with assault (DOJ has a higher number but they’re tracking two different crimes, 18 USC 111, assault, and 18 USC 231, whereas I’m tracking just the former). The assaults charged against these defendants range from pushing a cop once to tasing someone and nearly killing him. Much of this amounted to mob violence, albeit at times the mob violence was pretty finely coordinated.

That said, there are a handful of defendants charged with assaults that were tactically critical to the plan implemented by the Proud Boys (again, these are just allegations and all have pled not guilty and are presumed innocent):

  • After speaking with Proud Boy Joe Biggs, Ryan Samsel kicked off the riot by storming over the first barricade, knocking over a female cop
  • Ronnie Sandlin and Nate DeGrave helped open both the East Door and Senate gallery doors
  • Jimmy Haffner allegedly sprayed something at the cops trying to stave off the crowd on the East side
  • George Tenney pushed cops away from the East door and opened it (he is charged with civil disorder, not assault)
  • Active duty Marine Chris Warnagiris kept cops from closing the East door after Tenney had opened it

It’s important to understand whether those defendants who committed tactically critical assaults were operating with knowledge of the larger plan.

For most of the rest of the assault defendants, though, it’s a matter of identifying them, assembling the video and other evidence to prove the case, and finding them to arrest them.

The FBI has posted close to 500 total assault suspect BOLOs (Be On the Lookout posters, basically a request for help identifying someone), which means there may be up to 350 assault suspects still at large.

I expect assault arrests to continue at a steady pace, perhaps even accelerate as the government completes the investigations required with people who either used better operational security or fled.

Mobilized local networks

Something DOJ appears to be investigating are key localized networks through which people were radicalized.

This is most obvious for Southern California. The 3%er indictment is geographically based (and as I’ll argue in a follow-up, is investigatively important for that geographic tie.) In addition, after months of contemplating what seemed like it might be a larger conspiracy indictment, DOJ recently charged Ed Badalian and a guy nicknamed Swedish Scarf, in a conspiracy with one of the people accused of tasering Michael Fanone, Danny Rodriguez.

Recent arrest affidavits, most notably that of Danean MacAndrews, also show that FBI shared identifiers from the various geofence warrants obtained targeting the Capitol on January 6 and shared them with regional intelligence centers to identify local participants in the mob.

There have been recent case developments, too, which suggest DOJ is letting people from Southern Californian plead down in an effort to obtain their testimony (which I’ll explain more in my discussion of misdemeanants).

Some of this localized investigation feeds back into the larger investigation, as evidenced by the two conspiracy indictments coming out of Southern California. But it also shows how these various radicalized networks fit together.

While it is less visible (and perhaps because there’s not always the same terrorist and drug war intelligence infrastructure as LA has, potentially less formalized), I assume similar localized investigations are going on in key organizing hotspots as well, including at least PA and FL, and probably also the Mountain West.

Other felony defendants

There are other defendants charged with a felony for their actions on January 6, most often for obstruction of the vote count (under 18 USC 1512c2) and/or civil disorder. As of November 6, DOJ said 265 people had been charged with obstruction. A number of those obstruction defendants have been permitted to plead down to a trespassing charge, usually the more serious 18 USC 1752.

It’s hard to generalize about this group, in part because some of the mobilizing networks that got these people to the Capitol would not be visible (if at all) until sentencing, particularly given that few of them are being detained.

But the group includes a lot of QAnoners — which, I have argued, actually had more success at getting bodies into place to obstruct the vote count than the militias (which were busy opening multiple fronts). The PodCast Finding Q revealed that the FBI started more actively investigating QAnon as a mobilizing force in the days after the insurrection. So the FBI may well be investigating QAnon from the top down. But it’s not as easy to understand as — for example — investigative steps targeting QAnoners as it is the militia networks, in part because QAnon doesn’t require the same kind of network ties to radicalize people.

These defendants also include people mobilized in other networks — some anti-mask, some military, some more directly tied to institutional right wing organizations, and some who simply responded to the advertising for the event. Understanding how and why these people ended up at the Capitol is a critical step to understanding how the event worked. But it is harder to discern that from the court filings available.

Aside from better known right wing personalities, it’s also harder to identify potentially significant defendants from this group.

In the days ahead, a number of DC judges will be ruling on DOJ’s application of obstruction. Unless all rule for the government (which I find unlikely), it means DOJ will face a scramble of what to do with these defendants, especially those not otherwise charged with a felony like civil disorder. And until judges rule, there will be a significant number of felony defendants who are deferring decisions on plea offers, to see whether the felony charge against them will really survive.

The fact that most of the least serious felony defendants are delaying plea decisions creates an artificial appearance that the vast majority of those charged in January 6 were charged with trespassing. It’s not that there aren’t a huge number of felony defendants; it’s just that they’re not making the news because they’re not pleading guilty, yet.

Misdemeanants

The most common complaint about the January 6 investigation — from both those following from afar and the judges facing an unprecedented flood of trespassing defendants in their already crowded court rooms — the sheer number of trespassing defendants.

It is true that, in the days after the riot, DOJ arrested the people who most obviously mugged for the cameras.

But in the last six months or so, it seems that DOJ has been more selective about which of the 2,000 – 2,500 people who entered the Capitol they choose to arrest, based off investigative necessities. After all, in addition to being defendants, these “MAGA Tourists” are also witnesses to more serious crimes. Now that DOJ has set up a steady flow of plea deals for misdemeanors, people are pleading guilty more quickly. With just a few exceptions, the vast majority of those charged or who have pled down to trespassing charges have agreed to a cooperation component (entailing an FBI interview and sharing social media content) as part of their plea deal. And DOJ seems to be arresting the trespassers who, for whatever reason, may be useful “cooperating” witnesses for the larger investigation. I started collecting some of what misdemeanant’ cooperation will yield, but it includes:

Video or photographic evidence

Hard as it may be to understand, there were parts of the riot that were not, for a variety of reasons, well captured by government surveillance footage. And a significant number of misdemeanor defendants seem to be arrested because they can be seen filming with their phones on what surveillance footage does exist, and are known to have traveled to places where such surveillance footage appears to be unavailable or less useful. The government has or seems to be using evidence from other defendants to understand what happened:

  • Under the scaffolding set up for the inauguration
  • At the scene of Ashli Babbitt’s killing (though this appears to be as much to get audio capturing certain defendants as video)
  • In the offices of the Parliamentarian, Jeff Merkley, and Nancy Pelosi
  • As Kelly Meggs and other Oath Keepers walked down a hallway hunting for Nancy Pelosi
  • Some of what happened in the Senate, perhaps after Leo Bozell and others rendered the CSPAN cameras ineffective

In other words, these misdemeanor arrests are necessary building blocks for more serious cases, because they are in possession of evidence against others.

Witness testimony

TV lawyers seem certain that Trump could be charged with incitement, without considering that to charge that, DOJ would first have to collect evidence that people responded to his words by invading the Capitol or even engaging in violence.

That’s some of what misdemeanor defendants would be available to testify to given their social media claims and statements of offense. For example, trespasser defendants have described:

  • What went on at events on January 5
  • The multiple signs that they were not permitted to enter whatever entrance they did enter, including police lines, broken windows and doors, loud alarms, and tear gas
  • Directions that people in tactical gear were giving
  • Their response to Rudy Giuliani and Mo Brooks’ calls for violence
  • Their response to Trump’s complaint that Mike Pence had let him down
  • The actions they took (including breaching the Capitol) after Alex Jones promised they’d get to hear Trump again if they moved to the East front of the Capitol

Securing the testimony of those purportedly incited by Trump or Rudy or Mo Brooks or Alex Jones is a necessary step in holding them accountable for incitement.

Network information

Some misdemeanor defendants are being arrested because their buddies already were arrested (and sometimes these pleas are “wired,” requiring everyone to plead guilty together). Other misdemeanor defendants are part of an interesting network (including the militias). By arresting them (and often obtaining and exploiting their devices), the government is able to learn more about those with more criminal exposure on January 6.

Misdemeanor plea deals

In its sentencing memo for Jacob Hiles, the guy who otherwise would probably be fighting an obstruction charged if he hadn’t helped prosecute Capitol Police Officer Michael Riley, the government stated that, “no previously sentenced defendant has provided assistance of the degree provided by the defendant in this case.” The comment strongly suggests there are other misdemeanor defendants who have provided such assistance, but they haven’t been sentenced yet.

This category is harder to track, because, unless and until such cooperation-driven misdemeanor pleas are publicly discussed in future sentencing memos, we may never learn of them. But there are people — Baked Alaska is one, but by no means the only one, of them — who suggested he might be able to avoid obstruction charges by cooperating with prosecutors (there’s no sign, yet, that he has cooperated). We should assume that some of the defendants who’ve been deferring charges for months on end, only to end up with a misdemeanor plea, cooperated along the way to get that charge. That is, some of the misdemeanor pleas that everyone is complaining about likely reflect significant, completed cooperation with prosecutors, the kind of cooperation without which this prosecution will never move beyond the crime scene.

Organizer inciters

In this post, I have argued that DOJ is very close to rolling out more details of the plot to seize the Capitol, a plot that was implemented (at the Capitol) by the Proud Boys in coordination with other militia-tied people. I have also argued that one goal of the misdemeanor arrests has been to obtain evidence showing that speeches inciting violence, attacks on Mike Pence, or directing crowds to (in effect) trespass brought about violence, the targeting of Mike Pence, and the breach of the Capitol.

If I’m right about these two observations, it means that the investigation has reached a step where the next logical move would be to charge those who incited violence or directed certain movement. The next logical step would be to hold those who caused the obstruction accountable for the obstruction they cultivated.

This is why I focused on Alex Jones in this post: because there is a great deal of evidence that Alex Jones, the guy whom Trump personally ordered to lead mobs to the Capitol, was part of the plot led by his former employee, Joe Biggs, to breach a second front of the Capitol. If this investigation is going to move further, people like Alex Jones and other people who helped organize and incite the riot, will be the next step.

In fact, DOJ has made moves towards doing this for months — though at the moment, they seem woefully inadequate. For example DOJ charged Brandon Straka, who had a key role in inciting violence both before and at the event, in January; he pled guilty to a misdemeanor in October (his sentencing just got moved from December 17 to December 22). DOJ charged Owen Shroyer, Jones’ sidekick as the Pied Piper of insurrection, but just for trespassing, not for the obvious incitement he and Jones did. The one case where DOJ has already moved to hold someone accountable for his role in inciting violence is Russell Taylor, who was charged in the 3%er conspiracy, but that conspiracy indictment will test DOJ’s ability to hold those who incited violence accountable.

Back in August, when these three developments were clear, I noted that DOJ had only barely begun to unpack what happened on January 5 (to say nothing of events in DC in December), which played a key role in the success of January 6. It has provided scant new detail of having done so (though there are signs they are collecting such information).

The investigation at the crime scene is not the only investigation into January 6 going on. Merrick Garland made it clear DOJ was following the money. The FBI conducted investigative steps targeting QAnon just days after the riot. Daily Beast broke the news of a grand jury investigation into Sidney Powell’s grifting, an investigation that may be assisted by recriminations between her, Mike Flynn, and Patrick Byrne.

But the investigation building off of the crime scene will proceed, or not, based on DOJ’s ability to build cases against the organizer inciters.

Release the Kraken!! Two Degrees of Donald Trump at the East Doors

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It was probably happenstance that Jimmy Haffner, who was arrested the other day for assaulting the cops guarding the East door of the Capitol on January 6, met “Sidney FRICKIN’ Powell” while she was on a bus tour spreading the Big Lie. The FBI included a picture of him apparently pictured with Powell (her face is redacted because she has not been arrested) purportedly to add validation for their identification of him.

The rest of his networking, however, seems absolutely central to the evidence the government is collecting to explain how the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, and a mob led by Alex Jones all converged on the East steps of the Capitol just before it was breached, with the involvement of a number of Marines.

As the FBI explains, Haffner and his buddy Ron Loehrke — who lived in Washington State on January 6 but both of whom have moved since — were recruited to go to DC by then head of the Proud Boys in the Northwest, Ethan Nordean. On December 27, the complaint explains, Nordean texted Loehrke saying he wanted him “on the front line” with him. In response, Loehrke told Nordean he was bringing three “bad mother fuckers” with him.

Loehrke and Haffner’s phones were in contact 106 times between December 19 and January 7. Sometime on January 5, Nordean’s phone called Loehrke’s.

On the morning of January 6, Loehrke showed up at the Washington Monument, where Telegram chats sent the day before said the Proud Boys were meeting up. He and Haffner marched with Nordean and others towards the Capitol (though Haffner was pretty disciplined in keep his face hidden). Loehrke helped people over the initial barricades and waved people forward. He later encouraged rioters: “Don’t back down, patriots! The whole fucking world is watching. Stand the fuck up today!”

Both Loehrke and Haffner then moved to the East side of the Capitol, where Joe Biggs, the Oath Keepers, and Alex Jones would also go. The two men helped dismantle the barricades that enabled a mob to crowd the stairs in advance of the East doors being opened. “Let’s go! Get in there!” Loehrke exhorted.

The government alleges that Haffner sprayed the officers guarding the East doors with some kind of aerosol, which played a key role, they suggest, in the cops losing control of that entrance. Minutes later, the rioters breached the Capitol.

The arrest affidavit doesn’t say it, but Joe Biggs and the Oath Keepers were in the immediate vicinity as this happened; Alex Jones had been or was just yards away riling up the crowd he had lured there by falsely claiming that Trump would speak there, chanting “1776!” with his blowhorn.

The affidavit explains that Loehrke went to Merkley’s office once he breached the Capitol; it doesn’t say whether he met with Zach Rehl there.

There are lots of other details the FBI doesn’t provide either: the time on January 5 when Nordean called Loehrke, the hotel in downtown DC that Haffner checked into on January 5, the hotel at which Loehrke’s tattooed hand was videoed outside. It doesn’t reveal whether Haffner or Loehrke were at a meeting on January 5 that Nordean and Biggs — but not their alleged Proud Boy co-defendants — attended.

Even without those details, however, the arrest affidavit strongly suggests that guys Nordean personally recruited to attend the January 6 riot not only knew to converge on the East doors at the same time that Biggs, the Oath Keepers, and Jones were also doing so, but played a key role in successfully breaching that door.

Update: Here’s a video of Loehrke’s activities that day (look for his maroon hood) put together by online researchers. They also note he’s a Marine, just like many of the other key figures behind the breach of the East doors.

Where to Look (or Not) for Signs of Life in Rule of Law

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According to the court schedule for this week, January 6 defendants Stacie and John Getsinger will plead guilty on Thursday, no doubt to misdemeanor trespassing. On the surface, their guilty plea will likely resemble those of the dozens of other January 6 misdemeanor pleas that have gone before them, and that may be all it is.

But, along with a handful of others (Adam Johnson and Justin McAuliffe, who both pled guilty last week, are two other examples), these pleas may hint at what kind of larger underlying case DOJ is building. That’s because the Getsingers are witnesses to an important detail about the way January 6 worked: that Alex Jones, whom Trump had put in charge of leading mobs to the Capitol, likewise induced them to go to the top of the East steps of the Capitol with a lie, the false claim that Trump would be speaking there. That’s what led a couple like the Getsingers, who otherwise would never have entered the Capitol, to do so.

This comes even as InfoWars personality Owen Shroyer’s attempts to dodge his own legal accountability have brought more focus on Jones’ actions, described as Person One in DOJ’s opposition to Shroyer’s attempt to dismiss his indictment.

When the body-camera individual asked if he could get Person One there, the officer stated, “Through the hole that you guys breached right there” (emphasis added). When the body-camera individual responded that he didn’t breach anything, the officer retorted, “Well, the whole group that was with you guys.” The officer then pointed again away from the Capitol Building toward the northeast, telling them to leave through the same hole he had just said other rioters had breached. An officer surrounded by people illegally on the Capitol Grounds dismissively waving them away from the Capitol Building and toward another area hundreds of others had already illegally breached does not amount to “telling [the defendant] that … police officers could use his help.”

[snip]

[T]he defendant forced his way to the top of Capitol Building’s east steps with Person One and others and led hundreds of other rioters in multiple “USA!” and “1776!” chants with his megaphone. Harkening to the last time Americans overthrew their government in a revolution while standing on the Capitol steps where elected representatives are certifying a Presidential Election you disagree with does not qualify as deescalation.

[snip]

The video shows the defendant on an elevated platform leading chants with his megaphone on the Capitol Grounds before his first interaction with law enforcement officers; it shows the body-camera individual repeatedly (and unsuccessfully) try to get Person One on the Capitol steps; it shows evidence that the defendant reasonably should have known he was somewhere he was not supposed to be, including by stepping near moved barriers and downed signs; and it shows officers repeatedly refer to the defendant’s group as part of the problem and the “breaches” of various police lines. In fact, at the end of the video, the body-camera individual took matters into his own hands after facing multiple rejections for permission. He turned to the group and asked, “Just get him up there? … But we know we might catch a bang or two.” That is not evidence that the defendant received explicit or implicit permission to go onto the Capitol steps. That is evidence that the defendant is guilty of the crimes he is charged with.

Every single time that Merrick Garland has been asked about the scope of the January 6 investigation, he has said his DOJ will follow the evidence where it leads. These details are tidbits of the evidence in question, visible tidbits that would be largely meaningless unless you understood how the Oath Keepers, Joe Biggs, and his former employer all converged on those East doors just before they were opened from inside.

None of these details — and others like them, such as Johnson’s description of the crowd’s response to Rudy Giuliani and Mo Brooks’ calls for violence — guarantee that Rudy and Brooks will be held responsible.

At the rally, JOHNSON listened to several speeches, including by former President Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and an unknown older member of Congress–the latter of whom JOHNSON heard stating that it was time for action and violence. In response to these comments, JOHNSON saw members of the crowd nodding their heads in agreement.

But if you don’t know these details, you don’t know even what is publicly available about the investigation.

I respect David Rothkopf. I share his concerns about the threat Trump poses to US democracy and the limited time before Republicans likely take control of the House and shut down efforts to guard democracy in the US.

But unlike him I know that the place to learn about DOJ’s January 6 investigation is not by asking Harry Litman or Barb McQuade or AG Gill or Lawrence Tribe or even Dahlia Lithwick — all of whom I respect greatly — how they feel about the general direction of the investigation, but instead to look at the actual records or reading the reports of people actually covering hearings, such as this crucial Josh Gerstein story about how prosecutors responded when Judge Carl Nichols (the former Clarence Thomas clerk who happens to be presiding over Steve Bannon’s case) asked if someone who did what Trump did could be charged with the same obstruction charge DOJ is using with the more serious defendants.

At a hearing on Monday for defendant Garret Miller of Richardson, Texas, Nichols made the first move toward a Trump analogy by asking a prosecutor whether the obstruction statute could have been violated by someone who simply “called Vice President Pence to seek to have him adjudge the certification in a particular way.” The judge also asked the prosecutor to assume the person trying to persuade Pence had the “appropriate mens rea,” or guilty mind, to be responsible for a crime.

Nichols made no specific mention of Trump, who appointed him to the bench, but the then-president was publicly and privately pressuring Pence in the days before the fateful Jan. 6 tally to decline to certify Joe Biden’s victory. Trump also enlisted other allies, including attorney John Eastman, to lean on Pence.

An attorney with the Justice Department Criminal Division, James Pearce, initially seemed to dismiss the idea that merely lobbying Pence to refuse to recognize the electoral result would amount to the crime of obstructing or attempting to obstruct an official proceeding.

“I don’t see how that gets you that,” Pearce told the judge.

However, Pearce quickly added that it might well be a crime if the person reaching out to Pence knew the vice president had an obligation under the Constitution to recognize the result.

“If that person does that knowing it is not an available argument [and is] asking the vice president to do something the individual knows is wrongful … one of the definitions of ‘corruptly’ is trying to get someone to violate a legal duty,” Pearce said.

I can’t tell you whether DOJ will get much further up the chain of responsibility for January 6; part of that necessarily depends on DOJ’s success at obtaining cooperation, of which only that of Oath Keepers has DOJ thus far disclosed. I can’t tell you what DOJ is doing behind the scenes in what Garland describes as “following the money.”

But I can tell you that columns like Rothkopf’s, which complain that Garland’s DOJ is not doing enough to hold Trump accountable while ignoring cases like the Tom Barrack prosecution and the Rudy Giuliani investigation that provide concrete evidence about the kinds of investigative steps Garland’s DOJ has been willing to pursue (the Rudy raid was likely among Lisa Monaco’s first major decisions), likely don’t make it any more likely that Garland will be able to act against the masterminds of January 6 any sooner.

A far better use of Rothkopf’s time and space than bitching that Garland has authorized John Durham’s funding request, for example …

We have seen that Garland is letting the highly politicized investigation of special prosecutor John Durham into the conduct of the Trump-Russia investigation continue (by continuing its funding). We therefore have the real prospect that those who sought to look into the Trump-Russia ties that both Mueller and Congressional investigations have demonstrated were real, unprecedented and dangerous might be prosecuted while those who actively sought the help of a foreign enemy to win an election will not be.

… Would be to ask Harry Litman and Barb McQuade and AG Gill and Lawrence Tribe and Dahlia Lithwick about the specific things that Durham has done — like failing to cut-and-paste with fidelity, relying on a Twitter feed for a key factual assertion, and using materiality arguments to skirt DOJ’s prohibition on publicly commenting on uncharged conduct — that put his prosecutions in violation of DOJ guidelines. Such questions would be readily accessible to all by reading just two indictments (as compared to the full dockets of 675 charged January 6 defendants), it would draw on the considerable expertise of the prosecutors he cited, and it might do something concrete to give Garland the political support he would need to force Durham to hew to DOJ guidelines.

Importantly, it may not be possible for DOJ to move quickly enough against Trump without violating due process (just as one example, the Project Veritas investigation could lead to incredibly damaging revelations about political spying targeting the Biden family, but it’s not entirely clear DOJ respected First Amendment protections).

Which means those with a platform would be better off defending the rule of law — selling independents and moderate Republicans on the import of the January 6 investigation — than whining that it is not working quickly enough.

Update: In his piece, Rothkopf complains, as well, that the only visible investigation into the people around Trump is coming from the January 6 Commission, not DOJ.

More troubling to me though is that the only reason we are hearing of any case being brought against Bannon as a senior coup plotter (or upper middle management in any case) is because Congress is investigating the events of Jan. 6. We have not heard a peep out of the Department of Justice about prosecuting those responsible for inciting, planning or funding the effort to undo the lawful transfer of presidential power to the man the American people elected, Joe Biden.

This morning, Adam Schiff went on CNN. Dana Bash asked him about Judge Amit Mehta’s focus on Donald Trump’s role in the insurrection in a sentencing last week. In response, Schiff described that, “I am concerned that there does not appear to be an investigation, unless it’s being done very quietly” into Trump’s call to Brad Raffensperger to demand he come up with just enough votes for Trump to win the state. But Schiff noted that, “this is not January 6 related — specifically, at least, to the violence of that day.”

Then Bash asked whether Schiff was saying he wanted Biden’s DOJ to be more aggressive. Schiff did not answer “yes.” Instead, he responded to a question about DOJ by talking about the January 6 Commission’s role in holding people accountable.

We are now trying to expose the full facts of the former President’s misconduct, as well as those around him. It is certainly possible that what we reveal in our investigation will inform the Justice Department of other facts that they may not yet be aware of yet. And so we will pursue our role in this, which is to expose the malefactors, to bring about legislation as a result of our investigation, to protect the country. But we will count on the Justice Department to play its role.

That is, when Bash asked specifically if DOJ was being aggressive enough on January 6, Schiff implied that the January 6 Commission played a key role in their efforts.

This is something that has not gotten enough attention: Even if DOJ didn’t ask, the Jan 6 Commission would refer people for any crimes they discovered, as SSCI and HPSCI both referred people to Mueller for lying, lies that led to the prosecution and cooperation of (at least) Michael Cohen and Sam Patten. Schiff knows better than anyone that HPSCI’s investigation was critical to the prosecution of Roger Stone. I also suspect that Steve Bannon’s transcripts were important preparation for Bannon’s grand jury appearance in January 2019, because they laid out the script that the White House had given to him for his testimony. I further suspect that SSCI obtained — and then shared — testimony from certain witnesses that Mueller could not otherwise get.

Trump’s pseudo-cooperation with the Mueller investigation, waiving privilege for the investigation but not any prosecution, likely was one hinderance to holding him accountable. And on this investigation, DOJ would be even more constrained, because it could face Executive Privilege claims and definitely would face Speech and Debate protections.

There has been almost no discussion of how closely Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney are working with DOJ to ensure that the Jan 6 Commission doesn’t impede DOJ’s Jan 6 investigation, but it must be happening.

Similarly, there has been no discussion of obvious witnesses that the Jan 6 Commission has not (yet) subpoenaed, such as Lin Wood or Rudy Giuliani, the latter of whom DOJ seized phones from in another investigation in April.

Finally, there has been little discussion of how DOJ moved to have Executive Privilege waived for Congress just as the Jan 6 Commission got up and running.

DOJ only released its new contact policy — under which the request for a privilege determination may have been passed — on July 21. I’m curious whether the request for a  waiver of executive privilege waiver came after that. Executive privilege considerations were a key limitation on the Mueller investigation overseen in its final days partly by Rosen himself.

At least as interesting, however, is that DOJ sent the letter just one day before DOJ submitted a court filing in the Eric Swalwell lawsuit — speaking of members of Congress but using more generalized language — arguing that no federal officials can campaign in their official capacity and further noting that attacking one’s employer is not within the scope of someone’s job description.

DOJ is using that same waived privilege for the documents responsive to the Jan 6 Commission requests at the National Archive.

That is, DOJ is supporting the efforts of a co-equal branch of government to obtain testimony and records that that co-equal branch of government has a broader claim to than DOJ itself.

And Schiff, who understands better than anyone how HPSCI and DOJ worked together on the Stone prosecution, described, after first answering a question that he distinguished from January 6, then addressing January 6 directly by saying that “our role in this[] is to expose the malefactors,” and “we will count on the Justice Department to play its role” if and when the Commission “inform[s] the Justice Department of other facts that they may not yet be aware of yet.”

Yes, the January 6 Commission has a very short window in which to work. Yes, Congress is taking steps that DOJ does not appear to be taking. But that doesn’t mean that DOJ is not obtaining that evidence.

Schrödinger’s Capitol: Three Things Owen Shroyer Neglects to Mention

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Owen Shroyer has filed a motion to dismiss his trespassing case claiming that FBI left out material information in the arrest warrant against Shroyer. Basically, he argues that the FBI arrest affidavit neglected to describe that Jones and his entourage were begging the cops to let them go de-escalate the crowd.

Burns, however, omits that nothing in the video shows where the restricted area was, what its boundaries were, or warns Shroyer that he was in the restricted area. Burns also omits that, over the course of the 20-minute video, Shroyer’s bodyguard talked to multiple United States Capitol police officers, including on the United States Capitol steps, and expressed that Shroyer and his colleagues wanted to follow the law and help the United States Capitol police deescalate events. Burns conveniently omits the fact that a United States Capitol police officer – identifiable by his name tag as “C. Atkinson” – directs Shroyer and his colleagues to the opposite side of the Capitol building as being where the crowd is the worst when Shroyer’s bodyguard asks where the United States Capitol police needs help the most instead of telling them to leave a restricted area or not to go in one.

Shockingly, Burns hides from the Court that, when Shroyer and his colleagues went where Officer Atkinson directed them to go, Shroyer’s bodyguard had several more conversations with United States Capitol police officers right in front of what appears to be the United States Capitol steps. In these conversations, Shroyer’s bodyguard, Shroyer, and his colleagues interact with both rank-and-file Capitol police officers forming a line to guard the Capitol steps and a Capitol police commander who placed a phone call to his superiors asking whether they could allow Shroyer and his colleagues to assist in deescalating the crowd. Burns fails to tell the Court that, in these interactions, not a single Capitol police officer asked Shroyer or his colleagues to leave or told them that they were unlawfully in a restricted area. Burns also does not tell the Court that the United States Capitol police officers pled with their superiors to allow Shroyer and his colleagues to help them deescalate the crowd.

Shroyer additionally claims that the restricted area for every participant who didn’t already have a legal restriction on being on the Capitol grounds (as Shroyer did) changed after cops moved some barricades.

But Shroyer leaves out three key details that make it clear this filing is a bunch of propaganda.

Alex Jones invited the crowd to add to the mob on the East side even before a cop said there was a problem there

First, he’s lying about what the video shows. It starts with the interaction he describes in the motion, with a timestamp of 13:00. Except then it reverts to earlier footage, time stamped beginning 12:52, where Jones already makes the decision to move to the East front, promising viewers that Trump will speak and explaining they have a permit and a stage. The cop had nothing to do with their decision to go to the East side, and (as I noted here), Jones clearly suggested he was taking his mob to a place where he had legal permission to be, where he had a stage and a permit. That wasn’t the top of the steps; it was an area away from the Capitol that he never used.

Furthermore, the interaction in question captures the cop saying that “you” (meaning the rioters) had breached the East side barricades, undercutting their claim that the cops let rioters in or that the restricted area (for people not named Shroyer, who had a pre-existing one) had changed. Another cop describes that the stairs had been breached, again emphasizing that everyone was trespassing. The video shows Jones’ handlers attempting, but failing, to get legal coverage for Jones to mount the steps. That is, it pointedly shows that the cops never did sanction Jones’ trespassing (though one female cop said if he made it there on his own he could try).

And the video doesn’t show what happened when Jones did climb the steps.

This video (h/t @gal_suburban) shows that amid a mob of people Jones already knew had illegally “breached” the steps, Jones and Shroyer both yelled into blowhorns, “1776” amid an inflamed mob.

Only after that did Jones ask people to be peaceful, then shifted to a “Fight for Trump” chant, again inflaming the crowd (as he began to walk away).

That is, once they got the top of the steps claiming they were going to de-esecalate, they did the opposite, they used the language of Revolution.

Shroyer never denies he knew that his incitement throughout this video was illegal

Shroyer’s filing admits a key detail used to arrest him: less than a year before January 6, he had entered into a deferred prosecution agreement that prohibited him from making a ruckus anywhere at the Capitol, including the grounds of the Capitol.

The DPA defines the “Capitol Buildings” as the “United States Capitol, the Senate and House Office Buildings and garages, the Capitol Power Plant, all subways and enclosed passages connecting 2 or more of such structures, and the real property underlying and enclosed by any such structure.” Id. at p. 4. It the provides a map delineating what are considered to be the U.S. Capitol Grounds. Id. at p. 5. FBI Special Agent Clarke Burns insinuates that Shroyer violated this agreement even though federal prosecutors have left that decision to D.C. prosecutors.

DC prosecutors are AUSAs.

What Shroyer doesn’t mention is that the map he references includes all the places he was during the video he says exonerates him.

the term “United States Capitol Grounds” was defined to include an area delineated in a map attached to the DPA spanning the Capitol grounds from 3rd Street NW on the west side of the Capitol building, to 2nd Street SE on the east side of the Capitol building

And that’s it. He doesn’t deny his inflammatory speech was a violation of his DPA. He doesn’t say he didn’t have special notice and special prohibition to be on the Capitol grounds riling up a mob.

Having admitted to the DPA, he just ignores the import of it.

Shroyer neglects to mention the import of Ali Alexander’s presence

The video Shroyer says he exonerates him often doesn’t show who is in the entourage (it doesn’t even show his presence), though other videos clearly show who was with Shroyer and Jones as they made a public announcement they were moving to the East side even before speaking to a cop, then moving to the East side and chanting “1776” from the midst of the mob.

But one short clip shows that Ali Alexander was there (as, again, other videos confirm he was throughout).

The significance of Alexander’s presence is that — as BuzzFeed and others have shown — he used a series of front organizations to obtain permits at various locations around the Capitol. And those getting the permits on Alexander’s behalf were clearly told that their permits — the permit Jones used to lure people to the East side, only to ignore once he got there — were limited to 50 people.

Martin, an Iraq War veteran who serves on his local city council, directed the officer to speak with Stephen Brown, a sound and lighting technician who was listed as a “spokesperson,” because Martin said he “only deals with the logistics and the hotel bookings for the event.”

Brown, according to the officer’s notes, said he was “shocked” Martin would say that “because he is in daily communication with Mr. Martin for information regarding the event. He does not understand why he would say that or not give me the information I requested.”

A screenshot of the text from the documents

Obtained via Capitol Police

Brown, who did not respond to emails and phone calls requesting comment, told the officer Martin “is associated with Stop the Steal and travels with Ali Alexander.” Martin “does not seem to have an official title but he deals with the daily operations to include hotel books and car rentals.”

Alexander did not respond to a request for comment.

The officer reported advising Brown “of my concerns of not being able to regulate their numbers to 50 persons or less,” he wrote. “I explained that once information is on social media it is hard to regulate the number of participants. If his event is in fact one in the same Capitol Police will not be able to accommodate his event to the participant numbers being out of regulations and a public safety issue.”

Even the mob that Jones led to the East side exceeded what were allowed under the permit, and he (accompanied all the time by Alexander) didn’t lead them to the permitted area, which might have had the effect of drawing people away from (or at least prevented further accumulation on) the steps.

Shroyer didn’t need cops to tell him what was permissible for everyone who, unlike him, didn’t already have a prior prohibition tied to the Capitol grounds. He was steps away from Alexander the entire time in question.

Alex Jones Used the Promise of a Permit and a Stage to Lure Hundreds to the East Steps

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As I noted in this post, Zach Rehl got me to look closer at BuzzFeed’s story liberating the Capitol Police permits for the events on January 6 (even if, after he discovered my own post, he didn’t give me credit in his follow-up). The most important point in Jason Leopold’s story on the permits is that Ali Alexander’s associates used some front organizations to hide that a series of permits were actually all for the Stop the Steal rally.

But Leopold also got one of those people fronting for Alexander, Nathan Martin, to confirm that no one ever used the stage set up in conjunction with the permit.

The One Nation Under God demonstration was scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. near Constitution Avenue NE and First Street. A stage, podium, and sound system were set up. But Martin said they were never used.

That’s important because of what Alex Jones told a group of more than 50 people (the limit on the permit obtained by a front for Alexander) to get them to go to the East side of the building, while Alexander was standing just a few feet behind him. The idea, per Jones, was that they would all go to the other side of the building where they had a stage and a permit so as to avoid any confrontation with the police. (h/t KarmaOneSixOne for alerting me to this video)

Listen to me. We’ve got a permit on the other side. It’s great that this happened, but they’re, Trump’s not going to come if they’re taking this over. We’re not Antifa, we’re not BLM. You’re amazing, I love you. Let’s march around to the other side. Let’s not fight the police and give the system what they want. We are peaceful, we won this election, and much as I love seeing all the Trump flags flying over this, we need to not have the confrontation with the police, they’re going to make that the story. I’m going to march to the other side where we have a stage, where we can speak, and occupy peacefully. Tell everybody behind you. March to the other side. March to the other side.

[Surround the Capitol!]

You guys are great. But the police — provocateurs have caused a problem.

These are the comments that got people like John and Stacie Getsinger to go to the East side of the Capitol, leading them to believe that if they followed Jones, they would get to hear Trump speak again.

Only, Jones didn’t go to the permitted stage. Instead, he walked right up the East steps, stack-style, with boom mikes and people chanting QAnon slogans around him. Some of the Oath Keepers were already waiting, Jones’ former employee Biggs was either there or on his way, and shortly after Biggs arrived, someone would come from inside and open those doors, only to have a Stack ready to help push through and keep those doors open. (h/t @gal_suburban who shared this video)

Right in the Stack with Jones was Alexander, the guy who had used several front organizations to obtain a permit for a stage where he could have legally protested but, in doing so, would have assembled the crowd some distance away from the Capitol rather than right at its doors.

The stage and the permit were the excuse that Jones used to move a mob to the East side of the Capitol.

But the East stairs are where he led them.

The FBI’s Proud Boy Informant Showed Up Late

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The Proud Boys charged with the most serious assaults on January 6 — including (at a minimum) Dan “Milkshake” Scott and Christopher Worrell — are not charged with conspiracy, though both could easily have been included as co-conspirators. Nor is Ryan Samsel, who is not known to be a Proud Boy but spoke to Joe Biggs just before he kicked off the entire riot by allegedly knocking over a cop and giving her a concussion (this may change, especially since, after a long delay, DOJ charged Samsel individually in an indictment that, either via the assignment wheel or because it was identified as a case related to the Proud Boys leadership indictment, got assigned to Judge Tim Kelly). While Dominic Pezzola is charged with assault for stealing the riot shield he used to break into the Capitol and Billy Chrestman is charged with threatening to assault a cop, their co-defendants are not implicated in those assaults, except insofar as they are overt acts in a conspiracy.

That’s why I find this detail from NYT’s blockbuster report on what a Proud Boy informant who showed up late to the January 6 riot and then entered the Capitol has told the FBI about the investigation rather interesting.

At the same time, the new information is likely to complicate the government’s efforts to prove the high-profile conspiracy charges it has brought against several members of the Proud Boys.

On Jan. 6, and for months after, the records show, the informant, who was affiliated with a Midwest chapter of the Proud Boys, denied that the group intended to use violence that day.

[snip]

On the eve of the attack, the records show, the informant said that the group had no plans to engage in violence the next day except to defend itself from potential assaults from leftist activists — a narrative the Proud Boys have often used to excuse their own violent behavior.

The government has never accused the Proud Boy conspirators of planning to use violence themselves, though there is evidence they knew their incitement could spark violence among “normies.” There’s even evidence that Ethan Nordean tried to rein in one attack (though only after he had presumably witnessed other assaults on cops).

That is, that claim is utterly irrelevant to the government’s conspiracy cases against the Proud Boys.

And yet the NYT offered it as one reason this informant’s report might, “complicate the government’s efforts to prove the high-profile conspiracy charges it has brought against several members of the Proud Boys.”

To be sure, there is one way this informant might undermine the existing conspiracy charges.

The informant’s interview reports affirmatively claim that he knew of no plans to storm the Capitol, nor did he hear any talk of the electoral college certification in his travels that day.

In lengthy interviews, the records say, he also denied that the extremist organization planned in advance to storm the Capitol.

[snip]

But statements from the informant appear to counter the government’s assertion that the Proud Boys organized for an offensive assault on the Capitol intended to stop the peaceful transition from Mr. Trump to Mr. Biden.

On the eve of the attack, the records show, the informant said that the group had no plans to engage in violence the next day except to defend itself from potential assaults from leftist activists — a narrative the Proud Boys have often used to excuse their own violent behavior.

Then, during an interview in April, the informant again told his handlers that Proud Boys leaders gave explicit orders to maintain a defensive posture on Jan. 6. At another point in the interview, he said that he never heard any discussion that day about stopping the Electoral College process.

The records show that, after driving to Washington and checking into an Airbnb in Virginia on Jan. 5, the informant spent most of Jan. 6 with other Proud Boys, including some who have been charged in the attack. While the informant mentioned seeing Proud Boys leaders that day, like Ethan Nordean, who has also been charged, there is no indication that he was directly involved with any Proud Boys in leadership positions.

In a detailed account of his activities contained in the records, the informant, who was part of a group chat of other Proud Boys, described meeting up with scores of men from chapters around the country at 10 a.m. on Jan. 6 at the Washington Monument and eventually marching to the Capitol. He said that when he arrived, throngs of people were already streaming past the first barrier outside the building, which, he later learned, was taken down by one of his Proud Boy acquaintances and a young woman with him. [my emphasis]

This guy’s testimony absolutely poses a challenge to prosecutors prosecuting the Proud Boys this guy was actually interacting with.

That said, the NYT does not say whether he was interacting with those charged with conspiracy or even obstruction (still-active Proud Boys, like Jeremy Grace, have been charged only with trespassing). Even if he was interacting with people charged with conspiracy, the fact that he showed up late and (claimed that he) did not know that some of his own acquaintances were going to breach the barriers until after the fact would, at most, show that he wasn’t privy to the plans of lower level cells.

But the way in which DOJ has charged the Proud Boy side of the conspiracies is with one leadership conspiracy, and four subconspiracies that are effectively cells that allegedly worked together to achieve smaller objectives: to breach the West door, to breach the North door, and to keep the Visitor Center gates open (the NYT misses one of the charged Proud Boy conspiracies, against the Klein brothers, for opening a North door to the building, which has acquired more tactical import with the charging of Ben Martin).

Two main things matter to the viability of the larger Proud Boys conspiracy: First, whether the four charged in the leadership conspiracy did have an advance plan. And second, whether their conspiracy interlocks with the Dominic Pezzola conspiracy that ended up breaching the front door of the Capitol and with it exposed Pezzola, his co-conspirators, and by association, the Proud Boy leaders to terrorism enhancements.

The second point is one that the Proud Boy leaders are contesting aggressively. We have yet to see evidence proving a tie between those two conspiracies. But we also have yet to see any evidence from the December rally at which the ties to Pezzola appear to have been forged. Meanwhile, William Pepe is disclaiming knowing the others, suggesting a possible weakness in that conspiracy charge.

As to the first, what we’ve seen in public evidence is that, in the wake of the Enrique Tarrio arrest on January 4, the four leaders attempted to regroup, and then, on the night before the riot, Joe Biggs and Ethan Nordean met with unnamed people and finalized a plan in seeming coordination with Tarrio, and avoided speaking of it even on their limited leadership Telegram chat.

On January 4, when Tarrio arrived in DC for the riot, he was arrested for his attack on the Black Church in December, whereupon he was found with weapons that are unlawful in DC. In the wake of Tarrio’s arrest, Ethan Nordean was supposed to be in charge of the operation. But around 9:08PM the day before the riot (these texts reflect Nordean’s Washington state time zone, so add three hours), someone said he had not heard from Nordean in hours.

Minutes later, Biggs explained that “we just had a meeting w[i]th a lot of guys” and “info should be coming out.” While redacted in these texts, the superseding indictment describes that he also notes he had just spoken with Tarrio.

He further explained that he was with Nordean and “we have a plan.”

Biggs then says he gave Tarrio a plan.

Ethan Nordean may have been in charge on January 6. But Biggs seems to have been the one working most closely with Tarrio, through whom at least some of the inter-militia coordination worked.

There’s little question they had a plan to do something (and that that plan did not include attending the Trump rally which was the primary innocent reason for Trump supporters to show up to DC that day). The question is what kind of evidence DOJ has substantiating that plan, especially after claimed efforts to flip Zach Rehl collapsed. (Nordean has also said he’ll move to suppress these texts because his spouse consented to the breach of his phone, which led FBI to obtain them, but it’s likely the FBI has a second set of the texts in any case.)

But it also is likely the case that the place to look for that evidence is not with a low-level Proud Boy who showed up late to insurrection, but with the others with whom Nordean and Biggs were meeting the night before the riot. And there’s no indication that these people were all Proud Boys, and in fact good reason to suspect they weren’t.

In the weeks before the riot, Kelly Meggs repeatedly talked about a Florida-based intra-militia alliance.

In the days after both the DC even[t] and an event involving Stone in Florida, Oath Keeper Kelly Meggs claimed he organized a Florida-based “alliance” between the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, and 3%ers.

On Christmas Eve, Meggs specifically tied protection at the January rally, probably of Stone, and coordination with a Proud Boy, almost certainly Tarrio, in the same text.

And in the days after, the Southern California 3%ers laid out a Stop the Steal affiliated plan to surround the Capitol.

Spread the word to other CALIFORNIA Patriots to join us as we March into the Capitol Jan 6. The Plan right now is to meet up at two occasions and locations: 1. Jan 5th 2pm at the Supreme Court steps for a rally. (Myself, Alan, [and others] will be speaking) 2. Jan 6th early 7am meet in front of the Kimpton George Hotel…we will leave at 7:30am sharp and March (15 mins) to the Capital [sic] to meet up with the stop the steal organization and surround the capital. [sic] There will be speakers there and we will be part of the large effort for the “Wild Rally” that Trump has asked us all to be part of. [my emphasis]

Not only is this what happened on January 6, but Joe Biggs seemed to know that key Stop the Steal figures, including his former employer Alex Jones, would open up a second front of this attack and arrived to take part in it, entering the Capitol a second time virtually in tandem with the Meggs-led Stack.

This is one reason I keep presenting all these conspiracies together: because there’s good reason the Proud Boy conspiracies don’t just intersect with each other, but that the Proud Boy conspiracies intersect, in the person of Joe Biggs and others, with each other.

There are many reasons that the report of an FBI handler not understanding that his or her Proud Boy informant was describing the breach of the Capitol as it happened is important.

After meeting his fellow Proud Boys at the Washington Monument that morning, the informant described his path to the Capitol grounds where he saw barriers knocked down and Trump supporters streaming into the building, the records show. At one point, his handler appeared not to grasp that the building had been breached, the records show, and asked the informant to keep him in the loop — especially if there was any violence.

But, except to limited degree to which his testimony affects the case against the Proud Boys with whom he actually interacted, this report primarily provides yet more proof that the FBI, trained by Billy Barr not to investigate any subjects Trump claimed as his own tribe, had no conception of what they were looking at on January 6, not even as the Proud Boys led an attack on the Capitol.

The government has not yet publicly shown all of its evidence that the Proud Boy leaders, alone or in concert with other militias and Stop the Steal organizers, had a plan to attack the Capitol on January 6. Unless something disrupts the case, we won’t see that until next summer.

But one thing we know from the available evidence is that low-level Proud Boys who showed up late to insurrection are not the place to look for that plan.