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Democrats Suggest Capitol Attackers Had Inside Assistance

Democrats Suggest Capitol Attackers Had Inside Assistance

Reprinted with permission from American Independent

At least five House Democrats have said that evidence suggests both Capitol Police and Republican members of Congress may have aided and abetted the terror attack on Jan. 6, in which a pro-Trump mob ransacked the Capitol as they tried to stop President-elect Joe Biden from being certified the winner of the 2020 election.

The comments from the Democratic lawmakers are chilling and come after those lawmakers have received private briefings from Capitol Police about the attack — which law enforcement was woefully unprepared for.

Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) made the most pointed accusation about Republican members of Congress possibly being involved in the attack. Sherrill, a retired Navy helicopter pilot who became a federal prosecutor after leaving the military, said in a Tuesday night video:

... Not only do I intend to see that the president is removed and never runs for office again and doesn't have access to classified material, I also intend to see that those members of Congress who abetted him; those members of Congress who had groups coming through the Capitol that I saw on Jan. 5 — a reconnaissance for the next day; those members of Congress that incited this violent crowd; those members of Congress that attempted to help our president undermine our democracy; I'm going to see they are held accountable, and if necessary, ensure that they don't serve in Congress.

Rep. Val Demings (D-FL), who served as chief of the Orlando Police Department before being elected to Congress, also suggested there may have been inside help, either from the Capitol Police or others.

Demings said on CNN on Wednesday morning:

Obviously this was a well-planned, well-coordinated breach of security, attack on our capital, and I do believe when we look at how the attackers were able to, they knew where they were going in many instances they knew directly where they were going, and I know many members of Congress get lost in the Capitol, and so I do believe there was some inside assistance. We know that there are officers that are being investigated, and others.

Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Ayanna Pressley's chief of staff told the Boston Globe, "Every panic button in my office had been torn out — the whole unit," suggesting something untoward had gone on.

And last week, Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) suggested the attackers may have had help from within the building.

Clyburn said in an interview on SiriusXM on Jan. 8:

And the one place where my name is on a door, that office is right on Statuary Hall. They didn't touch that door. But they went into that other place where I do most of my work, they showed up up there. Harassing my staff. How did they know to go there? … How they didn't go where my name was? Then where you won't find my name, but they found where I was supposed to be. So something else is going on untoward here. So we need to have an extensive investigation to find out.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said in an Instagram live video on Tuesday night that she does not feel safe around Republican members of Congress because she fears they, "would create opportunities to allow me to be hurt, kidnapped, et cetera."

Some House Democrats are worried that their colleagues from across the aisle pose a danger.

An unnamed Democratic lawmaker told HuffPost that there is an "eyes-wide-open realization" that there must be precautions taken against "all these members who were in league with the insurrectionists who love to carry their guns."

"You can't just let them bypass security and walk right up to [Joe] Biden and [Kamala] Harris at inauguration," the unnamed lawmaker told HuffPost's Matt Fuller.

It's possibly why metal detectors were installed outside the House floor — machines that Republican lawmakers are blatantly refusing to use, ignoring orders from Capitol Police.

With each day, more video evidence emerges depicting acts of violence at the Capitol.

Video has captured rioters chanting that they wanted to hang Vice President Mike Pence, and a platform with a noose was erected outside of the Capitol building.

Another video shows rioters plotting where to go within the building, including a discussion of floor plans and where to go to "take the building."

Law enforcement officers say they are using the video and photos from that day to find and arrest the perpetrators.

To date, five people, including one Capitol Police officer and four pro-Trump rioters, have died from the attack.

Democratic lawmakers have made moves to try to expel congressional Republicans who helped incite the violence as well as those who voted to invalidate Biden's win.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

Who Hates America?

Who Hates America?

Nobody expects Donald Trump to speak the truth about himself or his opponents anymore. To support him requires a suspension of disbelief that is impressive in a misbegotten way.

So when the president of the United States tells four duly elected members of Congress to go back to where they came from, an old trope of bigotry that everybody understands, the politicians who support him pretend that he was saying something else. Even his rank-and-file backers know how to play dumb — like the gentleman who told NPR that Trump was merely telling Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley to “go back to their home states.” Sorry, but nobody is really that stupid, although Trump and his minions treat us all as if we are.

Behind Trump’s rhetorical tactics lies what psychologists call projection: Each accusation he lodges against adversaries is emblematic of his own character. Defaming the four women of color, he said, “They hate our country. They hate it, I think, with a passion.” He said they express “a love for enemies like Al Qaeda.” And he was merely inviting them to leave the United States “if they want to leave,” which they must because “they’re doing nothing but criticizing us all the time.”

As usual, he was lying. His absurd claim about Al Qaida was a reference to Omar, who is Muslim and, therefore, slandered in this way regularly. She has never praised any terror group and instead has denounced terrorism many times. Indeed, she has publicly criticized the Saudi funding of Al Qaida, which is more than Trump has ever done.

No, it’s Trump who constantly sucks up to this country’s enemies. He grovels to Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose intelligence services are devoted to assaulting us and our allies, most notoriously through our electoral systems. He truckles to the Saudi monarchy, which has encouraged jihad for decades and most recently financed the Islamic State. He is “in love” with Kim Jong Un, the North Korean tyrant who murdered an innocent American and openly threatens us with nuclear weapons.

As for the four congresswomen’s supposed hatred of America and desire to leave, three of them were born here and know no other home. The fourth came here as a child refugee and built a new life of civic activism in her new home. They’ve sworn an oath to defend the U.S. and the Constitution. They’ve spoken movingly, as Ocasio-Cortez did, of the inspiration they find in American symbols such as the Lincoln Memorial. And like every patriot, they’ve sought to create a more perfect union — which cannot be done without criticism that sometimes sounds unsparing.

So far, none of those women has uttered a sentence that paints America as darkly as the portraits wrought repeatedly by one Donald Trump: in his furious tweets during the Obama years, in his grim campaign book, Crippled America, in his frothing GOP convention acceptance speech, and in his bizarre “American carnage” inaugural address on Jan. 20, 2017. Over and over again, Trump told us that we live in a crime-ridden dystopia, an economic ruin, a declining power that had earned the world’s derision.

Did Trump “hate America” when he said those terrible things? He would bristle at the very notion. He would say that he was just attacking Barack Obama, not America — which he has proved he loves with his creepy hugging of the flag. And of course, he had every right to knock Obama, to complain about the former president’s domestic and foreign policies, even to lie about his citizenship. Bear in mind, however, that Trump would deny the same right to others now if he could. That is why he talks about expanding libel laws and whines that “fake news” shouldn’t be considered free speech.

What Trump wants Americans to believe is that criticizing him and his crimes is the moral equivalent of hating America. This is the personal ideology of every would-be tyrant, always amplified by vilifying citizens of a different race, religion or immigration status. We have seen it in history, and we are seeing it now.

Who hates America? Look at the man who turns Americans against one another every day to distract us from his outrages against law, decency, and the Constitution. Then ask yourself that question.

To find out more about Joe Conason and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

IMAGE: Donald Trump delivering his presidential inauguration address on January 20, 2017.

 

 

Trump Tweet Urges ‘Democrat Congresswomen’ To Go Back Where They Came From

Trump Tweet Urges ‘Democrat Congresswomen’ To Go Back Where They Came From

On Sunday morning the president of the United States descended to the intellectual and moral level of a schoolyard bully — not for the first time, although this was one of his worst times.

Donald Trump’s latest domineering assault came as usual in a flurry of tweets, aimed clumsily at Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), whom he admonished to return to her country of birth instead of daring to criticize his immigration policy. Rather than name Omar specifically,  he pretended instead that not only she but her like-minded colleagues were all born elsewhere:

 

This childish smear is the equivalent of an adolescent thug’s verbal assault on someone wearing a hijab or turban — or perhaps a low-IQ Klansman’s screaming “Go back to Africa” at a civil rights demonstration. For Trump to spew such a vicious tirade against a naturalized citizen displays again his deep contempt for everything Americans believe about democracy, citizenship, and decency.

Trump also appears to suggest, in characteristically racist style, that Omar’s colleagues Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) are somehow unwelcome or unworthy of citizenship in the United States. But of course Ocasio-Cortez was born in the Bronx (just like the president’s father Fred Trump, the offspring of an immigrant deported from Germany for dodging the draft); Tlaib was born in Detroit; and Pressley was born in Chicago, the descendant of Africans who arrived on this continent long before the disgraced Mr. Drumpf.

All of those progressive Democratic Congresswomen — including Omar, who was born in Somalia — are duly elected officials whose place in our national discourse was ratified by a majority of voters in their districts (in contrast to Trump, a president who lost the popular vote badly).

It is he whose mentality and attitude is foreign to our values, not Ilhan Omar.

 

Danziger: Up In The Air

Danziger: Up In The Air

The four left-wing Congresswomen known as “the squad” are becoming an irritant to Speaker Pelosi — who has to worry about re-electing the other 230 Democrats.