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The Latest – Tuesday, January 12

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Collect, share, and discuss the daily news, updates, and events pertinent to the daily shock and awe, this is The Latest.


:warning: This thread has ended. The discussion continues: The Latest – Wednesday, January 13 (Impeachment 2.0 Edition


What we’re talking about


Previously

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Lots of post-Insurrection reckoning…who did what?

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Revelations on what the R’s maybe thinking - Mitch is glad Trump will be impeached, per NYT

Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, has told associates that he believes President Trump committed impeachable offenses and that he is pleased that Democrats are moving to impeach him, believing that it will make it easier to purge him from the party, according to people familiar with his thinking. The House is voting on Wednesday to formally charge Mr. Trump with inciting violence against the country.

At the same time, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader and one of Mr. Trump’s most steadfast allies in Congress, has asked other Republicans whether he should call on Mr. Trump to resign in the aftermath of the riot at the Capitol last week, according to three Republican officials briefed on the conversations.

While Mr. McCarthy has said he is personally opposed to impeachment, he and other party leaders have decided not to formally lobby Republicans to vote “no,” and an aide to Mr. McCarthy said he was open to a measure censuring Mr. Trump for his conduct. In private, Mr. McCarthy reached out to a leading House Democrat to see if the chamber would be willing to pursue a censure vote, though Speaker Nancy Pelosi has ruled it out.

Taken together, the stances of Congress’s two top Republicans — neither of whom has said publicly that Mr. Trump should resign or be impeached — reflected the politically fraught and fast-moving nature of the crisis that the party faces in the wake of last week’s assault by a pro-Trump mob during a session to formalize President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s electoral victory.

House Democrats are poised to impeach him on Wednesday. But President Donald Trump is not expected to mount a forceful White House defense against charges he incited last week’s deadly riots inside the U.S. Capitol, according to a White House official.

Trump knows he’s unlikely to be removed from office with Republicans controlling the Senate until next week and only a few days left of his term. The president has also grown increasingly isolated, distrusting the same aides and advisers he had relied on during prior crises in his presidency, including White House Counsel Pat Cipollone.

“We’re not building out an aggressive operation to combat these impeachment charges,” a White House official said. “It’s just logistically impossible. Counsel’s office has hollowed out obviously, Cipollone hasn’t been in the president’s circle. … Operationally, it’s just not going to look the same.”

The resistance to building out an aggressive effort to push back on impeachment is reflective of a president both isolated and distracted by political grievances.

In his final days of his term, Trump is still spending time railing against the election that he lost to Joe Biden in November and surrounding himself with a handful of loyalists — among them Rudy Giuliani — who have been with him since the start, according to interviews with eight current and former Trump aides.

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Hair-raising details on where the insurgency could attack - what may come from these militias. Keeping Congress and President-elect Biden/VP Harris protected is the most important criteria.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/democrats-briefed-plot-overthrow-government_n_5ffd29a4c5b691806c4bf199

House Democrats Briefed On 3 Terrifying Plots To Overthrow Government

One plot includes surrounding the Capitol and murdering Democrats to allow Republicans to take control of the government.

WASHINGTON ― Capitol Police briefed Democrats on Monday night about three more potentially gruesome demonstrations planned in the coming days, with one plot to encircle the U.S. Capitol and assassinate Democrats and some Republicans.

On a private call Monday night, new leaders of the Capitol Police told House Democrats they were closely monitoring three separate plans that could pose serious threats to members of Congress as Washington prepares for Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration on Jan. 20.

The first is a demonstration billed as the “largest armed protest ever to take place on American soil.”

Another is a protest in honor of Ashli Babbitt, the woman killed while trying to climb into the Speaker’s Lobby during Wednesday’s pro-Trump siege of the Capitol.

And another demonstration, which three members said was by far the most concerning plot, would involve insurrectionists forming a perimeter around the Capitol, the White House and the Supreme Court, and then blocking Democrats from entering the Capitol ― perhaps even killing them ― so that Republicans could take control of the government.

The members of Congress whom HuffPost spoke to Monday night were extremely concerned by the call.

It was pretty overwhelming,” one member said.

Officials on the call warned lawmakers about sharing too much information with the media, saying that divulging specific dates, times and countermeasures could aid the organizers of the plots. HuffPost is not disclosing certain information, such as who appears to be organizing these plots and when they are to take place.

One member was explicit that these groups were trying to get journalists to report on their demonstrations.

“Some of their main communications to organize these have been cut off, so they’re purposely trying to get the media to report on this as a way to further disseminate information and to attract additional support for their attacks,” this member said.

Democrats were told that the Capitol Police and the National Guard were preparing for potentially tens of thousands of armed protesters coming to Washington and were establishing rules of engagement for warfare. In general, the military and police don’t plan to shoot anyone until one of the rioters fires, but there could be exceptions.

Lawmakers were told that the plot to encircle the Capitol also included plans to surround the White House ― so that no one could harm Trump ― and the Supreme Court, simply to shut down the courts. The plan to surround the Capitol includes assassinating Democrats as well as Republicans who didn’t support Trump’s effort to overturn the election ― and allowing other Republicans to enter the building and control government.

All of these plots may never materialize. The Capitol Police have established a new perimeter with fencing and razor wire, and the National Guard has already been called in to help protect the Capitol and lawmakers.

But while Capitol Police assured members they were prepared for these terrorist plots, there was obvious concern from a number of lawmakers.

One topic of discussion was the need to put every member of Congress through a metal detector before the inauguration. A member on the call told HuffPost that there was an “eyes-wide-open realization” that Capitol Police needed to take precautions 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,” this lawmaker told HuffPost.

Another area of concern was the Trump administration’s involvement in tamping down an insurrection. “I don’t think anyone has confidence that the folks at the Pentagon, that may or may not even be needed for some of this, or the Department of Homeland Security, where we don’t even know who’s in charge, are going to be cooperative,” one member told HuffPost.

One Democrat on the call also raised the issue of security for members coming from their residences to the Capitol, as well as traveling to Washington, given recent confrontations at airports and on flights between some protesters and lawmakers. One member who spoke to HuffPost said the Capitol Police didn’t have a satisfactory answer about that concern.

This member mentioned how the briefing had underscored the wisdom of Twitter suspending Trump’s account, as well as tens of thousands of accounts associated with the right-wing conspiracy theory QAnon, and said the decision to cut off the social media platform Parler “looked a lot smarter” given the efforts to recruit armed extremists to come to the nation’s capital in the coming days.

“It’s a decision that might ultimately save lives,” this member said.

One of the lawmakers who spoke to HuffPost said members of Congress were all experiencing difficult reactions to the storming of the Capitol last week.

“Most of us are feeling that,” this Democrat said. “But we are also feeling that we don’t have time to indulge too much of it, that this is not about us, that it’s about a job that’s way bigger than us, and we are just going to suck it up and get through, and we’ll talk about how nutty it is on the other side.”

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Washington, D.C., police chief says he will talk to Lauren Boebert about gun video

Newly sworn-in Republican congresswoman from Rifle calls the stir “a little absurd”

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Maddow reveals letter showing military Joint Chiefs consider the attack on the Capitol to be ‘sedition’




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