Jan. 6 rioting was first battle in a longer war
The Washington Post on Sunday published an astounding piece of investigative journalism on the Jan. 6 insurrection.
If you don’t already have a subscription, it’s worth getting one.
The report represents the work of 75 journalists who interviewed more than 230 people, studied thousands of pages of documents and internal lawenforcement reports and reviewed videos and audio recordings.
The three-part series concludes the attack was premeditated. It’s an indictment.
This comes as the U.S. House commission on Jan. 6 continues its inquiry, and former President Donald Trump has sued to prevent it from obtaining records, claiming executive privilege.
It also comes after Trump encouraged others to ignore the commission’s subpoenas. Former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon is now facing criminal contempt proceedings for doing so.
The Post’s timeline serves as the most complete accounting leading up to the Jan. 6 attack. It details calls, meetings, social media posts, official reports and other events that led to a violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Insurrectionists missed by seconds capturing Vice President Mike Pence and other congressional leaders as they certified 2020 election results. One report showed that the life of Sen. Mitt Romney, R-utah, was particularly threatened.
So was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Mitch Mcconnell, whose homes were vandalized weeks prior to the attack, the newspaper reported.
The Post investigation puts to rest doubts about the far-right forces that continue to threaten U.S. democracy.
Among the newspaper’s investigation findings: Domestic terrorists used social media sites to communicate, plan, arm themselves and execute the attack.
They took direction from Trump, who did nothing for 187 minutes as the attack unfolded on television.
The investigation lays out how agencies failed to listen, especially to one another; were consumed by political events; or were unprepared or unwilling to respond to an attack led by white, middle-aged rioters, the newspaper reported.
The Post concludes the violence wasn’t a unique event but part of a long scheme, one battle in a war.
The newspaper strings together events beginning in srpring 2020, when Trump began questioning state elections in which he sensed he’d lose.
The big tell came during the first presidential debate when he was asked to condemn white supremacists and militia groups. He wouldn’t.
Instead, he told the far-right Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.”
The group’s leader responded in real time, the Post revealed, saying, “Standing by, sir.”
When Pennsylvania went to President Joe Biden, giving him the electoral votes to win, groups like the Three Percenters and Qanon extremists began converging on state capitals, the Post reported.
They were a prelude.
Two months before Jan. 6, Proud Boys and other extremists rallied in Washington. A Capitol police officer sensed they were sizing up the force.
By Dec. 12, Trump supporters were in Washington again with 700 Proud Boys. Some wore earpieces to communicate with each other.
The FBI believed the “principal danger … was street clashes.” The Post concluded that “would prove to be a grave miscalculation.”
The Stop the Steal rally got a permit, applying for it under a different name. The National Park Service later allowed the permit to grow from 5,000 people to 30,000.
The Proud Boys raised money online for communications equipment and protective gear. Another group, the Boogaloo Boys, coordinated efforts with avowed neo-nazis, the newspaper reported.
Members of this “unholy alliance” traveled to Washington as would other Trump supporters.
A week before Jan. 6, the FBI lost its third-party monitoring service that alerts agents and analysts to social media posts of note. A new service limited its understanding of what was going on.
The Post investigation criticizes Capitol Police leadership with “a pattern of miscommunication, poor planning and sloppiness” that left their officers illequipped.
The FBI got tougher criticism for its “long-running institutional unease with investigating domestic extremism.”
The bureau was accused of tempering “its reaction to threats of violence from White, middleaged and middle-class Americans.”
“The consequences of that day are still coming into focus,” the report states.
“But what is already clear is that the insurrection was not a spontaneous act nor an isolated event.”
It was a battle in a war propelled by lies about voting fraud. It’s a war against U.S. democracy.
What’s worse is the man largely responsible remains the leader of the GOP.