emptywheel (not a bill) Profile picture
Abundant tweets about civil liberties & national security*** Legendary potty mouth*** Also at @emptywheel@mastodon.social & @emptywheel.bsky.social 🗽🇪🇺

Dec 24, 2022, 16 tweets

Flynn's sorry-ass refusal to march to the Capitol bc it was too cold on Jan6 is hilarious for a lot of reasons, but it has significant ramifications for both the Oath Keepers and Brandon Straka.

documentcloud.org/documents/2352…

But a lot of this also falls out from the VIP fight (the Report is a bit thin on that too, not even mentioning Flynn): Had Flynn and Stone gotten their speaking role, they likely would have marched.

The effect was likely the same (except for Straka and the Oath Keepers).

The Report relies on claims Alex Jones made on his own show for details about his movement, which makes it about as reliable as the claim that Sandy Hook victims were just crisis actors.

I can't tell you how many times TV lawyers told me Alex Jones was not a key link between the White House and the Proud Boys giving shape to the attack.

Some of those same TV lawyers discovered, for the first time, that Proud Boys marched to the Capitol before Trump spoke.

The Report chooses not to rely on Tim Kelly's ruling debunking this claim, nor does it point out that Jones went nowhere near the stage the permit of which he invoked, nor does it focus on Ali Alexander, who arranged the permits and was right there in the video.

The Report generally does well at incorporating materials from court documents into the larger whole. But it's curious that J6C chose NOT to include the part of Matthew Greene's statement of offense where he described the POINT of crowding the Capitol was to pressure Pence.

Here's that bit from Greene's SOO.
justice.gov/usao-dc/press-…

Congratulations to failed GOP Gov candidate Ryan Kelley, who delayed pleading long enough for DOJ to add this false claim to his charges, if they decide to add a felony to your charges. (He continued his case in early December to February.)

This is one of many reasons why J6C's referral of incitement of insurrection referral will go nowhere.

How did Trump incite the Proud Boys if they didn't attend his speech?

You gotta prove that OTHERS committed insurrection, and for the most part, the evidence is thinner.

This passage on Ron Loehrke relies entirely on his arrest affidavit, not video, which is unfortunate bc the #SeditionHunters did a superb video showing him directing traffic on the W side.

Also I wish J6C would ID military experience--he's a Marine.

One moment I wish they had included a picture, bc Johnny Gordon and his tats is one of my favorite rioters.

I've said a couple of times that not discussing the veterans who played key roles in the attack was a missed opportunity. Here's a report from April 2021 on about that.

extremism.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/…

According to GWU's track, the % of rioters with military experience was right at that level (up a percentage, actually), to 13%, 19 months later.

Our military trained a lot of men and some women to carry out this attack, and we need to reckon with that.

extremism.gwu.edu/Capitol-Hill-S…

The Report DOES describe Robert Morss' military background.

The Report DOES describe that Alex Jones radicalized Danny Rodriguez.

[Note it doesn't focus on anti-maskers as much as other networks.]

The description of how the cops cleared the Capitol is really useful. Bc this is not evidence of a crime, these video angles don't make court filings.

And this video is not publicly available.

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