From @Reuters: The first wave of arrests from the siege of the U.S. Capitol was of rioters who made themselves especially visible - people who mugged for cameras or posted real-time confessions online. Authorities expect more serious charges will follow.
The Capitol mob was a diverse mix of QAnon adherents, right-wing activists and people who were school employees, policemen and even an Olympic swimmer. One had an attempted-murder rap. What united them was support for Trump and a deep political grievance.
For the most part, the people facing charges so far in the Capitol siege made it exceptionally easy for the FBI to find them. I've never seen this many people charged with this many crimes this quickly based on their own public confessions. reuters.com/article/us-usa…
NEW from @Reuters: Federal prosecutors have offered an ominous new assessment of the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol last week, saying they had "strong evidence" that "the intent of the Capitol rioters was to capture and assassinate elected officials."
Prosecutors alleged that the man who appeared shirtless wearing horns on the Senate dais during the siege participated "in an insurrection attempting to violently overthrow the United States government," its strongest language so far describing last week's unrest.
(Fixing a typo): The court filing in which prosecutors allege rioters planned to assassinate elected officials is here: courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…
The shirtless man with furs and a horned hat photographed on the Senate dais during the Capitol siege, Jacob Chansley, has been charged with unlawful entry. He told the FBI he came to D.C. "at the request of the President that all 'patriots' come to D.C."
Chansley confirmed to the FBI that this was him, according to the charging documents.
Prosecutors also charged the man who mugged for news cameras while walking through the Capitol holding a lectern. He posted about being in the Capitol on social media.
These are the lowest-hanging fruit for criminal cases.
The president's call with Georgia election officials is hard to listen to. We spend billions of dollars to make the president the best-informed person on Earth, but the information he's parroting about the election is total bullshit.
It's stunning that the president is peddling this much misinformation even in private. He told Georgia election officials that he actually won the state by a half-million votes. He didn't. It's hard to describe how far removed from reality that fiction is.
One wonders whether anyone who has the president's ear also has the courage to tell him the truth: He lost.
... And the lawsuit filed by Rep. Gohmert and others trying to give Vice President Mike Pence the power to singlehandedly select the next president has been dismissed because, to nobody's great surprise, they didn't have standing to bring this kind of case.
The opinion is quite straightforward, cites to the controlling cases, and in this way illuminates just how flimsy a lot of the legal arguments in support of this nonsense actually were.
People pretending to be electors from Michigan continue to mislead federal courts that they cast the state's electoral votes for President Trump "with the permission and endorsement" of the state legislature - in spite of the fact they couldn't even get into the capitol building.
The purported Republican electors say they cast their votes for Trump "with the knowledge and permission" of the legislature, which in no way voted to give its permission. And they claim that they cast them in the way state law requires, at the capitol, albeit outside.
Michigan actually has a law on this. It says electors have to be elected, which the Republican electors weren't. And it says they are to vote in the Senate chamber, not outside. So even the ridiculous claim that they voted for Trump in accordance with state law is false.
The only really notable feature of the absurd new election lawsuit in D.C. is that the plaintiffs sued Mike Pence in his official capacity, meaning I suppose that the Justice Department will now be obliged to defend him from the many pages of absurdity.
Also, good luck attempting service on the Electoral College, which isn't really an organization or a thing. This is like suing "the states."
Prison inmates who represent themselves generally avoid goofy stuff like this.
This is a real lawsuit that's really trying to invalidate the results of the 2020 election in *every* state, based on a legal theory that would invalidate every modern presidential election.
It won't go anywhere for Many Reasons but somebody really did file it in federal court.