Thread by @alanfeuer

As the day's new Capitol riot charges start coming out, here is Thread #5 of the ongoing update.
Other threads archived below.

https://twitter.com/alanfeuer/status/1353750626493198338

The FBI says Eric Chase Torrens, seen left in the fleece hat, illegally entered the Capitol w/his friends from Tennessee, Matthew Bledsoe & Jack J. Griffith. Bledsoe & Griffith were charged last week.

The FBI arrested Justin McAuliffe, 39, of Long Island, after he posted a Facebook photo of his cellphone set to the Senate's public WiFi network.

Federal agents also found a photo of McAuliffe in a Slate article (left) and compared it to another Facebook photo he posted w/a status update reading, "Justin McAuliffe is feeling blessed."

Richard "Bigo" Barnett, charged w/breaking into Nancy Pelosi's office, owns a stun gun in the shape of a walking stick, prosecutors just said at a hearing.
Agents haven't located it yet but have found the box...

nytimes.com/2021/01/06/us/…

Seeking to detain Barnett, prosecutors filed papers yesterday saying the stun gun is a "ZAP Hike N Strike 950,000 Volt Stun Gun Walking Stick."

Hike N Strike.

Prosecutors also say that Barnett attended a "Save the Children" rally in Arkansas in November "carrying a machine gun & acting suspiciously."
Prosecutors now say at the hearing that "Save the Children" rallies are often connected to Qanon.

This summer, according to a Fayetteville Ark police report, Barnett pointed a weapon at a Black Lives Matter protestor while taking part in a Blue Lives Matter counter-protest.

"I am a good man," Barnett says, speaking out before the judge can connect him to his lawyer. "Most people love me."

DC Chief Judge Beryl Howell going off on Jan. 6:
"What happened on that day is criminal conduct that is destined to go down in the history books of this country..."
"An assault on the US Capitol," she says, adding people broke windows, pushed through doors, assaulted police.

"We're still living here in Washington DC with the consequences of the violence which this defendant"--Bigo Barnett--"allegedly took part."
Notes that she can see heavily armed troops still deployed outside her own chambers window.

Judge Howell sounds livid.
Barnett, she says, not only broke into the Capitol but "strutted into the office of the Speaker Nancy Pelosi," with pictures showing him "smiling & seemingly enjoying himself."
"He felt so entitled he put his feet on her desk," Judge Howell says.

She reads quotes Barnett gave to media after the assault saying how he bled on Pelosi's desk and calling her "a bitch."
"Wow," Judge Howell says, "brazen, entitled, dangerous."

She is working toward ordering Barnett detained pending trial.

Judge Howell recalls how after the Capitol attack Barnett & his partner cleaned out the house. FBI agents have yet to recover Barnett's "Hike N Strike" stun gun or his cellphone.
Agents found the clothes Barnett wore to Capitol hidden under a dog crate, Judge Howell notes.

Judge Howell notes how Barnett told FBI agents who came to search his house that they weren't going to find anything b/c he's a "smart" man.
"I don't know how smart Mr. Barnett is," Judge Howell says, "but he's certainly a braggart."

This is 🔥.

DECISION: DC Chief Judge Beryl Howell, demonstrably angry, orders Richard "Bigo" Barnett detained pending trial on charges of breaking into the Capitol & putting his feet up on Nancy Pelosi's desk.

Meanwhile, prosecutors unseal charges against Mark S. Simon, of Huntington Beach, Calif.
Simon, the FBI says, posted a Facebook video of himself in the halls of Congress saying to the camera, "In the Capitol baby, yeah!"

Waking up to more charges in the Capitol riot:
On 12/31, FBI says, Nate DeGrave of Memphis posted a FB message saying he was organizing a "caravan of patriots" to go DC on 1/6 to stand behind Trump.
Already onboard? His friend Ronnie Sandler & Josiah Colt, the "Senate dangler."

Two brothers from Montana, Jerod & Joshua Hughes, climbed through a broken window at the Capitol then kicked through a door, moving toward the Senate floor.

The Hughes brothers, FBI says, were among the rioters who confronted Officer Eugene Goodman in a hallway. They ultimately made their way to the Senate floor where they looked through papers left behind by fleeing Senators.

This photo from Joshua Hughes' FB account from Berkeley Calif in April 2017 shows Hughes--charged last night in the Capitol riot--w/Kyle Chapman, aka Based Stickman, founder of the Fraternal Order of the Alt-Knights, the former military wing of the Proud Boys.

A cooperating witness took a screenshot of a Facebook video streamed live from inside the Capitol by Zachary H. Martin of Springfield, Mo., the FBI says.

"Local dangerous nut job that participated in the coup," the witness wrote in a caption of the screenshot.

NEW: Prosecutors release a detention memo describing in almost minute by minute detail the movements of Dominic Pezzola, a former Marine & Proud Boy member known as Spaz, on Jan 6. The memo follows Pezzola from the crowd outside, through a window, into the halls of Congress.

Prosecutors say Pezzola was part of the mob that confronted Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman outside the Senate Chamber.
“Where they meeting at?" the memo quotes Pezzola as saying. "Where they counting the votes?”

After breaching the building, prosecutors say, Pezzola posted a video of himself smoking a cigar.
“Victory smoke in the Capitol, boys," he says. "This is
f***ing awesome. I knew we could take this motherf***er over [if we] just tried hard enough.”

During a search of Pezzola's home in Rochester, FBI agents found a thumb drive w/several Pdf files on it.
Some had titles like “Advanced Improvised Explosives,”
“Explosive Dusts” and “Incendiaries;” “The Box Tube MAC-11,” and "Ragnar's Big Book of Homemade Weapons."

"People are smoking weed in here," Ronnie Sandlin said inside the Capitol on a video that was later used to bring federal charges against him. "Please, may I hit that?...Thank you, patriot. We made history here."

When Wilmar Montano Alvarado spoke to a Houston news channel, he said he was swept up in the crowd at the Capitol & couldn't get out.
But the FBI says it found video showing him taking part "in efforts by rioters to violently battle their way thru a line of police officers."

Up now: an arraignment for Jacob Chansley, the so-called Q Shaman.
Al Watkins, Chansley's lawyer, is requesting organic food for his client who, he says, gets a "debilitating" bacterial response when he eats non-organic food.

As a side note, the Q Shaman's lawyer has been making the rounds of the media offering to have Chansley testify at Trump's impeachment trial that Trump was responsible for inciting the Capitol riot.
lawandcrime.com/u-s-capitol-si…

Judge Royce Lamberth is now--God's truth--asking Watkins to explain the religion of shamanism to him.
Watkins says it's related to nature and wildlife and spirits" and such.

Q Shaman's hearing adjourned.

Prosecutors say Dawn Bancroft put a video of herself online exiting the Capitol after the riot.
"We were looking for Nancy to shoot her in the friggin' brain," Bancroft said, "but we didn't find her."
The authorities believe Bancroft was referring to Nancy Pelosi.

When the FBI interviewed Diana Santos-Smith who was w/Bancroft at the Capitol on Jan. 6, she initially denied going inside the building.
Then agents showed her Bancroft's video and she admitted she was lying, court papers say.