NEW: In his letter to the judge, violent Jan. 6 rioter Robert Scott Palmer says he now realizes Trump supporters "were lied to by… the sitting President, as well as those acting on his behalf.”
"They kept spitting out the false narative about a stolen election and how it was 'our duty' to stand up to tyranny. Little did I realize that they were the tyrannical ones…"
"I am one of the Capitol riot people. A lot if not most of the defendants I have been incarcerated with would object to me saying that we were rioting.”
"Mr. Palmer went to the Capitol at the behest of the former president. Like many others who participated in the Capitol riot, Mr. Palmer blindly followed the many figures who falsely but persistently claimed that the election had been stolen from the president.”
"As distorted as his mindset was at that time, his heart was set on doing what he believed was right. He knows now that he was wrong. He also accepts that the election was legitimate and that he had no right to attempt to interfere with the governance of our nation.”
Mr. Palmer was exposed to a barrage of media that convinced him that the election had been “stolen” from the former president. On the day in question, the former president himself led Mr. Palmer into that mindset.”
The defense sentencing memo concedes that Robert Scott Palmer spun a false narrative on a donation website after he was locked up, but that he removed the website and returned the money after "realizing the idiocy of his decision.” LINK: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…
The feds are seeking 5+ years — the longest Jan. 6 sentence to date — for Robert Scott Palmer, who lawyered up and turned himself in after he got a call from HuffPost in March. huffpost.com/entry/trump-ca…
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.@nickquested has an important new film out called 64 Days that zeroes in on the critical timeframe in the lead up to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
I’ve watched far more Capitol attack footage than any sane human being should, and even I was floored by what he’s got.
The day after the 2020 election, a mob of Trump supporters who believed Trump’s lies about voter fraud flooded to the TCF Center in Detroit, the largest majority-Black city in the nation.
NBC News’ own @PattersonNBC was inside, here’s some of what he saw:
As @janestreet and I report in our new story on the chaos at the TCF Center in 2020, some of the key instigators there — including folks banging on the windows — had official ties to the Trump 2020 campaign operation.
@janestreet Now, here's a key thing to know about the people who flooded down to the TCF Center on Nov. 4, 2020, because they saw some post on Facebook or something: They're plainly wrong. Trump didn't lose Michigan because of fraud in Detroit, where he performed better than he had in 2016.
NEW: One of the worst Jan. 6 rioters, David Dempsey, hit with 20 years in federal prison by a Reagan-appointed federal judge who has spoken out about the “preposterous” and dangerous rhetoric some Republicans have used in an attempt to “rewrite history" on Jan. 6.
Dempsey appeared to flash an “OK” sign as he was led out of court, several witnesses observed. Other rioters have yelled “Trump won!” as they were led out of court.
DOJ inspector general concludes, as folks who were paying attention four plus years ago did contemporaneously, that having Bureau of Prisons guards man civilian protests was a bad idea.
"Allowing federal law enforcement to operate with anonymity all but eliminates accountability when force is inevitably used against demonstrators." huffpost.com/entry/william-…
"A senior Justice Department official credited Barr with the idea of bringing in federal prison corrections officers, calling it an example of Barr’s 'outside the box' thinking." huffpost.com/entry/william-…
“If [we] don’t have a charge, we don’t say anything about an investigation; we just don’t do that.”
From the OIG report on Willam Barr and the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney who helped fuel the ex-president's bogus voter fraud narrative back in 2020.
He announced his resignation just before the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, which was fueled by Trump's election lies. huffpost.com/entry/david-fr…
"Freed’s unusual conduct came under intense scrutiny from Justice Department veterans who noted it was “wildly improper” for a federal prosecutor to be making public declarations about investigations that could be used as a political cudgel and help undermine confidence in the electoral process." huffpost.com/entry/david-fr…
DOJ inspector general's report on the Roger Stone sentencing recommendation (remember that?) is now out. It calls former interim U.S. Attorney Timothy Shea's leadership "ineffectual" and DOJ's handling of the Stone sentencing "highly unusual." Bill Barr refused to cooperate.
"we found that Barr had articulated his position about the sentencing recommendation both before and shortly after the first sentencing memorandum was filed, and before the President’s tweets." oig.justice.gov/sites/default/…
"Barr was in the middle of listening to what others thought about the idea of a second filing when someone mentioned the tweets, and then 'the air almost went out of the room.'"