Jan. 6 Panel Says Trump Engaged in 'Criminal Conspiracy'

WASHINGTON — 

The House Committee investigating the U.S. Capitol insurrection said Wednesday night that its evidence shows former President Donald Trump and his associates engaged in a “criminal conspiracy” to prevent Congress from certifying the results of the presidential election, spread false information about it and pressured state officials to overturn the results.

The committee made the allegations in a filing in response to a lawsuit by Trump adviser John Eastman. Eastman, a lawyer who was consulting with Trump as he attempted to overturn the election, is trying to withhold documents from the committee as it investigates the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. The committee argued there is a legal exception allowing the disclosure of communications regarding ongoing or future crimes.

“The Select Committee also has a good-faith basis for concluding that the President and members of his Campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States,” the committee wrote in a filing submitted in U.S. District Court in the Central District of California.

The 221-page filing marks the committee’s most formal effort to link the former president to a federal crime, though the actual import of the filing is not clear since lawmakers do not have the power to bring charges on their own and can only make a referral to the Justice Department. The department has been investigating last year’s riot but has not given any indication that it is considering seeking charges against Trump.

The brief filed Wednesday was in an effort by the committee to refute attorney-client privilege claims made by Eastman in order to withhold records from congressional investigators.

“The Select Committee is not conducting a criminal investigation,” Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the committee’s Democratic chairman, said in a statement. “But, as the judge noted at a previous hearing, Dr. Eastman’s privilege claims raise the question whether the crime-fraud exception to the attorney-client privilege applies in this situation.”

The filing also details exhibits from the committee’s interviews with several top Trump aides and even former Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short.

The committee also said it found evidence that Trump sought to obstruct an official proceeding — in this case, the certification of the results — by trying to strongarm Pence to delay the proceedings so there would be additional time to “manipulate’” the results.

“The evidence supports an inference that President Trump and members of his campaign knew he had not won enough legitimate state electoral votes to be declared the winner of the 2020 Presidential election during the January 6 Joint Session of Congress, but the President nevertheless sought to use the Vice President to manipulate the results in his favor,” the filing states.

Jan. 6 Panel Says Trump Engaged in 'Criminal Conspiracy'

WASHINGTON — 

The House Committee investigating the U.S. Capitol insurrection said Wednesday night that its evidence shows former President Donald Trump and his associates engaged in a “criminal conspiracy” to prevent Congress from certifying the results of the presidential election, spread false information about it and pressured state officials to overturn the results.

The committee made the allegations in a filing in response to a lawsuit by Trump adviser John Eastman. Eastman, a lawyer who was consulting with Trump as he attempted to overturn the election, is trying to withhold documents from the committee as it investigates the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. The committee argued there is a legal exception allowing the disclosure of communications regarding ongoing or future crimes.

“The Select Committee also has a good-faith basis for concluding that the President and members of his Campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States,” the committee wrote in a filing submitted in U.S. District Court in the Central District of California.

The 221-page filing marks the committee’s most formal effort to link the former president to a federal crime, though the actual import of the filing is not clear since lawmakers do not have the power to bring charges on their own and can only make a referral to the Justice Department. The department has been investigating last year’s riot but has not given any indication that it is considering seeking charges against Trump.

The brief filed Wednesday was in an effort by the committee to refute attorney-client privilege claims made by Eastman in order to withhold records from congressional investigators.

“The Select Committee is not conducting a criminal investigation,” Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the committee’s Democratic chairman, said in a statement. “But, as the judge noted at a previous hearing, Dr. Eastman’s privilege claims raise the question whether the crime-fraud exception to the attorney-client privilege applies in this situation.”

The filing also details exhibits from the committee’s interviews with several top Trump aides and even former Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short.

The committee also said it found evidence that Trump sought to obstruct an official proceeding — in this case, the certification of the results — by trying to strongarm Pence to delay the proceedings so there would be additional time to “manipulate’” the results.

“The evidence supports an inference that President Trump and members of his campaign knew he had not won enough legitimate state electoral votes to be declared the winner of the 2020 Presidential election during the January 6 Joint Session of Congress, but the President nevertheless sought to use the Vice President to manipulate the results in his favor,” the filing states.

Alabama Man Convicted of Seditious Conspiracy in US Capitol Riot

An Alabama man affiliated with the far-right Oath Keepers militia group pleaded guilty Wednesday to seditious conspiracy for his actions leading up and through the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, making him the first person involved in the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol to be convicted of the rarely used charge.

The sentencing guideline range for Joshua A. James, who also pleaded guilty to a charge of obstruction of an official proceeding, was estimated to be from 7¼ to nine years in prison.

The 34-year-old from Arab, Alabama, acknowledged getting into a physical altercation with a police officer while inside the Capitol and participating in a plan to use force to hinder or delay the transfer of presidential power. James also agreed to cooperate with authorities investigating the riot, including testifying before a grand jury.

Authorities say James and others affiliated with the group rode golf carts to the Capitol, moved through the crowd in a military-style “stack” formation and went into the building.

James was accused of pushing past officers who tried to stop rioters from moving toward the Rotunda, joining others who confronted officers, and profanely proclaiming the building was his. A week before the riot, James said in an encrypted chat that he believed teams within the militia group were adequately armed, prosecutors said in court records.

While four other people connected with the Oath Keepers have pleaded guilty to obstruction of Congress and a lesser conspiracy charge, James is the first among the 11 people associated with the group to plead guilty to a seditious conspiracy charge.

The seditious conspiracy prosecution is the boldest publicly known attempt so far by the government to prosecute those who attacked the U.S. Capitol. The group’s founder, Stewart Rhodes, and others have pleaded not guilty to seditious conspiracy and other charges. A seditious conspiracy conviction carries a maximum penalty of 20 years, compared with five years on the lesser conspiracy charge facing other group members.

Those charged with seditious conspiracy are accused of working together to use force to stop the peaceful transfer of presidential power. Authorities say participants discussed their plans in encrypted chats, traveled to the nation’s capital from across the country, organized into teams, used military tactics, stashed weapons in case they felt they were needed, and communicated with each other during the riot.

Prosecutors say the group set up a “quick reaction force,” or QRF, that kept guns at a hotel in nearby Arlington, Virginia, and were prepared to bring the weapons into Washington if Rhodes or associates believed the need arose. Days before the attack, one defendant suggested getting a boat to ferry weapons across the Potomac River. In the end, the QRF teams didn’t bring guns into Washington.

At the Capitol, Oath Keepers marched in two teams in stack formation, with team members advancing forward with one hand on the shoulder of the person in front of them.

More than 750 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the riot. Over 220 riot defendants have pleaded guilty, more than 100 have been sentenced, and at least 90 others have trial dates.

The longest prison sentence handed down so far to a Jan. 6 rioter was given to Robert Palmer of Largo, Florida.

Palmer, who was sentenced to 5½ years in prison, acknowledged hurling a wooden plank at officers protecting a Capitol entrance, spraying a fire extinguisher, and then throwing it when it was done.

The attack resulted in the deaths of five people, including a police officer. More than 100 officers were injured. Rioters caused over $1 million in damage.

Conspiracy Theorists Fuel Bump Extremist Killings in US

Newer strains of far-right movements fueled by conspiracy theories, misogyny and anti-vaccine proponents contributed to a modest rise in killings by domestic extremists in the United States last year, according to a report released Tuesday by a Jewish civil rights group.

Killings by domestic extremists increased from 23 in 2020 to at least 29 last year, with right-wing extremists killing 26 of those people in 2021, the Anti-Defamation League said in a report first provided to The Associated Press.

The ADL’s report says white supremacists, antigovernment sovereign citizens and other adherents of long-standing movements were responsible for most of the 19 deadly attacks it counted in 2021. The New York City-based organization’s list also included killings linked to newer right-wing movements that spread online during the coronavirus pandemic and former President Donald Trump’s presidency.

The ADL concluded that roughly half of the 2021 killings didn’t have a clear ideological motive, fitting a pattern that stretches back at least a decade.

The group’s tally included a shooting rampage in Denver by Lyndon James McLeod, who killed five people in December before a police officer fatally shot him. McLeod was involved in the “manosphere,” a toxic masculinity subculture, and harbored revenge fantasies against most of his victims, the ADL report notes.

Right-wing conspiracy theorists killed five people last year in two incidents, both involving “troubled perpetrators,” the ADL report says.

In August, California surfing school owner Matthew Taylor Coleman was charged with killing his two young children with a spear gun in Mexico. Coleman told an FBI agent that he was “enlightened” by conspiracy theories, including QAnon, and believed his wife had passed “serpent DNA” on to his children, according to a court affidavit.

A Maryland man, Jeffrey Allen Burnham, was charged with killing his brother, his sister-in-law and a family friend in September. Charging documents said Burnham confronted his brother, a pharmacist, because he believed he was poisoning people with COVID-19 vaccines.

“Prior to the coronavirus, the anti-vaccine movement in the United States did not have a particular ideological leaning and contained both left-leaning and right-leaning activists,” the ADL report says. “However, the politicization of the coronavirus and other factors have created many new anti-vaccine conspiracy adherents and given the anti-vaccine movement a distinctly right-wing tone it did not previously have.”

The QAnon conspiracy theory has been linked to other acts of real-world violence, including last year’s riot at the U.S. Capitol. In June, a federal intelligence report warned that QAnon adherents could target Democrats and other political opponents for more violence.

FILE – A man in a QAnon shirt confront US Capitol Police in the hallway outside of the Senate chamber at the Capitol in Washington, Jan. 6, 2021.

A core idea QAnon promotes is that Trump was secretly fighting a Satan-worshipping, child sex trafficking cabal of “deep state” enemies, prominent Democrats and Hollywood elites. QAnon hasn’t faded away with Trump leaving office.

Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow at the ADL’s Center on Extremism and author of Tuesday’s report, said the QAnon movement is still evolving and increasingly overlapping with other extremist movements, including vaccine opponents.

FILE – Jacob Anthony Chansley, who also goes by the name Jake Angeli, a QAnon follower, speaks to supporters of then-President Donald Trump outside of the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, in Phoenix, Nov. 5, 2020.

“Could it sort of dissipate into those or could it find some sort of new focus or new life? Or could it just hang around if Donald Trump is elected again in 2024 and take a new form then?” Pitcavage said during an interview. “It’s difficult to predict the future of those movements, so it’s difficult to predict whether they will continue to have this sort of similar effect on people.”

A dearth of mass killings in 2021 meant that last year’s tally was far lower than the totals in any year between 2015 and 2019, when killings by domestic extremists ranged from 45 to 78.

In other respects, the ADL data for 2021 mirrors long-term trends.

Right-wing extremists have killed at least 333 people in the U.S. over the past decade, accounting for three-quarters of all extremist-related killings, the report says.

The ADL distinguishes between killings that it considers to be driven by ideology and those that it found to be non-ideological or lacking a clear motive. Its report says the numbers for each category have been close to even over the past 10 years. The ADL concluded that 14 of the 29 extremist killings in 2021 were apparently motivated at least in part by ideology.

The ADL attributed 13 killings last year to white supremacists, three to antigovernment extremists, two to Black nationalists and one to an Islamist extremist.

The group didn’t count the death of Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick during the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, as an extremist killing. Sicknick collapsed and died hours after he was attacked by rioters who stormed the Capitol and interfered with Congress’ certification of President Joe Biden’s electoral victory. In April, the Washington, D.C., medical examiner’s office ruled that Sicknick suffered a stroke and died from natural causes.

“Although it is clear that the Capitol attack could have contributed to, or even precipitated, the strokes that felled Sicknick, it cannot be definitely proven that he was murdered by a Capitol stormer,” the ADL report says.