The Full Belmonte, 12/23/2022
Extremists at the vanguard of a siege: The Jan. 6 panel's last word
The voluminous final report from the Capitol attack committee dug deep into the unspoken alliance between Trump allies and far-right groups that showed up to riot.
A video of former President Donald Trump is shown on a screen, as the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol holds its final meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington on Dec. 19, 2022. | Jim Lo Scalzo
“Far-right extremists who believed they were answering Donald Trump’s call to stop the transfer of presidential power didn’t just join the Jan. 6 mob — they led it.
The first wave of rioters to enter the Capitol during the siege, according to the Jan. 6 select committee’s final report released Thursday night, was disproportionately comprised of members of the Proud Boys, Three Percenters, QAnon fanatics and so-called ‘Groypers’ loyal to Nick Fuentes, the former president’s racist and antisemitic recent Mar-a-Lago dinner guest.
Among the central findings of the select panel’s report: Trump’s incendiary lies about the 2020 election activated an extraordinary coalition of far-right militants and conspiracy theorists who not only joined the mob but were its vanguard smashing through police lines. Those extremists chose Jan. 6, the report outlines, in large part because Trump told them to in a now-infamous tweet: ‘Be there. Will be wild.’
‘The January 6th attack has often been described as a riot — and that is partly true. Some of those who trespassed on the Capitol’s grounds or entered the building did not plan to do so beforehand,’ the committee found. ‘But it is also true that extremists, conspiracy theorists and others were prepared to fight. That is an insurrection.’
The interplay between Trump world and shadowy right-wing extremist networks dominated the voluminous final report cataloging Trump’s multi-part bid to subvert the 2020 election and prevent Joe Biden from taking office. The document emerged nearly two days later than initially anticipated, as the select panel raced to wind up its work with a dwindling staff footprint in the waning days of its mandate from departing Speaker Nancy Pelosi. But the unspoken alliance Trump developed with those who would go on to do violence and destruction in his name stands out as a central conclusion of the committee’s year and a half of investigative work.
Pro-Trump conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, the select committee found, texted with Proud Boys Chair Enrique Tarrio — now charged with seditious conspiracy — during the attack on the Capitol. In addition, Jones’ sidekick Owen Shroyer texted with other Proud Boys charged alongside Tarrio, including leaders Ethan Nordean and Joseph Biggs, who would later breach the Capitol.
Those communications happened after Trump, confronting a failed effort to unravel his loss to Biden, exhorted allies to descend on Washington and pointed an angry crowd to the Capitol, where outnumbered and underprepared police officers quickly became prey.
The select committee has spent months outlining the former president’s bid to subvert the 2020 election, concluding that Trump committed multiple crimes in his quest to corruptly seize a second term. But its final report sheds new light on the nexus between Trump boosters and members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, as well as other groups.
That in-depth analysis is the product of nearly 1,200 witness interviews and reams of hard-won documents, arriving just days after the select panel held its final open meeting to approve the report’s release. It’s likely the last public action from the select panel, which is set to expire at the end of this Congress.
The eight-chapter report traces each element of the last-ditch effort by Trump and his allies to undercut the election. Four appendices to the document break down security and intelligence failures leading up to Jan. 6, the money trail of the ‘Stop the Steal’ rally on the Ellipse, and an analysis of foreign actors’ capitalization on Trump’s election disinformation.
Juxtaposed with the magnitude of the report was its somewhat chaotic conclusion: The select panel had originally targeted a Wednesday release, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s last-minute trip to Washington likely complicated the schedule. Then, the select panel abruptly released the report Thursday evening, with a placeholder date left on its cover page.
The committee dedicated a section of its report to Roger Stone, Trump’s longest-tenured political ally. Stone operated a Signal chat group called ‘Friends of Stone’ that brought together figures like Tarrio, Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes and Stop the Steal founder Ali Alexander.
Rhodes texted the group amid the Jan. 6 attack that he was at ‘the back door of the U.S. Capitol,’ the committee noted.
Stone, whom Trump pardoned at the end of 2020 for his effort to obstruct Congress’ probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election, relied on members of the Oath Keepers for protection in December 2020 and on Jan. 6, 2021, including several who later pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy.
Stone was also filmed by a documentary crew days before the 2020 election suggesting that Trump should declare victory even before the votes were counted, a tactic the then-president would soon adopt in an effort to sow false doubts about the results. The panel sent staffers to the Netherlands to view and obtain the footage of Stone.
The panel also details Fuentes’ trip to the Capitol on Jan. 6. Though he didn’t enter the building and has not been charged with a crime connected to the attack, many of his followers — known as ‘Groypers’ — have been identified among the early wave of rioters.
‘As the attack was underway, Fuentes incited followers from his perch immediately outside of the U.S. Capitol. Some of his followers joined the attack inside, with one even sitting in Vice President Pence’s seat on the Senate dais,’ the panel noted.
Fuente later described the chaos he witnessed on police lines that day as ‘awesome’ and said he hoped to see similar energy at future events. When he testified to the Jan. 6 committee, he repeatedly pleaded the Fifth.
Trump drew widespread rebukes for hosting Fuentes at his Mar-a-Lago estate in November, and reports suggest the white nationalist leader urged Trump during their meeting to more vocally defend those who breached the Capitol.
The executive summary of the report, which dug into nearly every aspect of Trump’s last-ditch effort to stay in power and recapped much of the ground covered by the select panel’s public hearings over the summer, was released on Monday. The committee’s nine lawmakers are aiming not only for an entry in the historical record, but also to send a signal flare to prosecutors and the voting public.
‘The Committee recognizes that this investigation is just a beginning; it is only an initial step in addressing President Trump’s effort to remain in office illegally,’ Vice Chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) wrote in a foreword. ‘Prosecutors are considering the implications of the conduct we describe in this report. As are voters.’
The report’s final chapter is an extensive analysis of the mob attack, relying on surveillance footage and video taken by the media and rioters themselves. That analysis shows that an early wave of rioters, many who arrived at the Capitol even as Trump continued to address a rally on the Ellipse, was packed with members of extremist groups and QAnon adherents.
Most prominent among them were the Proud Boys — including Nordean and Biggs — who were conspicuously present at several breaches of police lines and when the breach of the Capitol building itself occurred. But the panel found the Proud Boys were buttressed by Three Percenters, Groypers and other far-right extremists as they ignited the initial breach.” Read more at POLITICO
Cassidy Hutchinson Said Trump Allies Urged Her to Limit Jan. 6 Testimony
Transcript of White House aide’s earlier testimony is released by House committee
Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testifying at a hearing of the Jan. 6 committee in June. PHOTO: AL DRAGO/BLOOMBERG NEWS
“WASHINGTON—The Jan. 6 select committee released a transcript of oral testimony from former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson pointing to efforts by lawyers and others in former President Donald Trump’s orbit to urge her to protect Mr. Trump in her testimony before the committee.
Ms. Hutchinson, an aide to Mr. Trump’s last White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, had dismissed her first lawyer, Stefan Passantino, by the time she provided some of the most dramatic live testimony before the committee in June, when she said she was told that Mr. Trump wanted to be driven to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and wrestled for the steering wheel with the Secret Service when his order was refused.
In testimony given in September and released by the committee on Thursday, Ms. Hutchinson recounted what she viewed as a wide-ranging campaign by individuals close to Mr. Trump to pressure her to provide misleading testimony to the Jan. 6 committee.
‘There were people in Trump world who were a little more worried about me being more forthcoming with the committee because of the access and insight that I had into what was happening throughout these months,’ she testified.
The 138-page transcript of Ms. Hutchinson’s Sept. 14 testimony was released in advance of the committee’s final report, which was expected to be made public on Wednesday but has been delayed.
After receiving a subpoena to testify before the committee, Ms. Hutchinson said she reached out to former colleagues in the Trump White House and others connected to the former president for assistance in obtaining an attorney. She said she didn’t have the funds to pay for an attorney at the time and was instructed to reach out to a number of attorneys with ties to Mr. Trump who might represent her without requiring a fee.
Ms. Hutchinson said she first met Mr. Passantino in early 2022. ‘We have you taken care of,’ he told her by phone on Feb. 7, according to Ms. Hutchinson, adding that he didn’t want her to sign an official engagement letter.
‘That was the first alarm bell that went off in my head,’ she told the committee.
She said she asked Mr. Passantino who was paying him. ‘We’re not telling people where funding is coming from right now,’ he replied, according to Ms. Hutchinson.
At a meeting on Feb. 16, according to Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony, Mr. Passantino said he would ‘downplay’ her role in the White House to the committee. ‘You were a secretary. You had an administrative role,’ she said he told her. ‘Everyone’s on the same page about this.’
She testified that she became worried that Mr. Passantino was being paid by individuals connected to Mr. Trump and told the committee she worried that when a person becomes involved with Mr. Trump’s orbit financially, ‘there sort of is no turning back.’
Ms. Hutchinson testified that in a conversation with Mr. Passantino, she revealed that she knew about a confrontation in the presidential limousine after Mr. Trump’s Jan. 6 speech and expressed concern that the committee might raise questions about the event.
‘No, no, no, no, no,’ Mr. Passantino replied, according to Ms. Hutchinson. ‘We don’t want to go there. The less the committee thinks you know, the better.’
In a statement, Mr. Passantino said: ‘I represented Ms. Hutchinson honorably, ethically, and fully consistent with her sole interests as she communicated them to me. I believed Ms. Hutchinson was being truthful and cooperative with the Committee throughout the several interview sessions in which I represented her.’
He added that it wasn’t uncommon ‘for clients to change lawyers’ or ‘for a third party, including a political committee, to cover a client’s fees at the client’s request,’ and that he had taken leave from the law firm Michael Best & Friedrich LLP.
Ms. Hutchinson testified that Mr. Passantino never told her to lie and said telling the committee ‘I don’t recall’ wasn’t perjury. ‘The less you remember, the better,’ Mr. Passantino told her, according to Ms. Hutchinson.
‘We just want to focus on protecting the president,’ Mr. Passantino later told her in a meeting the day of her Feb. 23 deposition with the committee, according to Ms. Hutchinson. ‘We all know you’re loyal.’ She said Mr. Passantino brought up job opportunities, which he said they would discuss after the deposition.
Ms. Hutchinson testified that during the first interview, ‘I almost felt like at points Donald Trump was looking over my shoulder.’
Cassidy Hutchinson said she was told that former President Donald Trump wanted to be driven to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.PHOTO: SEAN THEW/ASSOCIATED PRESS
During the interview, the committee asked Ms. Hutchinson about events inside the presidential limo on Jan. 6. She told the committee that she couldn’t recall what happened. During a break, she testified, she told Mr. Passantino, ‘Stefan…I just lied.’
‘They don’t know what you know Cassidy,’ he told her, according to Ms. Hutchinson.
The committee later asked for another interview in March. The evening before the interview, she said she had an exchange with Ben Williamson, a former aide to Mr. Meadows. According to Ms. Hutchinson, Mr. Williamson told her that Mr. Meadows ‘wants me to let you know that he knows you’re loyal and he knows you’ll do the right thing tomorrow and that you’re going to protect him and the boss.’
Ms. Hutchinson told the committee she had a mental breakdown after parts of her testimony emerged in a committee brief, because she felt she had provided misleading testimony. ‘I was kind of disgusted with myself,’ she said. She said she later confided in an unnamed Republican member of Congress, who told her: ‘You’re the one that has to live with the mirror test for the rest of your life.’
Ms. Hutchinson, through a back channel to the committee, said she arranged for a third interview during which she planned to tell the full truth. She said Mr. Passantino, who accompanied her to the interview, was shocked about how much the committee knew about events at the White House.
After deciding that Mr. Passantino had provided bad legal advice, she said she sent him an email on June 9 terminating their attorney-client relationship.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
Winter storm whips up blizzard conditions, plunging temperatures across US
“A blast of arctic air advanced over much of the U.S. on Thursday, triggering dramatic temperature drops and blizzard conditions as the National Weather Service in Buffalo described the holiday storm as a "once-in-a-generation" event.
Authorities have confirmed at least three deaths as a result of the storm.
States including Wyoming, Colorado and Montana recorded significant temperature plunges and more than a dozen others had readings below zero Thursday.
More than half of U.S. states were forecast to see some areas with minimum wind chill temperatures in the negative double digits in coming days, and the coldest regions were bracing for wind chills below minus 50 degrees, according to the National Weather Service. There will be ‘dangerously cold conditions across most of the country this week,’ the weather service said.
High winds combined with even moderate amounts of snow could cause blizzard conditions in parts of the Midwest, Great Lakes and Northeast.
Forecasters warn the weather could snarl busy holiday travel and knock out power.” Read more at USA Today
Senate Passes $1.65 Trillion Omnibus Bill After Deal on Title 42 Votes
House plans to quickly approve spending package now that it has cleared Senate
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said ‘this is one of the most significant appropriations packages we have done in a really long time.’PHOTO: JACQUELYN MARTIN/ASSOCIATED PRESS
“WASHINGTON—Senators passed a $1.65 trillion spending bill just ahead of the Christmas holiday and a gathering winter storm, after breaking an impasse related to immigration policy and racing through more than a dozen amendments.
The bipartisan bill was approved in a 68-29 vote. The legislation will now go to the House, where it is expected to pass, before heading to President Biden’s desk.
The omnibus legislation includes $858 billion in military spending, $45 billion more than the White House had requested and up about 10% from $782 billion the prior year. It also includes $772.5 billion in nondefense discretionary spending, up almost 6% from $730 billion the prior year. The overall discretionary price tag works out to about $1.65 trillion, compared with $1.5 trillion the prior fiscal year.
The bill includes changes to the 1887 Electoral Count Act that would make it harder to block the certification of a presidential election, as well as revisions to the U.S. retirement system. It also widens a ban on TikTok on government devices….” Read more Wall Street Journal
Trump Audit Shows Depths of I.R.S. Funding Woes
The agency lacks the resources to go after rich taxpayers. For years, a single revenue agent was responsible for the audits of Donald J. Trump.
“WASHINGTON — Before Donald J. Trump became president and after, his exceedingly complex and voluminous tax returns came under regular scrutiny by the Internal Revenue Service. The number of agents assigned to the audit team: one.
After he left office, the I.R.S. said it was beefing up the audit team, to three. The tax agency itself acknowledged that it was still overwhelmed by the complexity of Mr. Trump’s finances and the resistance mounted by the former president and his sophisticated army of accountants and lawyers, which included a former I.R.S. chief counsel and raised questions early last year about why even three revenue agents should be assigned to audit him.
‘With over 400 flow-thru returns reported on the Form 1040, it is not possible to obtain the resources available to examine all potential issues,’ I.R.S. agents said of Mr. Trump’s tax returns in an internal memo that was released by the House Ways and Means Committee this week as part of its oversight of the mandatory presidential audit process.
The I.R.S. is a sprawling agency, and an audit notice can strike fear in most taxpayers. But the committee reports released this week highlight how depleted the I.R.S. has become in the last decade, as Republicans starved it of funding. They also show how the agency has become increasingly unable to crack down on wealthy taxpayers who push the legal limits to lower their tax bills and have the means to fend off audits if they get caught.
That has led to a $7 trillion ‘tax gap’ of revenue over a decade that is owed but goes uncollected, in many cases from superrich taxpayers such as Mr. Trump, who has boasted that he fights to pay as little tax as possible. But the resource shortfall is playing out against the backdrop of a partisan and ideological battle over the I.R.S. that appears sure to continue to constrain its ability to match the capacity of an industry dedicated to tax minimization and avoidance.
The agency’s work force of about 80,000 is the same size as it was in 1970. Its enforcement staff has fallen by over 30 percent since 2010, and audits of millionaires have declined by more than 70 percent. Its budget has declined by nearly 20 percent, when accounting for inflation, during the last decade.
Republicans have for years accused the I.R.S. of political bias and unfairly targeting conservatives. For that reason, they have fought to cut the agency’s funding or, in some cases, called to abolish it altogether.
The spending package that Congress is voting on this week reduces the base funding levels for the I.R.S. by $275 million to $12.32 billion, which Republicans hailed as a victory.
However, that does not account for the $80 billion in supplemental funding that the I.R.S. was granted through the Inflation Reduction Act this year to buttress its resources over the next decade and hire more than 80,000 agents and staff members. The Biden administration has broad discretion over how and when to deploy that money to modernize the agency and bolster its enforcement capacity….” Read more at New York Times
Sam Bankman-Fried Released on $250 Million Bond
FTX founder makes first U.S. court appearance following his extradition from the Bahamas
“FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was released on a $250 million bond Thursday and ordered to stay in his parents’ Palo Alto, Calif., home, after the former executive’s first appearance in a New York federal court following his extradition from the Bahamas.
Mr. Bankman-Fried, charged with engaging in criminal conduct that contributed to the cryptocurrency exchange’s collapse, came to court shackled by the ankles and wearing a charcoal gray suit. He sat quietly at the defense table, flanked by his lawyers.
Mr. Bankman-Fried left the courthouse in a black SUV. At a later date he will enter a plea on charges that he engaged in fraud and other offenses, a federal magistrate judge said. The next court hearing is set for Jan. 3.
Magistrate Judge Gabriel Gorenstein set the bail package, which requires Mr. Bankman-Fried to be under electronic monitoring and restricts his travel to parts of northern California and New York.Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicolas Roos called Mr. Bankman-Fried’s alleged crimes ‘a fraud of epic proportions’ and said he believed the $250 million bond was the largest ever. The judge said the bond would be cosigned by four financially responsible people, including one nonfamily member.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“China is likely experiencing 1 million Covid infections and 5,000 virus deaths every day as it grapples with what is expected to be the biggest outbreak the world has ever seen. The current wave may see the daily case rate rise to 3.7 million in January. The US said it was willing to assist with mRNA vaccines, which have been proven more effective than shots used in China, but hasn’t heard back from Beijing. Chinese security personnel have been pushing journalists away from crematoriums as concern grows that authorities there are hiding the death toll, which outside parties have predict could claim a million lives or more in this wave alone.” Read more at Bloomberg
Netanyahu's new government
“Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday announced he had formed what’s likely to be Israel’s most far-right government in history.” (Vox) Read more at CNN / Hadas Gold
“Netanyahu hasn’t publicized final agreements, but his Likud party is expected to join with religious and ultranationalist allies with a history of hostility toward Palestinians.” (Vox) Read more at Times of Israel / Carrie Keller-Lynn
“On Wednesday, the Israeli parliament also passed legislation that grants expanded police power to an openly anti-Arab national security adviser.” (Vox) Read more at Guardian / Ben Lynfield
“The formation of a coalition government coincides with the deadliest violence between Israelis and Palestinians in years.” (Vox) Read more at Washington Post / Shira Rubin
Pelé’s health has worsened, hospital says
By Angela Reyes and Jill Martin, CNN
Pele helped Brazil win three World Cup titles -- in 1958, 1962 and 1970.
Franck Fife/AFP/Getty Images
CNN —
“Pelé’s health has worsened and the Brazilian soccer great now requires greater care due to the progression of his cancer, according to a statement by the Albert Einstein Jewish Hospital in São Paulo on Wednesday.
Pelé was admitted to the hospital on November 29 for a respiratory infection and ‘re-evaluation of the chemotherapy treatment over the colon cancer identified in September 2021,’ the hospital said at the time.
Now Pelé ‘presents progression of the oncological disease and requires greater care related to renal (kidney) and cardiac dysfunctions,’ the hospital said Wednesday.” Read more at CNN