Two Opposing Assessments of Wednesday’s Events at the Capitol

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Here are two extremely different views of what happened Wednesday. Can we agree that some views are infinitely more reliable than others?

First, a person who identifies himself as Terry Bouton, an historian and author of Taming Democracy: “The People,” the Founders, and the Troubled Ending of the American Revolution (Oxford University Press), offered an account on Twitter. He says he and his wife attended the protest as observers and stayed around for the assault on the Capitol:

My wife and I attended the “Stop the Steal” Txxxx Insurrection on Wednesday (as observers, NOT participants) and there are FIVE big take-aways from what we witnessed and heard outside the Capitol that I’d like to share.

1) This insurrection wasn’t just redneck white supremacists and QAnon kooks. The people participating in, espousing, or cheering the violence cut across the different factions of the Republican Party and those factions were working in unison.

Preppy looking “country club Republicans,” well-dressed social conservatives, and white Evangelicals in Jesus caps were standing shoulder to shoulder with QAnon cultists, Second Amendment cosplay commandos, and doughy, hardcore white nationalists.

We eavesdropped on conversations for hours and no one expressed the slightest concern about the large number of white supremacists and para-military spewing violent rhetoric. Even the man in the “Camp Auschwitz” sweatshirt wasn’t beyond the pale. They were all “patriots.”

I’m sure there were Republicans there who were horrified by what was happening. But the most common emotions we witnessed by nearly everyone were jubilation at the take over and anger at Democrats, Mike Pence, non-Txxxx supporting Republicans, and the Capitol Police.

2) There is no doubt the Capitol was left purposefully understaffed as far as law enforcement and there was no federal effort to provide support even as things turned very dark. This contrasts sharply with all of other major protests we have attended.

A lot has been made of the contrast to the overwhelming police presence at Black Lives Matters protests in the fall, and this is certainly true. But there was also A LOT more federal law enforcement presence at every single previous protest we have attended in DC.

Most of these protests involved tens of thousands of mostly white, middle-aged people (meaning race wasn’t the only reason for the disparate police presence). Even the March for Science had far more police for a non-partisan event featuring “Bill Nye the Science Guy.”

By contrast, there was a tiny federal police presence at “Stop the Steal” despite weeks of promises of violence spread on social media by well-known far-right radicals, many of whom had long histories of inciting violence.

When we arrived, the only forces present were the clearly overwhelmed Capitol Police. The only reinforcements that arrived were other Capitol Police. There were a handful of DC Metro police, but they had accompanied the ambulances to take away the injured.

The only other federal law enforcement presence was an FBI Swat team of about eight officers who arrived to provide cover for the Capitol Fire and EMTs there to extract Ashli Babbitt, the QAnon radical who was shot inside the Capitol Building.

Once the FBI team got Babbitt out, they left and no other federal officers arrived in the more than two hours that followed. The small Capitol Police force was left to deal with the chaos by themselves.

3)  The Txxxx rioters only supported law enforcement as long as they believed law enforcement was supporting them. Rioters, many carrying Thin Blue Line flags, seemed convinced that the Capitol Police would turn against the government and join them.

Numerous rioters shouted at the police, saying some version of “we had your back, now you need to have ours.” All of the Capitol officers we saw—Black, white, Latino, male, female—seemed alarmed by what was happening and continued to try to do their job faithfully.

And the crowd reviled them for it. They booed the police and FBI swat team, calling them traitors and murderers. A man on the back Capitol steps ripped up a Thin Blue Line flag, the torn stripes fluttering down over a crowd briefly chanting “fuck the police.”

4)  There were also no clear crowd rules imposed for Stop the Steal like there were for all the other protests we have attended. All of the “liberal” protests of the last four years we attended had a long list of things you could not bring that were enforced at the Capitol.

At these protests, there were no poles or sticks, no backpacks, no weapons or body armor, etc. There were sometimes security check points to go through to get onto the mall or Capitol grounds.

None of these standard rules applied to Stop the Steal. There were poles and flags and backpacks and body armor EVERYWHERE. We didn’t see any guns or knives. But there were certainly people brandishing flag poles as if they were weapons.

5) These people are serious and they are going to keep escalating the violence until they are stopped by the force of law. There were many, many people there who were excited by the violence and proud and excited about the prospect of more violence.

And it wasn’t just the white nationalists, Second Amendment radicals, and QAnon boneheads. I can’t adequately describe the blood lust we heard everywhere as we walked over the Capitol grounds, even from mild-mannered looking people.

The most alarming part to me was the matter-of-fact, causal ways that people from all walks of life were talking about violence and even the execution of “traitors” in private conversations, like this was something normal that happened every day.

I am convinced that if Congress doesn’t act to do something about this quickly, these people are going to keep going and the unrest and violence will get more widespread and more uncontrollable. This is a crisis. It’s real. It’s happening. It must be taken seriously.

Second, Brian Leiter, a professor at the University of Chicago, posted something he says he received from a friend. It’s said to be an email from the head of an actual New York City investment firm:

From: Blackhawk Partners [email address omitted]

Date: January 8, 2021 at 3:43:24 PM EST

To: [name omitted]

Subject: It ain’t over yet. something BIG is about to happen.

Thanks much for being a loyal reader of my letters. If you think you’ve received this email by error, simply remove yourself from the list. No worries.

If interested in supporting me, I appreciate you forwarding this email along to help bypass the censorship of conservative/capitalist reports & opinions.

With 100,000 followers on board, my team and I are committed to start changing the narrative in America. It is high time for disruption. The alternative is “misery”.

The American Revolution 2.0 is upon America. That was the WORST staged event at the US Capitol that I have ever seen. Everyone of those ACTORS that ended up in the Capitol Building were hired actors. There was ZERO Police Presence at the Capitol Building and I am glad that Txxxx got out of Washington. We are watching the Coup come to an end and it was interesting to see that the MSM are naming it a coup and it really is a Coup. A coup against Txxxx. Anyway Txxxx is at an Elite Military Communications Base in Abilene, Texas where he is watching his Vice President finish his Presidency as he sits in the Bird Seat. Get ready for some big announcements. America is on the Brink. Treason is the End Game.

Fakestream Media continues to manipulate the world into thinking the U.S. Capitol insurgency was the fault of President Txxxx, asking for the 25th amendment, while Schumer and Pelosi et al are pushing the DoJ to go after Txxxx for inciting a riot to overthrow the government.

THEY are saying that all MAGA / Txxxx supporters are “Domestic Terrorists,” especially “Q-Anon followers.”

The hypocrisy by the communist left is over-the-top as NOTHING was said by these bastards about ANTIFA / BLM fire and destruction on the streets of America.

What THEY are not wanting the fakestream media to talk about is….WE in the Patriot Movement have the intel and WE understand that ANTIFA led the MAGA cattle to a deadly slaughter at the Capitol. WE all have the footage and intel on two particular ANTIFA thug chiefs.

The American public are being hoodwinked by the communist force that continues their coup against President Txxxx.

Txxxx MUST prevail and if he has NO support to begin massive arrests of all TRAITORS, then at least…HE MUST expose, expose and expose the foreign interference and traitors aiding and abetting the Chinese Communists.

Word tonight is that Pelosi’s laptop was grabbed and shows emails with ANTIFA organizers.

I am also seeing reports from credible sources, a U.S. military operation (during the night) was conducted in Ukraine, a raid of a Biden (owned) building and some very disturbing items and black tar heroin was seized.

The next couple of weeks could further entice the mental trip we’re all experiencing…WE ARE AT WAR.

Regardless of what Txxxx finally has to do, which WE might NOT agree with, the revolution and resistance against an illegal government will not end, but will become extremely dangerous, but righteous and our duty under the U.S. Constitution.

If you’re ready to escape perpetual fiefdom, extortion and slavery and build a powerhouse company or startup, sign up here < … > to find out how to create the biggest wealth creation movement ever

Subscribing to my master class will also get you:

  *   a complimentary copy of my most recent book . . . 

Start differentiating between what is the reality v/s what they are imposing on you or live with the consequences.

Let’s Roll!

Ziad K. Abdelnour, President & CEO

Blackhawk Partners

445 Park Avenue

New York, NY 10022

Unquote.

For context, Prof. Leiter offered a link to a Securities and Exchange Commission Order, which says in part:

This matter concerns a scheme by registered representative Abdelnour to offer and sell fictitious “prime bank” securities. From at least September 2009 to April 2011, Abdelnour, acting through Blackhawk Partners, Inc., a purported private equity “family office,” solicited investors to invest in trading programs that purportedly yielded returns of up to 600% in as little as seven days, with no risk. None of this was true, however. . . . 

2. Although Abdelnour did not succeed in selling any of the fictitious securities, as a result of his fraud, Abdelnour willfully violated Sections 17(a)(1) and (3) of the Securities Act, and by engaging in unregistered broker-dealer activity, he violated Section 15(a) of the Exchange Act.

Some of Them Are Merely Religious Fanatics

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One of America’s leading villains is Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri. He’s well-educated and apparently smart. Nevertheless, he insists the election was stolen. That’s him giving a fist of solidarity to the seditionists before the riot.

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Katherine Stewart, who has studied the religious right for years, explains why he’s willing to tell big lies. In addition to his political ambition, he’s serving what he sees as a higher truth:

In today’s Republican Party, the path to power is to build up a lie in order to overturn democracy. At least that is what Senator Josh Hawley was telling us when he offered a clenched-fist salute to the pro-Trump mob before it ransacked the Capitol, and it is the same message he delivered on the floor of the Senate in the aftermath of the attack, when he doubled down on the lies about electoral fraud that incited the insurrection in the first place. How did we get to the point where one of the bright young stars of the Republican Party appears to be at war with both truth and democracy?

Mr. Hawley himself, as it happens, has been making the answer plain for some time. It’s just a matter of listening to what he has been saying.

In multiple speeches, an interview and a widely shared article for Christianity Today, Mr. Hawley has explained that the blame for society’s ills traces all the way back to Pelagius — a British-born monk who lived 17 centuries ago. In a 2019 commencement address at The King’s College, a small conservative Christian college devoted to “a biblical worldview,” Mr. Hawley denounced Pelagius for teaching that human beings have the freedom to choose how they live their lives and that grace comes to those who do good things, as opposed to those who believe the right doctrines.

The most eloquent summary of the Pelagian vision, Mr. Hawley went on to say, can be found in the Supreme Court’s 1992 opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Mr. Hawley specifically cited Justice Anthony Kennedy’s words: “At the heart of liberty,” Kennedy wrote, “is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” The fifth century church fathers were right to condemn this terrifying variety of heresy, Mr. Hawley argued: “Replacing it and repairing the harm it has caused is one of the challenges of our day.”

In other words, Mr. Hawley’s idea of freedom is the freedom to conform to what he and his preferred religious authorities know to be right. Mr. Hawley is not shy about making the point explicit. In a 2017 speech to the American Renewal Project, he declared — paraphrasing the Dutch Reformed theologian . . . Abraham Kuyper — “There is not one square inch of all creation over which Jesus Christ is not Lord.” Mr. Kuyper is perhaps best known for his claim that Christianity has sole legitimate authority over all aspects of human life.

“We are called to take that message into every sphere of life that we touch, including the political realm,” Mr. Hawley said. “That is our charge. To take the Lordship of Christ, that message, into the public realm, and to seek the obedience of the nations. Of our nation!”

Mr. Hawley has built his political career among people who believe that Shariah is just around the corner even as they attempt to secure privileges for their preferred religious groups to discriminate against those of whom they disapprove. Before he won election as a senator, he worked for Becket, a legal advocacy group that often coordinates with the right-wing legal juggernaut the Alliance Defending Freedom. He is a familiar presence on the Christian right media circuit.

The American Renewal Project, which hosted the event where Mr. Hawley delivered the speech I mentioned earlier, was founded by David Lane, a political organizer who has long worked behind the scenes to connect conservative pastors and Christian nationalist figures with politicians. The choice America faces, according to Mr. Lane, is “to be faithful to Jesus or to pagan secularism.”

The line of thought here is starkly binary and nihilistic. It says that human existence in an inevitably pluralistic, modern society committed to equality is inherently worthless. It comes with the idea that a right-minded elite of religiously pure individuals should aim to capture the levers of government, then use that power to rescue society from eternal darkness and reshape it in accord with a divinely-approved view of righteousness [“be faithful to Jesus or to pagan secularism”].

At the heart of Mr. Hawley’s condemnation of our terrifyingly Pelagian world lies a dark conclusion about the achievements of modern, liberal, pluralistic societies. When he was still attorney general, William Barr articulated this conclusion in a speech at the University of Notre Dame Law School, where he blamed “the growing ascendancy of secularism” for amplifying “virtually every measure of social pathology,” and maintained that “free government was only suitable and sustainable for a religious people.”

Christian nationalists’ acceptance of President Txxxx’s spectacular turpitude these past four years was a good measure of just how dire they think our situation is. Even a corrupt sociopath was better, in their eyes, than the horrifying freedom that religious moderates and liberals, along with the many Americans who don’t happen to be religious, offer the world.

That this neo-medieval vision is incompatible with constitutional democracy is clear. But in case you’re in doubt, consider where some of the most militant and coordinated support for Mr. Txxxx’s post-election assault on the American constitutional system has come from. The Conservative Action Project, . . . which serves as a networking organization for America’s religious and economic right-wing elite, made its position clear in a statement issued a week before the insurrection.

It called for members of the Senate to “contest the electoral votes” from Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and other states that were the focus of Republicans’ baseless allegations. Among the signatories was Cleta Mitchell, the lawyer who advised Mr. Trump and participated in the president’s call on Jan. 2 with Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state. . . .

Although many of the foot soldiers in the assault on the Capitol appear to have been white males aligned with white supremacist movements, it would be a mistake to overlook the powerful role of the rhetoric of religious nationalism in their ranks. At a rally in Washington on Jan. 5, on the eve of Electoral College certification, the right-wing pastor Greg Locke said that God is raising up “an army of patriots.” Another pastor, Brian Gibson, put it this way: “The church of the Lord Jesus Christ started America,” and added, “We’re going to take our nation back!”

In the aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection, a number of Christian nationalist leaders issued statements condemning violence — on both sides. How very kind of them. But few if any appear willing to acknowledge the instrumental role they played in perpetuating the fraudulent allegations of a stolen election that were at the root of the insurrection.

They seem, like Mr. Hawley himself, to live in a post-truth environment. And this gets to the core of the Hawley enigma. The brash young senator styles himself not just a deep thinker who ruminates about late-Roman era heretics, but a man of the people, a champion of “the great American middle” . . . and a foe of the “ruling elite” . . .

Yet Mr. Hawley isn’t against elites per se. He is all for an elite, provided that it is a religiously righteous elite. He is a graduate of Stanford University and Yale Law School and he clerked for John Roberts, the chief justice. Mr. Hawley, in other words, is a successful meritocrat of the Federalist Society variety. His greatest rival in that department is the Princeton debater Ted Cruz. They are résumé jockeys in a system that rewards those who do the best job of mobilizing fear and irrationalism. . . .

Over the past few days, following his participation in the failed efforts to overturn the election, Mr. Hawley’s career prospects may have dimmed. Two of his home state newspapers have called for his resignation; his political mentor, John C. Danforth, a former Republican senator from Missouri, has described his earlier support for Mr. Hawley as “the biggest mistake I’ve ever made”; and Simon & Schuster dropped his book. On the other hand, there is some reporting that suggests his complicity in efforts to overturn the election may have boosted his standing with Mr. Txxxx’s base. But the question that matters is not whether Mr. Hawley stays or goes, but whether he is simply replaced by the next wannabe demagogue . . . 

Make no mistake: Mr. Hawley is a symptom, not a cause. He is a product of the same underlying forces that brought us President Txxxx and the present crisis of American democracy. Unless we find a way to address these forces and the fundamental pathologies that drive them, then next month or next year we will be forced to contend with a new and perhaps more successful version of Mr. Hawley.

Unquote.

Some of them believe white people, especially men, own America. Others believe lying isn’t a sin if it helps their religion own America. It’s important to know your enemy, but I can’t think of any other encouraging words.

The Outgoing Capitol Police Chief Gives His Side of the Story

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Tonight, The Washington Post published an interview with the former chief of the Capitol Police, combined with other reporting. This is most of it. It’s painful to read:

Two days before Congress was set to formalize President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund was growing increasingly worried about the size of the pro-Txxxx crowds expected to stream into Washington in protest.

To be on the safe side, Sund asked House and Senate security officials for permission to request that the D.C. National Guard be placed on standby in case he needed quick backup.

But, Sund said Sunday, they turned him down.

In his first interview since pro-Txxxx rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol last week, Sund, who has since resigned his post, said his supervisors were reluctant to take formal steps to put the Guard on call even as police intelligence suggested that the crowd President Txxxx had invited to Washington to protest his defeat probably would be much larger than earlier demonstrations.

House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving said he wasn’t comfortable with the “optics” of formally declaring an emergency ahead of the demonstration, Sund said. Meanwhile, Senate Sergeant at Arms Michael Stenger suggested that Sund should informally seek out his Guard contacts, asking them to “lean forward” and be on alert in case Capitol Police needed their help.

Irving could not be reached for comment. A cellphone number listed in his name has not accepted messages since Wednesday. Messages left at a residence he owns in Nevada were not immediately returned, and there was no answer Sunday evening at a Watergate apartment listed in his name. A neighbor said he had recently moved out.

Stenger declined Sunday to comment when a reporter visited his Virginia home. “I really don’t want to talk about it,” he said.

It was the first of six times Sund’s request for help was rejected or delayed, he said. Two days later on Wednesday afternoon, his forces already in the midst of crisis, Sund said he pleaded for help five more times as a scene far more dire than he had ever imagined unfolded on the historic Capitol grounds.

[When] an army of 8,000 pro-Txxxx demonstrators streamed down Pennsylvania Avenue . . . Sund’s outer perimeter on the Capitol’s west side was breached within 15 minutes. With 1,400 Capitol Police officers on duty, his forces were quickly overrun [Note: It’s been said elsewhere that only 500 Capitol Police were on duty].

“If we would have had the National Guard we could have held them at bay longer, until more officers from our partner agencies could arrive,” he said.

Just before 2 p.m., the pro-Txxxx mob entered the Capitol, sending lawmakers and staff scrambling for safety. D.C. police had quickly dispatched hundreds of officers to the scene. But it wasn’t enough. At 2:26 p.m., Sund said, he joined a conference call to the Pentagon to plead for additional backup.

“I am making an urgent, urgent immediate request for National Guard assistance,” Sund recalled saying. . . .

On the call were several officials from the D.C. government, as well as officials from the Pentagon, including Lt. Gen. Walter E. Piatt, director of the Army Staff. The D.C. contingent was flabbergasted to hear Piatt say that he could not recommend that his boss, Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy, approve the request.

“I don’t like the visual of the National Guard standing a police line with the Capitol in the background,” Piatt said, according to Sund and others on the call.

Again and again, Sund said, “The situation is dire,” recalled John Falcicchio, the chief of staff for D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser. “Literally, this guy is on the phone, I mean, crying out for help. It’s burned in my memories.”

Pentagon officials have emphasized that the Capitol Police did not ask for D.C. Guard backup ahead of the event or request to put a riot contingency plan in place with guardsmen at the ready, and then made an urgent request as rioters were about to breach the building . . .

“We rely on Capitol Police and federal law enforcement to provide an assessment of the situation,” Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said during a news conference last week. “And based on that assessment that they had, they believed they had sufficient personnel and did not make a request.”

Despite Sund’s pleas, the first National Guard personnel didn’t arrive at the Capitol until 5:40 p.m. — after four people had died and the worst was long over.

Sund, 55, offered his resignation the next day, telling friends he felt he had let his officers down. Many lawmakers, infuriated by the breach and angry that they had been unable to reach Sund at the height of the crisis, were only too happy to accept it.

Under pressure from lawmakers, Stenger and Irving also resigned.

In a wide-ranging interview, Sund sought to defend his officers, who, he said, had fought valiantly. And with threats of violence looming ahead of Biden’s Jan. 20 inauguration, he said he remains worried.

“My concern is if they don’t get their act together with physical security, it’s going to happen again,” he said. . . .

Last Monday, Sund said, he began to worry about the Jan. 6 demonstration.

“We knew it would be bigger,” Sund said. “We looked at the intelligence. We knew we would have large crowds, the potential for some violent altercations. I had nothing indicating we would have a large mob seize the Capitol.”

Sure, there were claims that alt-right instigators had discussed storming the building and targeting lawmakers. But Sund said such threats had surfaced in the past.

“You might see rhetoric on social media. We had seen that many times before,” he said. “People say a lot of things online.”

Still, he decided to call Irving and Stenger to ask for permission to request that the National Guard be put on emergency standby. Irving didn’t like the idea, Sund said; he said it would look bad because it would communicate that they presumed an emergency. He said he’d have to ask House leaders.

On the way home that evening, Sund did as Stenger suggested, calling Maj. Gen. William J. Walker, the head of the 1,000-member D.C. National Guard, to tell him that he might call on him for help.. . . Sund said, “how long do you think it would take to get us assistance?”

Walker said he thought he could send 125 personnel fairly quickly. Over the weekend, Sund had also conferred with D.C. Police Chief Robert J. Contee III, who also had offered to lend a hand if trouble arose.

On Tuesday, Sund said he briefed Irving and Stenger, who said that backup seemed sufficient.

Just before noon Wednesday, Sund was monitoring Txxxx’s speech to the crowd on the Ellipse when he was called away. There were reports of two pipe bombs near the Capitol grounds. . . . Sund said he now suspects that the pipe bombs were an intentional effort to draw officers away from the Capitol perimeter.

The first wave of protesters arrived at the Capitol about 12:40 p.m.

“As soon as they hit the fence line, the fight was on,” Sund said. “Violent confrontations from the start. They came with riot helmets, gas masks, shields, pepper spray, fireworks, climbing gear — climbing gear! — explosives, metal pipes, baseball bats. I have never seen anything like it in 30 years of events in Washington.”

Using video footage from the Capitol and radio transmissions from his incident commanders, Sund could see his officers trying to hold the line. But the rioters immediately yanked the barricade fence out of the way and threw it at his officers’ heads.

“I realized at 1 p.m., things aren’t going well,” he said. “I’m watching my people getting slammed.”

Sund immediately called [D.C. Police Chief] Contee, who sent 100 officers to the scene, with some arriving within 10 minutes. But at 1:09 p.m., Sund said he called Irving and Stenger, telling them it was time to call in the Guard. He wanted an emergency declaration. Both men said they would “run it up the chain” and get back to him, he said.

Minutes later, aides to the top congressional leaders were called to Stenger’s office for an update on the situation — and were infuriated to learn that the sergeants at arms had not yet called in the National Guard or any other reinforcements, as was their responsibility to do without seeking approval from leaders.

“What do you mean that there’s no National Guard, that there’s no reinforcements coming?” aides demanded to know. “Why haven’t you ordered them, why aren’t they already here?”

Sund said he called Irving twice more and Stenger once to check on their progress. At 1:50 p.m. — nine minutes before the Capitol was breached — Sund said he was losing patience. He called Walker to tell him to get ready to bring the Guard. Irving called back with formal approval at 2:10 p.m. By then, plainclothes Capitol Police agents were barricading the door to the Speaker’s Lobby just off the House chamber to keep the marauders from charging in.

Sund finally had approval to call the National Guard. But that would prove to be just the beginning of a bureaucratic nightmare to get soldiers on the scene.

At 2:26 p.m., Sund joined a conference call organized by D.C’s homeland security director, Chris Rodriguez. Among those on the screen were the District’s police chief, mayor and Walker.

Unlike anywhere else in the country, the D.C. Guard does not report to a governor, but to the president, so Walker patched in the office of the Secretary of the Army, noting that he would need authorization from the Pentagon to order soldiers to the Capitol.

Piatt noted the Pentagon still needed authorization from Capitol Police to step foot on Capitol grounds. Sund ticked through details on the severity of the breach, but the call got noisy with crosstalk as officials asked more questions.

Chief Contee sought to quiet the din. “Wait, wait,” he said, and then directed attention to Sund. “Steve, are you requesting National Guard assistance at the Capitol?”

Sund said he replied: “I am making urgent, urgent, immediate request for National Guard assistance.”

But Piatt, dialed in from across the river at the Pentagon, pushed back, according to Sund, saying he would prefer to have Guard soldiers take up posts around Washington, relieving D.C. police, so that they could respond to the Capitol instead of guardsmen. Sund’s account is supported by four D.C. officials on the call, including Bowser.

Bowser told The Washington Post that Sund had “made it perfectly clear that they needed extraordinary help, including the National Guard. There was some concern from the Army of what it would look like to have armed military personnel on the grounds of the Capitol.”

Falcicchio said that once Contee confirmed that Sund wanted the National Guard, D.C. officials echoed his request.

“Contee was definitely — I hate to use this term, but there’s no other term for it. He was pleading,” Falcicchio said. “He was pleading with them to fulfill the request that Capitol Police was making.”

But the entire discussion was in vain. Only McCarthy, the secretary, could order the Guard deployed — and only with the approval of the Pentagon chief. McCarthy has since said that, at the time of the call, he was busy taking the requests to activate more Guard to acting defense secretary Christopher C. Miller.

At one point, according to a defense official, Contee said, “Let me be clear, are you denying this?” To which Piatt responded that he wasn’t denying the request; he simply didn’t have the authority to approve it.

“It was clear that it was a dire situation,” the defense official said. “He didn’t want to commit to anything without getting approval.”

At 3:45 p.m., Stenger told Sund that he would ask his boss, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), for help getting the National Guard authorized more quickly. Sund never learned the result. More of Contee’s officers had arrived and were helping remove rioters from the grounds. Capitol Police worked with other federal authorities, including the Secret Service, the Park Police and the FBI, to secure lawmakers, eject rioters and sweep the building so lawmakers could return to finish counting the electoral college votes that would allow them to formally recognize Biden’s victory later that night.

According to a timeline the Defense Department published Friday, Miller verbally authorized the activation of the entire D.C. Guard at 3:04 p.m. It would take two more hours for most of the citizen soldiers to leave their jobs and homes, and pick up gear from the D.C. Armory.

Sund, who was officially replaced as chief Friday, said he is left feeling that America’s bastions of democracy need far more security. He said the violent crowd that mobbed the Capitol was unlike anything he has ever seen.

“They were extremely dangerous and they were extremely prepared. . . . I’m a firm supporter of First Amendment. This was none of that,” he added. “This was criminal riotous activity.”

Sund blamed Txxxx for putting his officers at risk, saying “the crowd left that rally and had been incited by some of the words the president said.” Sund said he fears what may come next.

The More We Learn, the Worse It Looks

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Wednesday could have been even worse. From The Guardian:

Two men who were seen carrying plastic “zip tie” handcuffs during the deadly riot at the US Capitol, suggesting plans to kidnap lawmakers in an attempt to overturn Txxxx’s election defeat, were arrested on Sunday. . . .

The news came as more graphic details of violence and brutality emerged. Before the arrests announced on Sunday, prosecutors had filed 17 cases in federal district court and 40 in District of Columbia superior court for offenses ranging from assaulting police officers to entering restricted areas, stealing federal property and threatening lawmakers.

Alarming footage of the riot continued to emerge. Some captured a bloodied officer crushed in a doorway and screaming. Other officers were reportedly beaten with pipes; one was seen tumbling over a railing into a crowd below. The officer had been body-slammed from behind.

Brian Sicknick, 42 and a 12-year veteran, died after he was struck in the head with a fire extinguisher while “physically engaging” the rioters, according to a statement from Capitol police. . . . 

Police arrested one man alleged to have brought guns and explosives to Washington; another was heavily armed and allegedly threatened to kill House speaker Nancy Pelosi. Chants of “Hang Mike Pence”, the vice-president, were heard during the riot. . . . 

Prosecutors said additional cases remained under seal and dozens were sought by federal agents. The US attorney in Washington vowed that “all options were on the table” for charges, including possibly sedition.

According to the Secretary of the Army, domestic terrorism cases are being opened. Among the items recovered on Wednesday were long guns, Molotov cocktails and other explosive devices.

The Washington Post reported that confrontations between the mob and members of Congress and Capitol staff were imminent:

A mob nearly breached the Speaker’s Lobby with access to the House Chamber while [representatives] and staff were sheltering inside;

There was a similar moment when a right turn instead of left would have taken another mob straight to the Senate chamber; 

Eight staffers huddled together under a table in a conference room, one door away from the terrorists rummaging through Nancy Pelosi’s office;

Behind another door, Senate aides heard a woman praying loudly for “the evil of Congress to be brought to an end”.

Maybe the mob simply wanted to discuss election security with their elected representatives.

A member of the Capitol Police told BuzzFeed that he heard about the coming assault in a message from a friend:

“I found out what they were planning when a friend of mine screenshot me an Instagram story from the Proud Boys saying, ‘We’re breaching the Capitol today, guys. I hope y’all ready.’”

That was a heavily trained group of militia terrorists that attacked us,” said the officer, who has been with the department for more than a decade. “They had radios, we found them, they had two-way communicators and earpieces. They had bear spray. They had flash bangs … They were prepared.

Tonight, CNN has a new video. Someone who’s watched it says it shows “a MAGA rioter (in white hat and backpack) grab a DC Metro officer and pull him down Capitol steps, where he is stomped and beaten with an American flag pole”. These are the “patriots” the president “loves”.

The story that’s slowly being told is that nobody who works for the federal government or the District of Columbia anticipated an attack on the Capitol. They supposedly thought there would be another demonstration, similar to the one on December 12th, during which nothing much happened until after dark, when a few roving bands of the president’s supporters turned violent. That would imply that no government departments were monitoring the discussions on social media and right-wing messages boards that featured detailed discussions of the impending attack (see this article from Pro Publica).Or that whoever is supposed to keep track of domestic terrorism didn’t take the threats seriously. Or that they purposefully kept information about the threat to themselves. The issue will be investigated and at least some of the truth will be revealed.

Meanwhile, Business Insider reports that there are foreign observers who think the lack of security on Wednesday indicates that this was an actual attempted coup by elements in the government:

Insider spoke with three [European] officials on Thursday morning: a French police official responsible for public security in . . . central Paris, and two intelligence officials from NATO countries who directly work in counterterrorism and counterintelligence operations . . . 

They said the circumstantial evidence available pointed to what would be openly called a coup attempt in any other nation. None were willing to speak on the record because of the dire nature of the subject.

While they did not furnish evidence that federal agency officials facilitated the chaos, . . .  America’s international military and security allies are now willing to give serious credence to the idea that [the president] deliberately tried to violently overturn an election and that some federal law-enforcement agents — by omission or otherwise — facilitated the attempt. . . .

“These are not subtle principles” for managing demonstrations, “and they transfer to every situation,” the [French] official said. “This is why we train alongside US federal law enforcement to handle these very matters, and it’s obvious that large parts of any successful plan were just ignored.”

Seditious Right-Wing Apples Aren’t the Same as Illegal Left-Wing Oranges

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Right-wing apologists have suggested that it was left-wing radicals acting as agents provocateur who fomented the violence on Wednesday. That’s almost as ridiculous as the idea that the government orchestrated the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre as part of a plot to take away everybody’s guns.

The suggestion apparently originated when some idiot(s) using facial recognition software identified three men who invaded the Capitol. Two of the men’s faces also appear on an anti-fascist site. The big problem is that the site identifies these two as hard-core Nazis, not anti-fascists. The third man wasn’t an anti-fascist either. He’s a QAnon conspiracy promoter who’s been photographed in the vicinity of a protest or two. These stupid charges made it into a conservative newspaper and were given more oxygen by one of the worst members of Congress. So much for evidence.

Earlier this week, a law professor at the University of North Carolina, Carissa Byrne Hessick, responded to a somewhat more rational idea about the insurrection:

I have seen so many people (including folks on #lawtwitter) comparing what happened at the Capitol yesterday with the violence and property damage that happened in some cities during protests last summer.

Let me explain what is wrong with that analogy . . . . .

To clarify — my disagreement is not with those who are pointing out that law enforcement didn’t respond with the same level of force and arrests at the capitol as it did during BLM protests.

That comparison deserves to be drawn and it raises some very important questions.

My disagreement is with those who are saying that what happened at the Capitol yesterday is so similar to what happened during protests this summer, that people’s reactions ought to be similar–a suggestion that those reacting more strongly now are hypocritical.

Here’s one example of someone (a law professor) making the argument [“kudos to those who’ve consistently condemned riots”]. But I’ve seen it plastered across the site all day, it keeps cropping up in my mentions, and so I want to respond.

There are a number of things that distinguish what happened at the Capitol from what happened during [Black Lives Matter] protests. The most obvious is the reason that people protested—some protested about factually false claims about election fraud; others about real police shootings.

It should go without saying, but the reasons that people act are incredibly important in judging their actions. People who do bad things for bad reasons deserve more condemnation than people who do things for good reasons.

This is a pretty basic social and legal concept.

There is another, more important difference between the reasons for action.

The people at BLM protests were trying to get changes made to policing practices.

The people at the Capitol were trying to stop Congress from certifying an election.

Changing policing practices so that fewer civilians get shot is a totally legitimate aim. If we were to accomplish it through a court decision or legislation, I don’t think people would object. In fact, most Americans would likely welcome it.

In contrast, stopping the certification of an election is not a legitimate aim. It would be a major problem if it were accomplished via a court decision. And it’s even worse to try and do it via force or intimidation.

But the reasons for the actions we saw is not the only important difference.

There is also a huge difference in how those actions came about–specifically the role that public officials played in the turmoil and protests that led to the storming of the Capitol.

The anger towards and distrust of police in Black communities didn’t come from public officials. It came from people in those communities. In fact, much of the anger was directed at the public officials in those cities. Folks blame Democratic mayors for police violence.

And while some officials in Democratic cities expressed solidarity with the protestors, the mayors were not encouraging people to take to the streets and protest. The opposite in fact. They wanted people to stay home.

Contrast that with how President Txxxx and many other members of the GOP have reacted to the 2020 election:

They have been leading the charge to challenge the result.

They have been engaging in rhetoric that talks about violence and unrest.

They fanned these flames.

The President himself held a rally in which he literally encouraged people to march to the Capitol. He told them that the Republicans in Congress were being weak, and they needed to show them to be bold.

He told them to march to the Capitol, and he repeated it multiple times.

Did Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, or any one of a similar stature tell people to take to the streets this summer?

Did they give the protestors a fist pump like [Senator] Josh Hawley did, as he was heading in to try and overturn the election using frivolous legal arguments?

The answers to those questions is obviously “no”

Contributing to a bail fund or saying that you understand why people are angry–things that folks on the right criticized Democratic officials for–is obviously not the same thing as encouraging people to take to the streets.

So were there protests this summer at which some people broke the law?

Yes.

But what we saw at the Capitol yesterday and what happened over the summer obviously aren’t analogous.

And to pretend otherwise seems like it is minimizing yesterday’s attack on democracy [no, that’s exactly what it is].