The GOP has claimed insurrectionists kept their firearms stored away from the Capitol because they were only tourists and staying within the stanchions. Since most insurrectionists were also allowed to leave without being searched, this is the first person charged who actually brought their firearm into the Capitol. Because you never know something, something. Better to have one and not need it than to need one and not have it. Darn democracy and that tree of liberty… the ironism of 1968 returns.
A grand jury has invoked a rarely used federal statute to indict a Capitol defendant who repeatedly admitted transporting a weapon across state lines ahead of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
The D.C. federal grand jury, in a superseding indictment returned Wednesday and unsealed Thursday, charged Guy Reffitt of Texas with transporting “a rifle and a semi-automatic handgun, knowing and having reason to know and intending that the firearm will be used unlawfully in furtherance of a civil disorder.”
Reffitt is the first Capitol defendant indicted under the firearm component of the civil disorder statute, according to a law enforcement official. That civil disorder statute was passed as part of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, championed by segregationist lawmakers intent on targeting Black activists. In addition to being used against accused rioters in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, the civil disorder statute has been used against more than 100 of the nearly 500 defendants charged in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
www.huffpost.com/...
It’s sometimes said that history is written by the victors, but if Republicans get their way, the history of the Jan. 6 insurrection will be written largely by the perpetrators and the enablers.
That’s the takeaway from a major new Senate report on security lapses at the Capitol that was released Tuesday. While the report is well executed on that topic, it’s also notable for what it does not cover: It does not officially describe the attack as an “insurrection,” instead opting for the word “attack,” and it avoids a frank discussion of the role played by one Donald J. Trump.
In short, the only history of the insurrection that Republicans will acknowledge is one that carefully sanitizes the role in inciting the mob played by the then-president — and by Republicans themselves.
What’s more, the only permissible history for them is one that buries another profoundly consequential truth: that Trump fully intended to disrupt the election’s conclusion by inciting a mob attack on duly elected lawmakers. Republicans refuse to reckon with this event as an act of mass political violence, one in which they are deeply implicated.
www.washingtonpost.com/...