Replies to post #44061 on Franklin, Andrews, Kramer & Edelstein

[BullNBear52]

Law enforcement officers have used what they call an "exclusion list." The list lets investigators see mobile devices that were authorized to be in the Capitol -- such as for Congress members and staff, law enforcement and other government and public safety officials -- while sifting out people who were not authorized to be in the building, according to a federal court filing in a riot-related case.
The FBI and Justice Department declined to comment.

FBI collection of phone metadata and geolocator data -- permissible under federal law -- was the subject of multiple lines of questions this week by some senators who pressed FBI Director Christopher Wray to reveal what investigators were doing with communications and financial data. Republican Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Josh Hawley of Missouri suggested at a hearing Tuesday that the FBI could be overstepping its authority by scooping up communications data.

Investigators also have Capitol Police security footage that Democrats want examined to see if any members gave tours to riot participants in advance of January 6. Democrats have accused unnamed Republicans of providing rallygoers access, suggesting they were surveillance opportunities ahead of the riot.

Other lawmakers have a separate concern, that as investigators move closer to the activities of lawmakers, some members of Congress could use the protections of the Constitution's Speech or Debate Clause to try to block the work of the FBI. The clause provides legal immunity to members of Congress when carrying out their legislative duties.

That argument is kind of weak since it they were in communication with people who were not authorized to be in the building in the first place then it had nothing to do with legislative duties.

And per their oath they should have reported any conversations to law enforcement officials.

I am all for protections under the Constitution. But that is a stretch.

[scion]

Oath Keepers founder directed Capitol rioters on January 6, Justice Department says

By Katelyn Polantz, CNN
Updated 7:25 PM ET, Tue March 9, 2021
https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/09/politics/oath-keepers-capitol-riot-justice-department/

(CNN)The founder of the Oath Keepers was giving directions before and during the US Capitol riot to alleged extremist conspirators among the right-wing paramilitary group, the Justice Department said in court filings Monday and Tuesday.

The new details begin to capture more about the leadership and network within the Oath Keepers around the insurrection, as prosecutors fight to keep defendants in jail and charge additional members of the group.
Monday night's filing highlighted newly disclosed communications over the messaging app Signal that investigators have found from Stewart Rhodes, the Oath Keepers' founder, and regional Oath Keepers leaders.

The Justice Department describes Rhodes as a central presence among the Oath Keepers during the siege, telling some where to go and gathering with them in person at the Capitol.

Prosecutors also described, in court documents supporting the arrest of an Alabama Oath Keeper on Tuesday, how members of the group carried out Rhodes' call to provide security for "VIPs" at events related to the "Stop the Steal" pro-Trump effort on January 5 and 6.

Prosecutors have gradually been building out a major Capitol riot conspiracy case against nine Oath Keepers. The new details about Rhodes, which come in arguments to keep another alleged Oath Keeper who was arrested early in the investigation in jail, is the first time the Justice Department has offered a bigger picture of directions given that day and shared publicly what they've learned about the involvement of the Oath Keepers' national leader. Before this week, nine Oath Keepers from different states had been charged in a conspiracy case.

Rhodes has not been charged and did not immediately respond to a request from CNN on Tuesday.

On January 19, he had denied planning the attack in an interview with CNN.

"We weren't part of any decision to go in there and were part of no planning and no one was instructed to do so," he said then.

"I fully expect to be the media to continue to try to spin it as though I was some kind of grand master planner. If I'd have planned it, it would have been a whole lot different."

Signal messages

But prosecutors cited his own words over a texting app.

Rhodes, on Signal, described "several well equipped" forces surrounding the city for backup, and, prosecutors say, the Oath Keepers come to Washington, DC, to provide security for VIPs at events around undermining the election.

"DO NOT bring in anything that can get you arrested. Leave that outside DC," Rhodes allegedly wrote to other key Oath Keepers, who've already been charged with conspiracy related to the siege.

"There are many, many others, from other groups, who will be watching and waiting on the outside in case of worst case scenarios," Rhodes added in the chat, prosecutors say. He also suggested to the group members to bring flashlights and helmets, and said he planned to bring a collapsible baton.

During the siege, prosecutors say Rhodes also wrote in the Signal a direction to gather Oath Keepers to the southeast side of the Capitol, and at one point was caught on photos and images with several Oath Keepers gathered around him.

"All I see Trump doing is complaining. I see no intent by him to do anything. So the patriots are taking it into their own hands. They've had enough," he allegedly wrote on Signal at 1:38 p.m. that day, shortly after the siege had begun.

Rhodes is called Person One in the court filing but identified in it by prosecutors through a link to a post he made about a call to action on January 6 on the Oath Keepers website.

On the Oath Keepers' site, Rhodes had asked for donations and for volunteers to come to Washington, DC, to assist with "security" on January 5 and 6.

"It is CRITICAL that all patriots who can be in DC get to DC to stand tall in support of President Trump's fight to defeat the enemies foreign and domestic who are attempting a coup, through the massive vote fraud and related attacks on our Republic. We Oath Keepers are both honor-bound and eager to be there in strength to do our part," he wrote in the post.

Rhodes also writes on the Oath Keeper's site about so-called "Quick Reaction Forces" or QRFs -- a key component of the Justice Department's descriptions in court of the danger they believe Oath Keepers pose if they were to be released. Prosecutors previously noted one member's idea to ferry weapons across the Potomac River by boat.

"As we have done on all recent DC Ops, we will also have well armed and equipped QRF teams on standby, outside DC, in the event of a worst case scenario, where the President calls us up as part of the militia to assist him inside DC," Rhodes wrote on the Oath Keepers website before January 6.

Prosecutors wrote in court this week they are still investigating any quick-reaction forces.

After the siege, Rhodes continued to push resistance of the Biden presidency, including on the far-right talk show InfoWars.

Another Oath Keeper charged

In addition to the new focus on Rhodes, prosecutors charged Alabama cleaning business owner Joshua James, another member of the Oath Keepers who provided security around the "Stop the Steal" events on January 5 and January 6, according to a newly unsealed court filing in the DC District Court.

James allegedly dressed in tactical gear to act as a security detail for a speaker at the "Stop the Steal" on the eve of January 6, according to the court filing.

He is charged with two counts related to entering the US Capitol on January 6, according to the court filing.

"On January 6, 2021, James and a number of the same Oath Keepers he was with on January 5—all clad in much of the same tactical and Oath Keeper gear they had donned the day prior—are seen in photographs and videos walking together throughout Washington, D.C., and eventually toward the Capitol building," the FBI wrote in an affidavit supporting James' arrest.

James was arrested in Alabama on Tuesday, according to court records.

James' arrest comes a day after the arrest of another Oath Keeper, Roberto Minuta, who has been linked to longtime Trump-confidant and "Stop the Steal" champion Roger Stone's security circle around January 6.

James and others "wearing apparel with the Oath Keepers name and/or insignia provided security to a speaker at the 'Stop the Steal' events planned for that day," investigators said in James' charging documents.

"Publicly-available video shows that, after storming the Capitol, James congregated with charged and uncharged individuals affiliated with the Oath Keepers—many of whom had also stormed the Capitol, and some of whom James had acted with throughout January 5 and 6, 2021."


This story has been updated with additional developments Tuesday.

CNN's Sara Sidner and Mallory Simon contributed to this report.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/09/politics/oath-keepers-capitol-riot-justice-department/

[scion]

'We're Going To Keep Digging,' FBI Director Wray Says Of Capitol Siege

March 18, 20215:01 PM ET
Heard on All Things Considered
CARRIE JOHNSON
https://www.npr.org/2021/03/18/978193998/were-going-to-keep-digging-fbi-director-wray-says-of-capitol-siege?t=1616103514644

Christopher Wray is only the eighth person to lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation — and the only one whose appointment was announced on Twitter.

For the past 3 1/2 years, he has been grinding through fierce criticism by former President Donald Trump. He's also guided the bureau through some wounds the FBI inflicted upon itself, including employees' text messages about political candidates in 2016, the guilty plea by an FBI lawyer for altering a document, and a watchdog report that uncovered surveillance applications filled with big mistakes.

Now the laconic Wray, 54, is opening up, ever so slightly, to address what he calls a metastasizing threat of violent domestic extremists and the sprawling investigation of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

He spoke with NPR Thursday afternoon to talk about the state of the bureau and how the FBI is confronting white supremacist and militia-based terrorism. He also addressed the ongoing investigation into the recent shootings in the Atlanta area.

Interview Highlights

Atlanta-area mass shooting

So obviously, it's a heartbreaking incident, and it hits particularly close to home for me since I consider Atlanta home. And so I certainly grieve for the victims and their families. The FBI is supporting state and local law enforcement, specifically APD, the Atlanta Police Department, and the [Cherokee County] Sheriff's Office. So we're actively involved, but in a support role.

And while the motive remains still under investigation at the moment, it does not appear that the motive was racially motivated. But I really would defer to the state and local investigation on that for now.

Threats from domestic terrorists

I elevated racially motivated violent extremism to our top threat priority level about a year and a half ago or so. And I've been trying to call out this threat for a number of years now, since I've been in this job.

We have doubled the number of domestic violent extremists investigations we've had since where they were when I started as director, and we were up to about 2,000. And that was before the Jan. 6 siege. So I expect the numbers to be even higher this year. And arrests likewise went up dramatically from 2019 to '20.

And so at the same time, the international terrorism threat — especially international terrorist organizations that inspire homegrown violent extremists here in the U.S. — hasn't gone away by any stretch of the imagination. So we clearly are making do right now with what we have. But we need and will need more resources to tackle that problem.

The sprawling investigation into Jan. 6

You know, I was appalled that something like that could happen in this country and determined to make sure that it doesn't happen ever again. ...

We intend to see this to its conclusion, no matter how many people it takes us to devote to it, no matter how long it takes us to do it, we're going to see it to the end. ... If we have the evidence to charge somebody and they committed a crime on that day, I expect them to be charged. ...

We've arrested people all over the country. I think we have ... open investigations specifically related to the Jan. 6 siege in all but one of our 56 field offices, which gives you a sense of the national sprawl of the investigation. And in some of those instances, there have already been conspiracy charges — small, I would call them — sort of small cells of individuals working together, coordinating their travel, et cetera. I don't think we've seen some national conspiracy, but we're going to keep digging.

Whether the FBI dropped the ball before Jan. 6

Now, in the case of Jan. 6, specifically, as you said, we had tasked all of our field offices to be on the lookout for information related to any threat to the Capitol and to the National Capital Region on Jan. 6. And to feed that information back. We passed on the information that we did have, as best I can tell, in quite a number of ways. And we had been reporting and warning for a good chunk of 2020, together with the Department of Homeland Security and in a number of instances about the domestic violent extremist threat, about the possibility that the domestic violence extremist threat would carry into the election and beyond the election. ...

Now, what we did not have, as far as I can tell ... is any indication that hundreds and hundreds of people were going to breach the U.S. Capitol. And so we'll be looking hard to figure out, is there more we can be doing? How can we do more, even better?

Whether the law enforcement preparation and response would have been different on Jan. 6 if the rioters were Black or Muslim

Well, look, I'm only going to speak to the FBI's approach, the FBI's position. You know, some of what people talk about has to do with crowd-control tactics ... by law enforcement and defense of buildings and things like that. And that's not the FBI's role or responsibility — whether it's the Capitol, a courthouse, a church, you know, anything else.

Our approach, the FBI's approach — we have one approach, which is if you take the law in your own hands and commit violence, it doesn't matter what your motivation is, what your ideology is, we're going to pursue you to the fullest extent of the law. And that ... was our approach over the summer. That's been our approach with jihadists-inspired violent extremists, and that's been our approach to the siege on the Capitol.

Public confidence in the FBI

So in the last two years, the number of people across this country, qualified people, applying to be special agents, has tripled the years before, and it's the highest it's been in about a decade. So it was around 12,000 a year my first few years as director and went up to 36-, 37,000. So those are people measuring their confidence level in the FBI by wanting to come work here and put their lives on the line.

But I also look at things internal, like our attrition rate. Our attrition rate is 0.4% now, which tells me something about how people feel about working here. At the end of the day, I think public confidence is measured by, you know two questions: If you were a victim ... who would you most want trying to seek justice on your behalf? And if you were a bad guy, who would you least want on your tail? And I think the FBI is the answer to both questions, 99 out of 100 times all over the country, and that to me is ultimately what really matters in terms of our our brand.

Life after Trump

Trump soured on his choice to lead the bureau not too long after Wray took the job in the summer of 2017, and by the end of Trump's presidency, people in and outside the Justice Department wondered whether Wray might be fired. That never happened. NPR asked him how life had changed since he no longer woke up every day wondering if his job were on the line — and whether he hid a letter of resignation in a safe someplace, just in case, during the Trump era.

I guess all I would say is I'm a low-key guy, but nobody should mistake my demeanor for what my spine is made out of. And I made a commitment when I was nominated that I was going to do this job one way — by the book, and that's why I've tried to approach it since Day 1. That's the way I'm going to continue to approach [it].

https://www.npr.org/2021/03/18/978193998/were-going-to-keep-digging-fbi-director-wray-says-of-capitol-siege?t=1616103514644