By Michael Kunzelman
A Maryland man (click here) described by the FBI as a “self-professed” white supremacist was sentenced on Wednesday to four months of incarceration for storming the U.S. Capitol while wearing a court-mandated device that tracked his movements, court records show.
U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly also sentenced Bryan Betancur to one year of supervised release after his term of imprisonment and ordered him to pay $500 in restitution.
Betancur, 22, was on probation for a 2019 burglary conviction when he traveled from the Washington suburb of Silver Spring, Maryland, and joined the mob that attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. A GPS-enabled monitoring device that he was wearing under the terms of his probation showed that he spent roughly three hours in or around the Capitol that afternoon....
By Ella Lee
Opening remarks (click here) are set to begin this week in the seditious conspiracy trial of members of the Proud Boys, a right-wing extremist group with ties to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.
Longtime Proud Boys leader Henry "Enrique" Tarrio and four other members of the group are charged with plotting to forcibly oppose the authority of the federal government and halting certification of President Joe Biden’s 2020 election win, along with a plethora of related crimes.
The trial comes weeks after the historic sedition convictions of two leaders of the right-wing militia group Oath Keepers. Three other Oath Keepers were also found guilty of multiple felonies in connection with the attack that left several dead, dozens of police officers injured and nearly 1,000 rioters arrested....
Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, (click here) who’s Cuban, has tried to sell the group as “rough around the edges,” but welcoming to people of color. Many of those who’ve bought the message are fixated on proximity to power at any cost.
13 January 2024
By Adam Gabbatt
Supporters of Donald Trump have long been forced to suspend their belief in reality (click here): expected to believe, against all evidence to the contrary, that the one-term president won the 2020 election, hasn’t committed any crimes and is a successful businessman.
But as another tight presidential election looms, the recent efforts by Donald Trump to reimagine the people imprisoned for their role in the January 6 insurrection as “hostages”, and to downplay the horrors of that day as a peaceful protest, could have serious ramifications for democracy and his own party, onlookers have warned....
By Adam Gabbatt
Supporters of Donald Trump have long been forced to suspend their belief in reality (click here): expected to believe, against all evidence to the contrary, that the one-term president won the 2020 election, hasn’t committed any crimes and is a successful businessman.
But as another tight presidential election looms, the recent efforts by Donald Trump to reimagine the people imprisoned for their role in the January 6 insurrection as “hostages”, and to downplay the horrors of that day as a peaceful protest, could have serious ramifications for democracy and his own party, onlookers have warned....
By Maya King
U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, (click here) D-Miss., takes his ballot from election managers Gail Davis, left, and Joyce Moore to vote at his home precinct in Bolton, Miss., in Mississippi's Second Congressional Democratic Primary, Tuesday, June 7, 2022.
On the heels of the Senate’s acquittal of Donald Trump (click here), the NAACP, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson and civil rights law firm Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll filed a lawsuit against the former president, Rudy Giuliani and two white supremacist groups, citing their role in the Jan. 6 insurrection.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday morning in Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, alleges that Trump and Giuliani, in collaboration with the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, conspired to incite the riot to keep Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election. It claims they did so in violation of the Ku Klux Klan Act (click here), a Reconstruction-era statute designed to protect both formerly enslaved African Americans and lawmakers in Congress from white supremacist violence....
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday morning in Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, alleges that Trump and Giuliani, in collaboration with the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, conspired to incite the riot to keep Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election. It claims they did so in violation of the Ku Klux Klan Act (click here), a Reconstruction-era statute designed to protect both formerly enslaved African Americans and lawmakers in Congress from white supremacist violence....
If one hates equality and "the other" then one hates the USA Constitution.
The adoption of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution (click here) extended civil and legal protections to former slaves and prohibited states from disenfranchising voters “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Forces in some states were at work, however, to deny black citizens their legal rights. Members of the Ku Klux Klan, for example, terrorized black citizens for exercising their right to vote, running for public office, and serving on juries. In response, Congress passed a series of Enforcement Acts in 1870 and 1871 (also known as the Force Acts) to end such violence and empower the president to use military force to protect African Americans....
