Culiacán (Mexico) (AFP) - Ten soldiers and 19 suspected criminals were killed in an operation to arrest a son of jailed drug trafficker Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, Mexico's government said Friday, with a dramatic shootout sowing terror at an airport.
Thousands of soldiers retook control of the Sinaloa cartel stronghold of Culiacan, which resembled a war zone after furious gunmen went on the rampage to try to free their boss.
Ovidio Guzman was captured in the northwestern city on Thursday and flown to Mexico City before being transferred to the high-security Altiplano prison in central Mexico from which "El Chapo" once escaped.
The 32-year-old, nicknamed "El Raton" (The Mouse), had allegedly helped to run his father's operations since the former Sinaloa cartel boss was extradited to the United States in 2017.
A colonel who commanded an infantry battalion was among those killed after his team came under attack following the arrest, Defense Minister Luis Cresencio Sandoval told reporters.
Another 35 soldiers sustained gunshot wounds and were taken to hospital, while 21 gunmen were arrested.
Sandoval said a civilian airliner that was about to take off from Culiacan International Airport, as well as two Mexican Air Force aircraft, were hit by gunfire as cartel henchmen tried to free Ovidio Guzman.
The military planes "had to make an emergency landing" after receiving "a significant number of impacts," said Sandoval.
No injuries resulted from the plane attacks and Culiacan airport resumed operations on Friday.
The United States had issued a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to Ovidio Guzman's capture. It accuses him of being a key player in the Sinaloa cartel founded by his father.
The arrest came as Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador prepared to welcome his US counterpart Joe Biden for a North America leaders' summit next week where security is expected to be high on the agenda.
The drug trafficker's detention was "not an insignificant accomplishment by Mexican authorities," US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said.
"And we're certainly grateful for that," he said, adding that the United States would keep working "in lockstep" with Mexico, notably to tackle trafficking of the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl.
Mexico denied that the United States had been involved in the operation to catch Ovidio Guzman.
"We act autonomously, independently. Yes there is cooperation and there will continue to be, but we make the decisions as a sovereign government," Lopez Obrador told reporters.
Ovidio Guzman secured a court order blocking his immediate extradition to the United States.
In any case, Mexico's government ruled out a fast-track extradition, saying the proper legal process would be followed.
Authorities said calm had returned to Culiacan, where security forces removed dozens of stolen and burnt out vehicles scattered throughout the city of 800,000 people.
Videos on social media Thursday had shown passengers and Aeromexico airline employees ducking behind counters as gunfire rang out at Culiacan airport.
Cartel gunmen set cars and trucks ablaze at several intersections in the city, and authorities reported 19 roadblocks.
El Chapo is serving a life sentence in the United States for trafficking hundreds of tons of drugs into the country over the course of 25 years.
However, his cartel remains one of the most powerful in Mexico, accused by Washington of exploiting an opioid epidemic by flooding communities in the United States with fentanyl, a synthetic drug about 50 times more potent than heroin.
Ovidio Guzman and one of his brothers are accused of overseeing nearly a dozen methamphetamine labs in Sinaloa as well as conspiring to distribute cocaine and marijuana, according to the US State Department.
Ovidio Guzman also allegedly ordered the murders of informants, a drug trafficker and a Mexican singer who refused to perform at his wedding, it said.
He was captured briefly once before in 2019, but security forces freed him after his cartel waged an all-out war in response.
His release prompted sharp criticism of Lopez Obrador, who said the decision was made to protect civilians' lives.
WASHINGTON — Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) who is known for asking Donald Trump for a pardon for Jan. 6, 2021, tweeted that he finally reached an agreement for the speaker spot but was cagey on what the actual deal was.
"We’re at a turning point. I’ve negotiated in good faith, with one purpose: to restore the People’s House back to its rightful owners. The framework for an agreement is in place, so in a good-faith effort, I voted to restore the People’s House by voting for [GOP Leader] Kevin McCarthy," he wrote on Friday.
When the media finally got specifics about the deal that moved him and others to vote for Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), it was that the fringe members wanted to eliminate spending going forward.
The role of Congress is to allocate spending to support services to taxpayers, but the far-right members are looking for ways to cut the role of government. The members are seeking a balanced budget, they claim, but have been unwilling to support any revenue enhancements. In fact, they cut taxes to the ultra-wealthy in the 2017 tax cut once they had power in the House, Senate and White House, which only added to the deficit.
"What is important is to put to rest out-of-control spending and that is very much a part of the deal," Perry told reporters.
NBC News confirmed the claim, noting that the agreement is for the GOP to present a balanced budget over the course of ten years that would use 2022 as the baseline for the model.
The members went on to say that they would refuse to get into the details.
President Joe Biden's 2023 budget made a big step toward reducing the deficit for the first time in years. Throughout the course of Donald Trump's administration, there was no effort to balance the budget. The 2023 deficit would add $1.1 trillion. Which is down from the $1.4 trillion deficit estimated for 2022 and $2.8 trillion 2020 deficit, Forbes reported last year.
The other demand is more nebulous. Perry said he wants “conservative representation” in the chamber that “represents the face of America." It's unclear whether that means he wants racial diversity, gender diversity, economic diversity or political diversity. Regardless, the far-right has been unwilling to support legislation that is overwhelmingly supported by Americans like background checks on guns or an assault weapons ban, both of which are supported by over 50 percent of Americans.
With additional reporting by Matt Laslo
"Stop the Steal" organizer Ali Alexander posted a video on the second anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection portraying himself as a victim.
The right-wing agitator and convicted felon, who has ties to Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and prominent conservative activists, insisted that Donald Trump supporters like himself were not responsible for the violence that erupted at the U.S. Capitol as lawmakers certified President Joe Biden's election win, reported Right Wing Watch.
"We were betrayed, we were set up and the crowd was agitated," Alexander claimed, although numerous investigations have failed to turn up evidence that outside provocateurs were involved in the riot.
Alexander, who was wearing a bulletproof vest in the video, complained that a cascade of lawsuits over his alleged role in fomenting the deadly riot and his questioning by investigators had wrecked his finances, and he claimed that he was unfairly targeted despite helping to plan the rally that preceded the violent assault on the Capitol.
"Lives like mine have been ruined, they took away my life savings -- I had to spend it all on legal fees," Alexander said. "I was sued by partisan attorneys representing, pro bono, police officers I've never met that are suing me under some arcane law to get to Trump. I testified for over three hours before a grand jury that was investigating my political associations and my political speech, something they're not legally allowed to do. I testified, and I didn't plead the Fifth [Amendment], not once, before the Jan. 6 select committee for over eight hours, marking one of the longest testimonies recorded by that committee, and I told the truth because I've done nothing wrong."
"Enough," he concluded. "Jan. 6 is a day that will live in infamy, but it can be a day where we resolve that we affirm our elections, we affirm protesting and we affirm accountability. Please pray for the Jan. 6 criminal defendants. Please pray for those of us that have been politically targeted. Please pray for the mortgages and the marriages and the children that have been affected by what happened that day with the protesters and the police, and you know what I say? Damn the politicians."
The transcripts were central to a committee report released in December that held Donald Trump responsible for the 2021 insurrection and referred the former president to the U.S. Justice Department for criminal prosecution.
The voluminous deposition transcripts also revealed other details about what the committee described as a multipart scheme to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Here are four things you may have missed from deep in the transcripts:
Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, a Republican, told the committee about Trump’s pressure campaign to find fraud in the 2020 election long after President Joe Biden took office.
Vos, who has held that office since 2013, didn’t speak with Trump between the 2020 election and August 2021, he testified in a Nov. 30, 2022, interview. But the two spoke by phone about 10 times from August 2021 to July 2022, he said.
U.S. House Jan. 6 panel report finds Trump incited insurrection, demands accountability
In those calls, Trump was not nearly as explicit or persistent with Vos as he was with state officials in other parts of the country in the two months between the election and the Capitol attack. But Trump remained fixated on an investigation into potential fraud.
“He did not give any specific recommendations,” Vos said in a deposition. “I believe that he would have liked us to use the things that we discovered to show that there were problems with the 2020 election. But he never specifically said to me, ‘You need to overturn the election.’”
Trump spent a lot of time in those calls complaining of what he perceived to be problems in the 2020 election. He left Vos with the impression that a finding of wide scale fraud in 2021 or 2022 could undo the election.
Vos was sympathetic to Trump’s complaints about voter fraud and told the former president he would seek legislative remedies to prevent issues in the future. But the Wisconsin speaker told Trump “more than once” that nothing could be done about the 2020 results.
Trump felt the election was unfair, and the result could not be justified, Vos said.
“He wanted us to go backwards to try and look and see what we could do about 2020,” Vos said. “I have consistently said we need to look forward, that it’s unconstitutional and impossible for us to go back to what occurred in 2020.”
Vos said he was not involved in efforts to advance false slates of electors, who would cast the state’s Electoral College votes for Trump, including in Wisconsin.
Virginia L. “Ginni” Thomas, a conservative activist with Nebraska roots who is married to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, said in a Sept. 29, 2022, interview with the panel that she regretted the tone and content of her texts urging Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff and a former Republican U.S. House member from North Carolina, to work to overturn the election.
“I would take them all back if I could today,” she told committee member Adam Schiff, a California Democrat. “I’m not comfortable with any of them being — I wish I could have rewritten them. I wish I didn’t send them… It was just an emotional time.”
Thomas also said she still reserved doubts about the integrity of the election.
There's a lot of people uncomfortable with the 2020 election despite what this committee is pushing. Okay? I just think there's still concern … I still believed that there was fraud and irregularity, as millions of Americans do.
– Ginni Thomas
Thomas said that prior to the committee’s revelations, she had been unaware that campaign and administration officials, including Attorney General Bill Barr and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, had rejected claims of fraud. Asked by committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, if Barr or Cipollone’s comments or the Trump campaign’s losses in 61 of 62 court cases would have changed her mind, she said no.
“Honestly, I don’t think it would have,” Thomas said. “There’s a lot of people uncomfortable with the 2020 election despite what this committee is pushing. Okay? I just think there’s still concern … I still believed that there was fraud and irregularity, as millions of Americans do, Representative Cheney.”
Thomas also expressed some annoyance at her texts with Meadows becoming public. Clarence Thomas was unaware of his spouse’s communications with Meadows or the details of her “post-election activities,” she said.
“He was completely unaware of the texts that I had with Mark Meadows until this committee leaked them to the press while my husband was in a hospital bed in March fighting an infection,” she said.
“I don’t know how many of you would want your texts to become public on the front page of The Washington Post,” she said. “Certainly I didn’t want my emotional texts to a friend released and made available.”
Before this summer, Hutchinson was a little-known aide to Meadows. But she delivered one of the committee’s most captivating moments, appearing as a surprise witness in a hastily organized hearing.
Hutchinson’s hearing testimony — when she described scenes of an infuriated Trump attempting to have metal detectors removed, grabbing a steering wheel from Secret Service agents and whipping his lunch against a White House wall that was left dripping with ketchup — was among the most explosive of any the panel heard in its series of seven hearings in June and July.
But the transcripts released in December show Hutchinson was also among the committee’s most valuable witnesses outside the hearing room.
She met with the panel six times — more than any other witness — and provided details about Trump’s legal strategy after the attack that other witnesses did not.
The committee interviewed Hutchinson three times while she was represented by her initial Trump-aligned attorney, Stefan Passantino, and three times after she’d replaced him.
In her later interviews, she told the panel Passantino had instructed her to downplay her knowledge and omit details.
“The less the committee thinks you know, the better, the quicker it’s going to go,” she said Passantino told her. “Your go-to, Cass, is ‘I don’t recall.’”
Hutchinson’s White House boss, Meadows, never appeared before the committee, though he was scheduled for two interviews.
At the time of the first scheduled interview on Nov. 12, 2021, Meadows had not complied with the subpoena for records, claiming as a member of the executive branch he could not be compelled to testify.
The committee still provided a transcript for the second scheduled meeting, on Dec. 8, which consisted only of a committee staffer explaining the situation. The staffer said Meadows had agreed to the deposition as part of his cooperation with the subpoena, for which he also provided 6,600 pages of documents and 2,000 text messages.
The staffer said Meadows had dropped his earlier assertion of executive privilege to avoid answering all questions and the panel expected him only to raise privilege in response to certain questions, which the staffer said would have been valuable.
“We are disappointed in Mr. Meadows’ failure to appear as planned, as it deprives the select committee of an opportunity to develop relevant information in Mr. Meadows’ possession and to, more specifically, understand the contours of his executive privilege claim,” the staffer said.
The House voted in December 2021 to hold Meadows in contempt for failing to cooperate with the committee.
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On Friday, POLITICO reported that dozens and dozens of corporations that vowed in the wake of the January 6 attack to stop giving campaign money to lawmakers complicit in the plot to overturn the election, have quietly gone back to their old ways, and given around $10 million to the politicians they said they'd swear off.
"Political action committees affiliated with more than 70 major corporations said they would pause or reconsider donations to those who objected to certifying the results of the 2020 election after the attack on the U.S. Capitol two years ago," reported Jessica Piper and Zach Montellaro. "Then they gave more than $10 million to members of Congress who did just that, according to a POLITICO analysis of federal campaign finance filings."
"In the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021 riots — fueled by former President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen — dozens of companies including Walmart, Comcast and Lockheed Martin said they would either suspend political donations entirely or specifically cut off Republicans who echoed Trump’s stolen election claims or voted against certifying the election results," said the report. "But over the next two years, amid a contentious midterm battle, less than half of those companies kept those promises for a full election cycle, the analysis of campaign donations found."
Some of these details were previously reported by Judd Legum, author of investigative blog Popular Information. Legum, who has also tracked companies that claim to support LGBTQ rights while funding politicians who have tried to restrict them, identified Amazon, one of the many companies that took a pledge against election deniers, funneling money to 9 of them.
One major recipient of funds was GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who objected to certifying electors from swing states President Joe Biden carried. He received $285,000 from these PACs.
"The fundraising totals illustrate the limits of the changes that the events of Jan. 6 sparked in Washington," said the report. "The rhetoric that fed the riots has continued to be embraced by scores of Republican politicians, and they in turn have been kept in the fold by some of the big outside interests who condemned their position at the time. The turnaround also raises questions about what the corporations that paused contributions and later turned them back on were hoping to accomplish with their stand — besides a fleeting PR win."
A group of Republican rebels dubbed the "Taliban 20" have brought Washington to a standstill by torpedoing party favorite Kevin McCarthy's bid to become speaker of the US House of Representatives.
The House cannot perform any of its vital functions -- including overseeing national security, investigating government misconduct and passing legislation -- until its presiding officer is in place, spelling paralysis in Congress.
The renegade Republicans were given their unflattering nickname by frustrated lawmakers from their own side. But who are they and what do they want?
Many in the group -- which has boasted between 19 and 21 adherents depending on the ballot -- are members of the House Freedom Caucus, a collection of some of the most staunchly right-wing Republicans in the lower chamber of Congress.
They share geography too as they are dominated by southerners, mainly from Texas, Florida or Arizona.
Pennsylvania's Scott Perry is the only member living above the Mason-Dixon line that traditionally separates the southern United States from the north.
Most represent districts that voted solidly for defeated Republican Donald Trump in the 2020 election and most were endorsed by the former president for last November's midterms.
Trump backed 144 primary candidates in the midterms, all but a handful of whom won the Republican nomination.
But the rebels do not appear beholden to the former president: McCarthy's vote share actually dropped after he received Trump's endorsement on the second day of the standoff in the House of Representatives.
Some Republicans oppose McCarthy because they say he has proved an obstacle to their right-wing agenda and will make for a weak foe to Democratic President Joe Biden.
Others just seem to dislike him personally, whatever policies he espouses.
Many Republicans complain privately that McCarthy is politically rudderless, opportunistic and untrustworthy -- "empty suit" is a favorite rebuke -- and willing to make any promise or alliance for as long as it appears expedient.
A number of "Never Kevins" -- notably Matt Gaetz of Florida, Andy Biggs of Arizona and Lauren Boebert of Colorado -- have been clear that no amount of compromise will change their minds on opposing the California congressman.
Biggs bemoaned the lack of selflessness and principle in modern politics in a tweet posted before the first round of voting, when he stood as a symbolic opponent to his fellow Republican.
"This is what a McCarthy speakership would look like and would put our country last."
Well over half of the rebel group have explicitly denied the results of the last presidential election, amplifying Donald Trump's false claims that it was rigged -- reflecting a now-dominant creed among House Republicans, two thirds of whom voted against certifying the 2020 vote.
A handful are newly elected but the majority earned their stripes in the ultra-conservative Tea Party movement that grew out of opposition to president Barack Obama from 2010.
As well as being known for fiscal austerity, the movement has its origins in a form of libertarianism that rejects "business as usual" and prides itself on producing agents of chaos who revel in their outsider status and ability to disrupt the consensus politics of the political elite.
Televised stunts, rather than carefully-worded bills, are their weapon of choice.
Several among this group, such as Boebert, Andy Harris and Bob Good -- beat more established Republican incumbents in primary nominating contests to earn their place at the table.
© Agence France-Presse
A newly revealed document created by the Michigan Republican Party conflicts with a certificate signed and submitted by Donald Trump supporters claiming that he won the state's 2020 election.
The certificate, which has come under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice, asserts that Michigan's 16 GOP electors "proceeded to vote by ballot" on Dec. 14, 2020, and cast all of their electoral votes for the former president, but a separate document prepared by state GOP officials said the electors had only participated in a ceremony pledging to cast their votes for the Republican president if given the chance, reported the Detroit News.
"It was just a ceremony, and I didn't want it to be misconstrued as something as other than a ceremony," Laura Cox, who was Michigan GOP chair at the time, told the House select committee in a May 3 interview.
Cox told the select committee the intent behind the document was to attest that GOP electors were willing to stand and serve for Trump if "something were to happen in the courts" that would overturn Joe Biden's win by 154,000 votes, and there was only space for one person to sign -- and Cox believes Kathy Berden, the state's Republican national committeewoman, did so.
Berden did sign another certificate during the so-called electors meeting that was then submitted to the National Archives stating that Trump had won the Michigan election, although she cited the Fifth Amendment during her own March 11 interview and refused to tell House investigators whether she signed that document.
The gathering took place in the basement of state GOP headquarters, with few other people inside the building, so it's unclear how Trump campaign lawyers or supporters persuaded the Michigan electors to sign the false certificate.
"They said, 'Sign this paper,'" said elector Michele Lundgren, of Detroit, who said she thought she was putting her name on a sign-in sheet.
Two other electors also told the newspaper they weren't sure what they were signing during the Dec. 14, 2020, meeting.
“I didn’t think it was going anywhere," said Shelby Township Clerk Stan Grot, one of the electors. "I thought it was a ceremonial thing.”
Lungren said the page where the electors signed doesn't specify what the certificate is about, but instead offers vague and somewhat obtuse language.
"In witness whereof, we, the undersigned, have hereunto, in the city of Lansing, in the state of Michigan, on this 14th day of December, 2020, subscribed our respective names," the certificate states, while another page claims the document is a "certificate of the votes of the 2020 electors from Michigan."
Most of the insurgent Republican lawmakers who are blocking GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) from claiming the Speakership also happen to be election deniers who promoted former President Donald Trump's conspiracy theories about the election, and objected to the counting of votes on January 6, 2021, as violent insurrectionists tried to storm the Capitol
On Friday, POLITICO published a deeper dive on the connection between the efforts to block certification of Joe Biden's victory, and the efforts to stonewall the Speakership.
"A handful of Republicans who remained in the Jan. 6 committee’s sights throughout its investigation are now leading the effort to deny Kevin McCarthy the speakership — using their power to bring the House to a standstill," reported Kyle Cheney and Nicholas Wu. "During its last days of existence, the Capitol riot panel unleashed a massive trove of evidence with an unmistakable conclusion: At every stage of former President Donald Trump’s bid to overturn the 2020 election results, a phalanx of hardline GOP lawmakers were egging him on. The committee’s latest material, including 250 witness transcripts, often portrayed those House Republicans as drivers, enablers and even architects of Trump’s Jan. 6 scheme."
"And several conservatives currently standing against Kevin McCarthy’s bid for the top gavel, including House Freedom Caucus Chair Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) and Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), were among the handful of true believers in Trump’s efforts," said the report. "'There are some members who clearly have a track record opposing democratic norms,' select panel member Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) said, when asked about the nexus between McCarthy dissenters and Jan. 6. 'And I think it’s pretty clear if you read [former White House chief of staff] Mark Meadows’ text messages and the January 6 report who exactly we’re talking about.'"
Perry, in particular, was detailed as having a key role in the efforts to overturn the election, introducing Trump to Jeffrey Clark, who tried to weaponize the DOJ against states certifying their election results, and relaying conspiracy theories like "Italygate" to the White House through Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.
"Freedom Caucus members were described by select panel witnesses as routinely in touch with Trump and his allies virtually from the moment Joe Biden appeared on track to win the 2020 election. Trump himself told Justice Department aides that he viewed those Republicans as critical to his effort to remain in power," said the report. "'[J]ust say the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. congressmen,' Trump said in a meeting with top DOJ officials in late Dec. 2020 ... Two Freedom Caucus members and McCarthy critics stand out among their colleagues for their active efforts to support Trump’s efforts: Perry and Gosar. Witnesses described Gosar as one of the most ubiquitous players. Ali Alexander, the leader of the pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” effort, put Gosar among a small group of members who might relay updates after speaking to Trump. He also said Gosar supported his push for a Washington protest on Jan. 6."
The US House of Representatives plunged deeper into crisis Thursday as Republican favorite Kevin McCarthy failed again to win the speakership -- entrenching a three-day standoff that has paralyzed the lower chamber of Congress.
McCarthy, a favorite of his party's establishment but a bete noire of the far right, has made sweeping concessions to quell a rebellion of around 20 hardliners blocking his bid to be the country's top lawmaker.
But his overtures have fallen on deaf ears and he failed to win over a single renegade Republican across five ballots staged on Thursday before the House agreed to adjourn until noon (1700 GMT) Friday.
The final round of voting was the 11th in total since the chamber opened for a new term under a narrow Republican majority this week. No speakership contest has gone more than nine rounds since the Civil War era.
Before Thursday's defeats, McCarthy had already been humiliated by failure to secure the gavel six times in a chaotic 48 hours, losing each round to Democrat Hakeem Jeffries.
"It's my hope that today the House Republicans will stop the bickering, stop the backbiting and stop the backstabbing so we can have the backs of the American people," Jeffries, who is also short of the required majority, told reporters.
An increasingly desperate McCarthy had crossed one of his red lines overnight by agreeing to lower the threshold needed to force a vote on ousting a speaker to just one member -- imperiling his own chances of a long tenure.
The 57-year-old also offered his right-wing opponents more power over how floor votes are conducted, a vote on term limits and a commitment to stop backing moderates against far-right primary candidates in safe Republican seats.
No House business can take place without its presiding officer in place, meaning lawmakers-elect have to continue voting until someone wins a majority.
They can also consider a rule change allowing the candidate with the most votes rather than an outright majority to win -- a risky strategy given that the Democratic leader has won every round while Republican votes have been split.
Until a winner emerges, the chamber will be unable to swear in members, set up committees, tackle legislation or open any of the investigations Republicans have promised into President Joe Biden.
Three Republican lawmakers due to head national security committees also warned in an open letter Thursday that the House is currently unable to conduct oversight of the Pentagon or intelligence community.
"We cannot let personal politics place the safety and security of the United States at risk," they said.
The only significant development over 11 rounds of the contest has been a cameo -- in spirit, at least -- from Donald Trump, who is bidding to return to the White House and does not harbor speakership ambitions.
Florida Republican Matt Gaetz voted for the former reality TV star earlier Thursday and even nominated and voted for him in the final ballot.
The 76-year-old former president clearly enjoyed the attention, posting an irreverent image mocked up to show him sticking his tongue out at Biden from the speaker's chair during the annual State of the Union address.
But the two Gaetz nods were Trump's only support and the speakership crisis is being seen as a further marker of his diminishing influence, as his endorsement of McCarthy on Wednesday didn't move the dial at all.
McCarthy's allies were still hopeful of securing him the gavel, indicating that a deal bringing the so-called "Never Kevins" back into the fold could emerge in the coming hours.
But the signs were not encouraging as 21 of McCarthy's 221 Republican colleagues opposed him in every vote Thursday -- the same number as in all three of Wednesday's votes -- and he can only afford to lose four.
In many cases, McCarthy's critics lack specific objections to his policies, but claim instead that they find him untrustworthy, lacking a political philosophy and motivated only by a desire for power.
Meanwhile his allies fear the risky strategy of giving away the store to the most extreme fringe of the party will eventually spark a backlash among the moderates.
© Agence France-Presse
That much is clear on the two-year anniversary of the attack and in the wake of a massive congressional report that exhaustively details how former President Donald Trump sought to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, despite knowing there was no evidence of widespread fraud.
Released late last month, the report and accompanying interview transcripts — which together span more than 10,000 pages — read like a who’s who of Texas conspiracy theorists, conservative activists and extremists.
From those who planted the seeds of Trump’s strategy to try to challenge the election to others who sowed doubt and anger by spreading baseless theories on election fraud, Texans played major roles in fomenting, planning and, eventually, carrying out the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol.
And yet, two years later, it’s unclear if anything has changed. The House Select Committee has referred Trump to the Justice Department for charges including conspiracy to defraud the government and inciting or assisting an insurrection, and more than 900 people — including at least 75 Texans — have been charged with crimes related to the Capitol breach. But most Republican leaders have been, at best, reticent to speak out against Trump, if not outright defending his actions and endorsing his lies.
Others have continued to court the type of extremist groups and figures that played central roles in the riot or pushed the baseless election fraud myths that were the pretext for their violence.
“Jan. 6 has continued to be highly polarized,” said Catrina Doxsee, an expert on domestic terrorism at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that focuses on national security. “There is no one, single consensus or condemnation of the events. And the fact that these conspiracies continue to take hold — that that rhetoric is still so prevalent — is very concerning, especially as we start to turn our attention to a high-profile 2024 presidential season.”
Many of those conspiracy theories have Texas roots. In 2018, Sidney Powell, a Dallas-based lawyer with no expertise in election law, first met Russell Ramsland, a wealthy Dallas businessman and failed congressional candidate, in an airplane hangar outside of Dallas, Powell told the Jan. 6 congressional committee. Ramsland was joined by Laura Pressley, who had claimed in a 2014 lawsuit that voter fraud caused her to lose her bid for Austin City Council — and who, more recently, has tried to sue Gillespie County over the results of a referendum to put fluoride in the water.
At the meeting in the hangar, the two pushed the theory that voting machines were being rigged and told the group, which reportedly included prominent Texas conservatives, that challenging election results could force audits that would prove as much.
Powell told the committee she kept in touch with Ramsland after the 2018 Dallas meeting.
“I knew he understood aspects of it that I don’t have knowledge of,” Powell told the Select Committee. “I knew he had worked in the area.”
Their relationship would prove crucial two years later, as Trump desperately looked for evidence to prove that the 2020 contest was stolen from him — despite objections from top advisers, including his then-Attorney General William Barr. According to the Select Committee, Trump found his answer in a report by Ramsland’s Dallas-based cybersecurity company, Allied Security Operations Group, that alleged there were inconsistent vote tallies in numerous states that used voting machines by Dominion Voting Systems.
The Select Committee said Powell and former U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Tyler, helped get the report in front of Trump, who later offered Powell a position as Special Counsel for election-related meetings. White House lawyers “vehemently opposed” Powell’s appointment, and so it was never made formal.
Ramsland’s work, the Select Committee found, was “very amateurish,” “false and misleading” and was “widely ridiculed” by the public after it was discovered he’d confused Michigan and Minnesota precinct data, among other errors.
“I told him that the stuff that his people were shoveling out to the public was bullshit, I mean, that the claims of fraud were bullshit,” Barr recalled. “And, you know, he was indignant about that. And I reiterated that they wasted a whole month of these claims on the Dominion voting machines and they were idiotic claims.”
Nevertheless, Trump “was adamant that the report must be accurate, that it proved that the election was defective, that he in fact won the election, and the [Department of Justice] should be using that report to basically tell the American people that the results were not trustworthy,” Richard Donoghue, then the acting deputy attorney general, told the Select Committee.
The president and his allies, including Powell and Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, continued to push Ramsland’s report as proof that there was widespread fraud. In the following weeks and months, they routinely alleged that Dominion was part of a plot to overturn the election — perhaps at the direction of the Venezuelan government or a shadowy network of “global interests.”
The Dominion conspiracy was a key plank of Trump’s strategy and was cited in a fruitless lawsuit by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that challenged the outcome of the 2020 contest in four states outside of Texas. Dominion has since filed a $1.3 billion defamation suit against Powell. And both she and Paxton have fought efforts to be disbarred after being reprimanded by the State Bar of Texas for making false claims about election fraud.
In her closing remarks to the committee, Powell stood by her actions — and suggested much of the Capitol siege was orchestrated by people other than Trump supporters, including “antifa” or the FBI. “I think there are definitely some people that did some things wrong that they should not have done, but, yes, I think there was a huge set-up factor contributed to by the FBI and others,” Powell said.
She added: “I don’t like the turn any of our politics and activities have taken generally in the last two decades.”
Powell was not the only Texan to play a crucial role in Trump’s attempts to overturn the election. Around the same time that the then-president was seizing on the Dominion conspiracy, two Austin-area businessmen pitched him on a fringe theory that state legislatures could overturn the 2020 contest by sending separate electors.
The two men, Morgan Warstler and John S. Robison, did not respond to requests for comment, and so it’s unclear how they were able to secure the meeting with Trump. But they had earlier ties to former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who later served as Trump’s energy secretary and reportedly endorsed a similar plan in text messages to Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. The idea to use alternate electors became central to Trump’s alleged plot to overturn the election.
Another Texan, retired Army Col. Phil Waldron, was enlisted by Trump allies to disrupt the election’s certification. Waldron, of Dripping Springs, declined to answer most of the Select Committee’s questions during his interview, but circulated a 38-page PowerPoint presentation that, among other things, called for Trump to declare a state of emergency and seize voting machines, the Select Committee said. The plan was dismissed by most White House officials but intrigued Trump, who “was very interested in keeping pathways to victory open,” Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien told the Select Committee.
Extremist groups
Extremism experts say the insurrection was a case study in the fusion of extremist groups that once had relatively disparate goals but eventually coalesced around broader conspiracy theories — including those that borrow from white supremacist worldviews.
“Their ideologies are bleeding together,” said Freddy Cruz, who studies militia movements at the Southern Poverty Law Center. “A lot of these groups are basically picking off core messages from different movements and adopting them to recruit new members and stay alive.”
Cruz noted that the Oath Keepers, the far-right anti-government militia that was founded by Granbury resident Stewart Rhodes, was primarily focused on anti-immigration issues when it began to grow during the early years of the Obama administration. But he said that messaging changed as Trump, who the Oath Keepers saw as an ideological ally, increasingly infused election-fraud myths with nativist conspiracy theories such as Great Replacement Theory, which claims that there is an intentional effort to dilute white, often Christian, power in America through immigration, interracial marriage and other means.
Throughout the Trump era, such radical conspiracies were increasingly mainstreamed by figures such as Fox News host Tucker Carlson. And they were intensified amid COVID-19 lockdowns that drew protests from far-right activists and, according to the Jan. 6 congressional report, became a nexus point for some who played key roles in the insurrection.
Rhodes, for example, told the committee that he met a key Oath Keepers figure, Granbury lawyer Kellye SoRelle, at an anti-lockdown protest in Austin. SoRelle, who unsuccessfully ran to represent Texas House District 60 in the 2020 Republican primary, eventually became the group’s lawyer and was indicted last year for her alleged role in the Capitol riot. Attorneys for Rhodes and SoRelle did not respond to requests for comment this week.
The Jan. 6 report also shows how protest events brought the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, a violent far-right street gang, together with conspiracy theorists such as Austin-based Alex Jones and Ali Alexander, a Fort Worth activist who was instrumental in the “Stop the Steal” movement. Those relationships would prove crucial to Trump’s ability to mobilize loyalists after he lost the November 2020 election, the report found.
As Trump continued to push his baseless claims of widespread fraud, “Stop the Steal” groups mobilized at protests in or outside state capitol or other government buildings — a preview of the eventual violence at the U.S. Capitol, the Select Committee said. The report outlines how those groups, galvanized by Trump’s support and emboldened by the GOP’s widespread proliferation of conspiracy theories, steadily escalated their rhetoric and planned for violence.
“These events provided an opportunity for radicals and extremists to coalesce,” the report said. “Stop the Steal events and other protests throughout 2020 helped build the momentum for Jan. 6.”
In Atlanta in mid-November 2020, Jones, Alexander and white supremacist Nick Fuentes led supporters into the state Capitol. “We’ll light the whole shit on fire,” Alexander told the crowd that day. “Storm the capitol,” he said at another point.
Other groups, including the Proud Boys, similarly capitalized on Trump’s baseless election fraud claims.
“It’s time for fucking war if they steal this shit,” one leader, Joe Biggs, posted on social media. Another leader, Ethan Nordean, referenced the “Day of the Rope” — an allusion to the fictionalized day on which “race traitors” are lynched en masse in “The Turner Diaries,” a white supremacist novel that has inspired numerous murders and attacks by far-right groups.
At a November rally in Washington, D.C., Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio was photographed with Alexander and shared a stage with Jones. He also said on social media that he had a meeting at the White House that, according to the congressional report, “appears to have been facilitated” by Bianca Gracia, a Harris County resident who was then-head of the Latinos For Trump group, and who lost her 2022 primary bid for Texas’ 11th State Senate district.
Gracia, Tarrio, Jones and Alexander did not respond to requests for comment this week.
Things only escalated in December 2020, after Trump called for supporters to descend on Washington for what he promised would be a “wild” protest on Jan. 6. Soon after, Jones’ website asked readers if they “would answer President Trump’s call to defend the Republic?”
“He’s calling you, he needs your help, we need your help, we need 10 million people there,” Jones said on a Dec. 20 episode of his show, InfoWars. “We need martial law and have to prevent the police state of foreigners from taking over.”
“It’s literally in our hands,” Jones said at another point. “It’s literally up to us.”
Meanwhile, leaders of the Oath Keepers continued to prepare for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act — a 200-year-old law that would allow him to suspend civil liberties and deputize militias such as the Oath Keepers to enforce the rule of law. On a November episode of InfoWars, Rhodes told Jones they had established a “quick reaction force” to do as much. And, in the days before the Jan. 6 insurrection, Rhodes bought more than $10,000 in guns and tactical gear that were stashed in various spots just outside of Washington in anticipation of violence.
Rhodes and SoRelle arrived in Washington on Jan. 5; Gracia, the Texas-based leader of Latinos For Trump, later facilitated a meeting in a parking garage between the two and Tarrio, the Proud Boys leader, according to the Jan. 6 report. There, Tarrio said that he and Rhodes “don’t get along,” but that situations like Jan. 6 called for the groups to “unite regardless of our differences.” Tarrio left Washington soon after under the terms of an arrest the day prior for stealing and burning a Black Lives Matter flag from a church months earlier, as well as for having a high-capacity magazine.
The next day, leaders of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers allegedly led separate attacks on the Capitol that resulted in five deaths and an estimated $1.5 million in damage. Rhodes and numerous other Oath Keepers were found guilty in November of seditious conspiracy, among other charges.
Tarrio and other Proud Boys leaders were charged last year with similar crimes. Prosecutors say the group was part of a special unit that intended to breach and occupy the Capitol. That trial begins this month.
Jones has not been charged with any crimes connected to the Jan. 6 insurrection but was required to pay nearly $1.5 billion in lawsuit judgments to families of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that he accused of being crisis actors — claims that led to years of harassment and threats by his followers.
Alexander, meanwhile, has sought to distance himself from the violence at the Capitol. In testimony to the congressional committee, he said he was being scapegoated in part because he is Black and his legal name, Ali Abdul-Razaq Akbar, sounds foreign. And he has increasingly adopted bizarre claims — including that he could use time-travel to “will” a victory for Kari Lake, the Trump-endorsed Arizona gubernatorial candidate who continues to claim that the 2022 election there was stolen from her.
Politics as usual
In the wake of the Select Committee’s year of work detailing the moments before and during the Capitol attack, Texas Democrats on the Hill have called for accountability and framed the insurrection as part of a broader normalization of conspiracies and fraud myths that was perpetuated by Trump.
“This was so much more than a single day’s deadly, destructive riot,” Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, said in a statement. “Like other insurrectionists already convicted of seditious conspiracy, Trump attempted to overthrow the government — to throw a dagger in the heart of our democracy.”
Most Texas Republicans serving in Congress did not respond to requests for comment. But those who did framed the Jan. 6 committee’s work as a partisan witch hunt.
“Their singular focus has been to attack President Trump and punish anyone associated with him on the taxpayer dime,” Sugarland Rep. Randy Weber said. “If they genuinely wanted to make bipartisan efforts to know the truths behind that day, they wouldn’t have restricted Republicans like Kevin McCarthy and Jim Jordan from the committee.”
But Republicans did serve on the committee and accounted for virtually all of the interviews the committee conducted for the report. Many Republicans, including Jordan and McCarthy, refused to comply with subpoenas from the committee; and McCarthy, then the minority leader, was initially allowed to fill five seats on the committee but reportedly pulled his nominations after two of them were vetoed because they were 2020 election-deniers.
Nonetheless, in Texas and nationally, the election-fraud myths continue to be spread by top Republicans. Last year, the Texas GOP officially codified election denialism into its platform after delegates at the state convention voted to declare that Joe Biden was not the president.
And top Republicans have continued to stoke election-fraud myths, particularly in the lead-up to the 2022 midterm elections. Last summer, Powell, whose claims about the 2020 election had by then been discredited ad nauseum, was featured alongside Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller at a Dallas screening of “2000 Mules,” the debunked film on election fraud. Paxton’s office also screened the film. And a recent NPR investigation found that, since the insurrection, more than two dozen conservative groups in the state have hosted election-deniers — including Seth Keshel, who appeared in the Jan. 6 report and is scheduled to speak next month to a Houston-area group that previously hosted Ramsland and Waldron, the retired Army colonel who pitched Trump on martial law.
Meanwhile, Trump is running for president again, no less hellbent on convincing voters he was robbed and even suggesting the Constitution should be terminated so he can be reinstated as president. Last year, Trump met at Mar-a-Lago with Fuentes, the avowed fascist and Holocaust denier who was a staple at “Stop the Steal” rallies and was interviewed by the Jan. 6 committee; and, while the group’s top leadership has gone quiet ahead of their criminal sedition trial, Proud Boys remain a fixture at GOP events across the country, including drag show protests that have been promoted by conservative elected officials.
Doxsee, the domestic terrorism expert, said the sedition charges against the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys may lead to a fracturing of some far-right groups. But that may just push America’s extremist movement back toward the “leaderless resistance” model that was its norm until recently, when far-right views were increasingly normalized.
What’s clear, Doxsee said, is that more people of influence need to speak out against such groups and the myths that they’ve seized upon post-Trump.
“When individuals in positions of power, either intentionally or inadvertently, make comments that extremists interpret as condoning their actions or advocating for their beliefs, they are more likely to be empowered to actually take action, to rally in the public eye, and to incite or conduct violence,” she said.
Matthew Choi contributed to this reporting.
Disclosure: Southern Poverty Law Center and State Bar of Texas have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2023/01/06/texans-jan-6-insurrection/.
The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.
Democracy defenders will mark the second anniversary of the deadly January 6, 2021 attack on the United States Capitol with nationwide rallies to demand accountability for former U.S. President Donald Trump and push for "reforms to protect our freedom to vote."
The Not Above the Law and Declaration for American Democracy coalitions will lead the nationwide day of action on the anniversary of the right-wing insurrection by supporters of former President Donald Trump and his "Big Lie" that the 2020 presidential election was "stolen."
"Election deniers still threaten our democracy. On the second anniversary of the insurrection, we're fighting back."
"We need all hands on deck to make this January 6th national day of action as big as possible," said the coalition's Jan. 6 Justice: Our Freedoms, Our Vote website.
"We know that even though some of the most prominent election conspiracists lost their midterms, they are already looking to 2024 for ways to overturn the will of voters," the coalitions continued. "They are working to sabotage future elections by changing state laws, threatening election officials, and packing election administration offices so that they can have the final say over election results even when they lose."
Organizers of the #OurFreedomsOurVote demonstrations say the "next phase" in their work involves:
Last month, the bipartisan congressional committee probing the Capitol insurrection unanimously voted to recommend that Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Justice Department investigate Trump and some of his associates for four crimes in connection with the attack.
"Almost two years after the insurrection, we see our democracy is still in danger from Trump, his allies, and their sympathizers in office," coalition member Free Speech for People tweeted. "It's time to show our political leaders that there are still serious threats to our democracy."
New polling published Thursday by Data for Progress revealed that just 57% of respondents believe President Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 election. That figure is dramatically skewed by the two-thirds of Republican respondents who said the election was "stolen" from Trump. Ninety-two percent of Democrats said Biden won the contest fairly.
More than 170 candidates for U.S. House, Senate, and key statewide offices who deny that Biden fairly won the 2020 election were elected or reelected in November.
The survey also found that 59% of voters believe Trump bears "a lot of" or "some" responsibility for the Capitol attack—with 90% of Democrats, 57% of Independents, and 28% of Republicans agreeing. Nearly half of GOP respondents said Trump is not at all responsible for the insurrection.
Additionally, half of all survey respondents said Trump should be prosecuted for his role in the January 6 attack. Support for prosecution soared to 88% of Democrats, while 50% of Independents and just 13% of Republicans believe the former president—who's seeking the 2024 nomination—should face charges.
Noting that the new Republican majority in the House "has made clear that they have no interest in accountability for the attack on our Capitol," the Declaration for American Democracy coalition said that "it's up to us to show our political leaders that we demand urgent action to protect our democracy."
Scheduled speakers at the noon EST Union Square rally in Washington, D.C. include Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.); Martin Luther King III and Andrea Waters King of the Drum Major Institute; Stand Up America executive director Christina Harvey; Sierra Club democracy campaign representative Tishan Weerasooriya; Women's March D.C. spokesperson Noor Mir; and March for Our Lives board member Mariah Cooley, among others.
"The event comes as Trump and extreme politicians continue to spread false claims about the 2020 election results and undermine our Constitution, pass state laws to place new barriers to voting—disproportionately impacting communities of color—and prepare to launch a sham investigation into the January 6 committee so that they can stay in power to push their unpopular agenda: to destroy reproductive rights, steal our Social Security and our Medicare, and stop our ability to access affordable higher education, address the climate crisis, or prevent gun violence, among others," the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen said in a statement.
President Joe Biden will mark the second anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on Friday by honoring 12 people who defended democracy against former President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election. Two years to the day after a mob of Trump’s extremist supporters stormed the Capitol, Biden was set to present the Presidential Citizens Medal to a diverse group of police and officials who did their jobs in the face of Trump’s scheme to cling to power. The White House and Democrats want to use the anniversary to remind Americans of the horror of the attack and to spotlight the broad array ...
By Lizbeth Diaz and Dave Graham
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -Mexican security forces captured on Thursday drug cartel leader Ovidio Guzman, a son of jailed kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, ahead of a visit by U.S. President Joe Biden next week.
Coming three years after a failed operation to detain Ovidio ended in humiliation for the government of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the arrest triggered a wave of violence that forced authorities to shutter airports and schools in the city of Culiacan.
Defense Minister Luis Cresencio Sandoval told a news conference that security forces had captured the 32-year-old senior member of the Sinaloa Cartel. Ovidio, a fugitive since the previous arrest attempt, was now being held in the capital Mexico City, Sandoval said.
Videos shared on social media, which Reuters was unable to immediately verify, appeared to show heavy fighting overnight in Culiacan, the main city in the northern state of Sinaloa, with the sky lit up by helicopter gunfire.
The Sinaloa state government said three members of the security forces had been killed in the clashes.
The city's airport was caught up in the violence, with Mexican airline Aeromexico saying one of its planes had been hit by gunfire ahead of a scheduled flight to Mexico City. No one was hurt, it said.
A Mexican air force plane was also shot at, Mexico's federal aviation agency said, adding the airport in Culiacan, as well as in the Sinaloa cities of Mazatlan and Los Mochis, would remain closed until security could be ensured.
Ovidio, who has become a key figure in the cartel since the arrest of his father, was briefly detained in 2019 but was quickly released to end violent retribution in Culiacan from his cartel. The incident was an embarrassing setback for the government of Lopez Obrador.
His latest capture comes before a North American leaders' summit in Mexico City next week, which U.S. President Joe Biden will attend and at which security issues are on the agenda.
The United States had offered a $5 million reward for information leading to the arrest or conviction of Ovidio.
It not yet clear whether Ovidio will be extradited to the United States like his father, who is serving a life sentence at Colorado's Supermax, the most secure U.S. federal prison.
Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said any extradition would have to follow formal processes and would not be immediate.
A surge in overdose deaths in the United States, fueled by the synthetic opioid fentanyl, has led to increased pressure on Mexico to combat the organizations, such as the Sinaloa Cartel, responsible for producing and shipping the drug.
The cartel is one of the world's most powerful narcotics trafficking organizations.
Guzman's arrest helps save face for Mexican law enforcement following the escape of El Chapo's son in 2019, said Tomas Guevara, a security expert at the Autonomous University of Sinaloa.
"The detention of Ovidio is finally the culmination of something that was planned three years ago," he said.
It might also herald a change in approach by the government, Guevara added, after criticism from many security experts that Lopez Obrador was soft on the cartels, an accusation he denies.
The president argues the confrontational tactics of his predecessors were unsuccessful and only caused more bloodshed, saying he would instead pursue a strategy of "hugs not bullets."
RESIDENTS URGED TO STAY INDOORS
On Thursday morning, security forces were attempting to contain a violent reaction to the arrest in the Culiacan area by Guzman's associates.
Burned vehicles were scattered on the streets and heavily armed law enforcement patrolled in pickup trucks.
"We continue to work on controlling the situation," said Cristobal Castaneda, Sinaloa's public security chief.
Local government urged people to stay indoors and said schools and administrative offices were closed due to the violence. Street blockades had also been erected.
Joaquin Guzman, 65, was convicted in New York in 2019 of trafficking billions of dollars of drugs to the United States and conspiring to murder enemies.
Eduardo Guerrero, director of Lantia Consulting which analyzes Mexican organized crime, said recent pressure from the Biden administration to target the Sinaloa Cartel had likely motivated Mexico to go after Guzman.
But he warned that while Ovidio's capture was likely to weaken that cartel, it could help their main rival, the notoriously violent Jalisco New Generation Cartel.
"It's very important the government bear in mind that the weakening of the Sinaloa Cartel may also bring about an even greater expansion, a greater presence of the Jalisco Cartel."
(Reporting by Lizbeth Diaz, Dave Graham and Diego Ore, additional reporting by Tomas Bravo, Kylie Madry and Jackie Botts, Writing by Stephen EisenhammerEditing by Alistair Bell)
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