All posts tagged "January 6"

Federal regulators are probing former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), a vocal critic of President Donald Trump, over bets he placed on his pardon.

Citing three people familiar with the matter, Politico reported on Tuesday that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has been examining trades made in December 2024 and January 2025 by a Kalshi account tied to the Illinois Republican. Kalshi, a prediction market platform that says it monitors for insider trading on political events, is reportedly conducting its own review of the activity.

Kinzinger was among the members of the House committee that investigated the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack who received preemptive pardons from former President Joe Biden in the final hours of his term. Trump had previously called for the panel's members to be jailed....

Andrew Weissmann broke his silence after a judge tossed a former Trump lawyer's defamation suit against him over a tweet about a January 6 witness.

Weissmann, a former Mueller prosecutor, spoke Wednesday on The Bulwark's "The Illegal News" podcast, telling host Sarah Longwell the dismissal was "a very good win."

The case stemmed from a years-old tweet Weissmann posted about two attorneys who had represented Cassidy Hutchinson, the former Trump White House aide who became a star witness before the House Jan. 6 committee. The lawyer who sued, Stefan Passantino, served as a deputy White House counsel under Trump and represented Hutchinson before she switched attorneys....

A group calling itself "J6ers Were Destroyed by Weaponization" is asking a federal court to force Attorney General Todd Blanche to review and potentially throw out guilty pleas from January 6 defendants — and prosecutors in Jeanine Pirro's U.S. Attorney's office say the entire lawsuit should be tossed out.

The Trump administration has broadly tried to wipe the slate clean for the January 6 rioters, with the president granting them a mass pardon on his first day, and even toying with giving them payouts in a $1.8 billion slush fund — but they may have found one demand for January 6 handouts that goes too far.

The petitioner describes itself only as an unincorporated association of unnamed individuals prosecuted over the Capitol riot, arguing that charging decisions, pretrial detention, and sentencing threats coerced many of them into pleading guilty. The group wants a judge to order Blanche to review every plea tied to two specific federal charges, initiate motions to vacate or withdraw from those pleas, and launch investigations into the prosecutors and government informants involved in the original cases....

Federal prosecutors tore apart an accused pipe bomber's bid to pin his January 5, 2021, attack on a cleared Capitol Police officer.

On Friday, the Department of Justice filed an opposition in D.C. federal court that urged the judge to reject a renewed motion by Brian Cole. The DOJ's opposition handed a fresh embarrassment to the MAGA figures who spent months pushing the debunked theory that former Capitol Police officer Shauni Kerkhoff was the real bomber.

Chief among them is Ed Martin, the "Stop the Steal" organizer who until this month served as the DOJ's pardon attorney. Hours after the filing posted, Lawfare senior editor Anna Bower dared him to spread the exoneration as loudly as he once amplified the accusation. "Hey Ed, are you going to tweet this one out too?" she wrote, linking the document and quoting its finding that the FBI turned up "zero evidence connecting Kerkhoff in any way" to the bombs....

Attorney General Todd Blanche refused to rule out the idea that Jan. 6 rioters could be paid by President Donald Trump's administration.

During a Sunday appearance on NBC's Meet the Press, Blanche was pressed by host Kristen Welker on whether the Trump administration would pay Jan. 6 rioters. Blanche has repeatedly said that the anti-weaponization fund, which critics worried would pay Jan. 6 rioters, is dead, but Welker asked if they could still get payments.

"You're saying you're not ever reviving it, but just to be very clear, can you guarantee that under your Department of Justice, anyone who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6 will not receive one dime of taxpayer money if they file a claim against the federal government?"...

Twelve Jan. 6 defendants sued the federal government Friday for $1 million each, claiming the Capitol riot was a government "trap" designed to create the "appearance of a riot."

The complaint, filed in federal court in Washington under a law that allows citizens to sue the government for wrongful acts of its employees, names 12 plaintiffs whose Jan. 6 prosecutions ended in pardons, acquittals, or dismissals.

The filing landed three days after a federal judge dismissed the last Jan. 6 criminal case at the urging of President Donald Trump's Justice Department, saying he did so "reluctantly" — the same case that once put one of the 12 plaintiffs behind bars for more than four years....