Former President Donald Trump has called for releasing everyone arrested for the Jan. 6 insurrection last year at the Capitol.
That would presumably include people like defendant Albuquerque Cosper Head, sentenced last month to 7 1/2 years in prison for assaulting then-Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone and dragging him into the mob, where he was viciously beaten, threatened with his weapon and attacked with a stun gun.
“Let them all go now!” Trump said in a post on Truth Social Friday, declaring that it was time to “start treating Jan. 6 protesters fairly.”
Trump said in June at a Faith and Freedom Coalition event in Nashville, Tennessee, that he would “very, very seriously consider” pardoning Jan. 6 defendants if he’s reelected, claiming they had been treated “unfairly.”
“If I become president someday … I will be looking at them very, very seriously for pardons,” Trump said.
Trump called for the release of Jan. 6 inmates in a lengthy post gloating about the acquittal of billionaire pal Tom Barrack, an informal campaign adviser and chair of his 2017 inaugural committee, on charges that Barrack was working as an unregistered agent of the United Arab Emirates. Trump said the acquittal “greatly set the Radical Left back” and “could be the beginning of our breakaway from Communism.”
Trump also called in the post for the release of Catherine Englebrecht and Gregg Phillips, leaders of the right-wing conspiracy group True the Vote, who were jailed early this week in Texas for contempt of court when they refused to provide details of their activities in a civil suit.
The Department of Justice announced Friday that more than 880 people had been arrested in nearly all 50 states for crimes related to the breach of the U.S. Capitol aimed at overturning the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential victory. More than 270 individuals were charged with “assaulting or impeding law enforcement,” the statement noted.
The Capitol rioter who grabbed former Metropolitan Police Department officer Mike Fanone and dragged him into the mob, where he was grievously injured, was sentenced Thursday in federal court to 90 months, or 7 1/2 years, behind bars.
Prosecutors had sought an eight-year sentence for Tennessee resident Albuquerque Cosper Head. However, his punishment is still one of the harshest to be handed down to any rioter so far. Fanone left law enforcement the year after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack and has become one of the most visible figures advocating for justice.
Asked for a reaction to the sentence, Fanone told HuffPost, “Like a real American, I accept the sentence handed down by the court.”
The longest sentence handed down to any rioters has been 10 years, given to a retired New York police officer who assaulted another law enforcement official.
Head agreed to a deal where he pleaded guilty to one felony count of assaulting a police officer. Prosecutors say he wrapped his arm around Fanone’s neck as officers tried to push rioters back through an archway leading into the Capitol and yelled, “I got one!” while pulling Fanone deeper into the mob.
Members of the crowd beat Fanone and pinned him down, seizing his police radio and badge. One person threatened to kill him with his service weapon. Fanone was tased repeatedly at the base of his skull by rioter Daniel Rodriguez, who was sentenced in September to slightly less time than Head ― 86 months.
The mob backed off after Fanone yelled, “I got kids!” He blacked out and regained consciousness to find his partner and others, trying to ensure he was alright.
Fanone ended up suffering a heart attack and a traumatic brain injury.
The public spotlight that found him in the wake of the riot eventually made keeping his job untenable, he explained in interviews to promote a memoir he released earlier this month.
“I would trade all this attention to return to policing,” Fanone said in court Thursday, per ABC News. “But I can’t do that. And the catalyst for the loss of my career and the suffering that I’ve endured in the past 18 months is Albuquerque Head.”
Judge Amy Berman Jackson pointed out the irony that Fanone was beaten in the crowd with a Blue Lives Matter flag, NBC News reported.
“People need to understand that they can’t do this, or anything like this, again. They can’t try to force their will on the American people once the American people have already spoken at the ballot box. That’s the opposite of democracy. It’s tyranny,” the judge said, per NBC.
White House security professionals on-site during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection were aghast when former President Donald Trump tried to lead the violent mob he’d riled up that day to the U.S. Capitol ― and saw it as a direct attack on democracy itself.
An officer told Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) they “were all in a state of shock” at Trump’s pronouncement, according to testimony played by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack at a hearing Thursday.
The security professional, who was not identified by name, added that their concerns went well beyond fulfilling their duty to keep the president safe and the White House secure.
If Trump directed the crowd to the Capitol, he said, “we all knew what that implicated and what that meant: That this was no longer a rally, that this was going to move to something else.”
He added: “I don’t know if you want to use the word insurrection, coup, whatever. We all knew this would move from a normal, democratic, you know, public event into something else.”
(Watch that portion of the testimony in the player above.)
Text messages and emails released by the committee Thursday also showed that the Secret Service was aware in December 2020 that protesters might seek to enter the Capitol on Jan. 6.
And in July, the committee revealed that Trump knew members of the crowd were heavily armed before he aimed them at a co-equal branch of government. But he was unconcerned, reportedly waving off the danger because “they’re not here to hurt me,” according to testimony from former White House staffer Cassidy Hutchison.
A 23-year-old man who allegedly assaulted a police officer during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol was later paid by the Virginia Republican Party to campaign for now-Gov. Glenn Youngkin, HuffPost has confirmed.
Joseph Brody was arrested by federal authorities last month near his home in northern Virginia for his alleged role in the insurrection. He is charged with multiple felonies, including: assaulting, resisting or impeding law enforcement officers, causing bodily injury; interfering with a law enforcement officer during a civil disorder; and obstruction of an official proceeding.
According to an FBI affidavit, Brody attended the riot as part of a contingent of young men affiliated with the “America First” white nationalist movement. Brody allegedly pushed a metal barricade into a police officer, knocking him over.
He also allegedly entered Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s conference room, where he briefly removed an American flag from its holder, and the U.S. Senate chamber, where he took photos of documents on senators’ desks. After exiting the Capitol, Brody allegedly joined other rioters in destroying media equipment.
A famous photo from that day — Time magazine called it one of the best of the year — appears to show Brody in a suit and tie, with an American flag neck gaiter pulled over his mouth, standing arms outstretched on the building’s steps as he surveys the crowd of rioters breaking into the Capitol.
Later in 2021 — according to evidence unearthed this week by the anti-fascist group Anonymous Comrades Collective and online sleuths known collectively as Sedition Hunters — Brody was hired by the Virginia GOP to help campaign for Youngkin.
Joseph Brody, left, is shown campaigning for Glenn Youngkin.
Social media photos show a man bearing a strong resemblance to Brody — as seen in insurrection photos obtained by the FBI — campaigning for Youngkin and other Virginia Republican candidates. In one picture, the man who appears to be Brody holds a Youngkin campaign sign. In another, he’s wearing a Youngkin t-shirt.
“Mr. Brody was employed by the party as a door-knocker for one month last fall. He has not been employed by the Republican Party of Virginia for over a year,” a party spokesperson, Ellie Sorensen, told HuffPost on Wednesday. The confirmation was first reportedTuesday on Twitter by Ben Paviour, a journalist for Virginia public broadcaster VPM.
“Mr. Brody never worked for or with the Youngkin campaign,” Kristin Davison, a political strategist who shaped Youngkin’s successful bid for governor, told HuffPost in a statement. Davison seemed to be drawing a distinction without a difference, suggesting that Brody had not worked for the campaign because he was paid by the state party. She did not respond to a request for clarification.
Brody is among at least 919 people arrested for their part in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. His relationship with the GOP is just the latest example of the political party’s embrace of insurrectionism.
His mother, Maureen Brody, also attended the Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally that turned into insurrection; she once posted on Gab, the white supremacist-friendly social media platform, that she got near enough to the Capitol that she and others were targeted with tear gas. Footage found by anti-fascist researchers also appears to show her on the building’s steps — a restricted area.
Months later, Maureen Brody was named as the Republican nominee for a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates. During her campaign — on June 21, 2021 — she posted a photo to Gab showing her standing behind a table draped with an America First flag. She was running in a heavily Democratic district and lost in the general election by 30 points.
Maureen Brody, a 2021 Republican nominee for the Virginia House of Delegates, poses with a flag for the America First white nationalist movement.
Neither Davison, the strategist for the Youngkin campaign, nor the Virginia GOP responded to requests for comment about Maureen Brody photographing herself with the America First flag.
Joseph Brody and Maureen Brody also did not respond to a request for comment.
According to the FBI affidavit, Joseph Brody showed up to the Capitol on Jan. 6 with four other men affiliated with America First, all of whom have been arrested.
The five men illegally entered the Capitol, the FBI alleges, at 2:16 p.m., moving throughout the building. After entering Pelosi’s conference room, Brody removed an American flag from its stand and then replaced it when one of his friends communicates something to him, according to surveillance footage.
Joseph Brody, far right, was arrested on a slew of felony charges for his involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
In the Senate chamber, he “appeared to hold a cell phone in his hand and photograph” documents and other information on senators’ desks, the FBI says.
On the north side of the Capitol, the affidavit says, Brody could be seen “lifting a metal barricade” and pushing it against a police officer who had been attempting to use a fire extinguisher to hold back rioters.
After leaving the Capitol, Brody and his America First crew watched as other rioters destroyed equipment belonging to journalists reporting on the insurrection. Brody then allegedly joined in on the destruction, damaging a “corded phone,” per the affidavit.
He was arrested on Sept. 15 in Springfield near his home. He appeared in court and was released pending further court appearances.
The interview came after the committee attempted to get in touch with Thomas, who told the Washington Beacon back in March that the longest-serving member of the Supreme Court “doesn’t discuss his work with me, and I don’t involve him in my work.”
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said the interview with Thomas was a “work in progress and “at this point, we’re glad she came” to talk to the committee.
Trump told Michigan rally attendees on Saturday that Thomas, who he called a “great woman” and a wife of a “great man,” had “courage and strength” for backing up his false election fraud claim.
″She didn’t wait and sit around and say ‘Well, let me give you maybe a different answer than I’ve been saying for the last two years,’” Trump said.
“No, no, she didn’t wilt under pressure like so many others that are weak people and stupid people…” Trump said.
