A federal judge in Washington, D.C., issued a warning about the risk of future political violence and the dangers of ongoing misinformation and denialism regarding the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.
At a sentencing hearing for 21-year-old Aiden Bilyard, a North Carolina man who admitted deploying bear spray against police during the Jan. 6 insurrection — and smashing open a Capitol window with a metal bat — Judge Reggie Walton said that the U.S. is in a “scary moment” in which democracy remains endangered.
“It’s scary going forward as a country where we end up,” said Walton, who has handled a series of Jan. 6 cases. “Because what happened on Jan. 6 is not something that’s just in the past. It, unfortunately, is something that still haunts us because the individuals who instigated what occurred are still engaging in the same rhetoric that resulted in the frenzy that took place on that day. This is a very serious situation because it goes to the root of what we are supposed to be as a democracy.”
Bilyard’s defense attorneys unsuccessfully sought a sentence of home confinement during Friday’s hearing, arguing he was remorseful for his actions. Defense lawyers also said Bilyard has been exposed to unwelcomed propaganda and influence by other Jan. 6 defendants — including Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes — while in pretrial detention in Virginia. But Walton said the offenses committed by Bilyard, who sprayed officers with a gel form of bear spray that was considered particularly dangerous, were too serious for the leniency of home detention. Walton sentenced Bilyard to 40 months in prison, after also warning of the danger of the spread of misinformation about the Capitol riot.
Walton, a 2001 appointee to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, said he’s unsure how people “live with themselves” when they call Jan. 6 defendants “political prisoners,” or sow misinformation about what happened inside the Capitol that day.
Though Walton didn’t name anyone specific, Jan. 6 defendants and their sympathizers have held nightly protests outside the Washington, D.C., jail, in which defendants are frequently referred to as political prisoners. At a protest on Thursday, a Jan. 6 defendant called the Capitol attack an entrapment operation by the FBI and Antifa.
Multiple members of Congress, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, have referred to Jan. 6 defendants at “political prisoners.” Fox News host Tucker Carlson has also been accused of making baseless and “cherry picked” claims about the attack.
“A democracy can’t survive if you have a significant number of people who are prepared to subvert the electoral process because the result is not the result that they wanted,” Walton said during Bilyard’s hearing. “I mean that. That’s a sad state of affairs that we’re in at this point where someone loses — and loses by 7 million votes — but nonetheless, espouses that they did win. And there are enough people who believe that was the case, despite any evidence that would suggest that the allegations have any merit. There have been 60-something court cases that have rejected the proposition that the election was somehow stolen.”
Walton criticized people who are following “the calls of a demagogue.”
There was an outburst in the courtroom as Walton announced his sentence of Bilyard. His mother said “this isn’t right,” in protest of his decision.
“He made his bed,” Walton responded about Bilyard. “Now he has to lie in it.”
“Bilyard pointed the nozzle of the canister at officers who were attempting to prevent the mob from proceeding further towards the Capitol Building,” according to a news release from the Justice Department Friday following the sentencing. “He then discharged the chemical irritant towards the group of officers. Immediately after he sprayed the irritant, Bilyard and other rioters overwhelmed the police line, causing the officers to retreat through a stairwell to the Lower West Terrace.”
At the hearing, prosecutors said BIlyard’s actions helped rioters gain entry into the Senate conference room. They said some of the people in the mob stole furniture from the room and shared it with rioters who were attacking police, including a conference room door that was used as a shield by attackers.
Julian Kather was sentenced Friday to 80 months in prison for pepper spraying U.S. Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick on Jan. 6. Sicknick died a day after the attack. Scott MacFarlane has the details.
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President Biden marked the two-year anniversary of the attack on the U.S. Capitol with a ceremony at the White House. He awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal to 14 Americans for their efforts in defending democracy. Nancy Cordes reports.
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The FBI is offering a $500,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the person who placed pipe bombs outside the Democratic and Republican National Committee headquarters the day before the January 6 Capitol riot. Scott Sweetow, who has more than two decades of experience with the FBI and ATF, joins CBS News’ Catherine Herridge to break down what we know about the case.
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Almost two years after the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, Capitol police unveiled “significant improvements” to the department to protect against another large-scale attack.
Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger said in a news release that the department is “clearly better off” than what it was before the events of Jan. 6, 2021, when more than 2,000 protesters outside the U.S. Capitol breached the building in an effort to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election. More than 140 officers were injured, and Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick died from multiple strokes after he was sprayed with a chemical substance during the riot.
Some of the improvements highlighted by Manger include creating relationships with police departments in and around the Washington, D.C. area and bringing on law enforcement officials with knowledge of national security events. Congress has also passed legislation that will allow Capitol police to call in the National Guard, instead of waiting for prior approval. On Jan. 6, National Guard troops didn’t arrive on the scene for several hours.
“Perhaps most important, the United States Capitol Police is successfully recruiting and training new police officers at a rate that will, in the next several months, put us above our pre-pandemic and pre-January 6 staffing levels,” Manger said.
In total, the department has implemented over 100 advancements.
“The current threat climate, particularly against elected officials, will require continued and heightened vigilance. We will do everything possible to fulfill our mission of protecting the Members of Congress, the Capitol Complex and the legislative process,” Manger said.
Threats against members of Congress have increased drastically within the last five years, according to Capitol police. The agency investigated nearly 10,000 threats in just 2021.
“With the polarized state of our nation, an attack like the one our Department endured on January 6, 2021, could be attempted again. Should the unthinkable happen, we will be ready,” Manger said.
Anthony Ornato, a former White House deputy chief of staff in the Trump administration as well as a former longtime Secret Service official, repeatedly told the Jan. 6 House select committee that he had no recollection of a heated interaction between former President Donald Trump and U.S. Secret Service agents, according to a transcript of his testimony, released Friday.
Details of the alleged encounter first drew attention in June, when former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson told the committee of Trump’s desire to go to the Capitol with his supporters, recounting the alleged demand in explosive public testimony.
Hutchinson testified before the committee that she spoke with Ornato in a room with Robert Engel, the Secret Service special agent in charge on Jan. 6. According to Hutchinson, during the meeting, Ornato conveyed that the president became “irate” in his vehicle when he was told that he could not go to the Capitol, saying something to the effect of “I’m the effing president, take me up to the Capitol now.”
Cassidy Hutchinson, former aide to Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, speaks during a hearing of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the US Capitol, on June 28, 2022.
Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images
When informed that he had to return to the West Wing, Trump reached up to the front of the vehicle to grab at the steering wheel, prompting Engel to grab his arm, Hutchinson said she was told by Ornato, at the time. The president then used his free hand to lunge towards Engel, she said, noting that Ornato “motioned towards his clavicles” when describing the incident.
“I don’t recall being made aware of anything that took place with the president in his motorcade from the Ellipse back to the White House,” Ornato testified on Nov. 29 — according to the just-released transcript — when confronted about his conflicting account.
“So Mr. Ornato, it’s your testimony that the meeting itself was not even really a meeting. The way that you’ve described it, Mr. Engel stuck his head in your office, you had a brief exchange, and, as you described it, that was the end of it,” Rep. Liz Cheney, the committee’s vice chair, countered. “That’s inconsistent with the testimony that we’ve received, as I said, from multiple other witnesses.”
Following Hutchinson’s testimony, sources close to the Secret Service also threw Hutchinson’s testimony into question, noting that Secret Service officials were prepared to testify under oath that neither man was physically attacked or assaulted by Trump, and that the former president never lunged for the steering wheel of the vehicle.
Ornato, a 25-year veteran of federal law enforcement who served under five presidents, retired from the Secret Service in August.
Anthony Ornato, former White House deputy chief of staff.
Government photo
In several appearances before the committee, Ornato’s account deviated from that of Ms. Hutchinson and several other interviewees.
“I don’t recall any conversation taking place about the possible movement of the president to the Capitol,” Ornato told members of the committee during his interview under oath, on Nov. 29.
“Ornato does not recall that he conveyed the information to Cassidy Hutchinson regarding the SUV, and also does not recall that he conveyed similar information to a White House employee with national security responsibilities who testified that Ornato recalled a similar account to him,” according to the executive summary released by the committee. The committee went on to say they are “skeptical” of Ornato’s account, and obtained evidence from several sources about a “furious interaction” in Mr. Trump’s SUV, following his address to supporters.
“Mr. Ornato remained cooperative during the entirety of the committee’s investigation, and testified truthfully before the committee on three occasions,” Kate Driscoll, an attorney for Ornato, said in a statement to CBS News. “It is clear from the Introductory Material to the Final Report that the committee did not fully appreciate or understand Mr. Ornato’s role and responsibilities as the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations. Most of the committee’s questions were about emails that he neither sent nor received. It is also clear that they did not fully appreciate or ignored Mr. Ornato’s testimony regarding the President’s request to go to the Capitol.”
The select committee has now released 142 transcripts, totaling thousands of pages.
“The vast majority of witnesses who have testified before the Select Committee about this topic, including multiple members of the Secret Service, a member of the Metropolitan police, and national security officials in the White House, described President Trump’s behavior as ‘irate,’ ‘furious,’ ‘insistent,’ ‘profane’ and ‘heated,’” according to the executive summary.
During an interview with the committee in March 2022, Ornato also told committee members and staff he did not recall if he forewarned the president of a group coming to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, but would have been responsible for ensuring the president was “tracking the [demonstrations.]”
“I don’t recall,” Ornato said, according to an excerpt of his interview released by the committee. “However, in my position I would’ve made sure he was tracking the demos, which he received a daily brief, presidential briefing. So he most likely was getting all this in his daily brief as well. I wouldn’t know what was in his intelligence brief that day, but I would’ve made sure that he was tracking these things and just mentioned, ‘Hey, are you tracking the demos?’ If he gave me a ‘yeah’, I don’t recall it today, but I’m sure that was something that took place.”
According to the committee, “Ornato had access to intelligence that suggested violence at the Capitol on January 6th, and it was his job to inform Meadows and Trump of that.” Although Ornato told congressional investigators that he did not recall doing so, the committee “found multiple parts of Ornato’s testimony questionable.”
“The Select Committee finds it difficult to believe that neither Meadows nor Ornato told Trump, as was their job, about the intelligence that was emerging as the January 6th rally approached,” the committee wrote in their executive summary. “Hours before the Ellipse rally on January 6th, the fact that the assembled crowd was prepared for potential violence was widely known.”
According to the committee, the Secret Service produced nearly a million new internal documents in August and September of this year. Members wrote in a footnote of the executive summary that, “the committee has enormous respect for the U.S. Secret Service and recognized that the testimony regarding their work is sensitive for law enforcement, protectee security, and national security reasons.”
CBS News has reached out to the Secret Service for comment on Friday’s testimony.
Ornato’s interview with congressional investigators also revealed that Secret Service and White House officials were made aware of a White House tour granted to Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio on Dec. 12, 2020, in the days leading up to his arrest. On Dec. 12, 2020, an email thread from a Secret Service agent at the Washington field office to a group of USSS officials, forwarded onto Ornato, indicated that Enrique Tarrio received a tour of the White House, according to communications handed over to the committee.
“For your awareness, the [Joint Operations Center] was notified that the below individual was part of a White House tour this morning. The individual is the leader of the Proud Boys. There is no known media coverage at this point,” the email read.
A follow-up email from Secret Service official Ron Rowe to Engel reads: “Can we get some specifics on who submitted him for the tour? Why didn’t we pick up on his role/membership in the Proud Boys?”
During his testimony, Ornato told the committee he does not recall briefing then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, or anyone else, about Tarrio’s foray into the White House, but would have relayed that kind of information up the chain of command. Ornato speculated that he was alerted because “there would’ve been negative media coverage.”
At the time, a White House spokesperson, Judd Deere, told CBS News that Tarrio attended a public White House Christmas tour and “did not have a meeting with the president, nor did the White House invite him.”
The former Proud Boys leader and four lieutenants have since been charged with seditious conspiracy, namely conspiring to stop the peaceful transfer of presidential power by storming the Capitol on Jan. 6 and attempting to block Congress from certifying the election. Jury selection for the trial is slated to resume on Jan. 3 following a holiday break, according to court records.
This week on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,” Rep. Jamie Raskin shares lessons learned from the House Jan. 6 committee’s investigation. Plus our annual correspondents roundtable on the news and politics making headlines, and predictions for 2023.
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This week on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,” Rep. Jamie Raskin shares lessons learned from the House Jan. 6 committee’s investigation. Plus our annual correspondents roundtable on the news and politics making headlines, and predictions for 2023.
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This week on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,” Rep. Jamie Raskin shares lessons learned from the House Jan. 6 committee’s investigation. Plus our annual correspondents roundtable on the news and politics making headlines, and predictions for 2023.
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As Web3 Is Going Just Great’sMolly White reports, the deal was supposed to run for seven years, and involve FTX making “substantial payments” to Riot, starting with $12.5 million for the 2022 calendar year (and escalating to $12.875 for 2023, and so on). So far only $6.25 million of that 2022 sum has been paid, and there is almost zero chance Riot will ever see another cent, so the company has filed a case with a Bankruptcy Court in Delaware seeking to have the rest of the sponsorship deal nullified.
In strictly business terms, that’s perfectly understandable. As Riot points out in their filing, FTX have declared bankruptcy, which should send the whole deal straight into the bin, no questions asked. Just in case anyone does ask questions, though, Riot have added, “There is simply no way for FTX to cure the reputational harm already caused to Riot as a result of the highly public disrepute wrought by the debacle preceding FTX’s bankruptcy filing. FTX cannot turn back the clock and undo the damage inflicted on Riot in the wake of its collapse.”
Prior to, and throughout this media firestorm, Riot’s image and reputation to its customer base, remained inextricably linked to FTX through its former CEO, Mr. Bankman-Fried. Media outlets and Twitter commentators splashed images of Mr. Bankman-Fried playing League of Legends—Riot Games’ game— at the same time that FTX was crashing. Mr. BankmanFried is famous for his affinity for the game. He is well-known among investors to play League of Legends during meetings. He acknowledged on Twitter that he played “a lot more [League of Legends] than you’d expect from someone who routinely trades off sleep vs work.” Even Mr. Bankman-Fried’s ranking in League of Legends has been the subject of online commentary with public figures Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Elon Musk weighing in.
Even back when this deal was first signed, in August 2021, it was agonisingly clear what the endgame for this whole scam was going to be, whether it was video game developers or NBA teams or overly-eager celebrities.
You would think Riot would know this, especially now in the middle of all this, but another part of the filing argues that the FTX deal needs to be terminated because it is preventing the company from further “commercializing the crypto-exchange sponsorship category…currently owned by FTX.” Fool me once, shame on you, etc, etc.
The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection will hold what could be its final meeting Monday. The committee is also expected to to vote on who to refer to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution. Christina Ruffini has the details.
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The Capitol rioter who chased officer Eugene Goodman near the Senate chamber on Jan. 6, 2021, was sentenced to five years in prison. Meanwhile, the committee investigating the attack is holding its likely final meeting Monday. Scott MacFarlane has the details.
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Riot Blockchain has released its unaudited production and operations updates for November 2022. According to the release, the company produced 521 BTC, a 12% increase on its November 2021 production of 466 BTC. It sold 450 BTC, generating net proceeds of $8.1 million, and had a deployed fleet of 72,428 miners with a hash rate capacity of 7.7 exahashes per second (EH/s) on 30 November.
Jason Les, CEO of Riot stated, “Riot again achieved a new record for total hash rate capacity during the month of November, resulting in our highest monthly bitcoin production figure to date.” He did caveat this positivity, saying, “Despite this new level of production, expected production was approximately 660 bitcoin given our operating hash rate over the month, assuming normalized performance of the mining pool we participate in. Variance in a mining pool can impact results and while this variance should balance out over time, can be volatile in the short term. This variance led to lower bitcoin production than expected in the month of November, relative to our hash rate.”
To better formulate an outlook on their production, Les stated in the release, “In order to ensure more predictable results going forward, Riot will be transitioning to another mining pool which offers a more consistent reward mechanism, so that Riot will fully benefit from our rapidly growing hash rate capacity as we work towards our goal of reaching 12.5 EH/s in the first quarter of 2023.”
The report did not specify which mining pool Riot will now point its miners towards.
Looking ahead, Riot seeks to achieve a total self-mining hash rate capacity of 12.5 EH/s during Q1 2023, assuming full deployment of approximately 115,450 Antminer ASICs.
However, this does not include any potential incremental productivity gains from the company’s utilization of 200 MW of immersion-cooling infrastructure. The majority of Riot’s self-mining fleet will consist of the latest S19-series miners. In addition to its self-mining operations, the company hosts approximately 200 MW of institutional Bitcoin mining clients.
Former Washington, D.C. police officer Michael Fanone joins Major Garrett on the 300th episode of “The Takeout.” Fanone recounts how he was “frantically searching for ways to survive” when he was attacked at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Fanone says he voted for Donald Trump in 2016 but now believes he “doesn’t represent any of us, he only reprensents his own self interest.” Fanone also discusses his relationship with lawmakers, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
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One of the Jan. 6 rioters who attacked D.C. officer Michael Fanone received one of the harshest sentences yet — seven and a half years in prison. Albuquerque Head was seen dragging Fanone outside the Capitol, yelling, “I got one.”
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The Jan. 6 committee has formally subpoenaed Donald Trump, arguing he played a “central role” in trying to subvert the election and triggered the assault on the Capitol. Meanwhile, Trump’s former top aide Steve Bannon was ordered to serve four months in prison for failing to comply with a Jan. 6 subpoena. Scott MacFarlane reports.
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Far-right Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and several other group members are charged with seditious conspiracy in relation to the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The high profile trail resumes this week as the defendents face decades in prison if convited. Scott MacFarlane reports.
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