After bringing federal charges against more than 125 people accused of being part of the violent mob that stormed the US Capitol, now comes the hard part.

Law enforcement officials say they are moving from the so-called low-hanging fruit arrests and charges to more complicated cases, focusing on the extremist groups that participated in the attack.

That effort will take months to try to piece together, in part, because unlike some of the early arrests of suspects -- who gleefully posted on social media or even live-streamed their involvement -- many alleged attackers took pains to hide their identities and their involvement.

(Snip)

Prosecutors have said in detention hearings they are working on bringing seditious conspiracy charges -- a prospect that Washington, DC, acting US Attorney Michael Sherwin raised publicly early on.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/investigation-into-us-capitol-riot-moves-into-more-complicated-phase/ar-BB1d0D7E

Seven Democrats in the U.S. Senate have filed an ethics complaint against U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, for his role lending “legitimacy” to false claims of election fraud ahead of the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection in the Capitol by supporters of President Donald Trump.

In a letter addressed to the Senate Committee on Ethics, the Democratic Senators argue that Cruz and U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, “made future violence more likely.” The Democrats called for the committee to conduct an investigation into the two Republican senators and possibly consider “disciplinary action,” which could include the rare move of expulsion from the Senate. The Constitution also grants Congress the ability to censure its members, which is essentially just a strong condemnation from the chamber.

Leading up to the destructive Capitol riot, Cruz, Hawley and other Congressional Republicans vowed to object to the 2020 election results based on former President Donald Trump’s unfounded claims that the election was stolen from him. There is no evidence of widespread fraud on a level that would have affected the result. Even after a mob of Trump supporters desecrated the U.S. Capitol, Cruz objected to certifying Arizona’s electoral results and he’s been in political hot water ever since.

Cruz, whose office did not immediately return a request for comment Friday, told POLITICO that his objection “was the exact opposite of inciting violence.”

https://www.texastribune.org/2021/01/22/ted-cruz-democrats-capitol-riot/

American lawmakers have asked the FBI to investigate the role of Parler, the social media website and app popular with the American far right, in the violence at the US Capitol on 6 January.

Carolyn Maloney, chair of the House oversight and reform Committee, asked the FBI to review Parler’s role “as a potential facilitator of planning and incitement related to the violence, as a repository of key evidence posted by users on its site, and as a potential conduit for foreign governments who may be financing civil unrest in the United States”.

Maloney asked the FBI to review Parler’s financing and its ties to Russia.

Maloney cited press reports that detailed violent threats on Parler against state elected officials for their role in certifying the election results before the 6 January attack that left five dead. She also noted numerous Parler users have been arrested and charged with threatening violence against elected officials or for their roles in the attack.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jan/21/parler-capitol-attack-fbi-investigation-congress

Nearly six in 10 voters in Biggs’ congressional district think he should resign if he played a role in the events that occurred at the Capitol on Jan. 6, when a mob of Trump supporters rioted to try to stop certification of the 2020 election results, according to a poll released on Friday.

And nearly half those polled believe he probably did.

That’s not good news for a guy whose ruby-red district offers lifelong job security for a guy like Biggs.

(Snip)

“He may be in big trouble in AZ05,” pollster Mike Noble, of OH Predictive Insights, told me. “In a safe district, you can almost get away with anything. However, this poll indicates that may not be the case.”

https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/laurieroberts/2021/01/21/poll-shows-rep-andy-biggs-big-problem-after-capitol-riot/6666768002/

A Justice Department “strike force” is seeking to assemble a sedition case against some of those involved in last week’s riot at the Capitol, which is now being treated as a massive crime scene, a top prosecutor said Tuesday.

The acting U.S. attorney in Washington, Michael Sherwin, said a team of his colleagues was examining whether to file those serious charges, which carry a potential penalty of up to 20 years in prison.

(Snip)

“Just yesterday, our office organized a strike force of very senior national security prosecutors and public corruption prosecutors,” he added. “Their only marching orders from me are to build seditious and conspiracy charges related to the most heinous acts that occurred in the Capitol.”

(Snip)

Sherwin described some of the early, less-serious charges filed against participants in the violent riots — in which five people, including a Capitol Police officer, died — as placeholders that would eventually be expanded into far graver indictments. He also said some of the conduct that has received widespread public attention — like the man who sat in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s chair and stole a piece of mail — only scratched the surface of the criminality that took place. Additional, nonpublic information will be “shocking” when it comes out, he said.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/12/capitol-riot-sedition-charges-458309

Trump must go: Congress or his Cabinet must remove him from office before he injures another American

By BALTIMORE SUN EDITORIAL BOARD

Make no mistake: The surreal scene at the U.S. Capitol Wednesday that temporarily shut down the Electoral College vote count and led to at least one death was directly brought on by Donald Trump. He’s responsible for every critically injured person, every terrorized police officer and every single broken window caused by the violent mob of his so-called supporters. The president of the United States incited this riot.

He did it over years, sowing doubt in every institution our country holds dear, including our national security agencies, which he undermined as part of some phony “deep state” conspiracy; our research facilities, whose critical recommendations on climate change and medical best practices he dismissed as overblown; and our news organizations, whose watchdog work he repeatedly challenged as “fake” because it exposed his faults.

He did it over months, spreading lies and fear about his political opponents on the campaign trail, falsely claiming Democrats on the whole — and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in particular — are socialists looking to implement universal abortion access, throw open the borders and storm into homes on the hunt for legally owned guns.

He did it over weeks, raising absolutely untrue claims of fraud over his election loss, again and again, and threatening others to back him in his fiction or face consequences.

https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/editorial/bs-ed-0107-capitol-attack-20210106-t6lu4acy5rdljagpb5pkbbiy2e-story.html

Tax cuts for the wealthy have long drawn support from conservative lawmakers and economists who argue that such measures will "trickle down" and eventually boost jobs and incomes for everyone else. But a new study from the London School of Economics says 50 years of such tax cuts have only helped one group — the rich.

The new paper, by David Hope of the London School of Economics and Julian Limberg of King's College London, examines 18 developed countries — from Australia to the United States — over a 50-year period from 1965 to 2015. The study compared countries that passed tax cuts in a specific year, such as the U.S. in 1982 when President Ronald Reagan slashed taxes on the wealthy, with those that didn't, and then examined their economic outcomes.

Per capita gross domestic product and unemployment rates were nearly identical after five years in countries that slashed taxes on the rich and in those that didn't, the study found.

But the analysis discovered one major change: The incomes of the rich grew much faster in countries where tax rates were lowered. Instead of trickling down to the middle class, tax cuts for the rich may not accomplish much more than help the rich keep more of their riches and exacerbate income inequality, the research indicates.

https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/tax-cuts-rich-50-years-no-trickle-down/?__twitter_impression=true

One thing that has bothered me over the years is the media hasn't called out the Republicans for pushing discredited Hoover economics for years.

On the afternoon of October 21, seven Phoenix police officers gathered for a briefing in a Cave Creek station when the meeting diverged into a discussion about the defund-the-police movement.

When Officer Steven Poulos expressed his thoughts, the room went quiet: "If the mayor defunds the police, I'm going to shoot her," Poulos' sergeant recalled hearing the officer say, referring to Mayor Kate Gallego.

The sergeant broke the silence, saying, "You're not going to shoot the mayor."

Poulos doubled down, "That's a promise," he responded.

https://amp.azcentral.com/amp/4062470001?__twitter_impression=true