Free Republic

The retired firefighter who appears to be the man caught on camera throwing a fire extinguisher that hit at least three officers at the Capitol during a riot was arrested Thursday, officials said. Robert Sanford, of Chester, Pa., faces three federal felony charges including assaulting a police officer, the Wall Street Journal reported. Video footage of the incident shows the man hurling a fire extinguisher officers attempting to control a mob outside of the west side of the Capitol. The FBI has been pursuing charges against dozens of suspects in the riots, many of whom were identified through photos and...

Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., pushed back against fellow Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, Wednesday after the congressman defended Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., the highest-ranking woman in the house, for her vote to impeach President Trump. "With all due respect to Rep. Crenshaw, this is a minority view within the minority party," Gaetz tweeted to Crenshaw. Crenshaw said earlier that Cheney had a "hell of a lot more backbone than most" and called her a "principled leader."

National Guard troops hunkered down at the Capitol building Wednesday night following the House of Representative's historic impeachment vote as workers toiled into the night setting up additional barricades and a non-scalable fence was erected outside the Trump hotel. Security measures are being heightened inside and surrounding the Capitol in the wake of the January 6 riot that left five dead and ahead of anticipated violence in the countdown to Inauguration Day. A total of 20,000 National Guardsman have been authorized to descend on Washington to safeguard the nation’s capital. There are already 6,200 troops on the ground in DC...

An analysis of videos of the death of Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt at the U.S. Capitol indicates Antifa activists provoked the fatal gunshot from a police officer.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) says that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) "screamed" at an officer for not doing "enough" to protect senators as the U.S. Capitol was being breached last week. Brown shared the detail during an interview with MSNBC's Ari Melber on Monday. “I heard when the 75 senators were confined in a room with about 75 staff people, Lindsey Graham with his mask off started screaming at one of the officers — I think it was one of the captains — saying, ‘How come you didn’t protect us? It’s doing your job,' ” Brown said of the account. "He...

A photograph of a presumably indigenous man wearing a red-and-gold T-shirt that reads “Caucasians,” a parody of the NFL team formerly known as the Washington Redskins, has sparked a viral debate on Twitter. The photograph shared by @infamouschar appears to have been lifted from the original user, who was not credited, and the man in the image remains anonymous. Nevertheless, the tweet has raked in more than 525,000 likes in 36 hours, with many in the replies vowing to buy a version of the novelty shirt for themselves. However, others argued that the relatively tame irony didn’t go far enough...

The rioter who was slapped with federal charges after sitting at a desk in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office during the siege of the US Capitol claimed on video that he was “pushed” inside her quarters. “They started it! I came to peacefully protest! They Maced me,” Richard Barnett tells YouTuber Brandon Buckingham. “I didn’t break in — I got pushed in,” Barnett adds as he holds an envelope with Pelosi’s letterhead. “I paid a quarter for this. I’m not a thief! It had my blood on it.” Barnett, who goes by the nickname Bigo, also says he left the...

Washington (CNN) — Washington, DC, Mayor Muriel Bowser on Monday urged Americans to avoid the city during President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration next week and to participate virtually following last week's deadly domestic terror attack on the US Capitol. Meanwhile, the National Guard has plans to have up to 15,000 National Guard troops to meet current and future requests for the inauguration, Gen. Daniel Hokanson, the chief of the National Guard Bureau, said Monday. The dramatic increase in troops comes as law enforcement in the nation's capital and around the country brace for further extremist violence amid the transition of power....

District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine said Monday on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports” that he is “looking at” charging President Donald Trump and others who spoke at the rally proceeding the deadly riots at Capital Hill, “under the D.C. code of inciting violence.” Mitchell said, “I want to ask going forward about any plans to investigate and possibly prosecute President Trump for inciting the mob last week or certainly Rudy Giuliani, Don Jr?”

Several Capitol Police officers have been suspended following the Jan. 6 breach of the U.S. Capitol building, Acting Chief Yogananda Pittman announced in a statement late Monday. United States Capitol Police’s (USCP) Pittman confirmed that the department has suspended several USCP officers following a review of video and other open source materials. The department is actively reviewing footage of further officers and officials that appear to be in violation of its regulations and policies, said Pittman, who was appointed as USCP acting police chief after the former head resigned in the aftermath of last week’s breach. “Several USCP officers have...

Today, President Donald J. Trump declared that an emergency exists in the District of Columbia and ordered Federal assistance to supplement the District’s response efforts due to the emergency conditions resulting from the 59th Presidential Inauguration from January 11 to January 24, 2021. The President’s action authorizes the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to coordinate all disaster relief efforts which have the purpose of alleviating the hardship and suffering caused by the emergency on the local population, and to provide appropriate assistance for required emergency measures, authorized under Title V of the Stafford Act, to save...

I didn’t really want to write this article since I’ll probably be banned faster from big tech than expected, but as a lawyer whose favorite area of law is constitutional law, I see it as my duty. The left is trying to get rid of President Trump before the end of his term, saying he incited an insurrection in the speech he gave near the White House on January 6. House Democrats have drafted Articles of Impeachment with over 150 sponsors. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi compared Trump’s actions to those of President Nixon’s in Watergate. Dozens of Democrats and some...

There were several common themes on Twitter in the hours following the attacks on the U.S. Capitol: Capitol Police were either in on it (people who didn’t need to be responsible when it came to the accuracy of their postings) or simply let the protesters do what they would (people who had to maintain some vestige of responsibility).The implication is different based on who’s tweeting it, of course.From liberals, it’s a sign that this is indicative of police employing a different tactic against rioting Trump supporters than they did against other rioters this summer during the Black Lives Matter protests....

A longtime U.S. Capitol Police officer who responded to last week’s violent riot at the Capitol died Saturday apparently after taking his own life. The officer, Howard Liebengood, was 51. Capitol Police confirmed Officer Liebengood died while off-duty but did not reveal a cause of death. Law enforcement sources confirmed to The Washington Times that his death was an apparent suicide.

SNIP Yet neither Biden nor Pelosi reckoned with an uncomfortable fact: Sicknick was a Trump supporter himself, as his friend Caroline Behringer announced shortly after his death. Far from sharing the views of the #Resistance, he had written letters to his congressman opposing Trump’s impeachment. Like many Trump supporters who are now being censored, he ­believed that the system is fundamentally rigged in favor of a narrow elite. He had used fiery rhetoric, even called for regime change in America. The people who claim to honor Sicknick have elided these facts. Acknowledging them would undermine their ­effort to label the...

Sen. Joe Manchin, West Virginia Democrat, is open to adding two new states — the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. The liberal push to add the District and Puerto Rico comes as Democrats see adding U.S. Senate seats from those jurisdictions as providing them with a firmer grasp on control of Congress.

I took a beating on Twitter Thursday night for making what I thought was a commonsense observation that President Trump should be negotiating favorable terms for resignation "if there are 20 GOP senators who’d vote to impeach." In our current climate, this was taken as a call for Trump’s impeachment. But it wasn’t a value judgment. It was a mathematical calculation. As it happens, I do think the president has committed an impeachable offense, making a reckless speech that incited a throng on the mall, which foreseeably included an insurrectionist mob. These rioters ended up overwhelming security forces and storming...

Hypocrites! Details elaborated on.

Southern Baptist leaders condemned protesters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, occupying legislative chambers and various lawmakers’ offices. The SBC leaders called for peace – and called Christians to prayer. “Peaceable transitions of power have marked our Republic since the beginning,” SBC President J.D. Greear posted on Twitter. “It is part of honoring and submitting to God’s ordained leaders whether they were our choice or not. We need you, @POTUS to condemn this mob. Let’s move forward together. Praying for safety.” Ronnie Floyd, president and CEO of the SBC Executive Committee, said he was “deeply grieved over the destruction...

Reports are emerging from numerous eyewitness accounts that Antifa was actually behind the acts of violence at the Capitol on Wednesday.