Insurrection Update #1

A comprehensive review of recent developments in Donald Trump's rebellion against the people of the United States and their democratically elected federal government.

{Note: “Insurrection Update” is an ongoing series at Proof. You can find an archive of entries in the series here. The series curates the most significant news in the ongoing insurrection led by former president Donald Trump. A link to all ongoing federal criminal cases relating to the insurrection can be found here.}

Major Events

May 12: Former acting defense secretary Chris Miller tells Congress that on January 3 Trump told him to use the United States military to “do whatever was necessary [on January 6] to protect the [pro-Trump] demonstrators that were executing their constitutionally protected rights” at the U.S Capitol. Such a use of the armed forces to aid and assist a pro-Trump march on the Capitol—one intended to disrupt a joint session of Congress—would have been illegal, and could have been interpreted as the beginning of a military coup. Miller tells Congress that Trump was atop the “chain of command” on January 3, meaning that his order to deploy the armed forces to aid and abet his insurrection was a direct order.

May 12: Chris Miller writes, in his prepared remarks to Congress, that “I personally believed [Trump’s] comments [on January 6] encouraged the protesters that day.” When Miller appears before Congress, he elides this sentence from his remarks and does so without explanation. It remains unknown which Trump agent, if any, got to Miller prior to his sworn testimony to convince him to change it so demonstrably. It is a question that remains not just open but pressing—as any such convincing would potentially constitute the crimes of Witness Tampering and Obstruction of Justice.

May 12: Former acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen admits to Congress that he met with Trump on January 3, but will not disclose if at that meeting the then-president instructed him to use the powers of the Department of Justice to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

May 12: Rosen tells Congress that Trump’s Department of Justice saw “no evidence” that Joe Biden did not win the 2020 presidential election. If Rosen told Trump the same thing when he met with the president on January 3, it would not only make any subsequent demand by Trump that the DOJ stop the Biden certification the federal crime of Election Fraud but would be critical evidence in a criminal investigation of Trump for Incitement. Rosen refuses to disclose the content of his conversation with the former president, however—despite the fact that it’s unclear whether unambiguous evidence of criminality is actually protected from disclosure under executive privilege.

May 11: An attorney connected to Trump’s legal team, Lin Wood, tells a crowd in South Carolina that “Donald J. Trump has never conceded…because he won the [2020] election. So be cool—it’s all going to be good in time. Donald J. Trump is still the guy the military will call for the code if they need a first strike. Joe Biden is not the President of the United States.” An unseen woman in the crowd responds to Wood’s seditious statements by angrily demanding that someone “stop” and “do something” about Joe Biden. Wood responds by falsely saying that Trump secretly invoked the Insurrection Act of 1807 before leaving office, and can begin “cleaning things up” in the United States whensoever he desires. Per Wood, Trump will be the instrument of “God” when he does so.

May 11: The Arizona Senate, run by Republicans and now in the midst of a fraudulent “audit” of the 2020 presidential election in Maricopa County, purges 140,000 voters from the state’s Permanent Early Voting List. At least 30,000 Latino voters are affected.

May 10: A new book on the Secret Service by three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter Carol Leonnig reveals that (in the words of the Washington Post), “following the deadly January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, spurred on by Trump, some agents took to social media to express solidarity with the rioters. ‘One Secret Service officer called the armed protesters “patriots” seeking to undo an illegitimate election,’ Leonnig writes [in her book], ‘and falsely claimed to her friends that disguised antifa members had started the violence.’ President Biden’s transition advisers were so wary of Trump’s damaging hold on the agency that they urged the Secret Service to swap out all members of Trump’s protective detail before Biden was officially sworn in, Leonnig reports.”

May 10: It is revealed that the new head of the Utah GOP was present at the Capitol during the insurrection.

May 10: Business Insider begins a running tally of dispositions in insurrection cases. So far 450 insurrectionists have been charged with crimes, and two have pleaded guilty.

May 10: Republican representative Adam Kinzinger (R) reveals that prior to January 6 he warned House GOP leadership that, “‘I really, really am concerned about violence on January 6.’ The response I got was based on the cricket sound [silence], and then, ‘OK. Operator, next call.’”

May 8: The Republican Attorneys General Association, an insurrectionist entity that sent a top member to Trump’s January 5 war council at Trump International Hotel—Adam Piper—experiences an exodus of staffers after it decides to “promote Peter Bisbee, who was responsible for generating robocalls to turn people out for the January 6 Capitol insurrection, to be the group’s new executive director.” Bisbee had worked on the robocalls with Piper, who has since stepped down from his position.

May 8: Insurrectionists’ defense attorneys begin taking court-permitted tours of the U.S. Capitol to observe first-hand what is still regarded, per CNN, as a crime scene.

May 8: The Washington Post writes that “Donald Trump has emerged from his Florida hibernation—re-fashioning himself as the president of the Republican States of America and reshaping the party in ways both micro and macro.” Unmentioned is the fact that Trump’s continued implication that he is the rightful president of the United States may be a federal crime as well as an ongoing national security threat.

May 7: An investigative report by BuzzFeed News reveals that since the insurrection the Oath Keepers—a radical pro-Trump paramilitary group that has seen more than a dozen of its members charged with federal crimes over their conduct on January 6, including allegations that 30 to 40 planned to trap members of Congress in the tunnels below the U.S. Capitol and “gas” them—have struggled to recruit and raise money.

May 6: In an unprecedented political move, top Trump ally and Florida governor Ron DeSantis gives exclusive access to a bill-signing ceremony to Fox News. The bill he is signing, reports the Daily Beast, “signs away voting rights for millions [of Floridians].”

May 6: The Biden Department of Justice finally gets involved in the fraudulent “audit” being run in Arizona by demanding that the Senate there—held by Republicans—reply to grave concerns about the security of ballots and the intimidation of Arizona voters.

May 5: Influential conservative celebrity and Trump supporter James Woods writes on the newly relaunched far-right social media website Parler that “When the real conservatives take back the House, the Senate, and the White House, every single one of those individuals that have committed treason—Republican, Democrat, Independent, [and] Supreme Court Justices—will hang for their treasonous acts. Being nice is over. We are at war with the world and our own government.” Trump does not reject Woods’ support or denounce his words, even though he will (a week later) immediately release a statement about what a “horrible” and “bitter” person Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) is after she is removed from her House leadership position.

May 5: Politico publishes a summary of Trump’s ongoing de-platforming. A week later, the media will report that Trump’s attempts to regain his audience through the use of a blog connected to his website have largely failed—drawing only a tiny fraction of the traffic he previously commanded before his banning from the nation’s top platforms.

May 4: Trump’s ongoing and inexplicable refusal to pay his attorney Rudy Giuliani for the work Giuliani did in November and December 2020 to try to steal the presidential election may increase the odds that Giuliani cooperates with federal investigators in their ongoing investigation of him. No other conclusion can be drawn from this report in the New York Times about a growing rift between the Giuliani and Trump camps.

May 4: Yet another member of the U.S. military, the National Guard, or local police forces is arrested for participating in the January 6, 2021 insurrection. The number of insurrectionists revealed to have had paramilitary training continues to be staggering—and terrifying.

May 3: The Biden administration reveals that it is so concerned about the expanding online activities of extremist groups inside the United States that, according to CNN, it is “considering using outside firms to track extremist chatter by Americans online, an effort that would expand the government’s ability to gather intelligence but could draw criticism over surveillance of US citizens.”

May 2: It is revealed that the so-called “auditors” in Arizona, who have no experience in auditing elections and are not certified to do so, are using UV lights to examine ballots—apparently in response to a bizarre QAnon conspiracy theory which holds that then-president Trump secretly had certain mail-in ballots marked with invisible watermarks pre-election in order to make voter fraud easier to spot post-election.

May 1: In an interview with Newsmax, a far-right propaganda outlet run by longtime Trump friend Chris Ruddy, Arizona GOP chair Kelli Ward tells her interviewer that the Arizona audit is “America’s audit”, and that it will “restore election integrity” in the United States—the implication being that, at present, there is no such integrity in the elections of the nation. Far more terrifying is that Ward makes the political aims of the audit clear; she calls her state’s fraudulent “audit” “the first domino that will fall, and then other states will look into irregularities, abnormalities, mistakes and, potentially, outright fraud [in 2020].…We hope can lead the way for the nation….We are leading the way for other states to follow us [in drafting bills making it harder to vote].”

May 1: It is revealed that one of the chief funders of the so-called Arizona vote “audit” is none other than former Overstock CEO and noted insurrectionist Patrick Byrne, who per Axios attended a historically raucous December 2020 meeting at the White House in which he, Giuliani, discredited former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell, and disgraced former lieutenant general and DIA chief Michael Flynn urged President Trump to seize all voting machines in states he lost and consider invoking martial law.

April 30: Media in Arizona report that insurrectionist state representative Anthony Kern, who was present at the attack on the Capitol on January 6, is one of the ballot counters at the Arizona GOP’s fraudulent 2020 vote “audit.” A photographer gets a picture of Kern shaking hands with U.S. representative Andy Biggs (R-AZ), a top Trump congressional ally identified as one of the chief co-conspirators behind the insurrection by currently-in-hiding ex-con and Proud Boys liaison Ali Alexander.

April 28: The Washington Post reports—correctly—that there has been “no political accountability” for the January 6 insurrection inside the Republican Party.

April 28: Joe Biden makes history by using the term “white supremacy” in an address to Congress, identifying it as “terrorism”, and repeatedly calling the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6 an “insurrection.” Biden calls the insurrection “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”

April 28: A Trump supporter who threatened to kill members of Congress after the January insurrection is convicted of “making a death threat against elected officials.”

April 28: Internal U.S. Capitol Police emails are released—and they reveal, according to CNN, that “Capitol security officials dismissed warnings about troubling social media posts before the January 6 riot.”

April 27: U.S. Capitol police officer Michael Fanone, injured during the January 6 insurrection, gives an emotional interview to CNN that every American should watch.

April 27: The New York Times reports that far-right extremists are moving to Twitch—a platform usually used to watch other people play video games—to avoid detection.

April 27: Politico reports that Trump’s rhetoric has remained so incendiary that it is actually complicating the criminal defenses of insurrectionists facing federal trials.

April 26: Reuters reveals that the FBI had extensive contacts with four Proud Boys prior to the January 6 insurrection, yet is still claiming it had no inkling of what was coming on that day.

April 24: CNN runs a front-page story with a headline that should put a chill in the bones of every American: “Trump Supporters Could Be Incited to Future Violence by His Continued Promotion of 2020 Election Lies, DOJ and [Federal] Judges say.”

April 23: Arizona journalists begin finding massive irregularities in the conduct of the Arizona “audit,” as well as stunning prior public statements by the partisans behind it.

April 21: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) flatly rejects any January 6 commission that does not also consider entirely unrelated events relating to the Black Lives Matter protests of mid-2020.

April 21: Politico reports that “An investigation [of the U.S Capitol Police] found an official’s [January 6] radio transmission to ‘all outside [USCP] units’ attention’ that they should not be ‘looking for any pro-Trump [individuals] in the [Capitol] crowd.’”

April 20: NBC News reveals stunning information about the insufficiency of the FBI investigation into the January 6 insurrection and its prosecution of insurrectionists: per NBC, “FBI officials have repeatedly said they gathered no credible intelligence in the weeks leading up to the January 6 insurrection suggesting that pro-Trump extremists intended to storm the U.S. Capitol. And even after months of intensive investigation, Justice Department prosecutors have presented no evidence so far that any of the 420 individuals charged to date for their actions January 6 planned in advance to attack the building in which Congress was certifying Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election.” (Emphasis supplied.)

April 19: Two Proud Boy leaders, Joe Biggs and Ethan Nordean, both linked to top GOP officials and operatives, are jailed by a federal judge pre-trial. The news comes amid renewed interest in a late January 2021 Reuters report revealing that Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio was a “prolific” secret FBI informer prior to the insurrection.

April 19: CNN reports that “Foreign adversaries like Russia and China ‘weaponized’ QAnon messaging to sow further discord among the American population in the months leading up to, and following, the January 6 attack, according to a report.” To date there have been no federal charges against Ron Watkins, the longtime 8kun site administrator now widely believed to be “Q” following a documentary on the subject.

April 18: The New York Times reveals that Trump’s favorite propaganda outlet, One America News Network, is issuing reports stating that “there are serious doubts about who’s actually president.” Past reporting indicates that Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., was part of a group that tried to buy OANN—giving the network ample reason to want to continue to provide favorable coverage to the Trumps, even if that coverage foments further violence.

April 16: One of the co-founders of the Oath Keepers, Jon Schaffer, becomes the first insurrectionist to plead guilty to federal charges. Schaffer is convicted of “two felony charges of obstructing the certification of the 2020 election and breaching a restricted building.”

April 14: The member of the U.S. Capitol Police who shot Ashli Babbitt as she tried to forcibly enter the Speaker’s Lobby of the U.S. Capitol to get to fleeing members of Congress is found—upon an investigation—to have committed no crime whatsoever.

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