Attention to the Unseen

The Wall Street Journal reports: Jacob Fracker is a member of the Virginia National Guard and a police officer in the small town of Rocky Mount, Va. On Jan. 6, he joined the mob that broke into the U.S. Capitol and posted a photo of himself next to a fellow off-duty officer with his middle finger raised in front of a statue of a Revolutionary War commander, according to court documents. Mr. Fracker and the other officer, Thomas Robertson, were…

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The New York Times reports: The Justice Department’s top leaders listened in stunned silence this month: One of their peers, they were told, had devised a plan with President Donald J. Trump to oust Jeffrey A. Rosen as acting attorney general and wield the department’s power to force Georgia state lawmakers to overturn its presidential election results. The unassuming lawyer who worked on the plan, Jeffrey Clark, had been devising ways to cast doubt on the election results and to…

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The Daily Beast reports: A member of the far-right paramilitary group the Oath Keepers who’s been charged with conspiring to storm the Capitol was ready “for violence” during the deadly riot and had plans for a “further insurrection,” federal prosecutors said Friday. “The plan was never for peaceful protest,” a Virginia prosecutor said during a detention hearing for Donovan Crowl, a former U.S. Marine. “The Oath Keepers arrived in D.C. prepared for violence.” Crowl, 50, is one of three members…

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Politico reports: Former President Donald Trump can be convicted in an impeachment trial for his role in inciting the Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6 even though he is no longer in office, a bipartisan group of constitutional law scholars wrote in a letter Thursday. “We differ from one another in our politics, and we also differ from one another on issues of constitutional interpretation,” wrote the signatories, which include the co-founder and other members of the conservative Federalist Society legal…

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CNN reports: President Donald Trump received an unsettling warning on his final Saturday night in the White House. Huddled for a lengthy meeting with his legal advisers, Trump was warned the pardons he once hoped to bestow upon his family and even himself would place him in a legally perilous position, convey the appearance of guilt and potentially make him more vulnerable to reprisals. So, too, was Trump warned that pardons for Republican lawmakers who had sought them for their…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: Prosecutors filed conspiracy charges related to the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol Jan. 6, saying in a new complaint that three rioters had acted in an “organized and practiced fashion” and at one point appeared to suggest the possibility of gassing lawmakers in the tunnels below the building. A search of the home of one of the three people also turned up directions for making explosives from bleach, according to the affidavit filed in…

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The Washington Post reports: On the other side of Donald Trump’s turbulent presidency, the lawyers are waiting. Leaving aside his Senate impeachment trial, mounting government investigations include a civil probe by New York Attorney General Letitia James, a criminal probe by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., and a federal probe by acting U.S. Attorney for D.C. Michael Sherwin that may include Trump’s role in the catastrophic storming of the U.S. Capitol this month. But already pending for the soon-to-be…

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The New York Times reports: As President Trump prepares to leave office in days, a lucrative market for pardons is coming to a head, with some of his allies collecting fees from wealthy felons or their associates to push the White House for clemency, according to documents and interviews with more than three dozen lobbyists and lawyers. The brisk market for pardons reflects the access peddling that has defined Mr. Trump’s presidency as well as his unorthodox approach to exercising…

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The Washington Post reports: During the chaos at the Capitol, overwhelmed police officers confronted and combated a frenzied sea of rioters who transformed the seat of democracy into a battlefield. Now police chiefs across the country are confronting the uncomfortable reality that members in their own ranks were among the mob that faced off against other law enforcement officers. At least 13 off-duty law enforcement officials are suspected of taking part in the riot, a tally that could grow as…

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Politico reports: The lawyer for the “QAnon shaman” who was part of the deadly siege of the Capitol last week publicly petitioned President Donald Trump on Thursday to pardon his client. In an interview on CNN, attorney Albert Watkins said his client, Jacob Chansley, “felt like he was answering the call of our president” when he stormed the nation’s seat of government last Wednesday during a riot that resulted in the deaths of at least five people. Chansley, a 33-year-old…

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Noah Feldman writes: With the House of Representatives having voted to impeach President Donald Trump for incitement to insurrection, it’s time to start contemplating what Trump’s defense will be in a Senate trial. The answer can be summed up briefly: Trump’s lawyers will argue that Trump did not commit a crime of incitement and that his words were protected by the First Amendment. But wait, you may say, if you can remember Trump’s 2020 Senate trial 12 months ago (so…

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The Washington Post reports: Dozens of people on a terrorist watch list were in Washington for pro-Trump events Jan. 6, a day that ended in a chaotic crime rampage when a violent mob stormed the U.S. Capitol, according to people familiar with evidence gathered in the FBI’s investigation. The majority of the watch-listed individuals in Washington that day are suspected white supremacists whose past conduct so alarmed investigators that their names had been previously entered into the national Terrorist Screening…

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Bloomberg reports: President Donald Trump, on the eve of facing a historic second impeachment trial for inciting the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol last week, is having trouble finding a legal team to defend him. Allies of the outgoing president have been canvassing Washington’s legal landscape looking for representation but so far are coming up short. Lawyers who defended him in the previous impeachment trial, including Jay Sekulow and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, have said no this time, according…

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ProPublica reports: When Kim Dine took over as the new chief of the U.S. Capitol Police in 2012, he knew he had a serious problem. Since 2001, hundreds of Black officers had sued the department for racial discrimination. They alleged that white officers called Black colleagues slurs like the N-word and that one officer found a hangman’s noose on his locker. White officers were called “huk lovers” or “FOGs” — short for “friends of gangsters” — if they were friendly…

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