Title : "Ever since our government transferred power from George Washington to John Adams in the year 1797, we have had a core custom of routine and peaceful transfer of power...."
link : "Ever since our government transferred power from George Washington to John Adams in the year 1797, we have had a core custom of routine and peaceful transfer of power...."
"Ever since our government transferred power from George Washington to John Adams in the year 1797, we have had a core custom of routine and peaceful transfer of power...."
"These defendants tried to change that history. They concocted a plan for an armed rebellion to shatter a bedrock of democracy."Said Jeffrey S. Nestler, in the opening statement for the prosecution, quoted in "Prosecution Says Oath Keepers ‘Concocted a Plan for Armed Rebellion’ Defense lawyers said the far-right militia had assembled ahead of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol to await what they hoped would be a decision by Donald Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act" (NYT).
If it was a plan for an armed rebellion, why weren't the protesters/revolutionary using arms?
One answer is provided by the lawyer for the defense in his own opening statement:
... Phillip Linder, [the defendant Stewart] Rhodes’s lawyer, said Mr. Rhodes and his subordinates had never planned an attack against the government on Jan. 6. Instead, Mr. Linder said, the Oath Keepers were waiting for Mr. Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act — a move, they claim, that would have given the group standing as a militia to employ force of arms in support of Mr. Trump.
This is a delicate position to defend. It concedes that there was a plan to use force to engage in a military fight, but it was conditional on an action by Trump that would supposedly have legalized their fighting.
Calling the Oath Keepers a “peacekeeping force,” Mr. Linder also argued that the group did not go to Washington on Jan. 6 to storm the Capitol but to provide security at political rallies for speakers and dignitaries, like Roger J. Stone Jr., Mr. Trump’s longtime political adviser.
“Even though it may look inflammatory,” Mr. Linder told the jury, “they did nothing illegal.”
But they didn't peacefully await Trump's invocation of the Insurrection Act or restrict themselves to providing security. According to the prosecutor Nestler, "more than a dozen members of the Oath Keepers advanced in military-style “stacks” into the Capitol itself — with some moving off in search of Speaker Nancy Pelosi."
There are 5 defendants, Stewart Rhodes, Kelly Meggs, Kenneth Harrelson, Jessica Watkins and Thomas Caldwell. (Watkins is "a former Army Ranger and a transgender woman who had repeatedly struggled to fit in with the Oath Keepers.")
I'm not clear on whether any of the defendants entered the building. The NYT says, "the trial is less likely to focus on disputes over what the group did in the days and weeks leading up to Jan. 6 than it is to hinge on the question of why they did it."
The defense maintains that the Oath Keepers could not have seditiously sought to stop the transfer of power because they believed that the Insurrection Act would allow them to legally come to Mr. Trump’s aid....
ADDED: Did Trump ever talk about invoking the Insurrection Act? I see that during the riots in the summer of 2020, Trump said:
“Mayors and governors must establish an overwhelming law enforcement presence until the violence has been quelled. If a city or a state refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them.... I am mobilizing all available federal resources, civilian and military, to stop the rioting and looting, to end the destruction and arson, and to protect the rights of law-abiding Americans”...
A political commentator quoted in the Washington Post interpreted that statement to refer to invoking the Insurrection Act. I blogged about that here. At the time, Trump was criticized by Joe Biden for threatening to go military on the rioters. By the way, George W. Bush was criticized for not invoking the Insurrection Act after Hurricane Katrina. Blogged here.
So in recent years the Insurrection Act has been talked about as a way to deal with widespread disorder. Are the Oath Keepers in the present case saying they saw themselves as a potential security force if the peaceful protest broke into disorder, and they were simply ready to augment law enforcement, if the President called them into action?
Thus articles "Ever since our government transferred power from George Washington to John Adams in the year 1797, we have had a core custom of routine and peaceful transfer of power...."
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