FBI increases Jan. 6 arrests. It’s an election year and it’s about painting Trump supporters as criminals

Jan-6-Arrest-Warrant

“When once a Republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles; every other correction is either useless or a new evil.” ~ Thomas Jefferson

Important Takeaways:

  • After a Pause, Jan. 6 Arrests Are Now Sharply Increasing
  • The FBI is making arrests and the DOJ is filing charges at the quickest pace in three years, pushing the expected total up to 2,150 arrests by 2026.
  • The pace of FBI arrests and the opening of new Jan. 6 criminal cases quickened so much in late 2023 and early 2024 that District of Columbia federal courts could bend under the weight.
  • In the past two months, 93 people have been arrested and charged, according to Department of Justice (DOJ) reports.
  • At the current rate, some 445 new cases could hit the docket in 2024—more than in 2022 and 2023, according to one estimate.
  • In total, up to March 6, at least 1,358 people have been arrested by the FBI and criminally charged by the Department of Justice (DOJ) for crimes related to Jan. 6.
  • If the current trend is to hold, total arrests could be 2,150 by the time the statute of limitations on Jan. 6 crimes expires in early 2026, according to Jacob Rugh, associate professor of sociology at Brigham Young University in Provo
  • William Shipley, a former federal prosecutor who has represented more than 50 Jan. 6 defendants, said… “Every day, every day you see two or three more,” Mr. Shipley said. “My own view: it’s a political operation. Just my personal opinion. I think the Department of Justice, the Biden administration, is committed to continuing to keep this story front and center for purposes of the campaign.”
  • Shipley said the pace of arrests helps perpetuate the idea that supporters of former President Donald Trump comprise a threat to society.
  • “They want to continue to have that argument that some portion of the political opposition is actually a criminal element,” he said. “They use the branding of all these J6 defendants to say, ‘See that sliver of the MAGA movement, they’re insurrectionists, they’re foes of democracy.’”

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“No arrests made” seems to be the norm in democrat led cities

Chicago-Crime

Important Takeaways:

  • Harrowing moment thieves attack innocent man from behind, beating him to the ground to steal his backpack as he screams for them to ‘get the f*** off’
  • A horrifying video has emerged showing the moment that an innocent man is jumped by two opportunistic muggers on a Chicago street in broad daylight in the latest disturbing crime to occur in the Democratic-led Windy City.
  • The incident occurred on Monday in the Bucktown section of the city.
  • The video begins showing the two attackers wandering through an alley. Eventually, at 2:55pm, the victim, 33, nonchalantly walks by his attackers while eating a piece of pizza
  • The two are able to make off with his backpack and what appears to be a cellphone.
  • A witness, who can be seen in the video in a car across the street, told CBS Chicago that she honked her horn repeatedly in the hope that she could scare the attackers off, but they continued the assault.
  • She added that she remained with the victim until authorities arrived on the scene. He suffered bruising but seemed to be physically okay.
  • No arrests have been made, Chicago police told the station.
  • One commenter on social media remarked that he had walked through the alley in the video ‘for years.’
  • ‘This was my alley for several years. This is not about being poor and desperate. This is savagery and needs to be handled as such,’ the person wrote.

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U.S. faces deadline to reinstate ‘remain in Mexico’ border program

By Ted Hesson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States faces a court-ordered deadline this weekend to resume a controversial immigration program that forced tens of thousands of migrants to wait in Mexico for the resolution of their U.S. asylum cases.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals late on Thursday night denied a request by President Joe Biden’s administration to delay the effective date of a lower court judge’s ruling a week earlier ordering the program restarted by Saturday.

The ruling undercuts Biden’s decision earlier this year to end the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) program, which was put in place by his Republican predecessor, former President Donald Trump. Democrats and immigration advocates criticized the MPP program, informally known as “remain in Mexico,” saying it subjected mostly Central American migrants to unsanitary conditions and violence in the United States’ neighbor to the south.

Arrests of migrants caught crossing the U.S.-Mexico border have reached 20-year highs in recent months, a trend Republicans pin on Biden’s reversal of MPP and other hard-line Trump immigration policies. Still, the Biden administration has left in place a Trump-era health order that allows border authorities to expel migrants to Mexico without the chance to seek asylum in the United States.

The ruling by the conservative-leaning 5th Circuit said the Biden administration must implement the MPP program in “good faith,” which appears to leave the government some discretion in how to move forward.

If the implementation efforts are “thwarted” by a lack of cooperation from Mexico, the appeals court wrote, the administration will still be considered to be in compliance with the lower court order calling for the program restart.

The U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment asking whether it would appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.

(Reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington; Editing by Kristina Cooke and Jonathan Oatis)

Proud Boys member among the latest in wave of arrests over Capitol riots

By Sarah N. Lynch and Brad Heath

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The FBI on Wednesday arrested a Florida-based member of the right-wing Proud Boys group for his alleged role in breaching the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, the Justice Department said.

Joseph Randall Biggs, 37, is due to make his initial appearance in a federal court in Orlando on charges of corruptly obstructing an official proceeding before Congress, unlawful entry, and disorderly conduct.

He is the latest person in a growing number of people with ties to the Proud Boys to face charges surrounding the attack.

According to the criminal complaint, the FBI said Biggs actively encouraged members to travel to Washington, D.C., and communicated directly with the group’s leader Enrique Tarrio. Tarrio was arrested prior to the riots on charges of destruction of property and possession of a firearm magazine.

The FBI said that Biggs and fellow Proud Boy Dominic Pezzola can be seen in video footage entering the Capitol, with Pezzola breaking a window. Later, Biggs tells the camera “this is awesome,” according to the complaint.

Pezzola, who was arrested on Jan. 15, also faces charges.

More than 100 people have been arrested so far in connection with the Capitol riots, a figure prosecutors expect will grow significantly as the FBI continues to analyze more than 200,000 photos and videos.

On Tuesday, prosecutors alleged that three members of the Oath Keepers militia had conspired to breach the Capitol, and released text messages which made reference to trapping members of Congress in the tunnels beneath the Capitol and gassing them.

Prosecutors are also focused on tracking down people who assaulted police or members of the press.

Patrick Edward McCaughey III, who was pictured in a video in which a Washington, D.C., police officer was pinned with a riot shield, is due in federal court in Manhattan on Wednesday on charges of assaulting police.

McCaughey can be heard in the video telling officers to not resist the rioters, according to the criminal complaint.

“You see me. Just go home. Talk to your buddies and go home,” he allegedly said.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch and Brad Heath; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

Portland police arrest 11 after overnight protests

(Reuters) – Police arrested 11 people in Portland as protests continued to take place after 100 days of demonstrations in the Oregon city against racism and police brutality.

Tuesday night, a group began gathering at the site of the Saturday Market and marched in the street to the area of Transit Police Department offices, the police said in a statement.

As the crowd arrived, some stood on the train rails, which interfered with trains getting through the area. Other members of the group stood in the street, blocking vehicular traffic, the police added.

The police said they ordered the demonstrators to disperse. Some adhered while others continued to march around in the streets and threw projectiles such as eggs and water bottles toward officers.

Portland police said they used some munitions to control the crowd but no CS gas, the main component of tear gas.

The police did not mention any injuries but said they made 11 arrests on charges such as interfering with a peace officer, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and attempting escape.

Portland has seen nightly protests for over three months that have at times turned into violent clashes between demonstrators and officers, as well as between right- and left-wing groups.

Demonstrations erupted around the United States following the death in May of George Floyd, a Black man, after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

(Reporting by Rama Venkat in Bengaluru; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

Portland Police declare ‘riot’ after officers attacked

(Reuters) – Portland Police declared a gathering of protesters as a “riot” late on Sunday after saying its officers were attacked with lasers, rocks and bottles.

In a Twitter post, the police asked the gathering in the U.S. city’s North Precinct to disperse, adding that failure to comply with the order could lead to arrests and crowd control agents including tear gas and impact weapons.

Police had also declared a riot just before midnight on Saturday after a group of about 250 people – many of them wearing black and carrying shields, helmets and gas masks – tried to march on a government building that has often been the scene of violence during nearly three months of nightly protests.

Police made 14 arrests in that event.

Demonstrations against racism and police brutality have swept the United States since the death in May of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man who died after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

President Donald Trump’s administration in July deployed federal forces to deal with the protests in Portland.

On Friday, he denounced the demonstrations as “crazy” and said cities run by Democrats had descended into chaos. Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler is a Democrat.

Portland police said last week that they had declared riots 17 times between May 29 and Aug. 19.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Toby Chopra)

After more than a week of protests, four Minneapolis police officers face charges

By Brendan O’Brien

MINNEAPOLIS (Reuters) – A fired Minneapolis police officer will face a more serious murder charge and three other sacked officers will be charged as aiding and abetting in the death of an unarmed black man that triggered eight days of nationwide protest, court documents said on Wednesday.

George Floyd, 46, died after Derek Chauvin, a white policeman, knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes on May 25, reigniting the explosive issue of police brutality against African Americans five months before a presidential election.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison is charging Chauvin, 44, with second-degree murder in addition to the third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter charges leveled against him last week, according to court documents.

The new charge can carry a sentence of up to 40 years, 15 years longer than the maximum sentence for third-degree murder.

The other three former officers who were involved in the incident – Thomas Lane, J. Alexander Kueng and Tou Thao – face charges of aiding and abetting murder and arrest warrants have been issued by Ellison, according to the documents.

Ellison, a black former U.S. congressman, has requested that bail be set at $1 million for each of the four former officers, the documents showed. Ellison was expected to hold a briefing later on Wednesday.

When reached by Reuters over the phone, Earl Gray, the attorney for Lane, said he had not received any information on the charges yet. Attorneys for the other officers who are being charged did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

“This is a significant step forward on the road to justice, and we are gratified that this important action was brought before George Floyd’s body was laid to rest,” Benjamin Crump, attorney for the Floyd family, said in a statement.

He later told CNN that Chauvin should be facing a first-degree murder charge, and that Ellison had informed Floyd’s family that the investigation is ongoing and other charges could be filed.

Protesters who have vented their anger over Floyd’s death in sometimes violent demonstrations in major U.S. cities over the past week had demanded the case be widened to include all the officers who were present during the incident.

“This is another important step for justice,” said U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar, who is from Minnesota and a potential running mate for presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden in the Nov. 3 election.

Tens of thousands of people defied curfews and took to the streets of cities coast to coast for an eighth night in protest over Floyd’s death and brutality against other black Americans.

Authorities took the unusual step of ordering the curfews, and bands of police in riot gear and other heavily armed officers patrolled, ringing landmarks and shouting at protesters while helicopters roared overhead.

While most protests have been peaceful, there was less looting and vandalism overnight, and clashes between police and protesters were more sporadic.

The protests have highlighted the issues of racial inequality and excessive police force in a country that will go to the polls on Nov. 3 to decide whether to give Republican President Donald Trump another term in the White House.

Trump has said justice must be done in Floyd’s case but also touted a hard line on the violent protests, threatening to use the military to end the chaos. Biden has vowed to heal the racial divide in the nation if he is elected.

(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien, Nathan Layne, Maria Caspani, Rich McKay, Jonathan Allen, Sharon Bernstein, Dan Whitcomb, Lisa Lambert, Susan Heavey, Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali; Writing by Paul Simao; Editing by Nick Macfie, Howard Goller)

Residents take coronavirus surveillance into their own hands

By Thin Lei Win and Beh Lih Yi

ROME/KUALA LUMPUR (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – A week after Malaysia ordered a partial lockdown to slow the spread of the coronavirus, construction supervisor Hafi Nazhan saw residents in his affluent Kuala Lumpur neighbourhood jogging outside.

He took photos of people flouting the stay-at-home order and published them on Twitter, receiving hundreds of shares. Hafi’s followers informed the police, who subsequently arrested 11 joggers in his neighbourhood.

They were charged with violating the movement restriction order and each fined 1,000 ringgit ($230) in court.

“I was upset some people did not take this stay-at-home order seriously. These are well-educated people,” Hafi, 26, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, adding that police were spurred into taking action after his tweets went viral.

As governments around the world urge citizens to stay indoors to contain the deadly virus, concerned communities are taking surveillance matters into their own hands, reporting alleged breaches of quarantine and questioning anyone they deem suspicious.

The respiratory disease – which emerged in China late last year – has infected roughly 1.2 million people and killed about 65,000, according to a global tally by Johns Hopkins University.

In Singapore, a Facebook post by a man sharing a photo of himself enjoying a bowl of bak kut teh – pork rib soup – in a restaurant when he should be self-quarantining at home was so widely circulated that officials stepped in.

Singapore’s law minister ordered an investigation and the immigration authorities told local media the man was likely to be charged, although they did not respond to requests seeking comment.

In New Zealand, which is under a one-month shutdown, a police website set up to allow residents to report their neighbours who break isolation rules crashed hours after going live.

The website has received about 14,000 reports in less than a week since its March 29 launch, New Zealand police said in an email. They reportedly include people playing frisbee and holding parties.

In Italy, which has been under lockdown for weeks, fraying tempers have led to people being insulted from balconies or photographed and put on social media.

In Spain, locals have also begun posting videos of people going for a run, walking in the park, riding a bike – all prohibited activities – on social media.

HEALTH VS. PRIVACY

Such tip-offs and videos have sparked a debate over digital ethics with some arguing that normal privacy rules do not apply in a health emergency because the information is in the public interest.

“When we are all threatened with the risk of catching a lethal, incurable disease I see no reason why individuals should not report their legitimate concerns to the authorities,” said David Watts, former privacy commissioner for Australia’s Victoria state.

“There is not much point having privacy rights when you are dead,” added Watts, who now teaches information law and policy at Melbourne-based La Trobe University.

For David Lindsay, law professor at the University of Technology Sydney, privacy is “not an absolute right and must always be balanced against other rights and interests”.

“The balance struck obviously depends upon circumstances, and a global pandemic is an extreme event,” he said.

Still, both Watts and Lindsay said the balance between privacy and surveillance should be reset when the pandemic is over.

Others, like Joseph Cannataci, the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to privacy, fear surveillance measures ranging from facial recognition to phone tracking could outlast the current crisis.

“Dictatorships and authoritarian societies often start in the face of a threat,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation this week.

STIGMA AND FEAR

Community surveillance could also end up being used “in a malicious way, particularly to replicate prejudice or bias”, warned Raman Jit Singh Chima, Asia policy director at digital rights group Access Now.

“Often the people who might be reported on will be the least privileged, or might be belong to, in the case of India, lower caste communities or people who have to work outside,” he said.

Human rights experts worry that the tens of thousands of migrant workers who returned to Myanmar after a shutdown in neighbouring Thailand’s left them jobless will come under intense scrutiny.

In a village in central Myanmar, locals would not allow a young man who returned from Thailand to stay in his home, said Khin Zaw Win, a Yangon-based political analyst.

Foreigners have also been targeted on social media, with a Facebook video showing agitated residents in a neighbourhood in Mandalay, Myanmar’s second largest city, who described barging into a building after seeing Chinese visitors coughing.

Filmed Tuesday night, it has received more than 1 million views and 10,000 shares.

“The public is being very sensitive at the moment … when the key in this kind of situation is that you should help each other,” said Khin Zaw Win.

“Some of it have to do with the narrative that (coronavirus) was brought here from abroad. I think the panic is even scarier than the virus,” he added.

Myanmar so far has about 20 confirmed cases of the virus, with the health ministry warning of a “major outbreak” after the return of migrant workers from Thailand.

Officials have also reminded the public that failure to report people suspected of being infected could lead to jail sentences of up to a month.

“From the point of view of public health, surveillance and tracking is essential. The faster and the more effectively you can enforce it, the better,” said Sid Naing, Myanmar country director for health charity Marie Stopes International.

“But it should not be done in a way that breeds hatred and fear. It should be done based on understanding and support,” he said.

“At the moment, the state cannot provide full surveillance so people started doing it themselves because they are terrified … but there are stigma and discrimination behind the fear and those are the problems.”

(Reporting By Thin Lei Win @thinink and Beh Lih Yi @behlihyi, additional reporting from Sophie Davies in Barcelona, editing by Zoe Tabary. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers the lives of people around the world who struggle to live freely or fairly. Visit http://news.trust.org)

Iran makes arrests over plane disaster as protests rage on

By Parisa Hafezi and Babak Dehghanpisheh

DUBAI (Reuters) – Iran said on Tuesday it had arrested people accused of a role in shooting down a Ukrainian airliner and had also detained 30 people involved in protests that have swept the nation for four days since the military belatedly admitted its error.

Wednesday’s shooting down of Ukraine International Airlines flight 752, killing all 176 people aboard, has led to one of the biggest public challenges to the Islamic Republic’s clerical rulers since they took power four decades ago.

In a step that will increase diplomatic pressure, Britain, France and Germany launched a dispute mechanism to challenge Iran for breaching limits on its nuclear program under an agreement which Washington abandoned in 2018.

Since the United States killed Iran’s most powerful military commander in a drone strike on Jan. 3, Tehran has faced escalating confrontation with the West and unrest at home, both reaching levels with little precedent in its modern history.

Iran shot down the airliner on Wednesday when its military was on high alert, hours after it had fired missiles at U.S. targets in Iraq. After days of denying a role in the air crash, it admitted it on Saturday, calling it a tragic mistake.

Protesters, many of them students, have held daily demonstrations since then, chanting “Clerics get lost!” and calling for the removal of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in power for more than 30 years.

Police have responded to some protests with a violent crackdown, video posts on social media showed. Footage showed police beating protesters with batons, wounded people being carried, pools of blood on the streets and the sound of gunfire.

Iran’s police denied firing at protesters. The judiciary said 30 people had been detained in the unrest but said the authorities would show tolerance toward “legal protests”.

‘WHERE IS JUSTICE?’

Video posts on Tuesday showed scores gathered peacefully at two Tehran universities. “Where is justice?” one group chanted.

The extent of the unrest is difficult to assess because of limits on independent reporting. Demonstrations tend to gather momentum later in the day and clashes have been at night.

President Hassan Rouhani promised a thorough investigation into the “unforgivable error” of shooting down the plane. He spoke in a television address on Tuesday, the latest in a series of apologies from a leadership that rarely admits mistakes.

Judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili said some of those accused of having a role in the plane disaster had been arrested, although he did not say how many or identify them.

Most of those on board the flight were Iranians or dual nationals. Canada, Ukraine, Britain and other nations who had citizens on the plane have scheduled a meeting on Thursday in London to consider legal action against Tehran.

The disaster and subsequent unrest comes amid one of the biggest escalations between Tehran and Washington since 1979.

Missiles launched at a U.S. base in Iraq killed an American contractor in December, an attack Washington blamed on an Iran-backed group. Confrontation eventually led to the U.S. drone strike on Jan. 3 that killed Qassem Soleimani, architect of Iran’s regional network of proxy militias.

Iran’s government was already reeling from the reimposition of sanctions by the United States, which quit an agreement with world powers under which Tehran would secure sanctions relief in return for scaling back its nuclear program.

SEEKING COMPLIANCE

Since Washington withdrew, Tehran has stepped back from its nuclear commitments and has said it would no longer recognize limits on enriching uranium. After months of threatening to act, European signatories to the deal, France, Britain and Germany, activated the agreement’s dispute mechanism on Tuesday.

The European Union’s top diplomat said the European move aimed to bring Tehran bank to compliance, not impose sanctions.

Iran’s leaders have been facing a powerful combination of pressure both at home and abroad.

Just two months ago, Iran’s authorities put down anti-government protests, killing hundreds of demonstrators in what is believed to be the most violent crackdown on unrest since the 1979 revolution.

Elsewhere in the Middle East, where Iran has wielded influence through a network of allied movements and proxies, governments that include powerful Iran-sponsored armed factions have faced months of hostile demonstrations in Lebanon and Iraq.

Iran’s president said in his address that those responsible for shooting down the plane would be punished, describing the military’s admission of its mistake “a good first step.”

Rouhani also said the government would be accountable to Iranians and those nations who lost citizens. Iranian state television said aviation officials from Canada, which had 57 citizens on the doomed flight, as well as from Iran and Ukraine, met in Tehran on Tuesday to discuss the investigation.

(Reporting by Parisa Hafezi and Babak Dehghanpisheh and John Irish in Paris; Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing by Peter Graff)

Mexico makes arrests in massacre of American women, children – minister

Mexico makes arrests in massacre of American women, children: minister
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico has made an unspecified number of arrests over last week’s massacre of three women and six children of dual U.S-Mexican nationality in the north of the country, Security Minister Alfonso Durazo said on Monday.

“There have been arrests, but it’s not up to us to give information,” Durazo told reporters in Mexico City.

The women and children from families of U.S. Mormon origin who settled in Mexico decades ago were killed last Monday on a remote dirt road in the state of Sonora by suspected drug cartel gunmen, sparking outrage and condemnation in the United States.

Durazo said that prosecutors in Sonora, as well as at the federal level, were in charge of the investigation.

However, a spokeswoman for the state government of Sonora said: “We don’t have that information.”

Mexico’s government has said it believes the victims were caught in the midst of a territorial dispute between an arm of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel and the rival Juarez Cartel.

On Sunday, Mexico’s government said it had asked the FBI to participate in the investigation into the killings.

(Reporting by Lizbeth Diaz; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)