Latest news with #StoptheSteal
Yahoo
9 hours ago
- General
- Yahoo
Chief Capitol Riot Prosecutor Quits After Trump's ‘Terrible Message'
The federal prosecutor who helped oversee the Justice Department's mammoth probe of Capitol rioters has left for the private sector, slamming Donald Trump's sweeping pardons on the way out. A longtime assistant U.S. attorney, Greg Rosen served as chief of the DOJ's Capitol Siege Section, overseeing a team that investigated hundreds of cases connected to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack carried out by Trump's supporters. In an interview, Rosen told CBS News' Scott MacFarlane that the president's decision to pardon or commute the sentences of more than 1,500 people involved with the storming of the Capitol 'sends a terrible message to the American people.' 'Individuals who were duly—and appropriately—convicted of federal crimes ranging in culpability are immediately let loose without any supervision, without any remorse, without any rehabilitation to civil society," he said. After Trump took office, the Capitol Siege Section was disbanded. Rosen has taken a job at Rogers Joseph O'Donnell, a private law firm in Washington, D.C. 'Beyond excited for my new adventure,' he wrote on LinkedIn, telling CBS News he 'felt like it was time for a change.' The firm said in a press release that Rosen was joining its practice groups focused on white collar criminal defense and government contracts. 'Rosen was entrusted with supervising more than 1000 prosecutions connected with the January 6, 2021 breach and attack of the U.S. Capitol, the largest federal prosecution in American history,' the release said. Ed Martin, Trump's initial pick to lead the U.S. Attorney's Office in D.C., was a 'Stop the Steal' advocate who spread conspiracy theories about the riot. His nomination was unsuccessful; former Fox News host Jeanine Pirro is Trump's next pick for the job. Rosen also slammed the 'ridiculous' decision to fire or sideline prosecutors who worked on Jan. 6 cases. 'To see those talented prosecutors be marginalized or removed from office is an affront to the independence of the department,' Rosen told CBS. In one of his most brazen acts since returning to office, Trump issued mass pardons for individuals charged or convicted over the Capitol riot, wiping clean the records of defendants who were charged with offenses ranging from trespassing to assaulting law enforcement, including members of extremist groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. Critics have slammed the move as a dangerous whitewashing of political violence and an attempt to signal to supporters that loyalty will be rewarded. Trump had long cast the defendants as victims of unfair political persecution and pledged on the campaign trail to pardon them if elected.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The Real Reason We Want to See MAGA as a Cult
It's hard to pinpoint exactly when the word cult affixed itself to Donald Trump and his movement. It may have been as early as 2016, when, weeks before the Iowa caucus, Trump declared with god-man-like aplomb that he could shoot someone in Times Square and not lose a vote. It may have been mid-2018, when Bob Corker, a Republican senator from Tennessee, fretted as he left office about the 'cultish' turn in the party. Or maybe it can be traced to a New York Times editorial board op-ed, published a few days before Corker's comments made the news, which nervously noted the rapid transformation of the Republican Party into a machine for devotion to a single mortal. Certainly, by January 6, 2021, and the mouth-frothing fervor of Stop the Steal, cult had gone from being a political jab to a term of art, widely employed to describe the apparently invincible thrall in which Trumpism holds millions of Americans. The impulse to understand MAGA this way is owing in part to the efflorescence of stories about cults across pop culture. From Wild Wild Country's account of the rise and fall of the self-styled free-sex guru Rajneesh for a generation of wealth-seeking believers in Reaganomics to The Vow's portrayal of NXIVM's transformation from corporate management seminar to sex-trafficking ring; from Warren Jeffs's polygamous Latter-day Saints–offshoot commune in Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey to the charismatic hold of spiritual influencer Teal Swan in The Deep End, thirst for tales of charismatic leaders, secret rituals, and salacious scandals seems unquenchable. Between the major streaming platforms, Netflix, Hulu, Max, Disney+, and Prime, more than five dozen cult documentaries are currently available in a panoply of flavors: sex, UFO, meditation, doomsday, and on and on. We are in a billion-dollar cult culture boom. As a mass delusion fueled by charisma, shared grievance, aspiration, and a stubborn rejection of inherited truths, Trumpism bears no small resemblance to these insular, shadowy communities of faith and heterodoxy that have enthralled and entertained us. Over the past near-decade, people across the otherwise fissured political spectrum have become armchair experts in strange but potentially revolutionary groups, their imaginations caught up in escalating radicalism. And across dozens of stories, they are hooked by a single enticing promise: All cults fall. In TV cults, the skeptic is always vindicated. This, in fact, is the real satisfaction of the cult narrative: the reinforcement of the fantasy that we who watch are different—better, smarter, and more equipped to hold power and influence—than those who believe. Having spent hours engrossed in the details of being in a cult, we imagine ourselves to have understood a dangerous phenomenon without ever having been subject to that danger. Not only might we glimpse that elusive Secret, we see the invisible wires and sleights of hand and, maybe most importantly, the way it all turns out. We already know that it is doomed. We are the new prophets, gifted with future sight. In the waxing days of Trump's second presidential act, this is the true appeal of seeing MAGA as a cult: It's an alibi for liberals who are less trying to fathom the reasons for the man's return than dreaming of his movement's catastrophic collapse. The same combination of moral superiority and narrative certainty that foresees the imminent end of Heaven's Gate as they look to the sky for escape also fuels the internet's hunger for signs of #MAGARegret and makes the gleeful schadenfreude of 'FAFO' (fuck around and find out) a new political rallying cry. As the Democratic Party continues to wring its hands in meek and ineffectual dismay over the Trump administration's daily onslaught, its base has discovered the illiberal pleasures of scrolling TikToks that stitch videos of Trump supporters weeping over slashed farm subsidies or shuttered businesses against a gospel choir chorus of 'I never thought the leopards would eat my face.' Sadism, reveling in the suffering of others, is—as a rule—frowned upon, but when its satisfaction is turned toward a cultural phenomenon we have been told is too extremist or dangerous to exist in the mainstream, it comes to be a salutary violence. For their own good. Hard lessons, like a sharp slap to interrupt a hysteric outburst, school people back into good behavior. Except when the finding out doesn't seem to having been told for so long that they were wrong—uneducated, impolite, fanatical, gullible, racist, backward—MAGA supporters ascended to the highest ranks of American politics. From inside the Oval Office, they hear their own rageful, incoherent sputtering at the injustices of the Deep State and The System issuing from the mouth of the most powerful man in world. It's heady, it's fortifying, it's vindicating. This is the part of the cult narrative where the tearful pleas of loved ones to come home bounce back 'Return to Sender.' This is also the part that devotees of cult media and Trump opponents struggle to come to terms with: People don't want to leave what has given them such psychic and social gratification, especially to return to what didn't serve them in the first place. So we wait, with unconcealed anticipation, for the MAGA faithful to suffer the same fate as the brainwashed devotees of Mother God, who were arrested for carting their leader's mummified body through the desert in hopes of finding the salvation she promised, or of Charles Manson, whose 'family' followed him all the way to prison for life. Meanwhile, Trump supporters seem to remain impervious to the lessons they were supposed to have found out. And indeed, the more they refuse to repudiate the president and their own beliefs, or admit the causal connection between his policies and their tribulations, the more the left fantasizes their misfortune. We crave their reckoning as the satisfying (and promised) final act in the real-life docuseries we've been mainlining since before the pandemic. But what if the arc of history doesn't bend toward justice so much as turn back in on itself? What if the story of cults that so tidily predicts the end of Trump is as anesthetizing and deluding as the ideology it claims to oppose? It's gripping entertainment, but cult media's promises of guaranteed closure are not so much real as a compensation for what we already know. After the cameras stop rolling, after scenes of comforting closure are edited together, the story of a cult goes on. It continues in the courtroom, as undaunted adherents of Warren Jeffs crowd the spectator box. It continues as millions of Americans keep flocking to Rajneesh's Indian ashram. People continue to believe. Cults don't just die, they shift so that they can meet new social and psychic needs. Cult documentaries can't tell us what happens next because their power lies in their endings—the fiery siege, the tearful confession, the moment of brutal awakening—endings that are designed to produce social repression. Repression, Freud says, is the 'relaxation of the censorship—the formation of a compromise.' Everyone gives up a little (or a lot) of what we want in exchange for the muffled security of being 'normal.' A standard assumption about groups that share unconventional beliefs and rituals is that, by declaring them a cult and pushing them outside the bounds of acceptable society, we can curtail their influence. Indeed, that is precisely what these documentaries aim to do; to show and then contain the dangers that cults pose to the social compact. The truth is that when we've agreed to live within the safe strictures of normativity, it is almost unbearable to see people living beyond our psychic means. We must believe there's a cost. Crafted to impress upon everyone who tunes in precisely what the price of straying outside the bounds of decorum and constraint is, cult media has inadvertently written a new coda. That final episode is the beginning of the story's second life: the memes, the merch, the folklore, the obsession. Jonestown didn't end with the Kool-Aid; it became a metaphor for not heeding caution. Manson went to prison but became a cultural icon. Stalin was embalmed, but his political blueprint persists—in India, in Turkey, in America. The cult documentary's finale is just the opening act of its cultural immortality. Our hunger for the collapse of Trump's movement isn't just about justice—it's about the thrill of witnessing a story we know how to consume. But history doesn't follow scripts. Faith and loyalty are not so easily shaken. What appears to be the end of the story is, in fact, often a lesson against the calculus of consequences. Cults don't disappear; they go viral. And the reckoning we're waiting for? It might just be the prologue to something we don't yet know how to fear. After all, 30 years after the fiery siege in Waco, the scene of the inferno out of which abandoned followers of David Koresh staggered blinkingly into federal custody, Donald Trump held the first official rally of his second presidential campaign there. One end, another beginning.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Trump's pardon attorney considers full clemency for Oath Keepers and founder Stewart Rhodes over Jan. 6 crimes
The man Donald Trump appointed to review pardon requests at the Department of Justice is already reviewing full clemency for Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers militia group who was convicted of treason-related charges in connection with the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol. Justice Department pardon attorney Ed Martin recently met with lawyer Peter Ticktin, who delivered 11 pardon applications — including one for Rhodes, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy and sentenced to 18 years in prison in connection with the Capitol assault. Hours after taking office, Trump commuted his sentence, along with the sentences of 13 other Capitol rioters, including Oath Keepers and Proud Boys members who were similarly convicted. Rhodes was released from prison hours later. Martin, a prominent 'Stop the Steal' activist who defended Jan. 6 defendants, was briefly Trump's top prosecutor in Washington, D.C., tasked with running the office that handled those prosecutions. Trump recently withdrew his name for consideration for the role and instead installed him as the pardon chief and head of the Justice Department's 'Weaponization Working Group.' According to Politico, the renewed effort to fully pardon Rhodes and other Jan. 6 offenders was arranged by Ticktin and Treniss Evans, who help run the right-wing nonprofit legal group American Rights Alliance. Proud Boys members Joseph Biggs, Ethan Nordean, Dominic Pezzola and Zachary Rehl are also seeking full pardons through Ticktin and Evans. 'I know Ed Martin and I felt it was important to bring these particular applications to his attention,' Ticktin told Politico, which first reported the pardon requests. 'I listened! Cuz he's wise,' Martin said about the meeting. The Independent has requested comment from Ticktin and the White House. A fresh round of pardon requests from defendants charged with the most serious crimes surrounding the attack will now head to White House pardon czar Alice Johnson. Trump is meanwhile expected to issue pardons for reality television stars Todd and Julie Chrisley, who were convicted of tax evasion and bank fraud and sentenced to several years in prison. The president also recently pardoned Paul Walczak, who pleaded guilty to tax crimes. The pardon was issued one month after Walczak's mother attended a Mar-a-Lago fundraising dinner charging $1 million per person. The president has pardoned nearly 1,600 defendants charged in connection with the attack on the Capitol. Rhodes founded his far-right anti-government militia group in 2009 and claimed thousands of members across the country, including current and former service members and law enforcement officers, preparing for armed civil war in defense of what they perceive as threats to the Constitution. Rhodes and his allies spent weeks discussing a violent response to the 2020 election on encrypted messaging apps, then organized a weapons and supply cache at a nearby hotel before joining the mob. After several members breached the Capitol, shouting 'this is our f*****g house' and 'we took the f*****g Capitol,' Rhodes hailed them as 'patriots.' He told an ally that his only regret that day was that the group wasn't armed. Rhodes did not enter the building. Days after Jan. 6, Rhodes typed a message intended for then-President Trump, calling on him to 'save the republic' or 'die in prison.' That message was ultimately never delivered, but it echoed another message published on the Oath Keepers website weeks earlier, urging Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and deputize Rhodes and the Oath Keepers to take up arms. 'It's better to wage it with you as Commander-in-Chief than to have you comply with a fraudulent election, leave office, and leave the White House in the hands of illegitimate usurpers and Chinese puppets,' Rhodes wrote at the time. He followed up with another message demanding that Trump deliver a 'crushing blow' to his enemies 'while they sleep, wrapped in their arrogance.' Rhodes also instructed his allies to 'get gear squared away and ready to fight,' adding that 'Trump has one last chance right now to stand but he will need us and our rifles too.' More than 1,000 Jan. 6 defendants pleaded guilty. More than 200 people were found guilty at trial — including 10 defendants like Rhodes and Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio were found guilty of seditious conspiracy. Judges who presided over Jan. 6 cases have barely hidden their contempt for Trump's sweeping pardons for virtually every member of the mob — and have issued stark warnings against attempts to rewrite the history of the attack. Last year, the federal judge who presided over Rhodes's case said the prospect of a pardon for his crimes 'is frightening and ought to be frightening to anyone who cares about democracy in this country.' 'You, sir, present an ongoing threat and a peril to this country and its democracy and the very fabric of this country,' District Judge Amit Mehta told Rhodes during his sentencing hearing in 2023. 'You are smart, you are compelling, and you are charismatic. Frankly, that is what makes you dangerous.' District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who presided over Trump's federal election interference case, wrote that Trump's pardons 'cannot whitewash the blood, feces, and terror that the mob left in its wake.'
Yahoo
6 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Trump Pardon Attorney Reviewed Full Clemency Request For Oath Keepers Leader
Ed Martin, President Donald Trump's new pardon attorney, has examined a recommendation for Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the far-right Oath Keepers group, to receive a full pardon over his actions on Jan. 6, 2021, according to newsreports. Martin was presented with the pardon applications of Rhodes and 10 others during a meeting with Peter Ticktin, a lawyer and leader at the conservative American Rights Alliance nonprofit, last week. 'I know Ed Martin and I felt it was important to bring these particular applications to his attention,' Ticktin told Politico, which was first to report on the lawyer's application to grant Rhodes full clemency. Over the weekend, Martin posted a photo of his meeting with Ticktin, which Politico says took place Thursday. 'I listened! Cuz he's wise,' Martin wrote on X, formerly Twitter. Hours after his inauguration in January, Trump pardoned about 1,500 defendants charged in the Capitol riot — including those who assaulted police — and issued some commutations. Rhodes, who received an 18-year prison sentence after being convicted of seditious conspiracy charges, was among those who had their sentences commuted. Besides Rhodes, Ticktin said he also recommended full pardons for Proud Boys members Joseph Biggs, Ethan Nordean, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola, Politico and CBS News reported. CBS added that Ticktin also referenced pardon requests for two other Jan. 6 defendants, Dan Wilson and Elias Costianes, who were sentenced to prison over charges unrelated to the Capitol insurrection. Ticktin has made clear that Martin has not guaranteed that their applications would be successful, but said he would pass them on to Trump's pardon czar, Alison Johnson, for review. Martin has previously worked to defend Jan. 6 rioters. Apart from representing three defendants in the past, he once sat on the board of the Jan. 6 defendant advocacy group Patriot Freedom Project and attended the Stop the Steal rally on the eve of the Capitol attack. He also posted on social media on Jan. 6, likening the atmosphere in D.C. to that of Mardi Gras. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal published Tuesday, Martin, a major Trump ally, said he has been inundated with pardon requests since he started his role as pardon attorney last week. Martin said he would examine the requests he's received with a focus on 'the forgotten man and woman.' Martin's first full clemency recommendation to Trump was successful after the president announced he was pardoning Scott Jenkins, a former Virginia sheriff convicted of federal bribery charges, the Journal noted. Trump has since said he is pardoning reality TV stars Todd and Julie Chrisley, who were convicted in 2022 of bank fraud and tax evasion. According to The New York Times, he also granted full clemency to Paul Walczak, who pleaded guilty to tax crimes last year, after his mother attended a fundraising dinner for the president at Mar-a-Lago. Martin served as the interim U.S. attorney for D.C. after Trump appointed him to the temporary post in January. But the president was forced to pull his nomination after he faced bipartisan opposition in the Senate for dropping cases against Jan. 6 defendants, among other things. Instead, Trump gave him three new assignments at the Justice Department, making him the new director of the so-called weaponization working group, associate deputy attorney general and pardon attorney. Oath Keepers Founder Stewart Rhodes Visits Capitol Hill After Trump Pardon Trump Says He's Dropping Controversial Nominee Ed Martin
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Pardoned Jan. 6 rioter seen smashing Speaker's Lobby door charged with burglary
A Virginia man who was pardoned by the Trump administration after being seen smashing the Speaker's Lobby door during Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol was charged with burglary. Henrico County police responded to a call for breaking and entering on May 9. The police officers spoke with the homeowners, who said that around 8:30 p.m. local time, an unknown man entered their home in Arthurwood Place through the back door. The individual allegedly took 'several' items before being observed by people in the house and was asked to leave, Henrico County police said in an emailed statement on Tuesday. Law enforcement on Tuesday identified the suspect as Zachary Jordan Alam, 33, of Centreville, Va., who they said was arrested in a neighborhood near the crime scene. Alam was charged with residential breaking and entering and vandalism, according to Henrico County police. The statement did not specify the date of the charges. Upon returning to the office in January, President Trump pardoned nearly all Jan. 6 defendants. 'What they've done to these people is outrageous,' the president said at the time. Alam was convicted on charges related to smashing the glass panes of the Speaker's Lobby door with a black helmet. He was sentenced to eight years in prison in November last year. 'I believe in my heart that I was doing the right thing,' Alam said in court at the time, referring to his actions following Trump's 'Stop the Steal' rally. Prosecutors previously said that Alam assisted other rioters in scaling barriers. When he was inside the Capitol building, he allegedly threw a red velvet rope from the balcony at law enforcement and attempted to kick a door on the fourth floor. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
