Armed Trump supporters were waiting for order to storm Capitol

[DemocratSinceBirth]

As the Capitol was overrun on Jan. 6, armed supporters of President Donald Trump were waiting across the Potomac in Virginia for orders to bring guns into the fray, a prosecutor said Wednesday in federal court.

The Justice Department has repeatedly highlighted comments from some alleged riot participants who discussed being part of a “quick reaction force” with stashes of weapons. Defendants have dismissed those conversations as bluster. But in a detention hearing for Kenneth Harrelson, accused of conspiring with other members of the Oath Keepers militia group to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election win, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey S. Nestler said the government has evidence indicating otherwise.

“This is not pure conjecture,” Nestler said. In a court filing this week, he noted, prosecutors obtained cellphone and video evidence from the day before the riot showing that Harrelson asked someone about the quick reaction force. He then went to a Comfort Inn in the Ballston area of Arlington for about an hour before driving into D.C., prosecutors said. The day after the riot, surveillance video from the hotel shows him moving “what appears to be at least one rifle case down a hallway and towards the elevator,” according to the court records.

...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/quick-reaction-force-capitol-riot/2021/04/14/2021da66-9d39-11eb-8005-bffc3a39f6d3_story.html

[empedocles]

1. 'The Process' keeps grinding away

[So grateful here]

[lagomorph777]

18. The legal process grinds slow but exceedingly fine.

[Fullduplexxx]

2. It wasnt a riot you fkg hack

[bucolic_frolic]

3. If anything saves America, it will be adherence to our laws

The fomenters of insurrection will have to face the reality of laws broken, and civilized society's insistence of bringing the perpetrators to justice.

[lpbk2713]

4. Don't treat them like angry children next time.

Treat them as armed and determined traitors.

[onetexan]

19. not just traitors, domestic terrorists

[skip fox]

5. I heard one insurrectionist on the VICE video yell out to the crowd

"Get the guns! Time for the guns!" (or something to that effect).

He's outside on the Capital Building and yelling out:

[skip fox]

24. "Get your weapons" a man is yelling into a blowhorn at 30:00-30:06.

[Baked Potato]

6. And now, because of good people in society and government, they failed

in their ultimate goal. Their phones and all personal communication have been seized. Their emails and phone connections have been catalogued. Sophisticated electronic tools are being used to track and process evidence. Potential future Insurrection operations can be identified and thwarted quickly and efficiently.

[AllaN01Bear]

7. what i really want to say may get me banned . so i wont. but im very sad .

[BobTheSubgenius]

8. Me too.

[brooklynite]

9. Does DOJ explain why was there was apparently no order?

[calimary]

11. I bet there was. From the highest level. And IMPLIED.

trump is VERY good at IMPLYING what he wants, or what he thinks “should” happen. Like some Mafia don who’s slippery enough to be able to swear confidently that he “never actually gave an order to go do whatever criminal behavior was carried out.”

The power of shrewd, and carefully contrived and worded suggestion. What the listener hears is a vague “wish” or “what if” or “it’d be nice if...” but the listener will translate that into an understood directive. Especially the “well-conditioned” listener who’s already digested a bellyful of trump’s repeated yowling and whining, nonstop lies and propaganda about how unfair it’s all been to him and how aggrieved he is, and making clear who he says is to blame.

Plausible deniability. He’s a master at it. Likely because of a confluence of a naturally devious mind and TONS of practice from DECADES of “deal-making” AND flat-out fraud, and the usual accompaniment of lawsuits as a result.

[brooklynite]

12. I'm mean there was no apparent call to break out the stockpiled weapons.

[PatSeg]

14. That we know of

There is still so much we don't know.

[usajumpedtheshark]

22. Trump was too busy watching tv and forgot to make the call

[LiberalLovinLug]

10. How do I say this....I do not want this to have happened

But
If it had....if they had actually held and barricaded the Capital building. And there was weapons fire exchange. We could have seen just what else they had planned. How many in the police and armed forces might have been primed to switch sides and join the " MAGA revolution".

Would Trump have gone on camera, and instead of that weak ass "time to go home" address, he thought everything was going as planned and announced that "patriots" had taken the Capital, and he was staying on as their beloved President.

Because he'd lose anyways. I believe in the American spirit and in true patriots. They may trot out hostages to threaten them etc, but would eventually lose. May be a lot more violence before it was done though.

But every damn Republican that supported it would expose themselves. None of this shrinking back to..."I still think the election was stolen...but that "protest" was going over the line".

So that when all the dust and bullets settled, there would be no doubt it was a traitorous insurrection led by Trump and his cronies including many serving Republicans. It could have weeded out the traitors in the armed forces and police as well. It would have cratered the Republican party. No ability to soothe it all over time as they are attempting to do now "It wasn't really that bad".

Again, I'm happy that no Democrats were hurt and were able to escape and hide, and this did not happen. But I also hate how easily Republicans think they can now rewrite history and reframe the insurrection as a passionate patriot protest gone wrong.

[erronis]

20. The possible outcomes seem many and very hard to know in this chaos. But I also believe that

the country as a whole would not allow this monstrosity of a coup by trumputin to succeed.

If anything we have learned that this particular group of traitors were very poorly served by thought and intelligence. Just looking at the supposed masterminds of M. Flynn, O. Stone, D. Trump - we get a picture of impetuous actors puffed up on their self-generated importance.

Grandstanding meets reality. Still ugly.

[Fiendish Thingy]

13. While justice takes time, Biden could immediately declare OK's PB's and 3%'ers as Terrorist orgs. Nt

[empedocles]

23. Manafort could have been 'gone after' sooner. Instead, the time was taken to

construct a very tight case.

The result was a clear, hard to dispute conviction; despite an apparently biased, republicon judge, who could only decree a relatively light, though substantial sentence - also, apparently a staunch republican had to be overcome in the jury room.

A Biden summary 'judgement' against the 'PB's and 3%ers, would not carry big weight, like the manafort conviction

[Ford_Prefect]

15. I thought they arrested someone a day or 2 previous and found a pickup full of weapons.

He'd parked it on the street not too far from the mall and was walking around when they stopped him, I don't recall why. When they checked his truck after the arrest they were really alarmed.
Does anyone else recall that one?

[Vasmosn]

16. They say.....

...gun control doesn't work but can you imagine what it would have been like if DC allowed guns the way say Texas does?

[gratuitous]

17. A little lesson that needs teaching again and again

Armed clashes are frightfully disordered affairs, despite what dramatizations in popular entertainments show. One of the persistent bugaboos is communication and coordination between groups. It sounds like these knuckleheads hadn't quite worked out their plan of action, and their "quick reaction force" wound up as little more than evidence of their conspiracy. Too bad, so sad. Enjoy your time in jail, boys.

[erronis]

21. Eggsactly! Please throw trump and his enablers into the knucklehead category.