My guesses:
The representatives who led guided recon tours before the invasion will be named, and there will be consequences for them. What consequences exactly, I don’t know. I can hope many things.
The people who ripped out the ‘panic buttons’ in Capitol offices (this was reported as of this morning) before the invasion will be found out.
Those responsible for hamstringing the Capitol police force will be named.
Congressmen are continuing to bring weapons onto the floor of the Capitol to support the overthrow of the government.
Fuck.
This is going to go much deeper than a frenzied mob storming a building. The mob may not have realized it, but there was planning going into this. Members of Congress will be shown to have aided and abetted by providing access to map and plan the invasion. Capitol police known to be supportive were placed at key locations. The DOD was likely told not to bring in the National Guard to give the insurrectionists time to complete the mission. This is going to be explosive as the width and depth of the conspiracy is found out and it will be found out.
I just hope “guesses” that don’t pan out don’t evolve into lies. That’s what got us here in the first place.
Can you explain that further? Who is lying, who is guessing, and where are we now, and how did we get here,?
A guess about collusion with lawmakers is literally a conspiracy theory until the evidence has been examined by experts. If experts discredit that theory, it is a lie. That is exactly the trajectory of the voter fraud lies that incited last week’s mob.
Yeah, I wouldn’t put it that strongly, but I was initially also a bit bemused about the thinking behind a “guessing” thread. It’s hard enough work trying to keep track of what we do have any evidence for, to try to figure out what inference is justified. But perhaps we’re just reading to much in to precise word “guess” in the thread title. Informed speculation (including circumstantial evidence) about what’s coming next is the intent, I’m sure.
But lawmakers refusing to go through metal detectors or stating that they conceal carry on the floor against house rules is a fact.
My prediction: yes and no. Yes, they will be named, but it will be impossible to prove that the people they gave the tours to used that information on Jan. 6*. The reps will be able to claim they were just entertaining constituents.
*IANA criminal investigator, but I imagine you’d have to …
Not gonna happen, IMO. But that doesn’t mean the whole “tour” narrative won’t help establish that the invasion had a lot more planning than was originally believed.
If one of the mob was led by the hand by a representative and had the chinks in the armor explained to him, it’s going to come out. It’s going to take a while, but come out it will.
There have been a few items. A staffer discovered that the panic buttons on desks had been disabled very recently, before January 6th. Two very credible observers complained, before January 6th, that some rightwing election-results-deniers among the representatives (no one has actually been named as yet) were leading tours which were 1) banned due to Covid concerns and 2) looked like recon missions, even before the event. These were both observers who are familiar with what recon missions look like.
I may also cite the really not credible “lack of preparation” by the Capitol Police, which appears to be, as an excuse, falling apart rapidly under investigation.
I don’t think you need to be a CT whacko to connect the president, his Republican lawmaker enablers, the hundred thousand tweets and Facebook posts re: planning a coup, and say, gosh, maybe there are more people more deeply involved than we know now.
Dunno about that. I think putting pressure on the happy vandals and asking them to name names in exchange for a lighter sentence may yield surprising things. These people were not secretive.
But that’s assuming the happy vandals in custody are even the same people who got the tours. If that connection holds, then yes, it’s a lot more likely heads will roll.
I wouldn’t be surprised if that winds up being what is claimed. OTOH, I saw Mikie Sherrill (a Democratic representative from New Jersey) on Rachel Maddow’s show last night; she noted that, since March of last year, tours and informal visits to the Capitol aren’t allowed at all – the only visitors who are allowed in the building are those who are there on official business.
So, “I was just giving a tour to some of my constituents” would still be a problematic defense.
And most are just blow hard followers, not brave patriots willing to give up their middle class comfort. Just going to DC to see Trump was a high point of their pathetic lives, most really didn’t want to become martyrs. They just wanted to look tough and get pictures in order to one up folks back home. They will turn on each other in exchange for being allowed to slither back into obscurity.
It’s problematic if they are trying to defend themselves against impropriety claims in general; if you’re giving tours in spite of them being banned you’re clearly doing something you shouldn’t. I agree there. But there’s a big leap between that and proving that they conspired to enable those who infiltrated the capitol to stop the electoral certification. I’m sure that defense might be fine against those kinds of charges unless there is other evidence.
Agreed; in and of itself, giving a tour, when tours are specifically disallowed, isn’t evidence of conspiring. It’d have to be part of a bigger set of evidence, but even so, it looks sketchy.
Don’t people on tours have to sign in? If they don’t, holy cow, that’s unbelievable.
And what are the odds that not even a single Democratic congresscritter gave an unauthorized tour sometime in the last 2-3 months? If one is discovered, it will unleash a tsunami of whatabboutism. Are you gonna charge Rep. Blueticket with sedition, too?