Reps. Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar implicated in Seditious Conspiracy

The New York Times investigated how members of the Republican Party are engaged hand-in-glove with far-right domestic terrorist organizations. It will come as no surprise to Arizona residents that Arizona Republicans are featured prominently. Republican Ties to Extremist Groups Are Under Scrutiny (excerpts):

They called [the video] “The Coming Civil War?” and in its opening seconds, Jim Arroyo, who leads an Arizona chapter of Oath Keepers, a right-wing militia, declared that the conflict had already begun.

To back up his claim, Mr. Arroyo cited Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona, one of the most far-right members of Congress. Mr. Gosar had paid a visit to the local Oath Keepers chapter a few years earlier, Mr. Arroyo recounted, and when asked if the United States was headed for a civil war, the congressman’s “response to the group was just flat out: ‘We’re in it. We just haven’t started shooting at each other yet.’”

Less than two months after the video was posted, members of the Oath Keepers were among those with links to extremist groups from around the country who took part in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, prompting new scrutiny of the links between members of Congress and an array of organizations and movements that espouse far-right beliefs.

Nearly 150 House Republicans supported President Donald J. Trump’s baseless claims that the election had been stolen from him. But Mr. Gosar and a handful of other Republican members of the House

had deeper ties to extremist groups who pushed violent ideas and conspiracy theories and whose members were prominent among those who stormed the halls of Congress in an effort to stop certification of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.

Their ranks include Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona, who like Mr. Gosar was linked to the “Stop the Steal” campaign backing Mr. Trump’s effort to overturn the election’s outcome.

Media Matters adds, ‘Stop The Steal’ organizer bragged about a phone call with “people from the White House” weeks before the insurrection:

In a newly discovered video from a December 19 “Stop the Steal” rally in Arizona, organizer Ali Alexander bragged about being “on the phone” with “people from the White House” and appeared to encourage physical violence against members of Congress and other politicians who he claimed helped “steal” the election. This rally occurred just weeks before the Capitol insurrection.

At that same rally, Alexander appeared to advocate for physical attacks against members of Congress who he said helped “steal” the election, calling it a “moral obligation” to do so.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPV2CS3Hu9Y&feature=emb_logo

Beyond seeming to endorse violence against members of Congress, Alexander also appeared to suggest that “Stop The Steal” had the potential to become violent: “Before we get to the Lord’s Prayer, I want to say this. One of our organizers in one state says, ‘You know, we’re nice patriots. We don’t throw bricks.’ I leaned over, and I said, ‘Not yet.’ Not yet.”

“We will not go quietly,” said Alexander a few minutes later. “We will shut down this country if we have to.”

Alexander is also on the record admitting to speaking with Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former senior official with Trump’s campaign and also Donald Trump Jr.’s girlfriend, on January 5 about “Stop The Steal.” On the morning of January 6, Alexander said on Breitbart News Daily: “The president’s mood is he’s in fighter mode and today will determine which Republicans are going to suffer his wrath going forward. That’s the mood that he’s in. In fact, I got a call last night from Kimberly Guilfoyle and none of us are stopping.”

Ali Alexander and this January 5 phone call factor in this report from Seth Abramson, January 5 Meeting at Trump International Hotel Could Hold the Key to the January 6 Insurrection (excerpts):

[J]ust 15 hours before an insurrection against the United States government incited by the President of the United States—Nebraska Republican Charles W. Herbster, at the time the National Chairman of the Agriculture and Rural Advisory Committee for the Trump administration, attended a private meeting of Trump family members, Trump administration officials, Trump campaign advisers, January 6 organizers, and at least one member of the United States Senate at Trump International Hotel in Washington.

In attendance at the large and only recently uncovered meeting, conducted “in the private residence of the President” at his hotel, were, according to Herbster’s account, the following individuals (Note: Donald Trump’s presence at the meeting, either in person or via speakerphone, as yet remains unclear, so his name is temporarily absent from this listing):

• • • Donald Trump Jr., eldest son of the president
    • Eric Trump, second-eldest son of the president
    • Michael Flynn, former National Security Advisor to the president
    • Peter Navarro, Assistant to the President, Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, and National Defense Production Act Policy Coordinator
    • Corey Lewandowski, 2016 Trump campaign manager
    • David Bossie, 2016 Trump deputy campaign manager
    • Adam Piper, executive director of the Republican Attorneys General Association
    • Tommy Tuberville, United States senator from the State of Alabama

According to research by political strategist and regular CNN, MSNBC, The Hill, CBS, and Fox News contributor Cheri Jacobus, Txtwire CEO Daniel Beck claims he was at the January 5 meeting also, and that additional attendees at the gathering included the following three people:

• • • Rudy Giuliani, personal attorney to the President of the United States
    • Kimberly Guilfoyle, girlfriend of Donald Trump Jr.
    • Michael Lindell, Trump donor and MyPillow CEO

In a Facebook post, Beck claims that there were “fifteen of us [who] spent the evening [January 5]” at Trump International Hotel in DC, a statement that tracks with the nine attendees listed by Herbster[.]

* *

Guilfoyle’s presence at the meeting is critical given that Stop the Steal coordinator Ali Alexander claims he received a call from Guilfoyle during the evening of January 5—when she would have been with Trump’s family and advisers at Trump International. As for Tuberville, he now claims, contrary to the statements of Herbster and Beck, that he was never at the Trump International Hotel on January 5.

An Instagram photograph from January 5, taken at Trump International Hotel in DC, appears to show Senator Tuberville on-site, as described by both Beck and Herbster[.]

In Charles Herbster’s Facebook post detailing the meeting—a post that looks forward with anger and trepidation to the upcoming January 6 certification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory, and has since been hidden and reposted, along with all photos of the Trump family on Herbster’s Facebook account posted from December 2020 through January 2021—the Nebraska Republican writes of the “battles and blood” that in the past have been required to “protect our way of life”, as well as his own decision “[not to] choose the easy path” but instead “fight” the “widespread voter fraud that happened on November 3.” Herbster is, as of January 26, not yet speaking to media about January 5, nor about Senator Tuberville’s contrary account of the events of that evening in DC.

Here is Charles Herbster’s full Facebook post about the January 5 meeting:

Herbster’s Facebook feed, prior to its scrubbing, confirmed his high-level access to the Trump family, as it contained many pictures taken at Mar-a-Lago in the 30 days prior to the January 6 insurrection. These pictures featured Herbster alongside Vice President Mike Pence and his wife Karen Pence, Eric Trump and his wife Lara Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and Guilfoyle, and longtime Trump friend and adviser Jeanine Pirro, whose ex-husband Albert Pirro Trump pardoned as the last official actof his presidency.

That Herbster would have access to Trump’s inner circle is clear. But less clear is why the Trumps had invited, to a private residence outside the White House—and on the eve of an insurrection—(1) Michael Flynn, a man who that very day had organized a D.C. rally to protest the 2020 election, and would the next day conjoin his Jericho March with the Stop the Steal/March to Save America that Trump was to speak at; (2) Peter Navarro, a man who would later say on live television that he believed Trump had the unilateral authority to postpone Biden’s inauguration; (3) Tommy Tuberville, the U.S. senator who in a matter of hours Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani would be calling by telephone to demand that he fraudulently contest ten states’ Biden electors (far more than the five Giuliani had publicly declared contestable); (4) Adam Piper, who in a matter of days would resign from the Republican Attorneys General Association when it was found that he had helped orchestrate robocalls advertising the Stop the Steal/March to Save America event; and (5) Trump’s former campaign manager and deputy campaign manager—Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie, respectively—two men known for their bareknuckle politics and (in Lewandowski’s case) an alleged penchant for violence (see here, here, and here). Meanwhile, the presence of Trump’s personal attorney at the meeting all but ensures that Trump himself was aware of the event.

While of course there’s less question about why Don Jr. and Eric were at the January 5 meeting at their father’s Washington hotel, it’s useful to note that both men would speak alongside their father at the January 6 rally in D.C. that incited an insurrection, and that both (particularly the former) arguably uttered words during their speeches that helped incite that insurrection. Meanwhile, it remains unclear why Trump would have given his sons access to his private residence in Washington if he was not either planning to attend the meeting with them, planning to attend it via speakerphone—a longtime practice of the president in dealing with sensitive meetings, and a practicefor which he has become infamous—or expecting his sons to debrief him immediately. Giuliani would also have been expected by his client to offer an immediate debriefing, and Mike Lindell, another meeting participant, was known to have Oval Office access to the president at the time.

But the two men of most importance here, undoubtedly, are (1) the organizer of the Jericho March, and (2) the organizer of robocalls promoting the Stop the Steal/March to Save America—as their presence at a private Team Trump strategy meeting the night before an armed insurrection affirms that the president’s inner circle was in fact coordinating with the very men who were at that moment busy creating an armed mob for Trump to command on January 6. Just so, if Guilfoyle did indeed call Ali Alexander from the meeting, it means that one of the chief Stop the Steal organizers was involved in at least one high-level meeting with Trump family members, Trump administration officials, Trump campaign advisers, and a key member of the United States Senate the night before the January 6 insurrection.

Alexander had been caught on camera earlier in the evening of January 5 leading a crowd in a chant of “Victory or death!” Shortly thereafter, he was on the phone with the most powerful figures in Trump’s inner circle.

Nor must we guess what these fifteen men and women discussed on the eve of the insurrection, as the Omaha World Herald has already reported on what Herbster and his compatriots were doing: “discuss[ing] how to pressure more members of Congress to object to the Electoral College results that made Joe Biden the winner.”

This seeming footnote in a mid-size newspaper may become one of the most startling revelations of the ongoing federal criminal investigation of the January 6 insurrection: it means that one of the organizers of the now-infamous Stop the Steal/March to Save America event met with Trump’s top advisers and family members—and possibly, if a speakerphone was employed, Trump himself—on the night before the insurrection to discuss how to “pressure more members of Congress to object to the Electoral College results that made Joe Biden the winner.” It also means that the organizer of the Jericho March, Flynn, which had been timed to coincide with the Stop the Steal/March to Save America, also met with this corps of Trump advisers to discuss how to “pressure more members of Congress.” And for reasons we still don’t know—but perhaps can guess at—the fifteen (minimum) participants at the meeting decided that they couldn’t meet in the White House. A call from the hotel to Alexander may offer an explanation for this.

Not only does this meeting appear to confirm that Trump’s team helped orchestrate the events of January 6, but that it participated in the calibration of those events to exert maximum “pressure” on members of Congress in the midst of them executing a grave constitutional duty. Moreover, it participated in that calibration in the presence of a member of the United States Senate, who was therefore—we can now conclude, from the reporting of the Omaha World Herald—working in private with the president’s team to advise Trump on how to generate that maximum pressure on his Senate peers.

It’s evident that the meeting participants did not anticipate that such “pressure” would come from political persuasion—but from the large, angry gatherings that Flynn and Piper had personally helped foment. Indeed, how could a “peaceful” gathering of Trump voters standing well off Capitol property possibly have exerted “pressure” on members of Congress to “object” to state-certified Biden electors inside the building?

The answer is likely to be clear enough to federal investigators: the events Flynn and Piper orchestrated, along with Alexander, could only exert extraordinary pressure on members of Congress if the participants in those events illegally entered Capitol grounds.

While we cannot know if these co-conspirators discussed the possibility of violence on January 6, that they contemplated the crime that most of the January 6 insurrectionists have now been charged with—Unlawfully Entering a Restricted Building—is all but certain, as is the fact that the purpose of such entries was to put improper pressure on government officials to reverse course on a government action.

In simpler terms, the purpose of the January 5 meeting at the Trump International Hotel in D.C. was arguably seditious conspiracy—as it appears to have been intended to promote and incite criminal acts by a mob whose purpose was to intimidate federal officials engaged in the certification of a democratically elected branch of government.

* * *

On December 13, 2020, just three and a half weeks before the insurrection, Herbster attended a Moms for America event with the known insurrectionist Michael Lindell, who he would later—according to Daniel Beck—meet with at Trump International Hotel on January 5, and who was last seen several days before the end of Trump’s term carrying paperwork into the Oval Office urging then-President Trump to declare martial law and refuse to vacate the White House on January 20.

* * *

It turns out that the “intimate” December 13 gathering in Washington included more than just Herbster, Fletcher, insurrectionist Mike Lindell, and South Dakota’s GOP governor, Kristi Noem[.]

Also part of the “small group” that met in Washington was, according to an article in Breitbart, Rose Tennet, head of the Women for Trump group and a speaker at the January 5 Stop the Steal/Rally to Save America event that also featured Stop the Steal coordinators Alex Jones and Roger Stone. More importantly, the gathering featured Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), now known as one of the four chief organizers of the January 6 Stop the Steal/March to Save America event.

(Also present was Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA), identified in a blockbuster report by the New York Times, that he played a “key role” in former President Donald Trump’s abortive plot to oust his acting attorney general and replace him with one more sympathetic to his fact-free, and debunked, claims that the 2020 election had been stolen from him.)

But it gets still worse—as someone else very important spoke at the self-admittedly “intimate” December 13 Moms for America event that Charles Herbster attended: the aforementioned Ali Alexander, the Stop the Steal coordinator currently on the run from federal law enforcement.

That Herbster, Lindell, Biggs, Alexander, and Tennet were all present at the same pro-Trump event in the nation’s capital on December 13—and that three of these people would later participate in the January 5 meeting at the Trump International Hotel—raises the possibility that Herbster was in touch with Alexander at other points between December 13 and January 5. Federal officials will now need to question Herbster about whether he passed on to the president or his team any messages from or about Alexander, Alexander’s Stop the Steal/March to Save America co-organizer Andy Biggs, or Stop the Steal/Rally to Save America participant Tennet prior to or on January 5. These questions must be added, of course, to an even more foundational interrogation regarding what other topics the group of men and women at the January 5 meeting discussed, including what they discussed when Guilfoyle called Alexander.

The New York Times report at the top of the post continues:

Mr. Biggs has denied associating with Stop the Steal organizers and condemned violence “of any kind.”

There is substantial reporting to refute his denial.

Mr. Gosar did not respond to requests for comment.

I’ll bet.

[I]n signaling either overt or tacit support, a small but vocal band of Republicans now serving in the House provided legitimacy and publicity to extremist groups and movements as they built toward their role in supporting Mr. Trump’s efforts to subvert the outcome of the 2020 election and the attack on Congress.

Aitan D. Goelman, a former federal prosecutor who helped convict the Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, said that when elected officials — or even candidates for office — took actions like appearing with militia groups or other right-wing groups it “provides them with an added imprimatur of legitimacy.”

An examination of many of the most prominent elected Republicans with links to right-wing groups also shows how various strands of extremism came together at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

• • • In July, Mr. Gosar, a dentist, posed for a picture with a member of the Proud Boys. Two years earlier, he spoke at a rally for a jailed leader of Britain’s anti-immigrant fringe in London, where he vilified Muslim immigrants as a “scourge.” And in 2014, he traveled to Nevada to support the armed standoff between law enforcement and supporters of the cattle rancher Cliven Bundy, who had refused to stop trespassing on federal lands.

    • Mr. Biggs, the chairman of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, was seen by leaders of the Stop the Steal movement as an inspiration and has spoken at events hosted by extremists, including one at which a founder of the Oath Keepers called for hanging Senator John McCain.

To some degree, the members of Congress have been reflecting signals sent by Mr. Trump.

During a presidential debate in October, he made a nod toward the Proud Boys, telling them to “stand back and stand by.” Two months earlier, Mr. Trump described followers of QAnon — several of whom have been charged with murder, domestic terrorism, planned kidnapping and, most recently, storming the Capitol — as “people that love our country,” adding that “they do supposedly like me.”

Stop the Steal

Few Republicans have been more linked to extremist groups than Mr. Gosar.

“He’s been involved with anti-Muslim groups and hate groups,” said Mr. Gosar’s brother Dave Gosar, a lawyer in Wyoming. “He’s made anti-Semitic diatribes. He’s twisted up so tight with the Oath Keepers it’s not even funny.”

Dave Gosar and other Gosar siblings ran ads denouncing their brother as a dangerous extremist when he ran for Congress in 2018. Now they are calling on Congress to expel him.

“We warned everybody how dangerous he was,” Dave Gosar said.

In the days after the 2020 election, Mr. Gosar and Mr. Biggs helped turn Arizona into a crucible for the Stop the Steal movement, finding common cause with hard-liners who until then had toiled in obscurity, like Ali Alexander. The two congressmen recorded a video, “This Election Is A Joke,” which was viewed more than a million times and spread disinformation about widespread voter fraud.

Mr. Alexander has said he “schemed up” the Jan. 6 rally with Mr. Gosar, Mr. Biggs and another vocal proponent of Stop the Steal, Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama. Mr. Alexander’s characterization of the role of the members of Congress is exaggerated, Mr. Biggs said, but the lawmakers were part of a larger network of people who helped plan and promote the rally as part of Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the will of the voters.

After the election, Mr. Alexander emerged as a vocal proponent of the president’s stolen election claims, setting up a Stop the Steal website on Nov. 4 and making incendiary statements. On Dec. 8, he tweeted that he was willing to give up his life to keep Mr. Trump in office.

The Arizona Republican Party followed up, retweeting Mr. Alexander’s post and adding: “He is. Are you?” Mr. Alexander has since been barred from Twitter.

Ten days later, Mr. Gosar was one of the headliners at a rally in Phoenix that Mr. Alexander helped organize. Mr. Gosar used the rally to deliver a call to action, telling the crowd that they planned to “conquer the Hill” to return Mr. Trump to the presidency.

During his time onstage, Mr. Alexander called Mr. Gosar “my captain” and added, “One of the other heroes has been Congressman Andy Biggs.”

Although Mr. Biggs has played down his involvement with the Stop the Steal campaign, on Dec. 19, Mr. Alexander played a video message from Mr. Biggs to an angry crowd at an event where attendees shouted violent slogans against lawmakers. At the event, Mr. Biggs’s wife, Cindy Biggs, was seen hugging Mr. Alexander twice and speaking in his ear.

In 2019, Mr. Biggs spoke at an event supported by the Patriot Movement AZ, AZ Patriots and the American Guard — all identified as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center, according to The Arizona Republic. In 2015, he sat silent at an event as a founder of the Oath Keepers called for the hanging ​of Senator McCain, calling him a traitor to the Constitution. Mr. Biggs told The Republic at the time that he did not feel it was his place to speak up and denounce the comments.

Mr. Arroyo, of the Oath Keepers in Arizona, said Mr. Gosar had attended two of their meetings, about a year apart. Mr. Arroyo said that his organization “does not advocate for breaking the law” and that he was “saddened to see the display of trespassing on the Capitol building by a few out-of-control individuals.”

Just like Mr. Gosar’s family, Mr. Biggs’s two brothers have publicly denounced him, saying he was at least partly responsible for the violence on Jan. 6. In addition, a Democratic state representative in Arizona, Athena Salman, has called on the Justice Department to investigate the actions of Mr. Gosar and Mr. Biggs before the riot, saying they “encouraged, facilitated, participated and possibly helped plan this anti-democratic insurrection.”

Rep. Andy Biggs and Rep. Paul Gosar must either resign, or be expelled from Congress. their political career should be over, permanently. Hopefully the criminal investigations currently underway will develop the evidence necessary to successfully prosecute them for seditious conspiracy – 18 U.S. Code § 2384.

Arizona Republican’s dalliance with far-right extremist groups has been open and notorious. As a result, they have shown no interest in reigning in these domestic terrorist organizations. Arizona’s Attorney General has been AWOL.

Mary McCord, former acting assistant attorney general for national security at the Department of Justice, and a longtime federal prosecutor, writes at the L.A. Times, What it will take to fight the threat of violent right-wing militias (excerpt):

Putting aside whether there are gaps in U.S. terrorism laws that should be filled, the assault on the Capitol vividly exposed the need to enforce rarely used existing laws (and consider whether more are needed) to address the extremist threat from private militias. Numerous individuals criminally charged in the violent attack are alleged members of paramilitary organizations. The first set of conspiracy charges has been brought against three members of the Oath Keepers, a right-wing militia group that often recruits from law enforcement and the military because of their training in paramilitary tactics and the use of firearms.

Evidence is mounting that private militias played a significant role in planning and organizing the attack, using social media and other platforms. This role is consistent with what we’ve seen from these groups in the last year alone.

Since the onset of the pandemic, paramilitary groups have engaged in armed intimidation and threats at statehouses, governors’ mansions, and public health officials’ homes in opposition to public health orders. They have endangered public safety — with fatal results — by self-deploying to “protect” property from what have been largely false rumors of antifa violence during racial justice demonstrations. Six men involved with a private militia have been charged with plotting to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and try her for treason. These groups are trained and organized for the sort of violence that occurred on Jan. 6. Support for Trump has often been at the core of their online rhetoric, and Trump’s apparent encouragement of their activities has been used to normalize their extremist views for broader appeal.

The Capitol siege reveals something that many have been willing to ignore for too long: the involvement of paramilitary organizations that often refer to themselves as “patriots” with extremists who openly advocate for and commit violent attacks to intimidate and coerce. Many condemn the latter as domestic terrorists, and indeed, the U.S. Code defines domestic terrorism as activities that involve crimes of violence committed with the intent “to intimidate and coerce a civilian population” or “to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion.” But few have been willing to acknowledge that some paramilitary organizations and their members have advocated for and committed acts that meet the domestic terrorism definition.

* * *

Although private militias often point to the 2nd Amendment for their authority, that provision provides them no support. The Supreme Court made this clear in 1886 when it upheld a criminal prosecution for violating an Illinois anti-militia statute. That state law, which barred individuals from associating together as a military unit or company, or parading or drilling in public with firearms, remains on the books of 29 states to this day. Indeed, all 50 states prohibit private militias by the terms of their state constitutions and/or statutes, including the kind of statute upheld by the Supreme Court in 1886. But these laws are rarely enforced.

One reason could be that local prosecutors, police and sheriffs, who are accustomed to enforcing laws against more common street crimes, are unfamiliar with the anti-militia laws in their state. They might be uncertain about what type of evidence would be needed to prove a case.

But another likely reason is that local law enforcement officials are usually elected, and in jurisdictions where the local community is largely supportive of both Trump and private militias — often rural communities where strong anti-government and pro-gun-rights views predominate — there’s little incentive, and a lot of disincentive, to use the tools they have available. And so unlawful private militias persist, sometimes even with the open support of local law enforcement.

If local law enforcement officials fail to act, the threat must be addressed through other means. State attorneys general who have the authority to prosecute criminal cases should step in and bring the cases that local law enforcement agencies fail to bring. Where their state laws do not give them general criminal enforcement authority, the law should be changed. State attorneys general also should explore their civil enforcement options, including through public nuisance laws that exist to protect public health and welfare.

Federal prosecutors should go after private militias using existing federal criminal laws that prohibit the use of firearms, incendiary devices, or paramilitary techniques, or traveling interstate with firearms or incendiary devices, intending to use them in a civil disorder. Those who facilitate or fund such activity should be investigated, too.

And Congress should consider enacting a federal offense — like the state equivalent upheld by the Supreme Court in 1886 — prohibiting unauthorized private militias. The senators and House members who were minutes from being assaulted and abducted at the Capitol should now understand the danger that private militias present.