Brilliant reporting by American historian Heather Cox Richardson, who has emerged as our greatest journalist during these times of world history scale turmoil. Here is a taste, followed by her full report from last night.

White House Counsel Pat Cipollone urged people to stay away from Trump to limit their chances of being prosecuted for treason under the Sedition Act. By midnight, four staffers had resigned, as well as Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger, with other, higher level officials also talking about leaving. Even Trump adviser Stephen Miller admitted it was a bad day.

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Today the Confederate flag flew in the United States Capitol.

This morning, results from the Georgia Senatorial runoff elections showed that Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff had beaten their Republican opponents—both incumbents—by more than the threshold that would require a recount. The Senate is now split 50-50 between Republicans and Democrats, so the position of majority leader goes to a Democrat. Mitch McConnell, who has bent the government to his will since he took over the position of majority leader in 2007, will be replaced.

With the Democrats in control of both Congress and the Executive Branch, it is reasonable to expect we will see voting rights legislation, which will doom the current-day Republican Party, depending as it has on voter suppression to stay in power.

Trump Republicans and McConnell Republicans had just begun to blame each other for the debacle when Congress began to count the certified electoral votes from the states to establish that Democrat Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election. The election was not close—Biden won the popular vote by more than 7 million votes and the Electoral College by 306 to 232—but Trump contends that he won the election in a landslide and “fraud” made Biden the winner.

Trump has never had a case. His campaign filed and either lost or had dismissed 62 out of 63 lawsuits because it could produce no evidence for any of its wild accusations. Nonetheless, radical lawmakers courted Trump’s base by echoing Trump’s charges, then tried to argue that the fact voters no longer trusted the vote was reason to contest the certified votes.

More than 100 members of the House announced they would object to counting the votes of certain states. About 13 senators, led by Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Ted Cruz (R-TX), agreed to join them. The move would slow down the count as each chamber would have to debate and take a separate vote on whether to accept the state votes, but the objectors never had anywhere near the votes they needed to make their objections stick.

So Trump turned to pressuring Vice President Mike Pence, who would preside over the counting, to throw out the Biden votes. On Monday, Trump tweeted that “the Vice President has the power to reject fraudulently chosen electors.” This would throw the blame for the loss onto Pence, but the vice president has no constitutional power to do any such thing, and this morning he made that clear in a statement. Trump then tweeted that Pence “didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done.”

It seemed clear that the voting would be heated, but it was also clear that most of the lawmakers opposing the count were posturing to court Trump’s base for future elections. Congress would count Biden’s win.

But Trump had urged his supporters for weeks to descend on Washington, D.C., to stop what he insisted was the stealing of the election. They did so and, this morning, began to congregate near the Capitol, where the counting would take place. As he passed them on the east side of the Capitol, Hawley raised a power fist.

In the middle of the day, Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani spoke to the crowd, telling them: “Let’s have trial by combat.” Trump followed, lying that he had won the election and saying “we are going to have to fight much harder.” He warned that Pence had better “come through for us, and if he doesn’t, that will be a sad day for our country.” He warned that Chinese-driven socialists are taking over the country. And he told them to march on Congress to “save our democracy.”

As rioters took Trump at his word, Congress was counting the votes alphabetically by state. When they got to Arizona, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) stood up to echo the rhetoric radicals had been using to discredit the certified votes, saying that public distrust in the election—created out of thin air by Republicans—justified an investigation. 

Within an hour, a violent mob stormed the Capitol and Cruz, along with the rest of the lawmakers, was rushed to safety (four quick-thinking staffers brought along the electoral ballots, in their ceremonial boxes). As the rioters broke in, police shot and killed one of them: Ashli Babbitt, an Air Force veteran from San Diego, QAnon believer, and staunch Trump supporter. The insurrectionists broke into the Senate chamber, where one was photographed on the dais of the Senate, shirtless and wearing a bull costume that revealed a white supremacist tattoo on his abdomen. They roamed the Capitol looking for Pence and other lawmakers they considered enemies. Not finding them, they ransacked offices. One rioter photographed himself sitting at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s desk with his feet on it.

They carried with them the Confederate flag.

Capitol police provided little obstruction, apparently eager to avoid confrontations that could be used as propaganda on social media. The intruders seemed a little surprised at their success, taking selfies and wandering around like tourists. One stole a lectern.

As the White House, the FBI, the Justice Department, and the Department of Homeland Security all remained silent, President-Elect Joe Biden spoke to cameras urging calm and calling on Trump to tell his supporters to go home. But CNN White House Correspondent Kaitlan Collins later reported that she spoke to White House officials who were “genuinely freaked… out” that Trump was “borderline enthusiastic” about the storming of the Capitol because “it meant the certification was being derailed.”

At 4:17, Trump issued his own video, reiterating his false claims that he had been cheated of victory. Only then did he conclude with: “Go home, we love you, you’re very special.” Twitter immediately took the video down. By nighttime Trump’s Twitter feed seemed to blame his enemies for the violence the president had incited (although the rhythm of the words did not sound to me like Trump’s own usual cadence): “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!”

Twitter took down the tweet and banned the president for at least twelve hours for inciting violence; Facebook and Instagram followed suit.

As the afternoon wore on, police found two pipe bombs near the headquarters of the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee in Washington, D.C., as well as a truck full of weapons and ammunition, and mobs gathered at statehouses across the country, including in Kansas, Ohio, Minnesota, California, and Georgia.

By 5:00, acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller issued a statement saying he had conferred with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, Vice President Pence, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and Representative Steny Hoyer (D-MD) and had fully activated the D.C. National Guard.

He did not mention the president.

By late evening, Washington, D.C., police chief Robert J. Contee III announced that at least 52 people had been arrested and 14 law enforcement officers injured. A total of four people died, including one who died of a heart attack and one who tased themself.

White House Counsel Pat Cipollone urged people to stay away from Trump to limit their chances of being prosecuted for treason under the Sedition Act. By midnight, four staffers had resigned, as well as Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger, with other, higher level officials also talking about leaving. Even Trump adviser Stephen Miller admitted it was a bad day. Quickly, pro-Trump media began to insist that the attack was a false-flag operation of “Antifa,” despite the selfies and videos posted by known right-wing agitators, and the fact that Trump had invited, incited, and praised them.

Former Secretary of Defense James Mattis laid the blame for today’s attack squarely at the feet of Trump himself: “Today’s violent assault on our Capitol, and effort to subjugate American democracy by mob rule, was fomented by Mr. Trump. His use of the Presidency to destroy trust in our election and to poison our respect for fellow citizens has been enabled by pseudo political leaders whose names will live in infamy as profiles in cowardice.”

The attempted coup drew condemnation from all but the radical Trump supporters in government. Former President George W. Bush issued a statement “on insurrection at the Capitol,” saying “it is a sickening and heartbreaking sight.” “I am appalled by the reckless behavior of some political leaders since the election,” he said, and accused such leaders of enflaming the rioters with lies and false hopes. Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) was more direct: “What happened here today was an insurrection incited by the President of the United States.”

Across the country tonight are calls for Trump’s removal through the 25th amendment, impeachment, or resignation. The Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee have joined the chorus, writing to Pence urging him to invoke the 25th. Angry at Trump’s sabotaging of the Georgia elections in addition to the attack on our democracy, prominent Republicans are rumored to be doing the same.

At 8:00, heavily armed guards escorted the lawmakers back to the Capitol, thoroughly scrubbed by janitors, where the senators and representatives resumed their counting of the certified votes. The events of the afternoon had broken some of the Republicans away from their determination to challenge the votes. Fourteen Republican senators had announced they would object to counting the certified votes from Arizona; in the evening count the number dropped to six: Cruz (R-TX), Hawley (R-MO), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS), John Kennedy (R-LA), Roger Marshall (R-KS), and Tommy Tuberville (R-AL).

In the House, 121 Republicans, more than half the Republican caucus, voted to throw out Biden’s electors from Arizona. As in the Senate, they lost when 303 Representatives voted in favor.

Six senators and more than half of the House Republicans backed an attempt to overthrow our government, in favor of a man caught on tape just four days ago trying to strong-arm a state election official into falsifying the election results.

Today the Confederate flag flew in the United States Capitol.

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EDIT AT 12:00 on January 7: The symbol on the abdomen of the rioter on the Senate dais is a religious symbol that has been appropriated by white supremacists, not the Ku Klux Klan specifically, as I wrote originally. I apologize for the error.

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My guess here for the author of the uncharacteristic Trump tweet is Stephen Miller:

By nighttime Trump’s Twitter feed seemed to blame his enemies for the violence the president had incited (although the rhythm of the words did not sound to me like Trump’s own usual cadence): “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!”

Can you spell conspiracy to commit insurrection?

As sickening as the spectacle of a mob of domestic terrorists swarming the capitol building while a joint session of Congress was certifying the election — the fact that these Confederate and Trump flag waving insurgents invited by Mr. Trump held a defiant rally the night before and clashed with D.C. police, and that the National Guard (under federal and state control, but D.C. must rely on federal), requested by D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, did not arrive until long after insurgents overran, vandalized and occupied the Capitol, disrupting mandated constitutional business and forcing legislators and the Vice President to flee… leads to a strong presumption that the initial success of the riot was guaranteed by Trump dead-enders who left the Capitol under-protected. It could also be incompetence, of course, but the likelihood that it was the Trump administration’s last bloody fuck you to a Black woman in power is stronger.

Otherwise, the perfect storm that led to the breach of the building where the Vice President was protected by Secret Service is as eerie a coincidence as a notorious federal prisoner, Mr. Trump’s friend, child-sex trafficker and under-age sex aficionado Jeffery Epstein, who had attempted suicide and was on suicide watch, managing to die in his cell while his two guards were not paying attention and, coincidentally, the surveillance camera trained on Epstein’s death chamber was somehow not recording, darn it. You can imagine Bill Barr’s disappointment, as well as Alan Dershowitz’s and Mr. Trump’s own.

Anyway here is Amy Goodman reporting at 8 a.m. Wednesday morning, the morning of the historic riot, January 6, 2021. (Spoiler alert: you may be surprised to learn that Dick Cheney has emerged, for the moment, at least, from the dark side where his soulless essence resides). I’ve put a few things in bold, for later discussion. Here’s an appetizer, from the middle of the report, which suggests there was some planning involved in leaving the Capitol under-defended and vulnerable when Trump’s mob descended on it, smashed cameras of the Enemy of the People and breached the barricades:

The reality is that there are an awful lot of active-duty military engaged in Washington, D.C., in inaugural security, in the air defense of D.C., in reconnaissance operations and in emergency response, in support of everything from weapons of mass destruction events to continuity of government, thousands of active-duty military who are on alert and who could be called out and who would be called out if in fact the local authorities were overwhelmed. And so you have, on the one hand, a kind of a secret operation going on in the background that is the standard for inaugural security and the transition from one presidency to another, and then, on the other hand, you have this highly charged political reality that the outgoing White House is not speaking to the incoming White House, and the president of the United States is off in his own fantasyland.

AMY GOODMAN: Thousands who refuse to accept President Trump’s 2020 election loss to Joe Biden are protesting in Washington, D.C., today as Congress meets to certify the results and make it official. Pro-Trump protesters clashed with police Tuesday night near Black Lives Matter Plaza. Mayor Muriel Bowser has called in the National Guard ahead of today’s protest. Police arrested six people on charges that include bringing illegal guns to the city.

This comes as the leader of the Proud Boys hate group, Enrique Tarrio, was released without bail Tuesday, after D.C. police arrested him Monday for allegedly burning a Black Lives Matter banner at a historically Black church during protests in the city last month and possession of high-capacity firearm magazines. Tarrio was ordered to stay out of D.C. He’s posted on social media that Proud Boys members would be incognito for this week’s protest.

Former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who Trump pardoned last month, spoke at last night’s rally and thanked the “digital soldiers” — a reference to the conspiracy theory QAnon. This is podcast host Clay Clark addressing Tuesday’s “Stop the Steal” protest.

CLAY CLARK: Last night, about 150 of us went into Whole Foods, and we dressed up like people that aren’t idiots hiding from a virus that’s not deadly: We did not wear a mask! Who here is up to the task of not wearing a mask? I ask you again: Who here is up to the task of not wearing a mask? Jesus is king, and it’s time to let freedom ring! … Turn to the person next to you and give them a hug, someone you don’t know. Go hug somebody. Go ahead and spread it out, mass spreader. It’s a mass spreader event! It’s a mass spreader event!

AMY GOODMAN: President Trump tweeted he’ll be speaking at today’s so-called Save America rally near the White House and has promoted the event for weeks.

Meanwhile, Trump signed an executive order Tuesday night that asks Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to, quote, “assess actions of Antifa activists,” stop its members from entering the United States, and see whether it can be classified as a terrorist organization.

All this comes as all 10 living former U.S. defense secretaries signed a Washington Post op-ed Sunday declaring the time for questioning the results of the election has passed. They also said the U.S. military should not intervene in the presidential election. They wrote, quote, “Efforts to involve the U.S. armed forces in resolving election disputes would take us into dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory.”

For more, we’re joined by William Arkin, national security reporter for Newsweek, whose recent piece is headlined “Threat of Pro-Trump Violence in Washington Overshadows Inauguration Security [Plans].”

Can you start, Bill Arkin, by talking about what the police and the authorities are most concerned about today in the streets of Washington, D.C.?

WILLIAM ARKIN: Well, they’re most concerned about Donald Trump, whether he is going to instigate the thousands of people who have flooded into the district to take up violence, either to march on the Capitol or even try to enter the Capitol during the elector count.

The people I’ve talked to — and it’s been a broad range of National Guard, law enforcement and military officials — all say to me that this is an unprecedented moment, unprecedented because you have a president who is not only instigating protest and violence against this constitutional process, but also because there are other conditions which have been introduced: first, talk of martial law; second, talk of an implementation of the Insurrection Act, which would allow the military and the National Guard to engage in law enforcement; third, a kind of break between the District of Columbia and the federal government, as was exemplified by a letter sent yesterday by the mayor of the district to the acting attorney general, to the acting secretary of defense, asking them not to put any non-uniformed people onto the streets of D.C.; and then, finally, the question of who is actually in charge of the U.S. Capitol Police, the U.S. Park Police, the uniformed branch of the Secret Service today and in the coming week, because there’s really no one in charge. In fact, the secretary of homeland security is in the Middle East right now.

So we have this very strange mixture of people who are both on high alert, but also the wildcard, in Donald Trump, as to what he will both do at his speech today at the Ellipse in front of the White House and then, secondly, what he could do in the coming days ahead in terms of issuing an order to the national security establishment, to the military, that the military would, I think, have to say that they could not follow because it was an unlawful order.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, William Arkin, I wanted to ask you — this issue of the joint statement by all the living former defense secretaries, which, according to some reports, was a letter or statement organized by former Vice President Dick Cheney, that would seem to indicate to me that these people, because they obviously are all connected to the current military establishment, that there are some — it’s not just rumors, but it’s actual — they’ve been getting some sense that the White House and President Trump might actually be thinking of attempting to, as you say, invoke the Insurrection Act or, in some way or other, bring the military in. Is it your sense that there’s actually been these kinds of discussions among top brass of the existing military?

WILLIAM ARKIN: Well, Juan, I’ve been covering the military for over 30 years. I remember when Dick Cheney was the secretary of defense, before he was vice president, in the first Bush administration. It is true that he was one of the organizers of this letter. And it really is an unprecedented statement, a bipartisan statement, that says that the military has no role. But I think it’s more of a message to the military itself, a reminder, if you will, that they need to go back to the Constitution and go back to their oath to the Constitution, to recognize that they are not just merely toys of the commander-in-chief. They’re not merely saluting soldiers without a brain. They have to also understand the difference between a lawful and an unlawful order.

And part of the problem that we’re facing right now is that there’s an acting secretary of defense, a person who was installed by Donald Trump after the election, a wildcard himself, that we don’t really know where he stands because he hasn’t said anything. And so, though, while the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, who got a lot of criticism in June when he accompanied the president into Lafayette Park in uniform, and thereby sort of implicitly gave the military’s imprimatur and support for what the president was doing — he has put out a statement saying that the military has no role in the election.

The reality is that there are an awful lot of active-duty military engaged in Washington, D.C., in inaugural security, in the air defense of D.C., in reconnaissance operations and in emergency response, in support of everything from weapons of mass destruction events to continuity of government, thousands of active-duty military who are on alert and who could be called out and who would be called out if in fact the local authorities were overwhelmed. And so you have, on the one hand, a kind of a secret operation going on in the background that is the standard for inaugural security and the transition from one presidency to another, and then, on the other hand, you have this highly charged political reality that the incoming White House is not speaking to the outcoming White House, and the president of the United States is off in his own fantasyland.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to bring Jason Wilson into this conversation, investigative journalist who tracks the political right and extremist movements for The Guardian, the Southern Poverty Law Center and elsewhere. Talk about who’s out there today, expected to be out there. You’ve got QAnon supporters, Proud Boy members, Republican leaders. Trump is apparently going to address them. Can you talk about the confluence of these groups and where guns fit into it? You even have the new congress member, Boebert, from Colorado, who says she’s bringing her Glock into Congress, which Nancy Pelosi and others are trying to stop.

JASON WILSON: Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head, actually, Amy. I mean, you know, it’s just another demonstration of the fact that during the life of this presidency, there’s been a kind of merger between far-right activist groups and the Trump version of the GOP. There’s not really a sharp dividing line between violent, far-right street activists and the supporters of the president in Congress. You know, yeah, you’ve got at least three congresspersons, from my count, who are talking about participating in this rally. You’ve got all of these Trump-world figures, like Roger Stone, Jack Posobiec, Sebastian Gorka, who are all talking about being a part of this.

And yeah, I mean, the guns are not only a sort of indication of the militancy and radicalism of the GOP in 2021, but they’re bound up with the version of freedom that we’ve seen articulated by far-right street activists throughout the life of the presidency, as well. So, you know, the guns are integral, really, to the political ideology and the political project of this movement. And again, they’re an indication of militancy, as well.

And I’m pretty concerned that we’re going to see some violence today. And don’t forget, I mean, everyone is rightly focused on the rally in D.C., but there are parallel rallies happening all over the country at state capitols. So there are a lot of moving parts today. There’s a lot happening all around the country. And I’m concerned that the conditions are kind of ripe for some sort of violence, maybe in more than one of those places.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ:  And, Jason Wilson, we only have about a minute or so left, but I’m wondering if you could comment on this whole issue that some of the Trump supporters are reportedly going to be coming dressed in black, which would make them indistinguishable perhaps from antifa folks, if some antifa folks show up, to counter-protest. Are you concerned about the possibility of agents provocateurs actually instigating violence as a means to give Trump an excuse for more drastic actions?

JASON WILSON:  Yeah, I would — I mean, again, over the life of the Trump presidency, these groups have evolved in their tactics. And provocation has always been a quiver in their bow, not only provoking counter-protesters, but provocation of police or setting up the conditions where police respond with force to protests. So, yeah, I mean, disguising themselves as anti-fascists, they’ve done this before. And the fact that they’re talking about it now doesn’t surprise me at all. And, you know, as I said, they’re looking to trigger some kind of violence in the streets, I think.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you both for being with us. We’ll, of course, cover this closely today inside and outside Congress. We want to thank Jason Wilson, investigative journalist who tracks the political right, and William Arkin, national security reporter for Newsweek.

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