It remains wild that there is still, to this day, a concerted effort to suggest that the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6 was somehow not directly a function of President Donald Trump and his supporters. It’s not as though there were four guys wearing generic street clothes who snuck into the Capitol. There were hundreds from a sea of thousands, people bedecked in gear with Trump’s name and slogans all over it. Those subsequently arrested for their involvement in the violence have repeatedly identified Trump’s rhetoric as the impetus, in case anyone might somehow not have connected the then-president’s false claims about the election and his exhortations to show up in Washington that day to what followed.
Yet Trump and his allies still try. They still lift up small pieces of the day and declare them to be suspicious, from unidentified individuals mentioned in court filings to people later revealed to be exactly who they appeared to be. The idea isn’t to inform but to mislead and to distract. The idea is to distance Trump from the violence by suggesting that it had some non-obvious catalyst, like trying to argue that it was the metal used in the mooring tower that caused the Hindenburg to explode and not the combination of location and hydrogen.
In the past week or two, Trumpworld has coalesced around a different element of the day’s events as a way to blame outside influence for what followed: the pipe bombs left outside of the Democratic and Republican Party headquarters...
Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Tuesday announced is seeking to fine an immigration attorney who allegedly filed false asylum claims -- the first time the agency has filed such a claim. Home...