They’re hustling.

A growing corps of House Democrats, furious over the invasion of the Capitol on Wednesday by a mob inspired and encouraged by President Trump, is pushing to rapidly impeach the president a second time — hoping to force Trump from office even a few days early rather than allow him to leave on his own terms.

Removing Trump by constitutional means is a tall order for the 12 days remaining in his presidency, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has not made a formal determination to move forward with a second impeachment, even as she consulted Friday with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff about curbing Trump’s ability to launch nuclear weapons.

That ability should be not so much curbed as removed entirely.

“We have a great sense of unity that we have a moral obligation to act,” said Rep. Daniel Kildee (Mich.), a Democratic deputy whip. “If we can shave any number of days of the threat this president represents off the calendar, we will have done public good, but there’s also another important aspect of this. . . . It would be a more accurate view of history if this president suffered the ultimate penalty for his crimes against his country, no matter how many days are removed from his tenure.”

That. That’s actually really important. He absolutely should not be able to get away with it unscathed. There needs to be that giant blot on his record.

Two draft articles of impeachment have been circulated among House Democrats that cite Trump’s incitement of the mob and his delayed decision to encourage it to disperse as high crimes and misdemeanors necessitating removal.

“We just suffered the most massive, violent invasion of the U.S. Capitol in American history since the War of 1812,” said Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.), author of one of the drafts. “It is unthinkable to me that we would allow this simply to be, you know, one more unfortunate faux pas by the president. He has counseled and invited an attack on the Congress of the United States itself.”

…

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) told “CBS This Morning” on Friday that he could “consider” any impeachment articles forwarded by the House.

“He swore an oath to the American people to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution,” Sasse said. “He acted against that. What he did was wicked.”

Now get 16 more Republican senators to agree.

Takes some nerve.

WE must work together – says one of Trump’s loyal lapdogs. It’s not the Democrats who raised “the temperature” by enabling the treasonous mob boss who tried to incite a coup two days ago.

Anyway he’s already taken it back.

Failed useless impotent loser tries to bully world by shouting.

Meanwhile he has five deaths on his hands – five people died because of his coup attempt. Four were coup-attempters and one was a cop resisting them.

But he’s not interested in that. He doesn’t care about that. He doesn’t feel any shame or guilt about that. He has other fish to fry.

The BBC is also asking pointed questions about the abject failure to stop the attempted coup on Wednesday.

Criticism centres on preparation by police and their failure to anticipate possible violence, despite evidence that radical pro-Trump supporters and other groups were openly discussing their plans online.

And despite the fact that it is apparently standard procedure to police-up heavily for a protest or march that could get violent. This one wasn’t even a case of “could get”; the coup plotters were openly shouting that it would get violent.

The Washington Post, citing sources close to the matter, says that Capitol Police charged with guarding the building and its grounds did not make early requests for help from the city’s main police force or the National Guard nor set-up a multiagency command centre to coordinate response to any violence.

And yes we are going to point out how different this is from the way the BLM protests were treated last summer.

Even hours into Wednesday’s violence, protesters were filmed being escorted or guided out of the building without arrest – even appearing to be helped down the Capitol stairs and having doors held open for them to exit. Another viral clip appeared to show a police officer posing for a selfie with a man inside.

…

Aside from the clear lack of preparation, confusion mounted during the violence about when and if other security forces were being deployed to help.

According to the Washington Post, Pentagon officials had placed strict operational limits on the DC National Guard ahead of protests and remained concerned about the “optics” of armed military personnel at the Capitol.

Defence officials on Thursday sought to defend the speed in which they authorised and mobilised Guardsmen to respond to the violence.

Multiple US media outlets, citing senior sources, have suggested that President Donald Trump allegedly showed reluctance for the National Guard to be used to quell the unrest.

Naturally. He wanted the “unrest”; he summoned and cheered on the unrest. He was hoping the unrest would overturn the election for him.

Some radical supporters have responded with disbelief and frustration at the concession video shared by President Trump on Thursday following the violence.

Don’t worry! He’s taking it back already!

Also? He’s not going to attend your damn party.

Trump may have had high-level help from federal officials who blocked the normal procedures for a potentially violent DC protest.

The supporters of President Donald Trump who stormed the Capitol on Wednesday to stop the ratification of President-elect Joe Biden’s election victory were attempting a violent coup that multiple European security officials said appeared to have at least tacit support from aspects of the US federal agencies responsible for securing the Capitol complex.

Insider spoke with three officials on Thursday morning: a French police official responsible for public security in a key section of central Paris, and two intelligence officials from NATO countries who directly work in counterterrorism and counterintelligence operations involving the US, terrorism, and Russia.

People who know what they’re talking about, in short. Business Insider underlines that they didn’t present any evidence, but argued from their experience of what is normally done in parallel situations that was not done in this one.

The French police official said they believed that an investigation would find that someone interfered with the deployment of additional federal law-enforcement officials on the perimeter of the Capitol complex; the official has direct knowledge of the proper procedures for security of the facility.

The security of Congress is entrusted to the US Capitol Police, a federal agency that answers to Congress.

It is routine for the Capitol Police to coordinate with the federal Secret Service and the Park Police and local police in Washington, DC, before large demonstrations. The National Guard, commanded by the Department of Defence, is often on standby too.

And we know Trump’s people love violence, and we know Trump loves their violence, and we know Trump’s people know that, so we can surely assume that the Capitol Police and Park police and local police and National Guard all know that. It’s not as if it’s a secret. But the coordination seems not to have happened. (If it did happen they must have done it wrong.)

“You cannot tell me I don’t know what they should have done. I can fly to Washington tomorrow and do that job, just as any police official in Washington can fly to Paris and do mine,” the official said. The official directs public security in a central Paris police district filled with government buildings and tourist sites.

“These are not subtle principles” for managing demonstrations, “and they transfer to every situation,” the official said. “This is why we train alongside the US federal law enforcement to handle these very matters, and it’s obvious that large parts of any successful plan were just ignored.”

The National Guard, which was deployed heavily to quell the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, did not show up to assist the police until two hours after the action started on Wednesday, according to The Associated Press.

I guess I was thinking it was incompetence as opposed to…systematic collaboration.

The French police official detailed multiple lapses they believe were systematic:

Large crowds of protesters needed to be managed far earlier by the police, who instead controlled a scene at the first demonstration Trump addressed, then ignored the crowd as it streamed toward the Capitol.

“It should have been surrounded, managed, and directed immediately, and that pressure never released.”

Because the crowd was not managed and directed, the official said, the protesters were able to congregate unimpeded around the Capitol, where the next major failure took place.

“It is unthinkable there was not a strong police cordon on the outskirts of the complex. Fences and barricades are useless without strong police enforcement. This is when you start making arrests, targeting key people that appear violent, anyone who attacks an officer, anyone who breaches the barricade. You have to show that crossing the line will fail and end in arrest.”

“I cannot believe the failure to establish a proper cordon was a mistake. These are very skilled police officials, but they are federal, and that means they ultimately report to the president. This needs to be investigated.”

“When the crowd reached the steps of the building, the situation was over. The police are there to protect the building from terrorist attacks and crime, not a battalion of infantry. That had to be managed from hundreds of meters away unless the police were willing to completely open fire, and I can respect why they were not.”

The third official, who works in counterintelligence for a NATO member, agreed that the situation could only be seen as a coup attempt, no matter how poorly considered and likely to fail, and said its implications might be too huge to immediately fathom.

…

“The broader damage around the world will be extensive in terms of reputation, and that’s why Putin doesn’t mind at all that Trump lost. He’s got to be happy to take his chips and count his winnings, which from the Trump era will be a shockingly quick decline in American prestige and moral high ground.

That’s a done deal.

H/t Holms

He’s surrendered…until he takes it back.

A new martyr for free speech! Not really martyr, since he’s not dead, but you know. Martyrish.

He wasn’t really representing his constituents by pretending to believe Trump’s lies about the election; he wasn’t leading a debate about voter integrity, because that’s not what the pretend debate was about; it does look like sedition to try to overturn an election by lying about voter fraud; big publishing companies are not “the Left.”

And, crucial point, it’s not “canceling everything we don’t approve of” to resist efforts to steal an election.

Pro Publica notes that it was all out there in plain sight.

For weeks, the far-right supporters of President Donald Trump railed on social media that the election had been stolen. They openly discussed the idea of violent protest on the day Congress met to certify the result.

“We came up with the idea to occupy just outside the CAPITOL on Jan 6th,” leaders of the Stop the Steal movement wrote on Dec. 23. They called their Wednesday demonstration the Wild Protest, a name taken from a tweet by Trump that encouraged his supporters to take their grievances to the streets of Washington. “Will be wild,” the president tweeted.

Oh did he; let’s see.

“Be there, will be wild!” Four people dead wild enough?

Thousands of people heeded that call.

For reasons that remained unclear Wednesday night, the law enforcement authorities charged with protecting the nation’s entire legislative branch — nearly all of the 535 members of Congress gathered in a joint session, along with Vice President Mike Pence — were ill-prepared to contain the forces massed against them.

On Wednesday afternoon, a thin line of U.S. Capitol Police, with only a few riot shields between them and a knot of angry protesters, engaged in hand-to-hand combat with rioters on the steps of the West Front. They struggled with a flimsy set of barricades as a mob in helmets and bulletproof vests pushed its way toward the Capitol entrance. Videos showed officers stepping aside, and sometimes taking selfies, as if to usher Trump’s supporters into the building they were supposed to guard.

Taking selfies??!

A former Capitol policeman well-versed in his agency’s procedures was mystified by the scene he watched unfold on live television. Larry Schaefer, a 34-year Capitol Police veteran who retired in December 2019, said his former colleagues were experienced in dealing with aggressive crowds.

“It’s not a spur-of-the-moment demonstration that just popped up,” Schaefer said. “We have a planned, known demonstration that has a propensity for violence in the past and threats to carry weapons — why would you not prepare yourself as we have done in the past?”

Pro Publica asked the Capitol Police that question but got no reply.

The easily overpowered police force guarding the Capitol on Wednesday posed a stark contrast to the tactics deployed by local police during this summer’s Black Lives Matter protests. Then, the city felt besieged by law enforcement.

…

The contrast shook Washington’s attorney general, Karl Racine, who seemed to be almost in disbelief on CNN Wednesday evening.

“There was zero intelligence that the Black Lives Matter protesters were going to ‘storm the capitol,’” he remembered, after ticking down the many police forces present in June. “Juxtapose that with what we saw today, with hate groups, militia and other groups that have no respect for the rule of law go into the capitol. … That dichotomy is shocking.”

BLM protesters were not going to storm anything, so call out the military. Trump-loving white supremacists were openly planning to storm the Capitol, so call out no one at all, just treat it like any other day.

David Carter, director of the Intelligence Program at Michigan State University, said that sometimes, the best intelligence in the world doesn’t translate into adequate preparedness. Perhaps the security officials responsible for protecting the Capitol simply could not envision that a crowd of Americans would charge through a police line and shatter the glass windows that stood as the only physical barrier to entering the building.

“I go back to the 9/11 commission report,” Carter said. “It was a failure of imagination. They didn’t imagine something like this. Would you imagine people were going to break into the Capitol and go into the chambers? That failure of imagination sometimes makes us drop the ball.”

But we’ve had the Malheur takeover, we’ve had Charlottesville – this didn’t even require imagination, just remembering would have been good enough.