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Capitol rioter charged with threatening to assassinate AOC

Capitol rioter charged with threatening to assassinate AOC

Protesters who support U.S. President Donald Trump break into the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC on January 6, 2021.

Win McNamee | Getty Images

A Dallas area man who joined a violent mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol earlier this month was accused of threatening Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with a death threat in a social media post.

Garret Miller, 34, of Richardson, Texas, was arrested earlier this week on several charges related to the Capitol riot.

Miller’s attorney, Clinton Broden, told CNBC that a threat charge was added to his client’s charges on Tuesday, the day before his arrest in Richardson. The increased fee came relatively soon after the first complaint was filed in federal court in Washington, DC, Broden said.

The other charges include entering or leaving buildings or land without proper authorization; forced entry and disorderly behavior for Capitol reasons; Obstruction or obstruction of an official process and certain acts during a civil incident.

The charges against Miller are based on prosecutors’ allegations that he threatened Rep. Ocasio Cortez, DN.Y., across state lines on social media. The maximum sentence is five years in prison.

Miller wrote “Assassinate AOC” in a Twitter post, according to the complaint. Miller also reportedly wrote about entering the Capitol building on his Instagram account, admitting that he “had a rope in hand” [his] Bag that day. “

Miller also threatened a Capitol Police officer who shot and killed a woman who tried to break through the Capitol during the riot. “We will take care of it [the USCP officer] and hug his neck with a nice rope[.]”Said Miller, according to the complaint.

“Mr. Miller regrets the measures he has taken to demonstrate his support for former President Trump,” said Broden. “He has the full support of his family and has always been a law-abiding citizen.”

“His social media comments reflect a very ill-considered political exaggeration in very divided times and will certainly not be repeated in the future,” Broden continued. “He’s looking forward to leaving it all behind.”

Broden added that he doesn’t think there is any evidence that Miller tried to carry out the threats.

Miller will appear for a hearing in federal court in Dallas on Monday. Prosecutors have said they want him to be detained pending trial, but Broden said he would advocate for Miller’s conditional release pending trial in Washington.

Responding to the complaint in which Miller allegedly bragged about his role in the riot online, Ocasio-Cortez wrote in a tweet: “On the one hand, you have to laugh and, on the other, you have to know that the reason they were so bold is that they thought it would succeed. “

Ocasio-Cortez previously said she feared for her life during the uprising and that members of Congress were “almost murdered”.

“I didn’t know if I would make it to the end of this day alive, not just in a general sense, but also in a very, very specific sense,” said the Democratic representative in a live Instagram video on January 1st. 12 without explaining the details.

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The Trump Presidency Is Now Historical past. So How Will It Rank?

The Trump Presidency Is Now History. So How Will It Rank?

“In relation to this poll, it would be surprising if Trump were rehabilitated in a meaningful way,” Levy said. “If the first paragraph of a discussion starts with being charged twice, and the second sentence is about the coronavirus and the third is about bias, that will be very difficult to overcome.”

Sean Wilentz, a professor of American history at Princeton University, said Mr Trump was undoubtedly the worst president in history.

“He belongs to a completely different category in terms of the damage he has done to the republic,” said Wilentz, citing the radicalization of the Republican Party, the inept response to the pandemic and what he is “the brazen, almost psychedelic Mendacity of “called the man.”

Presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, whose recent book Leadership: In Turbulent Times examines how four presidents have faced difficult moments in history, said that it usually takes a generation to evaluate a leader. To the extent that a president’s legacy is determined by his ability to get into crisis, Mr Trump will be remembered for his failure: how badly he handled Covid-19 and how shamefully he behaved after the election Has.

“History will view President Trump with great disgrace for the crisis he has created,” she said.

For his part, Mr Rauchway said he believed Mr Trump would “be in the bottom five” of the president’s rankings, but that the bottom spot itself was uncertain. “I think he has tough competition” in Andrew Johnson, whom Mr. Rauchway personally considers the worst president of them all.

“If I had to predict where the historiography would lead, people would have to realize that Trumpism – nativism and white supremacy – has deep roots in American history,” Rauchway said. “But Trump himself has brought it to a new and vicious purpose.”

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Senate Democrats plan to focus on IRS in probe of pro-Trump teams

Senate Democrats plan to target IRS in probe of pro-Trump groups

Supporters of the fight of US President Donald Trump against the police at the west entrance of the Capitol during a “Stop the Steal” protest in front of the Capitol in Washington DC on January 6, 2021.

Stephanie Keith | Reuters

Senate Democrats plan to focus on the Internal Revenue Service as part of a larger investigation into tax-exempt groups that helped organize the pro-Trump rally before the deadly January 6 riot in the U.S. Capitol.

Democrats, partially led by lawmakers on the Senate Finance Committee, have begun asking the IRS to review the tax-exempt status of the dark money groups that helped plan the rally. At the event, then-President Donald Trump encouraged his supporters to march on the Capitol.

The eventual uprising left five dead, including a police officer.

Several nonprofit groups helped plan and organize the rally, including Women for America First, a 501 (c) (4) organization chaired by a senior tea party attorney. It had previously been funded by America First Policies, a 501 (c) (4) organization chaired by former wrestling executive and former Trump cabinet member Linda McMahon.

Such groups are known as dark money organizations because they do not publicly disclose their donors.

Senator Ron Wyden, D-Ore., The senior member and expected chairman of the committee, recently sent a letter to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig asking him to investigate and investigate any group involved in planning the rally to see if she can revoke her tax exemption status.

“I urge the IRS, in coordination with other law enforcement agencies, to investigate the extent to which tax-exempt organizations were involved in any part of the uprising or actions of the Capitol in the lead up to this event and, to the greatest extent possible, to revoke the law of exemption from those organizations that do Role played in inciting or committing violence and other illegal acts, “said Wyden Rettig in the letter.

With control of the White House, House and Senate, Democrats may have the best opportunity yet to tighten regulations on these groups and the agencies that are supposed to oversee them.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, DR.I., another member of the Senate Finance Committee, goes a step further and examines how the IRS certifies these groups. Whitehouse has passed laws for years that would force dark money groups to disclose their donors.

In an interview with CNBC late Thursday, Whitehouse said he was particularly focused on the groups that organized the rally, during which Trump and some of his allies made inaccurate claims that the election was stolen in favor of current President Joe Biden.

“The most immediate [objective] is to look into the dark money groups involved in the Capitol raid, “Whitehouse said.

Part of the focus, he said, will be on the IRS itself and how to deal with these groups.

“The question would be whether the IRS, beaten by the armed forces of the Right, interpreted and enforced the law and whether its enforcement is actually compliant with the law,” Whitehouse said.

The IRS has the power to revoke the tax exemption status of these groups if they exceed what the agency deems to be promoting “social welfare”. Although it is a broad mandate, 501 (c) (4) are typically allowed to exercise limited political activity. You can focus on promoting specific guidelines that can be oriented towards candidates for a federal office.

Democrats say these groups should lose the right to remain a 501 (c) (4) if they incite the insurrection.

Whitehouse told Treasury Secretary-designate Janet Yellen during her Senate confirmation hearing that he would ask her to “conduct a review of IRS 501 (c) guidelines” once it is confirmed. “I believe that the IRS guidelines have long been very inaccurate with the legal instruction that Congress has given the IRS through these agencies,” he added.

Yellen said she would initiate a review.

Beyond Whitehouse and Wyden, Democrats in general are making a legislative push against dark money organizations.

The summary of Senate Democrats’ first business mandates includes the DISCLOSE Act that Whitehouse introduced in 2019.

The bill, according to the Senate Democratic Legislature Summary, would require “super PACs, 501 (c) 4 groups, and other organizations spending money on elections and judicial nominations to reveal donors contributing more than $ 10,000.” “.

One of the Senate Democrats’ priorities is a focus on the IRS.

The separate bill would “lift an existing ban on the IRS from enacting rules to provide clarity on the rules governing political activity under 501 (c),” the executive reads.

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How Alvin the Beagle Helped Usher in a Democratic Senate

How Alvin the Beagle Helped Usher in a Democratic Senate

The dog was very busy.

He starred in a political ad that had to show the candidate’s good-natured warmth. But the ad also had to stave off an onslaught of racially motivated attacks without directly embroiling them, and to convey to white voters in Georgia that the black pastor who ran the Ebenezer Baptist Church could represent them.

Of course, Alvin the Beagle couldn’t have known about it when he was walking with Rev. Raphael Warnock last fall when a film crew was recording their time together in a neighborhood outside of Atlanta.

Pulling a Mr. Warnock in a puffer vest for an idealized suburban stroll – bright sunshine, picket fence, an American flag – Alvin appeared in several of Mr. Warnock’s commercials fighting his Republican opponent in the recent Georgia Senate runoff .

Perhaps at its most famous spot, Mr. Warnock, a Democrat, throws a plastic bag of Alvin’s feces in the trash and compares it to his rival’s increasingly caustic ads. The Beagle barks in agreement and when Mr. Warnock explains that “we” – he and Alvin – approve of the news, the dog licks its goatee healthy.

“The entire ad screams that I’m a black candidate who whites shouldn’t be afraid of,” said Hakeem Jefferson, a Stanford political science professor who studies race, stigma and politics in America.

On Wednesday, Mr Warnock became the first black Senator from Georgia after the Democrats swept both Senate seats in the runoff elections. The double victories gave President Biden and his chances of implementing his agenda, democratic control over the chamber and an enormous boost.

While there isn’t a single factor responsible for such narrow victories – Mr Warnock won by less than 100,000 out of around 4.5 million votes and the other new Democratic Senator, Jon Ossoff, won by even fewer – there is a bipartisan agreement That the Beagle played an outsize role in breaking the clutter in two competitions that broke every Senate spending record.

“The puppy ad got people talking,” said Brian C. Robinson, a Georgia-based Republican strategist. “It made it harder to caricature him because they humanized him.”

At the end of the campaign, the helpers from Warnock saw that their internal surveys showed dog warnings, supporters lifted their own puppies at solidarity rallies and put home-made beagle-themed signs in the front gardens. They even started selling Puppies 4 Warnock merchandise.

All of this would probably surprise Alvin. After all, he wasn’t even Mr. Warnock’s dog.

Before the November 3 election, two Republicans, Senator Kelly Loeffler and Rep. Doug Collins, bled each other in a race to the right as they pledged allegiance to President Trump.

Mr. Warnock found himself on a glide path to the drains, and had the rare opportunity to do months of uninterrupted introductory advertising about himself.

The 51-year-old pastor had taken for granted on camera, and his campaign would film him speaking directly to audiences in much of his ads. But the Warnock team also knew that the pastor’s two decades of sometimes fiery rhetoric in the pulpit would lead to potentially devastating attacks.

Racial politics was inevitable. In addition to being a black candidate, Mr. Warnock was the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, the spiritual home of Martin Luther King Jr., and political scientists and strategists emphasized that he faced Mrs. Loeffler with a unique challenge: against a white woman in the South.

“He knew he would be perceived as a highly raced candidate,” said Andra Gillespie, professor of political science at Emory University in Georgia and author of several books on race and politics. A key question for his campaign was she said, “Can you be racially transcendent and the pastor of arguably the most prominent black church in America?”

The Beagle spots were the brainchild of Adam Magnus, the lead admaker of the Warnock campaign, who wanted to use humor to find a way to vaccinate Mr. Warnock against explicit and implicit attacks. First he had to call the pastor. “I want to make sure you like dogs,” he recalled.

Mr. Warnock said he did – he had previously owned dogs (Comet, Cupid, and Brenal – all mutt), though not currently – and was playing a game for a puppy-themed commercial. Next, Mr Magnus had to cast a star pooch that he eventually found from a Georgia supporter whose name the campaign refused to reveal.

There has been some discussion that the Beagle – the type of breed that “we psychologically associate with whites,” as Dr. Jefferson put it – another subtle but deliberate effort was to explode racial stereotypes. Mr. Magnus said the reality was more mundane: “The dog had to be very cute, relatable, and he had to be able to hold the dog.”

A take of Alvin in Mr. Warnock’s arms would be the punchline.

“Get ready, Georgia, the negative attacks are coming,” the contestant said, predicting cutting back on everything from eating pizza with a knife and fork to hating puppies.

“And by the way, I love puppies,” he added, rocking Alvin.

It was Mr. Warnock’s opening ad of the drains, and it immediately went viral online.

Mr Warnock is not the first candidate to proclaim love for puppies in a preventive act of political self-defense. In 2006, another black candidate running for the Maryland Senate, Michael Steele, a Republican, showed an ad with his own saying essentially exactly the same thing.

Mr Steele, who said he was “honored by the tribute” in the Warnock spot, said his campaign had not consciously considered racial prejudice in creating his ad, but he saw clear efforts by Mr Warnock’s campaign to address racial prejudice disarm. “He’s making a statement in response to the president that black people are coming into your neighborhood,” said Steele. “We already live there.”

The Warnock team knew that getting to the Senate would require a complex and fragile multiracial coalition. The party needed to simultaneously mobilize black voters on a turnout close to that of a presidential election, while also targeting suburban white voters who split from the GOP last November to make Mr Biden the first Democratic presidential candidate since 1992 who won the state.

There is a rough rule of thumb for Georgia Democrats to win: you need 30 percent of the electorate to be black and about 30 percent of the white vote to win.

“If you are trying to make history in the South, and if you are trying to elect an African American pastor for an election that you know you need white voters, you must be doing all you can with your resources to get promotional strategy making white voters comfortable, ”said Chip Lake, a Georgia Republican strategist who is white and has worked for Mr. Collins.

Or as Jessica Byrd, a Black Democrat strategist in Georgia put it, “I don’t think I’ve spent a day in the past five years not thinking about how white people will see black candidates.”

Dr. Gillespie and other political scientists refer to efforts to make black candidates more acceptable to white voters “deracialization,” and Alvin the Beagle is a case study of its success.

“The point of deracialization is not to wake up black voters,” said Dr. Gillespie. “It’s supposed to reassure white voters.” In Mr. Warnock’s case, she did not avoid dealing directly with racial justice, as some previous candidates did. He simply and deftly added a suburban puppy.

Given the popularity of the first Beagle ad, Mr Magnus knew he would be returning to Alvin. But how? It had to be humorous, he decided, and it had to repeat the theme of rejecting Ms. Loeffler’s attacks, including the misleading quotation of Mr. Warnock as “Damn America” ​​(he quoted someone else) and her attacking as a Marxist the “anti-American” Celebrated hatred “.

The second Alvin shoot on the scene where Americana leaked lasted about four hours. And at one point, Mr. Magnus crouched behind a tree trying to persuade Alvin to turn on the cue. And Alvin wasn’t asked to do more than his performance on camera: the bag that was thrown in the trash was full of gravel. .

They ran the ad right before Thanksgiving, including reserving the annual National Dog Show.

Online, the Beagle spot rose to three million views within hours and to five million in one day.

Republicans and Democrats in the state were amazed at the effectiveness of the advertising campaign. “I know a lot of people who didn’t vote for Raphael Warnock but didn’t like or despise him,” said Mr. Lake.

Dr. Jefferson, the Stanford professor, said Mr Warnock’s continued sympathy was all the more impressive now that “his opponent casts all this vitriolic – dare I say racist – criticism aimed at revealing his blackness and otherness towards the electorate Highlight Georgia. ” Mr. Warnock countered with “that cute little dog” and a landscape that evoked a “white aesthetic”.

However improbable it may be, said Dr. Jefferson, objects – buffer vests, picket fences, beagles, suburbs – have racial associations: “It’s the same as a pumpkin spice latte.”

When the campaign commissioned its next poll following this ad, it included an open-ended question to see what voters thought of Mr. Warnock. Mike Bocian, the pollster, made a word cloud of the answers and couldn’t believe the results.

“I saw ‘Puppy’ and I saw ‘Dog’ and I saw ‘Poop’,” he said. “That’s crazy.”

Alvin had broken through in the middle of the two most expensive Senate races in American history.

The race remained tied to internal polls until the end. But Mr Bocian couldn’t help but notice that Mr Warnock had taken a two-point lead after being tied in his previous poll. “You can never be sure of causality,” his voice fell silent.

On January 5th, Mr Warnock won by exactly two percentage points.

Democrats credited a number of factors when they swore in Mr. Warnock on Wednesday. Few believe that they would have won without years of grassroots organization from black leaders. Or without the Republican feud fueled by Mr. Trump.

Alvin appeared once in the final days of the race to pull Mr. Warnock across the finish line in a beige zip-up sweater. As they strolled through another suburb, more dogs of all breeds joined in.

“It was a symbol of how he had carried out his entire campaign,” said Lake. The Republican strategist, himself a proud dog lover, was stunned to learn that Alvin was not Mr. Warnock’s dog.

“You could have fooled me!” he cried. “It looked like he and this beagle had a bond!”

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Trial will begin in February, Chuck Schumer says

Trial will start in February, Chuck Schumer says

Schumer said the Senate will “continue to do other business,” such as confirming candidates for the executive branch and working on a coronavirus relief package, before the trial begins the week of February 8th. On the previous Friday, Biden announced that he would support a later hearing to allow his administration to “get operational”.

Schumer added: “We all want to leave this terrible chapter in our nation’s history behind us.”

“But healing and unity will only come when there is truth and accountability. And that is exactly what this process will provide,” said the New York Democrat.

The riot earlier this month disrupted the Congressional count of Biden’s election victory, leaving five dead, including a Capitol policeman. The House indicted Trump a week after the riot, when 10 Republicans along with all 222 Democrats voted to indict him. Trump became the first President to be indicted by the House twice.

It will take 67 votes for the Senate to convict him. If all 50 Democrats support a guilty verdict, it will take 17 Republicans to join them.

If the Senate condemns Trump, it can in future hold him back from office with a separate vote.

Earlier on Friday, Senate Minority Chairman Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Voiced concerns that Trump would not have enough time to build a defense. He asked the House to air the article on January 28th to ensure “a full and fair trial.”

In a statement Friday, House spokeswoman Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. Said Trump had “the same amount of time to prepare for the trial” as House impeachment executives. You will represent the case in the House before the Senate.

Trump hired South Carolina attorney Butch Bowers to defend him during the trial. The nine impeachment managers are Democratic Representatives Jamie Raskin from Maryland, Diana DeGette from Colorado, David Cicilline from Rhode Island, Joaquin Castro from Texas, Eric Swalwell and Ted Lieu from California, Stacey Plaskett, US Virgin Islands delegate, Madeleine Dean from Pennsylvania and Joe Neguse of Colorado.

Pelosi claimed Thursday that managers would not have to prepare as much evidence for the second trial as they did for the first last year.

“This year the whole world witnessed the president’s instigation, call to action and violence,” the California Democrat told reporters.

The first trial against Trump last year for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress lasted about three weeks. The Republican-held Senate acquitted him.

Schumer downplayed GOP concerns that the Democrats would rush through the process after a quick trial in the House.

“It will be a full process. It will be a fair process,” he said earlier on Friday.

McConnell has not indicated whether he will vote to condemn Trump. On Tuesday he said the rioters were “provoked by the president and other powerful people.”

Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski from Alaska and Pat Toomey from Pennsylvania called on Trump to step down while he was still in office. Nobody said how they would vote on the conviction.

Murkowski said in a statement earlier this month that the House responded to the attack on the Capitol “swiftly and I believe appropriately with impeachment”.

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Who’s Jonathan Braun? Trump’s Final Minute Pardon Nonetheless Faces Accusations of Violence

Who is Jonathan Braun? Trump's Last Minute Pardon Still Faces Accusations of Violence

President Donald J. Trump’s late-night commutation of a 10-year prison sentence being served by a drug smuggler named Jonathan Braun made the action sound almost routine. The White House said only that upon his release, Mr. Braun would “seek employment to support his wife and children.”

What the White House did not mention is that Mr. Braun, a New Yorker from Staten Island who had pleaded guilty in 2011 to leading a large-scale marijuana smuggling ring, still faces both criminal and civil investigations in an entirely separate matter, and has a history of violence and threatening people.

According to lawsuits filed in June against Mr. Braun and two associates by the New York State attorney general, Letitia James, and the Federal Trade Commission, Mr. Braun helped start and worked as a de facto enforcer for an operation that made predatory loans to small-business owners, threatening them with violence if they refused to pay up.

Federal prosecutors for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan also have a continuing investigation into that operation, a person with knowledge of the investigation said Friday.

As recently as two and a half years ago, Mr. Braun was accused of throwing a man off a deck at an engagement party. Federal prosecutors said in a court proceeding that he threatened to beat a rabbi who borrowed money to renovate a preschool at his synagogue. “I am going to make you bleed,” he told the rabbi, according to court documents, adding, “I will make you suffer for every penny.”

How much Mr. Trump and his aides knew about Mr. Braun’s past and his current legal troubles is not clear. In its announcement of the pardon this week, the White House appears to have substantially overstated how much of his 10-year sentence Mr. Braun had completed, saying he had served five years when he had only reported to prison a year ago. (The White House announcement also misspelled his first name, calling him Jonathon.)

Mr. Braun’s family had told people it was willing to spend millions of dollars for lawyers and others to try to get him out of prison, according to two people who have been in contact with the family members in recent months.

No one registered under federal lobbying laws to make Mr. Braun’s case to the Trump administration, though registration would not necessarily be required for legal representation. The White House announcement of the wave of 143 pardons and commutations early Wednesday, just hours before Mr. Trump left office, did not cite anyone who had backed the commutation of Mr. Braun’s sentence.

The lawyer Alan M. Dershowitz, who represented Mr. Trump in his first impeachment trial, said he “played a very limited role” in Mr. Braun’s clemency push, “almost exclusively” advising his father about the clemency process, and was paid “a very small amount of money” for his assistance.

Mr. Dershowitz said he believed Mr. Braun’s argument for clemency was “meritorious,” because Mr. Braun cooperated with prosecutors “for a good many years, and was told that his cooperation would be recognized and he didn’t get that recognition.”

His case is the latest evidence of how far the pardon process under Mr. Trump had strayed from the rigorous Justice Department guidelines and screening that previous presidents had largely relied on for clemency recommendations.

“Jonathan Braun has threatened small-business owners with violence, death and even kidnapping,” Ms. James said. “A federal commutation will not protect Mr. Braun from being held accountable in New York for the civil charges against him.”

Interviews and court documents paint a portrait of Mr. Braun as a major drug smuggler who once beat one of his underlings so badly with a belt that Mr. Braun told others he had left the victim “black and blue.” In another instance, he threatened violence against a woman who worked for him who was threatening to cooperate with prosecutors.

In response to questions about the pardon, Mr. Braun’s lawyer, Marc Fernich, declined to discuss how Mr. Braun had gotten his case in front of White House officials or who had represented him. But Mr. Fernich praised Mr. Trump’s action.

“Mr. Braun’s 10-year sentence was grossly unreasonable — an extreme statistical outlier — on the facts and circumstances of his case,” Mr. Fernich said in an email message. He said he applauded Mr. Trump’s “courage in correcting what was a grave injustice.”

A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not return an email message seeking comment.

Mr. Braun was indicted in 2010 and entered a plea deal in the drug case the next year after initially fleeing the country for Canada and Israel before turning himself in. He was not sentenced until 2019 and did not have to report to prison until last January.

While free on bail after his guilty plea but before reporting to prison, he plunged into a new enterprise, helping run an operation that made loans to small-business owners at extremely high interest rates. According to the suits filed last year by Ms. James, the New York State attorney general, and the Federal Trade Commission, Mr. Braun regularly threatened those who had trouble repaying the loans.

“I know where you live.” Mr. Braun told a small-business owner who he claimed owed him money, according to court documents filed by Ms. James.

Mr. Braun told the business owner he knew where his mother lived.

“I will take your daughters from you,” he said, according to the suit.

Mr. Braun is accused in the suit of telling another business owner: “Be thankful you’re not in New York, because your family would find you floating in the Hudson.”

Previous presidents relied on a Justice Department screening process for pardons that ensured they were being given in an evenhanded way and that those with money and connections were not receiving preferential treatment. But Mr. Trump largely disregarded that process and wielded his clemency powers unlike any previous president.

The Constitution gives presidents the ability to issue pardons and commutations, a brake on the criminal justice system and a way to show grace and mercy. But Mr. Trump doled out clemency to friends, allies, donors, witnesses who did not cooperate with investigations that involved him and his campaign, and those who could help him politically.

“When the Justice Department process is short-circuited, and there’s insufficient vetting — if you don’t take the time to look at someone’s history and potential other exposure — this is what you end up with: a process that appears corrupted by money and influence,” said Daniel Zelenko, a white-collar defense lawyer at Crowell and Moring and former federal prosecutor and enforcement lawyer at the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The full story of Mr. Braun’s arrest, indictment and sentencing spans a decade and, according to prosecutors’ statements in court and filings in his case, often unfolded like a crime thriller.

In 2009, agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration raided a house on Staten Island that Mr. Braun’s drug trafficking network used to stash large stockpiles of drugs. Mr. Braun, who was in Florida at the time, learned from his underlings about the raid.

Immediately, Mr. Braun rented a car and with at least one associate drove 25 hours to the New York border with Canada.

“In the dead of night, dressed entirely in black and utilizing a motorless boat, Braun was ferried across the river into Canada, and remained there for several months, hiding out in one of the properties owned by his Canadian associate,” according to court documents filed by the Justice Department.

Clemency Power ›

Presidential Pardons, Explained

President Trump has discussed potential pardons that could test the boundaries of his constitutional power to nullify criminal liability. Here’s some clarity on his ability to pardon.

    • May a president issue prospective pardons before any charges or conviction? Yes. In Ex parte Garland, an 1866 case involving a former Confederate senator who had been pardoned by President Andrew Johnson, the Supreme Court said the pardon power “extends to every offense known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment.” It is unusual for a president to issue a prospective pardon before any charges are filed, but there are examples, perhaps most famously President Gerald R. Ford’s pardon in 1974 of Richard M. Nixon to prevent him from being prosecuted after the Watergate scandal.
    • May a president pardon his relatives and close allies? Yes. The Constitution does not bar pardons that raise the appearance of self-interest or a conflict of interest, even if they may provoke a political backlash and public shaming. In 2000, shortly before leaving office, President Bill Clinton issued a slew of controversial pardons, including to his half brother, Roger Clinton, over a 1985 cocaine conviction for which he had served about a year in prison, and to Susan H. McDougal, a onetime Clinton business partner who had been jailed as part of the Whitewater investigation.
    • May a president issue a general pardon? This is unclear. Usually, pardons are written in a way that specifically describes which crimes or sets of activities they apply to. There is little precedent laying out the degree to which a pardon can be used to instead foreclose criminal liability for anything and everything.
    • May a president pardon himself? This is unclear. There is no definitive answer because no president has ever tried to pardon himself and then faced prosecution anyway. As a result, there has never been a case which gave the Supreme Court a chance to resolve the question. In the absence of any controlling precedent, legal thinkers are divided about the matter.
    • Find more answers here.

Mr. Braun then fled to Israel, where he took refuge for several months, hoping to avoid being apprehended as he continued to run his drug operation from an encrypted BlackBerry phone, the documents say. In the fall of 2009, Mr. Braun returned to the United States, where he was arrested and jailed.

When he was indicted in 2010, he was charged with operating a marijuana ring that was one of the major distributors in New York City, smuggling in and selling $1.72 billion worth from 2007 to 2010.

“It is neither an exaggeration nor hyperbole to state that the defendant and his criminal enterprise generated illegal proceeds exceeding the gross domestic product of a small country,” the Justice Department said in a 2010 filing.

His lawyers sought at that point to persuade a judge to release him on bail, but prosecutors successfully kept him in jail, laying out how Mr. Braun had told others that he planned to flee the United States if he was released on bail.

“Braun specifically told a cooperating government witness that he would ‘never do time in jail,’” prosecutors said in a court filing. “Braun went on to explain that ‘for 10 grand, I could get a fake passport’ and be ‘on a beach somewhere where there is no extradition,’ still ‘making money.’”

In arguing that Mr. Braun should remain in prison, the prosecutors laid out a gruesome episode in which he beat a younger man working for him who had been given the job of guarding $100,000 worth of marijuana being kept in a house in California.

After Mr. Braun learned that the marijuana had been stolen, he called the man and demanded he give him $100,000. The man refused. Mr. Braun and one of his enforcers booked flights to California, arriving there the next morning. They broke into the house, where they found the man in bed.

“Braun then took off his belt and proceeded to viciously whip his worker with the belt,” the court documents say. “At one point, the ‘kid’ tried to get away from Braun, but Braun’s enforcer pushed him back down onto the bed so that Braun could continue the beating. In Braun’s own words, his brutal assault left the ‘kid’s’ entire body ‘black and blue.’”

Mr. Braun pleaded guilty in 2011 to two counts of conspiring to import a controlled substance and money laundering. As part of his plea, prosecutors allowed him to be released on bail and live at home while awaiting sentencing. His sentencing was delayed repeatedly.

Legal experts and defense lawyers say that defendants are typically on their best behavior when they are out on bail and awaiting sentencing. But Mr. Braun continued to flout the law, according to the suits later filed against him by the New York State attorney general and the Federal Trade Commission.

In 2018, Bloomberg News wrote a series of articles about how Mr. Braun had emerged as a leading short-term lender to small businesses. While structured to try to avoid usury laws, the rates Mr. Braun changed were as high as 400 percent a year. The New York attorney general’s office opened an investigation in response to the articles.

The next year, a judge held a sentencing hearing for Mr. Braun on the drug trafficking charges. At the hearing, prosecutors laid out two recent episodes in which Mr. Braun had violently assaulted others. One allegation said that Mr. Braun had thrown someone off a two-story balcony at a Staten Island engagement party in the summer of 2018.

The other allegation related to how Mr. Braun had lent money to the Brooklyn rabbi for the preschool. The rabbi had fallen behind on the payments and Mr. Braun reportedly threatened to beat and humiliate him.

“I am coming to Crown Heights,” Mr. Braun said, according to a lawsuit filed by the synagogue. “I will hang papers all over the lampposts in Crown Heights stating that you are a liar and a thief. I am going to tell people that you are running an illegal operation and a scam.”

Fearing the rabbi would be attacked, the synagogue wired Mr. Braun $1,000 and hired a lawyer. In a subsequent call between Mr. Braun and the lawyer, Mr. Braun called the lawyer a profanity, according to the suit filed by the synagogue.

Shortly after Mr. Braun’s commutation was announced, Mr. Dershowitz said he received a call from Mr. Braun and his father.

“Everybody was very grateful. There were a lot of tears going around,” Mr. Dershowitz said, explaining that the father called again on Friday before the Jewish Sabbath. “And he said he is going to continue to call me every Shabbos, so I should expect a call.”

Kenneth P. Vogel and Ben Protess contributed reporting. Susan C. Beachy and Kitty Bennett contributed research.

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Politics

Man admits dragging cop to be overwhelmed by flag pole

Not in Trump’s ‘nature' to do what's right for the U.S.,’ says Panetta

Rioters clash with police on January 6, 2021, trying to enter the Capitol through the front doors.

Lev Radin | Pacific Press | LightRocket | Getty Images

A Colorado geophysicist admitted to authorities that he was “in a fit of rage” as he dragged a police officer to be viciously beaten by a man with an American flagpole and others during the January 6 riot in the US Capitol announced a prosecutor.

The suspect, Jeffrey Sabol, attempted suicide sometime after the riot and also bought a plane ticket from Boston to Zurich, Switzerland, the prosecutor said at Sabol’s trial hours after his arrest at a Westchester County, New York hospital, Friday morning.

“He has the financial means to evade these charges,” said US assistant attorney Benjamin Gianforti during a videoconference and phone hearing held in the US District Court in White Plains, New York.

The prosecutor said authorities had reason to believe that Sabol “attacked another police officer” with a baton that he brandished during the riot.

Sabol “admitted he was in a fit of anger during the attack on the police officer” and told authorities his memory of much of the rest of the day on January 6 was foggy, Gianforti told Judge Andrew Krause.

Krause ordered Sabol, 51, to be detained without bail on a criminal complaint filed against him in the US District Court in Washington, DC, calling him a danger to the community and a risk of escape.

“This behavior is more than pale,” said Krause when he ordered Sabol’s imprisonment for civil disorder.

“These are extremely serious acts with consequences,” the judge told Sabol, a divorced father of three who grew up in New York State and whose sister is a colonel in the US Army.

According to authorities, Sabol can be seen in a widespread video during the riot, wearing a brown jacket, helmet and backpack, as he dragged a policeman to the ground outside the Capitol, where another rioter hit the officer with the flagpole.

Gianforti noted what he called the “irony” of the officer who was attacked with the US flag during the uprising by a group of supporters of President Donald Trump who opposed Congress and confirmed President Joe Biden’s election victory.

The prosecutor said police in Clarkstown, New York found Sabol in his car on Jan. 11, but did not specify exactly why Sabol was not arrested that day.

Sabol’s federal defender, who asked to be released for a $ 200,000 bond, said Krause that Sabol spent a week in a psychiatric center that was being treated after the riot.

Sabol’s lawyer also said the defendant is now stable.

The attorney said Sabol’s work history was “second to none” and his final job was to remove unexploded ordnance from the state for a Colorado environmental company.

The president of the company Sabol works for declined to comment, saying he had just learned from a CNBC reporter that Sabol had been arrested in connection with the Capitol riot.

NYC plumbing workers also indicted

Also on Friday, a New York plumbing worker was charged with participating in the riot.

Garbage man Dominick Madden has been identified in videos posted online showing him wearing a sweatshirt supporting the right-wing conspiracy QAnon during the Capitol Hill riot. The New York Post first reported his ID on January 14th.

Madden was tried in federal court in Brooklyn by Judge Ramon Reyes Jr.

Madden, 43, was charged in the District of Columbia with knowingly stepping into or staying in a restricted building or site without legal authority, knowingly engaging in disorderly or disruptive behavior in a restricted building or site, and forcibly for reasons of capital intruding into the building or the site.

Madden took sick leave from his position with the city’s Sanitary Department during the January 6th attack, according to an affidavit by an FBI agent in support of the complaint. The department has since suspended Madden, the affidavit said.

Madden was released on a $ 150,000 bond with his sister and brother-in-law’s home in Middletown, New Jersey listed as collateral.

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Politics

Kremlin Welcomes Biden’s Supply to Lengthen Nuclear Treaty

Kremlin Welcomes Biden’s Offer to Extend Nuclear Treaty

MOSCOW – The Kremlin on Friday welcomed the Biden government’s offer to renew a nuclear disarmament treaty due to expire next month and, as expected, signaled that, despite President Biden’s pledges to cooperate with the United States, Russia would work on nuclear safety working together wants to pursue a tougher line with Moscow than its predecessor.

The agreement was last updated in 2010 and limits the number of strategic nuclear warheads that either side can deploy. It does not limit the number of stored strategic weapons or smaller nuclear explosives that are intended for tactical use on a battlefield.

The Trump administration had refused to approve a five-year extension under a provision of the original treaty while attempting to extend the deal to China’s arsenal. That approach broke up when Beijing refused to negotiate.

Mr Biden has long been in favor of approving a simple extension of the existing treaty, as has the Kremlin.

“We can only welcome the political commitment to expand this document,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitri S. Peskov told journalists on Friday in a conference call.

The treaty limits the number of strategic nuclear weapons the sides can use to 1,500 warheads each. This is symbolically important as the last disarmament treaty from the late Cold War era is still in force despite poor relations between Russia and the United States.

Other contracts fell by the wayside. The United States pulled out of a treaty banning nationwide missile defense systems under the Bush administration, citing new threats from Iran and North Korea.

In response, Russia withdrew from a treaty on conventional troop operations in Europe. The Trump administration, citing what betrayed Russia, pulled out of a treaty that banned medium-range missiles, weapons with short flight times that had made Cold War opponents hair-trigger for nuclear war.

Mr Biden requested a full five-year extension, the most available time under the treaty, in hopes of preventing a nuclear arms race while the United States anticipated continued low-level competition with Russia around the world to his adjutants.

“This expansion makes even more sense when the relationship with Russia is controversial, as it is at the time,” said Jen Psaki, White House press secretary, on Thursday.

The Biden government and the Kremlin have only two weeks to negotiate the extension before the contract expires on February 6. As a complication of the talks, Mr Biden has announced that he will take revenge on Russia for a major hacking operation last year that violated government and corporate computers in the United States.

Mr Biden is also expected to take a stronger position on Russia’s military interventions in Libya, Syria and Ukraine, as well as the poisoning and arrest of the country’s most prominent domestic opposition figure, Aleksei A. Navalny.

Mr Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said Russian officials would consider the Biden government’s offer before officially agreeing to an extension. He noted that Ms. Psaki had said the contract could be renewed without new terms.

“So far, this has not been the conversation,” said Peskov. “Certain renewal terms were proposed, some of which were absolutely not suited to us. So let’s first familiarize ourselves with what the Americans have to offer, ”before answering.

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Politics

Enterprise allies focus on carbon tax

Business allies discuss carbon tax

U.S. President-elect Joe Biden speaks to reporters after making remarks at The Queen in Wilmington, Delaware ahead of the December 22nd, 2020 holiday.

Alex Edelman | AFP | Getty Images

President Joe Biden’s allies in the business world have met to come up with a number of proposals, including a potential carbon tax to help fund an expected $ 2 trillion infrastructure plan.

One of those efforts, which began immediately after Biden was named election winner in late November, is led by longtime ally Biden and New York business leader Dennis Mehiel along with former Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris, according to one person with direct knowledge of the matter .

Mehiel and Liveris have reached out to business leaders across the country to discuss how they believe the Biden administration and Congress could advance funding mechanisms for such a large-scale proposal, the person noted.

The plan is expected to come together after a few months while Biden focuses on the Covid-19 pandemic and economic relief.

Talks with various teams are expected to continue in the coming weeks. Some of the ideas are to be brought to the Biden administration officials and congressional leaders. Senator Chris Coons, D-Del., A confidante of Biden, was also on some of the calls, said the person.

The people on the calls discussed several ideas to pay for the plan, including a carbon tax, the person said.

A carbon tax is a “charge for burning carbon-based fuels (coal, oil, gas),” according to the Carbon Tax Center. “Policymakers could use the resulting revenue to offset these effects, cut taxes for individuals and businesses, reduce budget deficits, invest in clean energy and climate adaptation, or for other purposes,” according to the Tax Policy Center.

The idea of ​​a carbon tax previously emerged in the Obama and Trump administrations.

Reuters reported in 2017 that Republican officials went to Trump with the idea of ​​a carbon tax and the White House later pushed that concept back.

Brian Deese, who also served as an advisor under Obama before becoming Biden’s director of the National Economic Council, reportedly said in 2016 that carbon tax would not be levied under that administration due to the congressional deadlock.

This time around, however, the dynamic in Congress is different: the Democrats have a small advantage in the Senate after winning the Georgia runoff, and Vice President Kamala Harris is acting as a tiebreaker.

Biden’s plan is not only pushing for large-scale modernizations of bridges and roads, it is also heavily focused on clean energy technologies.

“Biden’s proposal will ensure that national infrastructure and clean energy investments create millions of middle-class jobs that develop a diverse and local workforce and empower communities as we rebuild our physical infrastructure,” the campaign’s plan reads.

Mehiel declined to comment. Liveris and Coons did not respond to requests for comment.

Liveris also chaired former President Donald Trump’s production council before it was disbanded after Trump criticized the deadly violence of white supremacists in 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Despite Trump’s efforts to improve American infrastructure and his administration’s numerous attempts to focus on the matter, the former president has been unable to find a way to push a large package forward. He reportedly disagreed with his own administration regarding the structuring of the initiative.

Henry Cisneros, who was secretary for housing and urban development in the Clinton era, runs a company that identifies infrastructure goals for the Biden administration, CNBC reported on Wednesday.

In an interview with CNBC’s Shepard Smith, Cisneros said he expected the Biden government to push for a “really significant infrastructure package” in a few months.

Cisneros said he recently took part in a study that looked at how the coronavirus pandemic has changed infrastructure priorities for different cities. Those who said it changed their infrastructure priorities said they now believe they need to upgrade their broadband, transit and medical facilities.

Pete Buttigieg, former Democratic presidential candidate and ex-Mayor of South Bend, Indiana, is Biden’s nominee for the Department of Transportation. The department will be responsible for implementing much of the president’s vision to rebuild the country’s infrastructure.

During his confirmation hearing on Thursday, Buttigieg said that improving infrastructure would help the economy grow.

“We need to ensure that all of our transportation systems – from aviation to public transportation to our railways, roads, ports, waterways and pipelines – are securely managed at this critical time as we work to fight the virus,” said Buttigieg.

Buttigieg himself proposed a $ 1 trillion infrastructure plan when he ran for president during the Democratic primary.

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Right here’s What’s in Biden’s Government Orders Geared toward Covid-19

Here’s What’s in Biden’s Executive Orders Aimed at Covid-19

WASHINGTON – President Joseph R. Biden Jr. published a series of new presidential ordinances and guidelines on Thursday aimed at expediting the production of Covid-19 consumables, increasing testing capacity, and requiring masks to be worn during interstate travel – part of a He announced the extensive 200-page edition of the National Pandemic Strategy at an event in the White House.

Taken together, the orders signal Mr Biden’s earliest priorities to achieve a more central federal response to the spread of the coronavirus. Some of them reflect actions taken during the Trump administration, while most are trying to change course.

Here is the goal of the orders.

A mandate calls on those in charge of the authorities to look for bottlenecks in areas such as personal protective equipment and vaccine supply and to determine where the administration could apply the Defense Production Act to increase production. The White House has announced that it will use the Korean War-era law that the Trump administration used in its vaccine development program to increase production of a type of syringe that pharmacists can use to extract an extra dose from vaccine bottles.

The Biden team said they identified 12 “immediate supply shortages” critical to the pandemic response, including N95 surgical masks and isolation gowns, and swabs, reagents and pipettes used for testing.

“On the asymptomatic screening side, we are completely undercapacitive, so we need the money to really move the testing forward, which is so important for schools and businesses to reopen,” said Jeffrey D. Zients, the white’s new Covid-19 House response coordinator.

Another assignment is to set up a Pandemic Testing Board, an idea that came from President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s War Production Board, to speed up testing. The new government promises to expand the country’s range of rapid tests and double tests, and expand the laboratory space for testing and monitoring for coronavirus hotspots.

“These efforts will ensure we test where it is needed and where it is most needed, helping schools and businesses reopen safely and protect the most vulnerable, such as those living in long-term care facilities.” said Biden in his Thursday remarks.

Mr. Biden has vowed to use his powers as President to influence the wearing of masks wherever legally entitled, including on federal property and when traveling across state lines. An order issued on Thursday requires masks to be worn at airports and on many planes, intercity buses and trains.

The same ordinance also requires international travelers to demonstrate that they recently had a negative coronavirus test before traveling to the U.S. and adhere to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Quarantine guidelines after landing.

On a mandate, the Secretary for Health and Human Services and the White House Covid-19 Response Coordinator are being asked to re-evaluate the federal government’s Covid-19 data collection systems and report on their findings. It also calls on the heads of “all executive departments and agencies” to collect and share coronavirus-related data.

The Biden Administration

Updated

Jan. 22, 2021, 1:25 p.m. ET

The Trump administration struggled to agree on a centralized system last year, competing programs from the Department of Health and Human Services and the CDC. Alex M. Azar II, the former secretary for health and personnel services, ordered hospitals to send daily reports of virus cases to a private provider, who submitted them to a centralized database in Washington instead of the CDC, which held the data previously were stored. The decision, which remains in effect, disgruntled CDC scientists.

Another mandate is to set up a Covid-19 Task Force for “Health Justice”, which recommends providing more funds for parts of the population that are particularly hard hit by the virus and, among other things, the needs of race, ethnicity, Analyze geography and disability. Mr Biden said Thursday that the task force would address hesitation in taking the vaccines.

The panel, which is housed in the Department of Health and Human Services, is part of a larger effort by the Biden government to draw more attention to persistent racial and ethnic differences in access to health care as minorities have been hospitalized and involved in Covid-19 died much higher rates. Mr. Biden appointed Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, an Associate Professor of Internal Medicine, Public Health, and Management at Yale, to lead the task force.

Mr Biden issued an order to protect workers’ health during the pandemic and asked the occupational safety and health authority to publish new guidance for employers. The regulation also calls on the agency to step up enforcement of existing regulations to stop the spread of Covid-19 in the workplace.

The president also directed education, health and human services departments to issue new guidelines for safely reopening schools – a major controversy during the summer when White House and Health Department officials pressured the CDC to reduce the risk of posting Downplaying students back.

The Biden government is calling on the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Director of the National Institutes of Health to work out a plan to support large, randomized trials of new drugs for Covid-19 and future public health crises . According to the Executive Order, the treatments should be “easy to manufacture, sell and administer, both domestically and internationally”.

The focus on randomized trials is on two emergency approvals – for convalescent plasma and the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine – that the Food and Drug Administration signed last year. Federal health officials, including FDA scientists, remain angry about the agency’s decisions under pressure from the Trump administration to clarify treatments without strong evidence from randomized trials.