by John Solomon
Days before former President Trump’s impeachment trial begins, newly filed federal charges against anti-government activists offer fresh, compelling evidence that the accused perpetrators of the Capitol riots pre-planned their attack days and weeks in advance and in plain sight of an FBI that vowed to be vigilant to extremist threats.
A dozen FBI affidavits supporting charges against the more than 200 defendants show rioters engaged in advance planning on social media sites. The planning included training, casing sites, identifying commanders on scene, and requests for donations of cash, as well as combat and communication gear.
More than a half dozen of the suspects are now charged with conspiracy to commit violence for actions predating the Jan. 6 riots. The early actions identified in court documents date back to November, with planning and rhetoric accelerating after Christmas, court records show.
That growing body of evidence raises questions about whether the FBI and other security agencies acted proactively enough to thwart the violence. It also undercuts the House Democrats’ impeachment claim — supported by 10 Republicans — that Trump’s speech spontaneously incited the riots, legal experts told Just the News.
“I would hope that those 10 Republicans and hopefully even some Democrats would say as we now look at the timelines that the media, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and all are reporting on, here’s exactly it, the facts,” said Kenneth Starr, the former federal appeals judge, solicitor general and Whitewater independent counsel.
“[House lawmakers] made a huge, colossal blunder,” said Starr, who was a member of the defense team for Trump’s first Senate impeachment trial. “So walk back, and apologize to the former president, apologize to the American people that I never should have voted in favor of this without the benefit of all the facts. I rushed to judgment.”
Trump’s lawyers are planning to argue the president’s speech did not in fact incite violence but rather called for peaceful protest and was protected by the First Amendment. They also are preparing a video montage showing Democrats making comments encouraging violence dating to last summer’s BLM protests.
George Washington University legal scholar Jonathan Turley, a Democrat who has defended Trump on impeachment issues, argued in a column published Sunday in The Hill newspaper that the impeachment claims do not meet the legal standard of incitement.
“It is so much easier to claim easy prosecutions than to prosecute such made-for-television charges,” Turley wrote. “I do not fault these experts for speculating about such a case, but many claim that prosecution would be relatively simple. That is just not true.
“The problem is free speech. The remarks of Trump last month would not satisfy the test in [landmark free speech case Brandenburg v. Ohio] when the Supreme Court said ‘advocacy of the use of force or of law violation’ is protected unless it is imminent. Trump did not call for use of force. He told supporters to go ‘peacefully’ and to ‘cheer on’ his allies in Congress.”
Beyond the First Amendment, the FBI’s investigation provides…
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