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Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse
- Thread starter CdnGuy
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IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — A white military veteran shot and wounded a 15-year-old girl when he fired his gun into a car carrying four Black teenagers during a tense confrontation at a Trump rally near the Iowa Capitol last month.
Michael McKinney, 25, is charged with attempted murder in the Dec. 6 shooting in Des Moines. McKinney, who was heavily armed and wearing body armor, told police he fired the shot in self-defense. A resident of tiny St. Charles, Iowa, McKinney has posted on Facebook in support of the far-right Proud Boys and against Black Lives Matter.
In a news release detailing McKinney’s arrest, the state police described an afternoon shooting at a parking lot and didn't mention the Trump car rally or the race of those involved. A city police spokesman said initial reports indicated the shooting was traffic-related. Division of Criminal Investigation spokesman Mitch Mortvedt said the agency released the immediate facts and circumstances as required.
But a review by The Associated Press shows the shooting was sparked by a belligerent political clash between a large group of white Trump supporters and four unarmed Black girls all aged 16 and under.
The teen driver’s mother said the girls argued with Trump supporters about politics and were subjected to racial slurs. Rallygoers blamed the teens for starting the confrontation, saying they were harassing and threatening the crowd.
The girls’ car ended up surrounded by Trump supporters who were yelling and honking horns before the driver went in reverse and struck a pickup. It’s unclear whether the collision was accidental. McKinney told police he fired at that point to protect himself.
The Capitol Police said Friday that it had opened an investigation into whether members of Congress inappropriately gave visitors access to the Capitol ahead of the storming of the building last week, after several lawmakers raised concerns that their own colleagues might have allowed members of a pro-Trump mob inside in the days leading up to the assault.
The inquiry came to light as Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that she had named Russel L. Honoré, a retired Army lieutenant general, to lead a security review of the Capitol in the wake of the riot, in which a throng of President Trump’s supporters rampaged through the building in a deadly security failure that put the lives of lawmakers and the vice president at risk.
Pledging accountability for those behind the Jan. 6 siege, Ms. Pelosi warned that if any Republican members of the House had aided the rioters as they sought to advance Mr. Trump’s effort to overturn the election results, they would be punished. She also said that she had spoken with the secretary of the Army and the Secret Service director to ensure that the necessary resources were in place to prevent a repeat at President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr’s inauguration next week.
“In order to serve here together, we must trust that people have respect for their oath of office, respect for this institution,” she said. “If in fact it is found that members of Congress were accomplices to this insurrection — if they aided and abetted the crimes — there may have to be action taken beyond the Congress in terms of prosecution for that.”
Led by Representative Mikie Sherrill, a New Jersey Democrat and former Navy pilot, more than 30 lawmakers called on Wednesday for an investigation into visitors’ access to the Capitol on the day before the riot.
In a letter to the acting House and Senate sergeants-at-arms and the Capitol Police, the lawmakers, many of whom served in the military and said they were trained to “recognize suspicious activity,” demanded answers about what they described as an “extremely high number of outside groups” let into the Capitol on Jan. 5 at a time when most tours were restricted because of the coronavirus pandemic.
While his boss approaches an infamous exit, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been busily and noisily scorching the earth behind them.
Apart from a brief, boilerplate condemnation of the violence on Capitol Hill last week, Mr. Pompeo has shown little remorse or distress over it, and certainly no recognition that President Trump had a central role in inciting the mob.
But Mr. Pompeo has not been idle. Over the past week, he unleashed a series of actions whose only real purpose appears to be to make life as difficult as possible for his successor at the State Department. He put Cuba back on the list of state sponsors of terrorism, he plans to designate the Houthi rebels in Yemen as a foreign terrorist organization, he eased restrictions on contacts between American diplomats and Taiwan officials and he claimed that Iran is a “home base” for Al Qaeda.
All the while, Mr. Pompeo has been hyperactive on social media, issuing scores of tweets since the start of the year touting the administration’s “accomplishments” abroad. Most of these are regarded by American allies and many State Department professionals as terrible, like withdrawing from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the Paris agreement on climate change and the Iran nuclear deal.
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