On October 28, 2022, David DePape broke into Democratic Party Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's home. He brutally beat her husband Paul with a hammer when he realized Nancy was not home.
Paul Pelosi is well-known in right-wing circles for profiting off of insider trading information he gets from Nancy, so it is likely he was an intended target as well.
According to DePape's own words, he planned to brutally torture her with the hammer. His presentation of a "neutralized" Pelosi to Congress would then apparently have kicked off another coup.
"The criminal complaint was based on an affidavit by FBI Special Agent Stephanie Minor and states that Mr DePape attacked Mr Pelosi “with intent to retaliate against” the speaker “on account of the performance of official duties”.
“DePape stated that he was going to hold Nancy hostage and talk to her. If Nancy were to tell DePape the ‘truth,’ he would let her go, and if she ‘lied,’ he was going to break ‘her kneecaps’,” the complaint said. “DePape was certain that Nancy would not have told the ‘truth.’ In the course of the interview, DePape articulated he viewed Nancy as the ‘leader of the pack’ of lies told by the Democratic Party.”
The document continues: “DePape also later explained that by breaking Nancy’s kneecaps, she would then have to be wheeled into Congress, which would show other Members of Congress there were consequences to actions. DePape also explained generally that he wanted to use Nancy to lure another individual to DePape.”
In Mr DePape’s backpack, police found “a roll of tape, white rope, one hammer, one pair of rubber and cloth gloves, and a journal”.
The suspect allegedly first made his way into the Democratic leader’s home by breaking through a backdoor before making it all the way to the second floor to confront Mr Pelosi, as Ms Pelosi was still in Washington DC.
“It was a forced entry into the rear door of the home and that he ultimately did make his way upstairs which is where he ultimately confronted Mr Pelosi,” San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said.
The suspect repeatedly shouted “where is Nancy?” when he confronted Mr Pelosi, who was alone at the time of the break-in, according to CBS News.
“When Pelosi told him that Nancy was not there, DePape stated that he would sit and wait. Pelosi stated that his wife would not be home for several days and then DePape reiterated that he would wait. DePape stated he wanted to tie Pelosi up so that DePape could go to sleep as he was tired from having had to carry a backpack to the Pelosi residence,” the complaint said, at which point he began “taking out twist ties from his pocket so that he could restrain Pelosi. Pelosi moved towards another part of the house, but DePape stopped him and together they went back into the bedroom”."
https://www.yahoo.com/video/david-depape-planned-break-nancy-114502872.html
DePape seems like an unhinged nutjob who didn't prepare very well. Now that far-rightists know how easy things are, the next terrorist will probably bring more than a hammer...
Prominent Republican members of Congress, such as Marjorie Taylor Greene (who may be Trump's new Vice President if he's illegally allowed to run again), have constantly said Democrats such as Pelosi should be killed.
Here's a clip of her saying that at a rally in 2020. She also said Pelosi should die in 2019, as well as urged for far-rightists to storm the Capitol in 2019!
Greene stated before being elected to Congress in 2020: "[Pelosi's] a traitor to our country, she's guilty of treason. She took an oath to protect American citizens and uphold our laws and she gives aid and comfort to our enemies who illegally invade our land—that's what treason is." Greene was referring to Pelosi not supporting former President Donald Trump's border wall, according to CNN.
Greene added: "And by our law, representatives and senators can be kicked out and no longer serve in our government, and it's a crime punishable by death is what treason is. Nancy Pelosi is guilty of treason and we want her out of our government."
(Greene's not wrong about the treason part. But she conveniently ignores she and the rest of her party would also be at the gallows alongside Pelosi.)
Greene's violent rhetoric was so extreme that she was removed from her committee seats in Congress in February 2021 precisely because she had political advertisements saying Pelosi should be killed! The Republican Party responded by giving Greene a standing ovation--signalling that they still supported assassinations, just a month after the Insurrection... They've reaffirmed this position again and again, particularly when they declared insurrections and coup attempts were part of "legitimate political discourse."
Is anyone really shocked some far-rightist finally took up the call? And there are millions more waiting for their opportunity to get in on the action.
***
The Pelosi incident is chickens coming home to roost, quite frankly. Pelosi refused to impeach George W. Bush (who even Trump agreed should be impeached), allowing the Republican party to commit increasingly larger crimes and use more extreme rhetoric. Pelosi dragged her feet on impeaching Trump--REFUSING to impeach on the basis of the Mueller Report, despite public indignation against Trump being at its highest! She only decided to impeach him after Trump made his "perfect" phone call the very same day the media suspiciously declared the Mueller Report dead (despite the media having previously spent years hyping it up and telling the public to just keeping waiting for the inevitable moment when Mueller and Congress would pull through for us...)
The Democratic Party (and their friends in the "liberal" media) tried very hard to sweep all Trump's crimes during his first few years in office under the rug, and all it did was enable a coup attempt. Thanks alot.
Even worse than that, Pelosi sought advice about removing Trump from office on the basis of the 14th Amendment (which states politicians involved in insurrections, or who have given aid and comfort to enemies, are unable to hold office)--yet she refused to enforce the Constitution against Trump and the 147 Republicans who attempted to overthrow the government. She knew what the Constitution said, she knew what her duty was, and she made the conscious decision not to do it in order to enable Republicans to get away with their crimes.
And among those 147 treasonous Republicans was Greene.
Once again, Greene spent years encouraging far-rightists to kill Pelosi, and the only consequence that befell her was removal from her committees in Congress. She is still in Congress, despite advocating for terrorism and committing literal treason. Normal people go to jail for far less.
I wonder if Pelosi has finally realized this isn't a game, and that the Constitution needs to be enforced if this nation is to survive...? If ANY of the 147 Republicans who were part of the Green Bay Sweep conspiracy to overthrow the government are sworn in to the 118th Congress on January 3, 2023, then we will know that the country will fall apart.
If a coup attempt (which has been extensively investigated by Congress and resulted in the criminal referral of Trump and some of his co-conspirators!), open planning and boasting about future coup attempts, and an assassination attempt of the 3rd highest ranking Democratic politician are not enough to convince the Democrats to enforce the most basic of laws and the Constitution itself, then nothing will spur the Democrats to action. At this point, if they don't act, they are part of the coup attempt. They will be the left fist positioning us for the right fist to knock America out during the next Republican coup attempt.
And let me make it very clear. The Democrats are not merely passively enabling future Republican crimes, they are actively enabling them. They are not merely playing a secondary role while the Republicans do the dirty work, but they are actually playing the most critical role. They are going out of their way to refuse to indict and arrest Republican coup organizers and the members of Congress who participated in the coup attempt. They're the corrupt cops pulling all the strings to keep their buddies from facing justice. They're the traitorous castle guardsmen opening the gates for the enemy.
They are not merely sweeping the coup attempt and crimes under the rug and helping in the cover up--far worse. They are opening the doors for any and all future crimes (that the Republicans have already been boasting about!) The positions they hold are the few safeguards we have to keep us safe, but they are intentionally sabotaging things.
They have a DUTY EXPLICITLY WRITTEN INTO THE CONSTITUTION to keep the politicians who COMMITTED TREASON out of Congress. By refusing to do that they are even worse than the Republicans who participated in the coup attempt. When the inevitable Republican coup succeeds in the future, it will be because of them. Not merely because they will be setting a precedent that coup attempts are legal, but because they were the only ones who have the legal authority to put them in prison and stop oath-breaking criminals who are Constitutionally banned from serving in Congress from making our laws! FFS...
***
The procedure for the swearing in of members of Congress will involve some of the current members swearing in the new members. In the Senate, the Vice President or President Pro Tempore (Democrats Kamala Harris or Patrick Leahy, respectively) will make newly-elected members swear the oath of office. They will swear "I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same". Senators not up for re-election already swore that oath. Of the 8 Senators who voted to overthrow the government (and who are thereby illegally serving in Congress), domestic enemy of the US John Kennedy was re-elected and will have to swear the oath that he broke again.
In the House of Representatives, the term of office is 2 years and every Representative must be sworn in again at the beginning of each new Congress. By convention, the House elects a new Speaker of the House before the swearing in begins. Then, the Dean of the House (the longest serving Representative--Hal Rogers, a Republican who voted in favor of the Coup Vote and is therefore illegally serving in Congress) swears in the Speaker (presumably a Republican, since they ostensibly gained a majority in the House; and statistically someone who is serving illegally, since a majority of the Republican Party voted in favor of the coup). The Speaker then swears in all other Representatives as a group.
These procedures are a moot point when 147 members of Congress played their part in a seditious plot to overthrow the US government, thereby violating their oaths of office and demonstrating that they are enemies of the United States.
After the electoral votes were officially done being counted at 3:40 AM on January 7th, 2021, the very first thing Congress should have done was expelled all 147 members who had just committed treason, broken their oaths, and were serving in violation of the 14th Amendment. Instead, they decided to ignore the flagrant violation of the oath of office and violation of the 14th Amendment and allowed all 147 of these traitors to serve their entire term in office... So, while Republicans will technically (illegally) oversee the swearing in of new House members on January 3rd, 2023, the fact that the 139 members of the House who participated in the seditious plot to overthrow the government of the United States were allowed to continue serving in Congress in flagrant violation of US law and the US Constitution falls squarely on Pelosi and Democratic Party leadership.
Once again, regardless of who is in charge of the bureaucratic process in January 2023, we can confidently say that if, and when, a single Republican who participated in the coup attempt is sworn in to either branch of Congress for the 118th Congress, the highest levels of Democratic leadership are indisputably part of the coup. No ifs, ands, or buts.
No more. People have been sentenced to life in prison for stealing a few dollars or having a tiny amount of a plant. Yet TREASON receives no legal consequences? Yet the plain text of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution will not be enforced against a coup attempt which involved HUNDREDS of politicians at the federal, state, and local levels of government?!?!
At that point, what's the point in having laws or a Constitution?
The Democratic Party's refusal to act is not just a small oversight. It's a critical action in setting the stage for the next coup attempt. They are actively helping Republicans with their plans to overthrow the government. Both parties are openly treasonous at this stage.
***
The death of the United States will likely be a prolonged rot instead of a powder keg, and we cannot ever make a smooth recovery if the most clear and basic elements of the Constitution aren't enforced against both the party which attempted a well-organized coup and the party which willingly covered it up and is helping pave the way for the next coup attempt.
As predicted hundreds of years ago, our death will come from within. And it will be the Democrats who have dealt the death blow, paving the way for Republicans to then defile the corpse.
"We find ourselves in the peaceful possession of the fairest portion of the earth, as regards extent of territory, fertility of soil, and salubrity of climate. We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us.
[...]
At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? -- Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! -- All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.
At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide." -Abraham Lincoln (1838)
***
People's attention spans are short these days and we expect major events to happen at the drop of a hat. The US didn't become an apocalypse movie on January 7th, 2021, and it won't on January 4th, 2023. Does that mean we are "normal", that there isn't a terminal cancer killing our nation?
Let's look at history.
Thomas Jefferson predicted the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the issue of slavery would rip the country apart. This escalated to the Nullification Crisis from 1828-1832. This escalated to a series of failed compromises in the 1840s and 1850s over the expansion of slavery. This escalated to Bleeding Kansas (a full-on civil war within the state of Kansas) from 1854-1859. This escalated to secession and the nation-wide Civil War from 1860-1865.
The end of the Civil War led to Reconstruction to ensure that we could finally get on the path towards national healing, and the 14th Amendment to ensure that treasonous individuals would never again hold power in America.
Spoiler alert, Reconstruction was an utter failure because it was not ruthlessly enforced. Section 3 of the 14th Amendment may as well never have been written, since no one cared about it back then and certainly no one in the government cares about it today.
What did those failures lead to? To the KKK and Jim Crow within decades of the Civil War's end. To a massive revival of the KKK in the 1920s and literal air attacks against "black" Americans. To another rise of the KKK throughout the 1950s-60s during the Civil Rights era, and all the bloody church bombings, lynchings, beatings, and assassinations...
It's led to white supremacists like Dylann Roof conducting mass murders just a few years ago. It's led to far-rightists besieging the Capitol and formulating plans to kill politicians--all while carrying Confederate flags. It's led to the Texas state Republican Party to openly advocate for secession in their party platform!
It's led to Republicans boasting about their coup plans for the upcoming elections in public because they think no one is going to stop them. ...And based not only on current attitudes, but also recent US history over the past 50+ years, they are likely correct.
It took 40 years after the Missouri Compromise for the crisis of slavery to escalate into all-out civil war. It's been 200 years and the struggle for the heart of America is not over yet.
It's been 50 years since the government decided to just ignore Nixon's crimes. This led to politicians and political parties committing bigger and bigger crimes until it culminated in a literal coup attempt.
How much will the cancer grow in the next 50 years? Do you think someone alive in 1820 could have ever imagined the carnage of the 1860s? Do you think someone watching the Watergate investigations on TV would have ever imagined they would watch a coup attempt with insurrectionists chanting about murdering the Vice President 50 years later? Do you think they would have imagined that a Republican Party who turned on Nixon for something as "minor" as a little break-in would eventually declare insurrections and coup attempts (where their own Vice President's life was threatened, no less) as "legitimate political discourse"?
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. These events in American history are a small taste of what is to come if the Democratic Party is fully dedicated to helping the Republicans commit their next coup. We may not end up in a Yugoslav-civil-war-style mass ethnic cleansing or Soviet-style totalitarianism immediately, but we will descend further and further into hell each passing year until our nation is unrecognizable.
It will get much, much worse.
***
Already--enabled by the Democratic Party's consistent refusal to enforce the most basic laws--far-right violence has been increasing. Unfortunately, it seems all but certain that it will continue to increase.
Already armed groups of rightists have been monitoring ballot box drop offs and have been making lists and attempting to intimidate people who have political signs in their yards. Hell, even Elon Musk (who recently acquired Twitter), started pushing conspiracies about the Pelosi assassination attempt just days after it happened. (...If we thought social media propaganda was bad during the past few elections, it will get much, much worse.)
During January 6th, rightists had planned insurrections at state capitols throughout the nation. Although they lacked the manpower for those plans to successfully go through, they had previously come close to executing a coup attempt against the Michigan state government and should not be underestimated.
A year ago, one of Charlie Kirk's fans asked him point-blank when they "get to use the guns" on Democrats. Kirk pretended to be shocked at the time, but now he is now praising DePape. The far-right violence will continue to escalate.
As we speak, far-rightist terrorists have commenced attacks on the power grid in multiple states. What's next, and why is the so-called Justice Department not taking far-right terrorism (i.e. the fact that a majority of Republican politicians have openly embraced terrorism for years) seriously?
"That event inspired protests involving armed individuals clad in military gear and the participation of groups such as Moore County Citizens for Freedom, whose director, former U.S. Army psychological operations officer Emily Grace Rainey, was questioned by the Moore County Sheriff's Office after the attack.
Rainey, who was implicated in the January 6, 2021 storming of the Capitol by pro-President Donald Trump crowds seeking to overturn the presidential election, attributed the substation shootings to "God," whom she said was "chastising Moore County" over the drag show.
Far-right chatter also drew a connection between the attacks and the drag show, which was ultimately held in spite of its detractors. One neo-Nazi Telegram post laden with slurs against the LGBT+ community and shared with Newsweek by the SITE Intelligence Group celebrated the "magnificent act of sabotage" as a "beautiful escalation" in a broader culture war.
Another neo-Nazi publication warned that "these attacks will only continue" unless such events are not held. A number of posts on message board 4Chan described specific tactics to cause further damage to the power grid, and others proposed conducting similar actions in larger cities such as New York and Washington, D.C. because they "are not majority white.""
https://www.newsweek.com/neo-nazis-say-attack-leaving-40000-americans-dark-only-beginning-1765179
The danger to America will not go away until every last one of the Republican politicians who attempted to overthrow the government and promote terrorism are punished for their crimes. The danger to America will not go away as long as the most basic elements of the Constitution are not enforced.
In order to prepare for the worst case scenario, all left-wing and non-treasonous Americans MUST arm ourselves and prepare to defend our communities against terrorists.
The danger will not go away. If even the most powerful politicians are not safe, why would we delude ourselves into thinking we are? We certainly won't be safe if the Democrats have already willingly opened the flood gates for the treasonous Republicans to be sworn in to Congress in violation of one of the clearest passages of the Constitution. At that point, it will be confirmed that both major political parties are actively working to kill America and that both support the Republican coup plans.
We MUST (legally) arm ourselves and prepare to defend our communities against these terrorists. If we wait, it will be too late.
