March 5, 2021

On Thursday afternoon news broke that investigators are looking into communcations between members of Congress and rioters from the January 6th insurrection - leading up the riot and during the riot itself. Jake Tapper reported:

TAPPER: Here's some breaking news for you now on the politics lead. Investigators are looking into communications between U.S. lawmakers and members of the pro-Trump insurrectionist mob who stormed the Capitol on January 6th, that's according to a U.S. official who tells Evan Perez that investigators could examine whether lawmakers wittingly or unwittingly helped the insurrectionists. Let's get right to Evan Perez breaking this news for us. This official told you there are indications that some of these rioters had contact with lawmakers around that date?

PEREZ: Yeah, Jake. This is one of the big questions that has been frankly, overhanging this entire investigation which is were lawmakers who were inside the Capitol, some of them who were aiding -- who were propelling The Big Lie that got some of these people from the rally to try to interrupt what Congress was trying to do, certify the victory of Joe Biden, whether any of them knew what was about to happen and so what we understand investigators are doing is, they've gone through some of these subjects of the investigation, and the rioters and the insurrectionists and in looking through their devices they have found some indications that they were in touch.

Some of them were in touch with members of Congress in the days around January 6th, the insurrection. The question then is what is that about? There's no indication at this point that members of Congress are actually under active investigation. We don't know exactly what these communications show. We don't know whether they're just people -- there's indication and some of them claim that they were acting as security for lawmakers who were involved in attending the rally at the Ellipse. There are a lot of open questions and a lot of smoke, so to speak according to one official I talked to, but it does get to the bigger question of whether lawmakers were all involved and when prosecutors and the FBI will get around to try to unearth what happened there.

During a hearing earlier this week with FBI Director, Christopher Wray, Senator Mike Lee and Senator Josh Hawley were very concerned about data that the FBI may have collected from Capitol rioters. Could he be worried? Also, Rep Boebert gave tours immediately before the insurrection. Remember Rep Madison Cawthron, who actually spoke at Trump's rally? How involved was he, really?

I suspect many Republicans in Congress are going to be very very worried as more details come out. GOOD.

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