The insurrection is ongoing. Further violence is ahead

Virginia "bible study" secret militia, complete with homemade bombs, reveals the extent of the terrorist threat

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For a while now I’ve said we should stop calling January 6th a “riot” because it was actually, according to the FBI director Christopher Wray, a planned and coordinated “domestic terrorist attack.” Calling it a “riot” downplays it as something random or spontaneous.

And referring to it as “the January 6th insurrection” raises another problem: It presupposes that the event was a one-off, that there was an attempted insurrection, via a planned violent attack among some who entered the Capitol, and that it was quelled.

But the insurrection is ongoing.

Republicans keep trying to change the subject to everything from “critical race theory” to a “border crisis.” Democrats can’t fall for these diversions and need to keep the focus squarely on this dangerous threat to our democracy. And, as I wrote a few weeks ago, Democrats can make big gains, and save democracy, if they brand the GOP as “anti-police,” “anti-family” and “anti-freedom.” Donald Trump, ironically, is helping Democrats in this regard, shining a light on the fascist threat and forcing Republicans to back him even as some try to sweep it all under the rug.

But the stories keep surfacing that give Democrats the opportunity to loudly sound the alarm. This week we learned how one of the insurrectionists who was inside the Capitol on January 6th unknowingly connected with an undercover FBI agent whom he believed was a fellow insurrectionist.

The agent infiltrated a militia group that the man, Fi Duong, had created after January 6th. Duong used a bible study group as the cover for the plotting terrorists:

Duong told the FBI agent that his group tried to be "cloak and dagger" and wanted to "build resistances," according to court records. The agent then attended what the group members called a "Bible study" meeting at an Alexandria, Virginia, house in February, where the group members discussed the Bible and secession, weaponry and combat training, and using methods to make their communications private, according to court records.

The Washington Post @washingtonpost

Virginia “Bible study” group was cover for violent militia plans, prosecutors say

wapo.stVirginia ‘Bible study’ group was cover for violent militia plans, prosecutors sayAt the time of his arrest, defendant Fi Duong had several guns, including an AK-47, and the material to make 50 molotov cocktails, court documents say.

There’s a lot to be learned from the government documents in the case — and a lot to be very worried about. Duong, who entered the Capitol using a crow bar and was shouting, “We’re coming for you Nancy!,” told the agent that he’d dressed in all black to look like an Antifa activist — clearly so that Trump loyalists could promote the false conspiracy they’ve spread far and wide that the January 6th assault was actually instigated by leftists.

Duong appeared in court last Friday. According to the court record, when he was arrested he was in the possession of several guns, including an AK-47, and had the components to make 50 homemade bombs. Duong told the agent he was preparing for a “revolution” and his group reportedly included at least one member of the extremist Three Percenters (some of whose leaders have been charged in the January 6th Capitol assault). One of the violent actions discussed was to blow up prisons and free some of those who entered the Capitol on January 6th who were arrested and are being held:

He talked about surveilling the Capitol building, and in February an associate took some footage of it, according to prosecutors. He also talked about freeing alleged rioters who were behind bars, saying, according to the government, “I see that as an opportunity. With every great revolution, you go to the prisons and you break them out.”

This alarming case raises the question of how many other plots are right now being planned by other groups connected to or formed after January 6th but which the FBI hasn’t infiltrated? It may be one reason why the Department of Homeland Security in recent weeks warned of violence by domestic terrorists this summer connected to the conspiracy that Trump will be reinstated as president next month.

The investigation of January 6th by a select committee in the House needs to in fact look at this as an ongoing insurrection — and one that is, at best, ignored by Republicans, and, at worst, promoted by them.

This week the Georgia QAnon cultist in the House, Marjorie Taylor Greene, grotesquely compared Ashli Babbitt, who was shot in the Capitol on January 6th after trying to crawl through the broken glass of a door to get to legislators — and who was warned against proceeding further — to George Floyd. Greene, in the Newsmax, interview, also called Babbitt a “passionate patriot” with whom she would have been “friends.”

Greene, a racist and bigot who simply cannot contain herself, is parroting Trump’s statements recently, in which he’s recklessly promoting Babbitt — a terrorist — as a martyr and a hero of his cause, the Big Lie. Greene wasn’t admonished for this outrageous comment by GOP Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who is right now mulling who to suggest among Republicans in the House to be on the select committee Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced to investigate January 6th.

How could Democrats have anyone on the select committee suggested by a party leader who refuses to condemn the promotion within his party of an insurrectionist as a “passionate patriot”?

McCarthy had refused to support a bipartisan commission that would have given Republicans equal representation and equal power in choosing members. Now he will have “input” on five Republican members of the select committee, and Pelosi can veto any or all of them. GOP leaders shot themselves in the foot by not backing the commission, where they’d have more power to push their lies.

Now McCarthy, who at first threatened ramifications for any Republican who joined the select committee, reportedly wants to name five Trump loyalists, with names like Jim Jordan and Elise Stefanik being floated — and in all likelihood this was an order from Trump. It’s an example of how, even when they want to try to ignore his actions, Trump brings GOP leaders right back into defending those actions.

Trump is leading the GOP, and he’s also leading an ongoing insurrection and domestic terrorist movement — and that makes the GOP complicit in promoting that terrorist movement. The Virginia ‘bible study” terrorist cell may be just the beginning of further dangerous and deadly realities ahead.