WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Judge Tanya Chutkan sentenced Robert Scott Palmer to the longest sentence for any person convicted for their role in the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol.

Palmer was given a 63-month sentence to be served in federal prison. He received an additional 36 months of supervised release and was ordered to pay $2,000 in restitution. Judge Chutkan said she would recommend that Palmer be housed in a federal prison close to his home in Clearwater but could not guarantee that would happen.

Palmer pleaded guilty to his role in the attack on the Capitol on 1/6. The government said Palmer threw a wooden plank at officers, sprayed the contents of a fire extinguisher at the officers before then throwing the extinguishers. He then searched for more materials to assault police with including throwing a fire extinguisher a second time.

According to the sentencing memorandum, Palmer was eventually pepper sprayed by law enforcement, but that didn’t stop him. The government said Palmer assaulted another group of officers with a 4–5-foot pole that he threw like a spear at the officers. He was then shot by officers with a non-lethal bullet that hit him in the abdomen.

The government said Palmer admitted in interviews that his goal was to subvert a democratic election and that he hoped for military intervention to overturn the election to keep then-President Donald Trump in power.

The judge was critical of Palmer’s actions on 1/6 and said that the U.S. Marshals, Capitol Police, and others who fought to keep the insurrectionists out of the Capitol and away from the elected leaders were “the real patriots that day.”

“The men and women who kept democracy functioning that day and saved lives, they deserve the thanks of this nation,” Judge Chutkan said as she pronounced the sentence. “They didn’t deserve to have fire extinguishers thrown at them.”

When pronouncing the sentence, Chutkan said part of the reason for her sentence was, “It has to be made clear that trying to violently overthrow the government, trying to stop the peaceful transfer of power, and assaulting law enforcement officers in that effort is going to be met with absolutely certain punishment.”

This story was originally published by Tim Kephart at abcactionnews.com.

CINCINNATI —

As the nation continues to grapple with the deadly attack on the Capitol, Congress continues to differ on where the country goes from here.

"So you think of Dec. 7, 1941," Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown said in a Zoom call Friday. "I think we will think about Jan. 6, 2021, is a dark day for our country."

Brown says those responsible for Wednesday's deadly attack on the Capitol should be held accountable. He says that includes President Donald Trump. Brown supports invoking the 25th Amendment and impeachment if needed.

"I think most of us would prefer the vice president of the cabinet would do it quickly like that I think it would be better for the country. It would look less partisan and less divided," Brown said.

Ohio Republican Congressman Brad Wenstrup disagrees.

"I just don't see the purpose in it at this point," Wenstrup said when asked by WLWT if he supports invoking the 25th Amendment. "I don't see what they're going to accomplish. What are you going to do? You're going to have Mike Pence be the president for two weeks? I think we'll be OK."

Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman remains focused on the security problems. On Friday, Sen. Portman tweeted out this statement along with a bipartisan group of senators.

Their announcement discussing the rioters by saying "...their intention to hold hearings and conduct joint oversight of security failures after a criminal mob stormed the Capitol and interrupted the formal county of the Electoral College votes, attempting to subvert American Democracy."

Ohio Democratic Congressman Tim Ryan says investigations have begun to find those responsible as well as how to secure Inauguration Day on Jan. 20. He says he was told law enforcement was prepared for Jan. 6.

"There was an absolute epic fail on preparation, there was an absolute epic fail on intelligence," Ryan said in a Zoom call on Friday.

Ryan says now is not a time to "sugar coat things."

"I wish that Vice President Pence would have the guts to start to organize what's happening and what needs to happen within the context of the cabinet," Ryan said. "It sounds like he's not and history will remember him if he doesn't."

Senate is in recess

WARNING: This live video may contain violent images and strong or coarse language. Viewer discretion is advised.

1:40 p.m.

Senator Majority Leader Chuck Schumer calls for a 15 minute recess. The trial will resume shortly.

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1:30 p.m.

House Democrats prosecuting Donald Trump's impeachment trial are methodically tracing his monthslong effort to undermine his supporters’ faith in the election results. They say they will show he is responsible for last month’s deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol.

During arguments Wednesday, impeachment managers showed a flurry of excerpts from Trump speeches in which the then-president told supporters the only way he could lose is if the election results were rigged.

The effort to challenge the results continued after the election, with Trump telling his supporters the election had been stolen and that they shouldn’t accept the results.

Impeachment managers also pushed back at defense team arguments that Trump’s words were protected by the First Amendment. They said the case was not about protected political speech but rather about Trump’s incitement of violence.

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1 p.m.

One of the House impeachment managers on Wednesday showed videos, some filmed by the Capitol rioters themselves, who said they were heeding a call from former President Donald Trump when they descended upon the complex that January day.

One rioter said he was "invited by the president of the United States." Others later told investigators and participated in interviews where they said that they were motivated by Trump’s words at a rally before the storming occurred.

House impeachment manager Rep. Joe Neguse also showed photos of samples from some of the 200 criminal cases stemming from the insurrection, specifically quoting people who said they were inspired by Trump to storm the Capitol.

Trump knew very well what would happen when he took to the microphone at the outdoor White House rally that day, almost to the hour that Congress gaveled in to certify Biden’s win, said Neguse.

“This was not just a speech,” he said.

Trump’s supporters were prepped and armed, ready to descend on the Capitol, Neguse said. “When they heard his speech, they understood his words.”

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12:30 p.m.

In his opening argument for the conviction of former President Donald Trump, lead impeachment manager Rep. Jaime Raskin called Trump the "inciter-in-chief," placing blame on the former president for the deadly Capitol riot.

"[This trial will show that Donald Trump surrendered his role as commander-in-chief and became the inciter-in-chief of a dangerous insurrection, and this was as one of our colleagues put it so cogently on Jan. 6 itself, the greatest betrayal of the presidential oath in the history of the United States," Raskin said.

Raskin also played videos from Trump's now-suspended Twitter account, where Trump called the rioters "very special."

"He watched it on TV like a reality show. He reveled in it," Raskin added. "He did nothing to help us as commander-in-chief. Instead, he served as the inciter-in-chief sending tweets that only further incited the rampaging mob."

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Noon

Opening arguments in the second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump are underway. House impeachment managers will start first, making their case for the former president's conviction. Senate leaders reached an agreement Monday, giving the impeachment managers and Trump's lawyers up to 16 hours each to present their cases and creating the option for a debate and vote to call witnesses if the House impeachment managers seek it.

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Original story below

Opening arguments will begin in Donald Trump's impeachment trial after an emotional first day ended with the Senate voting to hear the case for convicting the former president of inciting the riot at the U.S. Capitol even though he is no longer in office.

On Wednesday, House Democrats prosecuting the case and the former president’s attorneys will lay out their opposing arguments before the senators, who are serving as jurors. The defense lost the vote seeking to halt the trial on constitutional grounds, 56-44, leaving Trump fuming over his lawyers' performance and allies questioning the defense strategy. Some called for yet another shakeup to his legal team.

House prosecutors on Tuesday wrenched senators and the nation back to the deadly attack on Congress, showing a graphic video of the Jan. 6 mob violence that stunned the the world as hundreds of rioters ransacked the building to try to stop the certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s victory. Five people died.

That detailed and emotional presentation by Democrats was followed by meandering and occasionally confrontational arguments from the Trump team, which insisted that his remarks were protected by the First Amendment and asserted that he cannot be convicted as a former president. Even Trump’s backers in the Senate winced, several saying his lawyers were not helpful to his case.

Senators, many of whom fled for safety themselves the day of the attack, watched and listened, unable to avoid the jarring video of Trump supporters battling past police to storm the halls, Trump flags waving. More video is expected Wednesday, including some that hasn't been seen before.

The heavy emotional weight of the trial punctuates Trump’s enduring legacy as the first president to face impeachment trial after leaving office and the first to be twice impeached. While many minds are made up, the senators will face their own moment to decide whether to convict or acquit Trump of the sole charge of “incitement of insurrection.”

“That’s a high crime and misdemeanor,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., declared in opening remarks. “If that’s not an impeachable offense, then there’s no such thing.”

Trump’s lawyers insist he is not guilty, his fiery words just figures of speech.

Security remained extremely tight at the Capitol, a changed place after the attack, fenced off with razor wire and with armed National Guard troops on patrol. The nine House managers walked across the shuttered building to prosecute the case before the Senate.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden would not be watching the trial of his predecessor.

“Joe Biden is the president, he’s not a pundit, he’s not going to opine on back and forth arguments,” she said.

With senators sworn to deliver impartial justice, the trial started with the Democratic House managers' gripping recollections, as they described police officers maimed in the chaos and rioters parading in the very chamber where the trial was being held.

Trump’s team countered that the Constitution doesn’t allow impeachment at this late date. Though the trial now proceeds, that’s a legal issue that could resonate with Republicans eager to acquit Trump without being seen as condoning his behavior.

Lead defense lawyer Bruce Castor said he shifted his planned approach after hearing the prosecutors’ opening and instead spoke conversationally to the senators, saying Trump’s team would do nothing but denounce the “repugnant” attack and “in the strongest possible way denounce the rioters.” He appealed to the senators as “patriots first,” and encouraged them to be “cool headed” as they assess the arguments.

Trump attorney David Schoen turned the trial toward starkly partisan tones, saying the Democrats were fueled by a “base hatred” of the former president.

The early defense struggles also underscored the uphill battle that Trump’s lawyers face in defending conduct that preceded an insurrection that senators themselves personally experienced. Though they will almost certainly win Trump’s acquittal — by virtue of the composition of the Senate — they nonetheless face a challenge of defanging the emotion from a trial centered on events that remain raw and visceral, even for Republicans.

Republicans made it clear that they were unhappy with Trump’s defense, many of them saying they didn’t understand where it was going — particularly Castor’s opening. Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, who voted with Democrats to move forward with the trial, said that Trump’s team did a “terrible job.” Maine Sen. Susan Collins, who also voted with Democrats, said she was “perplexed.” Sen. Lisa Murkowki of Alaska said it was a “missed opportunity” for the defense.

While the 56-44 vote affirmed the Senate’s authority under the Constitution to decide the case even after the president had left office, the total was still far from the two-thirds threshold of 67 votes that would be needed for conviction.

The six Republicans who joined with Democrats to pursue the trial was one more than on a similar vote last week. Cassidy joined Collins, Murkowski, Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.

At one pivotal point, Raskin told his personal story of bringing his family to the Capitol that day to witness the certification of the Electoral College vote, only to have his daughter and son-in-law hiding in an office, fearing for their lives.

“Senators, this cannot be our future,” Raskin said through tears. “This cannot be the future of America.”

The House prosecutors had argued there is no “January exception” for a president to avoid impeachment on his way out the door. Rep. Joe Neguse, D-Colo., referred to the corruption case of William Belknap, a war secretary in the Grant administration, who was impeached, tried and ultimately acquitted by the Senate after leaving office.

If Congress stands by, “it would invite future presidents to use their power without any fear of accountability," he said.

It appears unlikely that the House prosecutors will call witnesses, and Trump has declined a request to testify.

The trial is expected to continue into the weekend.

Trump's second impeachment trial is expected to diverge from the lengthy, complicated affair of a year ago. In that case, Trump was charged with having privately pressured Ukraine to dig up dirt on Biden, then a Democratic rival for the presidency.

This time, Trump's “stop the steal” rally rhetoric and the storming of the Capitol played out for the world to see.

The Democratic-led House impeached the president swiftly, one week after the attack. Of the five who died, one was a woman shot by police inside the building and another a police officer who died the next day of his injuries.

CNN contributed to this report.

Donald Trump’s impeachment lawyers accused Democrats of waging a campaign of “hatred” against the former president as they sped through their defense of his actions and fiery words before the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, hurtling the Senate toward a final vote in his historic trial.

The defense team vigorously denied on Friday that Trump had incited the deadly riot and said his encouragement of followers to “fight like hell” at a rally that preceded it was routine political speech. They played dozens of out-of-context clips showing Democrats, some of them senators now serving as jurors, also telling supporters to “fight," aiming to establish a parallel with Trump's overheated rhetoric.

“This is ordinarily political rhetoric that is virtually indistinguishable from the language that has been used by people across the political spectrum for hundreds of years," declared Trump lawyer Michael van der Veen. "Countless politicians have spoken of fighting for our principles.”

But the presentation blurred the difference between general encouragement to battle for causes and Trump’s fight against officially accepted national election results. The defeated president was telling his supporters to fight on after every state had verified its results, after the Electoral College had affirmed them and after nearly every election lawsuit filed by Trump and his allies had been rejected in court.

The case is speeding toward a vote and likely acquittal, perhaps as soon as Saturday, with the Senate evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans and a two-thirds majority required for conviction. Trump's lawyers made an abbreviated presentation that used less than three of their allotted 16 hours.

Their quick pivot to the Democrats’ own words deflected from the central question of the trial — whether Trump incited the assault on the Capitol — and instead aimed to place impeachment managers and Trump adversaries on the defensive.

His lawyers contended he was merely telling his rally crowd to support primary challenges against his adversaries and to press for sweeping election reform.

After a two-day effort by Democrats to sync up Trump's words to the violence that followed, including through raw and emotive video footage, defense lawyers suggested that Democrats have typically engaged in the same overheated rhetoric as Trump.

But in trying to draw that equivalency, the defenders minimized Trump's months-long efforts to undermine the election results and his urging of followers to do the same. Democrats say that long campaign, rooted in a “big lie,” laid the groundwork for the mob that assembled outside the Capitol and stormed inside. Five people died.

“And so they came, draped in Trump’s flag, and used our flag, the American flag, to batter and to bludgeon," Rep. Madeleine Dean, one of the impeachment managers, said Thursday as she choked back emotion.

On Friday, as defense lawyers repeated their own videos over and over, some Democrats chuckled and whispered among themselves as many of their faces flashed on the screen. Some passed notes. Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal threw up his hands, apparently amused, when his face appeared. Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar rolled her eyes. Most Republicans watched intently.

During a break, some joked about the videos and others said they were a distraction or a “false equivalence” with Trump's behavior.

“Well, we heard the word ‘fight' a lot,” said Maine Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats.

Colorado Sen. Michael Bennett said it felt like the lawyers were “erecting straw men to then take them down rather than deal with the facts."

“Show me any time that the result was that one of our supporters pulled someone out of the crowd, and then we said, ‘That’s great, good for you,’” said Delaware Sen. Chris Coons.

Trump's defenders told senators that Trump was entitled to dispute the 2020 election results and that his doing so did not amount to inciting the violence. They sought to turn the tables on prosecutors by likening the Democrats' questioning of the legitimacy of Trump's 2016 win to his challenge of his election loss.

The defense team did not dispute the horror of the violence, painstakingly reconstructed by impeachment managers earlier in the week, but said it had been carried out by people who had “hijacked” what was supposed to be a peaceful event and had planned violence before Trump had spoken.

“You can't incite what was going to happen,” he said.

Acknowledging the reality of the January day is meant to blunt the visceral impact of the House Democrats' case and pivot to what Trump's defenders see as the core — and more winnable — issue of the trial: Whether Trump actually incited the riot. The argument is likely to appeal to Republican senators who want to be seen as condemning the violence but without convicting the president.

Anticipating defense efforts to disentangle Trump's rhetoric from the rioters' actions, the impeachment managers spent days trying to fuse them together through a reconstruction of never-been-seen video footage alongside clips of the president's months of urging his supporters to undo the election results.

On Thursday, they described in stark, personal terms the terror they faced that January day — some of it in the very Senate chamber where senators now are sitting as jurors. They used security video of rioters searching menacingly for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence, smashing into the building and engaging in bloody, hand-to-hand combat with police.

Though defense lawyers sought to boil down the case to a single Trump speech, Democrats displayed the many public and explicit instructions he gave his supporters well before the White House rally that unleashed the deadly Capitol attack as Congress was certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s victory. And they used the rioters’ own videos and words from Jan. 6 to try to pin responsibility on Trump. “We were invited here,” said one Capitol invader. “Trump sent us,” said another. “He’ll be happy. We’re fighting for Trump.”

The prosecutors' goal was to cast Trump not as a bystander but rather as the “inciter in chief” who spread election falsehoods, then encouraged supporters to come challenge the results in Washington.

The Democrats also are demanding that he be barred from holding future federal office.

Trump's lawyers say that goal only underscores the “hatred” Democrats feel for Trump. Throughout the trial, they showed clips from Democrats questioning the legitimacy of his presidency and suggesting as early as 2017 that he should be impeached.

“Hatred is at the heart of the house managers’ fruitless attempts to blame Donald Trump for the criminal acts of the rioters — based on double hearsay statements of fringe right-wing groups, based on no real evidence other than rank speculation," van der Veen said.

Trump's lawyers noted that in the same Jan. 6 speech he encouraged the crowd to behave “peacefully,” and they contend that his remarks — and his general distrust of the election results — are all protected under the First Amendment. Democrats strenuously resist that assertion, saying his words weren’t political speech but rather amounted to direct incitement of violence.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday named a second Republican critic of Donald Trump, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, to a special committee investigating the Capitol riot and pledged that the Democratic-majority panel will "get to the truth."

Kinzinger said he "humbly accepted" the appointment even as his party's leadership is boycotting the inquiry.

With the committee set to hold its first meeting, hearing from police officers who battled the rioters, Pelosi said it was imperative to learn what happened on Jan. 6, when insurrectionists disrupted the congressional certification of Joe Biden's presidential victory, and why the violent siege took place. That mission, she said, must be pursued in a bipartisan manner to ensure "such an attack can never happen again."

Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican, will bring "great patriotism to the committee's mission: to find the facts and protect our Democracy," she said in a statement. 

He joins Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, as the two committee's Republicans, both selected by the leader of the opposition party. Kinzinger and Cheney were among the 10 House Republicans to vote for Trump's second impeachment. They were the only two Republicans who voted last month to form the special committee.

"For months, lies and conspiracy theories have been spread, threatening our self-governance," Kinzinger said in a statement. "For months, I have said that the American people deserve transparency and truth on how and why thousands showed up to attack our democracy."

House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy has said the GOP will not participate after Pelosi, D-Calif., refused to accept two of the members he picked.

McCarthy, R-Calif., has said the committee was a "sham process" and withdrew his five members when Pelosi rejected two of them, Reps. Jim Banks of Indiana and Jim Jordan of Ohio. Both voted on Jan. 6 against certifying Biden's election victory over Trump and both are outspoken allies of the former president.

In a statement Sunday, McCarthy said Pelosi's decision to reject his picks and appoint members "who share her preconceived narrative will not yield a serious investigation" and is intended "to satisfy her political objectives."

Kinzinger and Cheney have faulted Trump as a factor in spurring the insurrection with his persistently false claims that the 2020 election was "stolen" due to voting fraud.

In recent weeks, Kinzinger has suggested he would be open to serving on the committee, despite threats from McCarthy that Republicans who accept a spot could be stripped of their regular committee assignments as retaliation for participating. 

"It's clear that Pelosi only wants members on this committee who will stick to her talking points and stick to her narrative. That's why she's picked the group that she's already picked," Banks said on "Fox News Sunday." He said that "anyone that she asks to be on this committee, from this point moving forward, will be stuck to her -- her narrative, to her point of view. There won't be another side."

The House voted in May to create an independent investigation that would have been evenly split between the parties, but Senate Republicans blocked that approach. Pelosi said the new panel was being created only because a bipartisan commission was no longer an option. 

Currently Cheney sits on the committee along with seven Democrats — ensuring they have a quorum to proceed, whether other Republicans participate or not. 

Pelosi expressed confidence that the committee's work will be seen as bipartisan and credible even with McCarthy's effort to boycott the panel. 

"We have to, again, ignore the antics of those who do not want to find the truth," she said. "We will find the truth. That truth will have the confidence of the American people because it will be done patriotically and not in a partisan way."

Seven people died during and after the rioting, including a woman who was shot by police as she tried to break into the House chamber and three other Trump supporters who suffered medical emergencies. Two police officers died by suicide in the days that followed, and a third officer, Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, collapsed and later died after engaging with the protesters. A medical examiner determined he died of natural causes.

WASHINGTON (Video above from WJLA via CNN) —

A U.S. Capitol Police officer who died after a man rammed his car into him and another officer at a barricade was identified as an 18-year veteran of the force.

William "Billy" Evans joined the department in 2003 and was a member of its first responders unit.

President Joe Biden said in a statement that he and his wife were heartbroken to learn of Friday's attack and expressed condolences to Evans' family. He directed flags at the White House to be lowered to half-staff. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi hailed Evans as a "martyr for our democracy." She and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer both spoke Friday with members of Evans' family.

The death of the father of two is the latest moment of sorrow for a department after the loss of Brian Sicknick, who clashed with rioters during the Jan. 6 insurrection and died a day later, and Howard Liebengood, who committed suicide days after that.

"He just always had a smile on his face, helping out," Chris Wystepek told WJLA-TV. He had just commented on his college friend's social media page the day before Evans was killed.

"All of a sudden, next day, it's like, that's it. He's gone," Wystepek said.

Video shows the driver of the crashed car emerging with a knife in his hand and starting to run at the pair of officers, Capitol Police acting Chief Yogananda Pittman told reporters.

Authorities shot the suspect, identified by law enforcement officials as 25-year-old Noah Green. He died at a hospital.

Investigators were digging into his background and examining whether he had any history of mental health problems as they tried to discern a motive. They were working to obtain warrants to access his online accounts.

"Our thoughts and prayer are with the Officer who passed and his family," Larry Cosme, national president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, said in a statement. "He gave his life in dedication to protecting our nation's democracy and should be treated as a national hero. Our prayers also remain with the second officer battling injuries sustained in the attack. We hope for a swift recovery and commend both officers for their courageous actions."