News Roundup

Published for NC Criminal Law on January 08, 2021.

Readers no doubt already are aware of the criminal law news of this sad week in America where President Donald Trump is being blamed for inciting extremist political supporters to engage in a violent siege on the United States Capitol.  One person, Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt, was shot dead by police as she and other rioters attempted to breach a barricaded door in the Capitol.  The deadly force used to repel Babbitt was remarkable in its singularity – throngs of rioters beset the Capitol and met little resistance, with video footage showing some police officers moving barriers, standing aside, and even posing for selfies in the midst of what Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell later called a “failed insurrection.”  Keep reading for more news. Capitol Attack.  The shocking attack on the Capitol, and the response to it, in many ways are a crystallization of difficult problems that have strained our country in recent years – radicalization rooted in online conspiracy theories, disparate policing based on race, and inability to agree on common facts. News reports suggest that Ashli Babbitt, who served in the Air Force for 14 years, was actively involved in the online conspiracy theory QAnon.  As the Atlantic recently explained, QAnon theorists believe, based on cryptic anonymous internet posts from a supposed government intelligence insider, that Donald Trump is heroically thwarting an international ring of pedophiles comprised of global elites.  The Pizzagate conspiracy theory that caused a North Carolina man, Edgar M. Welch of Salisbury, to storm a [...]