Storming of the US Capitol (Jan, 2021)

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    ‘The Insurrectionist Next Door’ Review: Getting Personal

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    In her latest film, the documentarian Alexandra Pelosi has disarming chats with people who participated in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.In the compulsively watchable “The Insurrectionist Next Door,” Alexandra Pelosi visits rank-and-file people arrested because of their roles in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. And then, instead of condemning, she asks them about themselves. Her brisk emotional portraits of Americans are disarming, unpredictable, funny, sad, and, yes, at times enraging.Palming her own camera, Pelosi fires away why’s and what’s-your-deal’s to her polite subjects: a genial former wrestler; a military man who shares a love of wine with his husband; a family guy with a “Proud Boy” forehead tattoo and a rabble-rousing hit rap song; and a practitioner of parkour who apparently learned about some kind of war in 1776 from a Trump speech.Some joined the mob out of anger or boredom; others plead mass hysteria or even lovesick depression. (Jan. 6 was also a popular family road trip.) Pelosi has made films about the Tea Party and wealthy donors, and her barroom directness feels sincere, while also being canny. She even asks someone about the targeting of her mother, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, on Jan. 6, when the filmmaker too was in the Capitol.The terrifying attacks are not excused or minimized, and Pelosi acknowledges that these “normies” were very useful for the goals of militant organizations. She also presses the convicted on their blind devotion to President Trump. Yet it’s possible to feel despair despite the bluff banter: Yes, but now what?In the end, as a document, it’s undeniable: The unvarnished human detail gives the film a life of its own that escapes any particular polemic or hope.The Insurrectionist Next DoorNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 15 minutes. Watch on Max. More

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      Jay Johnston, ‘Bob’s Burgers’ Actor, Is Arrested on Jan. 6 Charges

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      The actor was banned from the animated sitcom in 2021 after he was accused of participating in the Capitol riot.Jay Johnston, a comic actor known for his work on the animated sitcom “Bob’s Burgers,” was arrested in California on Wednesday and charged with felony obstruction of police officers during the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.The actor was identified in police body camera footage pushing against officers and aiding other rioters at the Capitol, according to the F.B.I.Mr. Johnston, 54, was charged on four counts, including civil disorder and entering a restricted building. An F.B.I. affidavit states that images from closed-circuit television show Mr. Johnston using a shield stolen from the Capitol Police to join a group assault on officers defending a tunnel entrance to the building.Mr. Johnston’s name surfaced in connection with the riot in March 2021 when amateur sleuths said they recognized him in photographs shown in an F.B.I. call for tips on Twitter. Colleagues on the podcast “Harmontown” also tweeted that they recognized Mr. Johnston, who appeared in small roles on “Arrested Development” and “Anchorman,” among other comedies.“I’m no detective, but I do know Jay,” Cassandra Church, who worked on “Harmontown” with Mr. Johnston, wrote in a tweet that has since been deleted. “He said he was there. And that’s him in the picture. So…”The F.B.I. said three associates of Mr. Johnston’s identified him in the Jan. 6 photographs. One associate provided the F.B.I. with a text message in which Mr. Johnston acknowledged being at the Capitol on Jan. 6, stating: “The news presented it as an attack. It actually wasn’t. Thought it kind of turned into that. It was a mess. Got maced and tear gassed.”Mr. Johnston was also said to have assisted other rioters by pouring water over their eyes after they had been sprayed.The Daily Beast reported in December 2021 that Mr. Johnston had been banned from voicing his recurring character, Jimmy Pesto Sr., on the Fox show “Bob’s Burgers” after the Jan. 6 riot.More than 1,040 people have been charged in connection with the attack on the Capitol, according to the Justice Department. Prosecutors have indicated that there could be as many as another 1,000 people who might eventually face charges, according to people familiar with the matter.The owner of a Long Island funeral home, Peter G. Moloney, was also charged on Wednesday in the department’s investigation of the riot. He is accused of spraying an insecticide at police officers guarding the Capitol and attacking members of the news media.Last month, Richard Barnett, who was photographed with his boot on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s desk during the attack, was sentenced to four and a half years in prison after being found guilty in January on eight criminal offenses.Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the far-right Oath Keepers militia, received the most severe penalty so far from criminal cases stemming from the Capitol attack. He was sentenced last month to 18 years in prison for his conviction on seditious conspiracy charges.Mr. Johnston has a long list of television and movie credits, mostly in comedic roles. He was a regular on the 1990s sketch comedy program “Mr. Show” with David Cross and Bob Odenkirk. He more recently appeared in an episode of “Better Call Saul,” starring Mr. Odenkirk.A lawyer for Mr. Johnston did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Alan Feuer More

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      ‘January 6th’ Review: Scenes of a Riot

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      A new documentary from Gédéon and Jules Naudet recounts the day of the U.S. Capitol attack.As with their previous projects, the directors Gédéon and Jules Naudet (“9/11,” “November 13: Attack on Paris”) have crafted a documentary that revolves around a national tragedy. “January 6th,” about the U.S. Capitol riot, posed a similar challenge: How exactly does one go about telling a story whose drama and horror is being seen and reported on in real time, and that continues to inundate the country in fragmented pieces in the two years since?The filmmakers take a rather straightforward approach — one that lends the film its power. “January 6th” sticks strictly to a chronological recounting of events, piecing together the progression of the violence that day through video footage and details from talking-head interviews with those who were either defending the grounds or hiding within them.Strikingly, it mostly abstains from theorizing on the political context that could foment an attack like this (see “This Place Rules,” another new Jan. 6 documentary, as the flip side to this coin); instead, we are left simply with what happened on the ground, as told by Capitol Police officers, journalists and lawmakers. In this sense, the film does not offer any particularly new insights, but witnessing the events of Jan. 6 this way — as a matter-of-fact, two-and-a-half-hour montage that seems to occur at once in slow motion and with shocking speed — creates a terror that is perhaps newly visceral and sustained.Across the film is a constant, dreaded creep — of violence escalating and piercing through fences and windows, of the sound of a mob getting closer to barricaded doors. It all adds up to a frightening and necessary document of a deadly day, and also, as the camera continually swoops through a 3-D rendering of the Capitol to transition to a new scene of horror, a grave understanding that things could have gone far worse.January 6thNot rated. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes. Watch on Discovery+. More

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      ‘Saturday Night Live’ Takes On the Jan. 6 Committee

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      Megan Thee Stallion was the host and musical guest of an “S.N.L.” episode that satirized what may have been the committee’s final public meeting.Although its first two episodes avoided opening sketches that recreated news events, “Saturday Night Live” eventually found reality too irresistible: This weekend’s broadcast led with a parody of what was potentially the final meeting of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.As the hearing began, Kenan Thompson, playing the committee’s chairman, Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, offered some momentous remarks. “Jan. 6 was one of the most dramatic and consequential moments in our nation’s history,” he said. “So to fight back, we assembled a team of monotone nerds to do a PowerPoint.”Summarizing the meeting’s agenda before holding up a tray of miniature cupcakes, he added, “We’re going to summarize our findings, hold a history-making vote, and then and only then, we all get to have a little treat.”He then turned the hearing over to Heidi Gardner, playing Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and the committee’s vice chairwoman. Gardner explained that the committee’s evidence was aimed at all Americans: “Whether you’re a Republican who’s not watching or a Democrat who’s nodding so hard your head is falling off, one person is responsible for this insurrection: Donald Trump,” she said. “And one person will suffer the consequences: me.”For those viewers wondering where her toughness came from, Gardner suggested it was hereditary. She asked, “For your 10th birthday, did you eat pizza at Chuck E. Cheese with all your friends, or did you shoot a deer in the face with Dick Cheney?”Thompson almost acknowledged an eerily eager Michael Longfellow, playing Adam Schiff, Democrat of California, but reconsidered. (“Too spooky,” he said.) The committee also showed a video of Chloe Fineman (as Speaker Nancy Pelosi) and Sarah Sherman (as the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer) reacting in real time to the Capitol attack.While Fineman, as Pelosi, conducted a tense call with Mike Pence, Sherman, as Schumer, was also on the phone — to DoorDash, seeking a missing lunch order. (She said it contained “12 dill pickles, still floating in the juice, and a hot pastrami sandwich with very light mustard.”)Another video featured James Austin Johnson as former President Donald J. Trump, making remarks said to have taken place the day before the attack. Speaking on a phone, Johnson said: “The votes don’t matter at all. Because what even is a vote? It’s just a piece of paper, you fold up and put it in a hat, a guy shakes it around.” After some rambling remarks about Apollo Creed, Ivan Drago and Obamacare, Johnson wrapped up the call by casually asking, “Is Mike Pence dead yet?”Thompson concluded the meeting itself: “We tried,” he said. “It was a fun country while it lasted.”Giiiiiiiiirrrrrl of the weekIs it possible for a single joke — a single graphic — to make an entire sketch worthwhile? If so then “Girl Talk” might just have been that sketch. It started off innocuously enough, with an introduction from its host, Mo’nique Money Mo’nique Problems (Ego Nwodim), who described the program as “the talk show where ladies tell me their problems and I keep my advice real simple.”She and her guests (Megan Thee Stallion and Punkie Johnson) went on to discuss their problems and solutions in conversations consisting of different intonations of the word “Girl.” And just to be helpful to “any white people or men tuning in,” Nwodim provided subtitles for a discussion of the war in Ukraine, during which a two-syllable utterance of “girl” by Megan Thee Stallion produced an entire screen’s worth of densely packed (but educational!) text on the history of the conflict.Music video of the weekThis filmed segment for an original song called “We Got Brought” spun laughs (and a genuinely catchy tune) from a recognizably stressful premise: Nwodim, Megan Thee Stallion and Bowen Yang played the tag-along guests of three longtime friends who have met up at a club and ditched their plus-ones to hang out among themselves.Now the three guests, who are strangers to one another, are stuck at a table and unable to find anything to talk about. As one verse goes: “You’re all out of topics and the conversation’s lazy / So you just keep on saying, ‘That’s crazy, that’s crazy.’” The anxiety of Yang’s character — who tries to make small talk by remarking that only 25 people have died at Disneyland since 1955 — is so palpable it pops off the screen.Weekend Update jokes of the weekOver at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Michael Che and Colin Jost continued to riff on the Jan. 6 committee and the outcomes from its latest meeting.Jost began:After the Jan. 6 committee subpoenaed Donald Trump, Trump responded the next day with a 14-page letter. Fourteen pages. OK, Unabomber. I don’t know if this is a coincidence, but Trump wrote the letter on the same day the F.D.A. confirmed the nation is experiencing a shortage of Adderall. I just know from experience in college, any time I wrote a 14-page paper in one night, I’d also taken a disturbing amount of Adderall.He went on:My favorite part of Trump’s letter is the beginning because it’s on really nice letterhead. It starts, “Dear Chairman Thompson.” And then the first line is just screaming. It’s like reading a Victorian love letter that says, “My beloved Winifred, WHO THE HELL ARE YOU HAVING SEX WITH?”Che picked up the thread:The committee showed a never-before-seen video from Jan. 6 of a desperate Nancy Pelosi speaking on the phone with Mike Pence. Which to Pence counts as adultery. In the video, Pelosi said that she wanted to punch out Donald Trump and knew that if she did, she’d go to jail and be happy. I assume because she owns stock in private prisons.Heartfelt musical performance of the weekIt was a moment that passed by almost as quickly as one of Megan Thee Stallion’s verses, but in the midst of a hectic night of comedy and costume changes, the rapper was genuinely moved during a portion of one her songs. In her performance of “Anxiety,” Megan Thee Stallion referenced her mother, Holly Thomas, who died of brain cancer in 2019. As those lyrics run:If I could write a letter to HeavenI would tell my mama that I shoulda been listenin’And I would tell her sorry that I really been wildin’And ask her to forgive me, ‘cause I really been tryin’And I would ask, please, show me who been realAnd get ‘em from around me if they all been fakeIt’s crazy how I say the same prayers to the LordAnd always get surprised about who he takeMegan Thee Stallion did not so much as swallow a syllable but the emotion of the lyrics were audible in her voice and visible on her face — some viewers wondered online if they even saw her shed a tear. On Friday, Megan Thee Stallion tweeted that she was contemplating a break following “S.N.L.,” and if she chooses to take it, she has surely earned it. More

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      ‘Late Show’ Staff Arrested at U.S. Capitol Complex Won’t Be Prosecuted

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      The Justice Department said it would not proceed with charges of unlawful entry against staff members from “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” who were arrested at a Capitol building last month.Federal prosecutors said late Monday that they would not prosecute staff members of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” who were arrested last month at the United States Capitol complex on charges of unlawful entry.When members of a production team for the CBS show were arrested on June 16, they had been filming a segment featuring Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, a cigar-chomping canine puppet that is voiced by the comedian Robert Smigel, who was among those arrested. Mr. Colbert later said on his show that they were guilty of “high jinks with intent to goof.”The arrests, in a hallway of the Longworth House Office Building, were notable in part because they occurred soon after Congress began holding televised hearings into the Jan. 6, 2021 attack, in which supporters of President Donald J. Trump violently stormed the Capitol complex.The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia said in a brief statement on Monday that it would not move forward with misdemeanor charges against the nine people arrested by the Capitol Police because the case wasn’t strong enough.The crew members had been invited to enter the building on two separate occasions by congressional staff who never asked them to leave, although the Capitol Police did tell some members of the group that they were supposed to have an escort, the statement said.In order to sustain convictions on charges of unlawful entry, prosecutors would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that “these invited guests were guilty of the crime of unlawful entry because their escort chose to leave them unattended,” it said.“We do not believe it is probable that the office would be able to obtain and sustain convictions on these charges,” the statement said, adding that the defendants would not be required to attend a court hearing scheduled for Wednesday.The statement did not say whom the production team had visited at the Longworth House Office Building. Mr. Colbert said on his show that the team had been invited to interview Democratic and Republican members of Congress about the Jan. 6 hearings.Spokespeople for the Justice Department and CBS did not immediately respond to requests for comment overnight.After the arrests last month, the Fox News host Tucker Carlson said that the “Late Show” producers had committed “insurrection.” Mr. Colbert said a few days later that such criticism amounted to a “shameful and grotesque insult” to the memory of those who died in the Jan. 6 attack.“But who knows,” he joked on his show, “maybe there was a vast conspiracy to overthrow the government of the United States with a rubber Rottweiler.”Glenn Thrush More

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      Late Night Reacts to Cassidy Hutchinson’s Damning Trump Testimony

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      “I mean you’ve got to admit, though, fighting your own Secret Service agent is genius on Trump’s part — he’s hitting the one person who can’t hit back,” Trevor Noah said.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Go for the JugularThe latest Jan. 6 hearings were called “insane” by late-night hosts several times on Tuesday night, after Cassidy Hutchinson, a Trump aide, testified that the former president hurled his lunch against the wall in anger, lunged at a Secret Service agent and attempted to grab the steering wheel of the presidential limousine so that he could join the rioters at the Capitol.“I, too, was shocked to hear that Trump threw any of his food away. Because let’s be honest, this guy’s taken more selfies with food than some of his kids,” Trevor Noah joked.“And you heard what she said — this wasn’t a one-time thing. Trump was constantly throwing food tantrums. But what’s interesting is she didn’t say ‘flipping the table’; she said ‘flipping the tablecloth.’ So either Trump was an amateur magician, or he wasn’t strong enough to flip a table, so he just did the tablecloth.” — TREVOR NOAH“He went for the throat! When you get into the Secret Service, you know you have to take one for the president, but you never expect to take one from the president: ‘Thank you for your service. Let’s keep this part secret.’”— STEPHEN COLBERT“Always good when you need another Secret Service to protect the Secret Service, you know what I’m saying?”— JIMMY FALLON“Evidently, the former president breaks a lot of dishes, which is why his handlers make sure his meals are served only in bucket or edible bowl.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“That is no way to treat the Secret Service — that is how you treat a contestant in the dressing room of the Miss Universe pageant.” — CHELSEA HANDLER, guest host of “Jimmy Kimmel Live”“Trump fighting to take control of the president’s car like it’s an action movie, only he’s the president and this is real life.” — TREVOR NOAH“I mean you’ve got to admit, though, fighting your own Secret Service agent is genius on Trump’s part — he’s hitting the one person who can’t hit back. Yeah, they can punch back but then they’ve got to jump in front of their own punch.” — TREVOR NOAH“When grabbing the steering wheel didn’t work, he grabbed the car by the [expletive].” — CHELSEA HANDLER“Immediately the agents were like, ‘Who the hell let him out of his car seat?’” — JIMMY FALLON“That is insane, but it is going to make a great season premiere of ‘Kleptocrats in Cars Seizing Power.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Not to victim blame, but this is on the Secret Service, all right? You had four years to Trump-proof that vehicle — you knew who you were dealing with. There should have been a toy steering wheel in the passenger seat the whole time. Just let him think he’s driving and go back to the West Wing anyway.” — TREVOR NOAHThe Punchiest Punchlines (Killing Me Softly Edition)“Folks, speaking of Jan. 6 plotters, this weekend Rudy Giuliani was assaulted by a grocery store worker on Staten Island. Before I go any further, before I say anything else, let me say that Rudy Giuliani is fine, other than the fact that he remains Rudy Giuliani.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“And more importantly, ‘The Late Show’ and ‘The Late Show’ family of producers condemns violence of any kind. You should not go out and lay a finger on the former mayor in any way. First, because it is just wrong, and, second, because you don’t want to get any of that weird Rudy juice on you.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Something tells me this isn’t the first time Rudy has exaggerated the size of something.” — CHELSEA HANDLER“You think that’s what being shot feels like? No wonder you’re not concerned about guns. That wasn’t a slap. That was a Little League coach saying, ‘You’ll get ’em next time.’” — SETH MEYERS“After the video evidence came out, the D.A. released the assailant, who also had the charges against him reduced. They’ve gone from felony assault down to back-tap with intent to ‘Hey!’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Rudy remains undaunted. His son, Andrew, and his load-bearing teeth say we don’t have to worry about Rudy because he’s ‘tough as nails.’ And just like nails, he’s always hammered.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingRepresentative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sat down with Stephen Colbert to discuss Tuesday’s hearing on “The Late Show.”What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightSteve Carell will sit down with Seth Meyers on Wednesday’s “Late Night.”Also, Check This OutKurt Russell as Elvis in the 1979 TV movie of the same name.Donaldson Collection/Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty ImagesFrom Kurt Russell to Michael Shannon, some of the best modern actors have taken a crack at portraying Elvis on the screen. More