Amid Fears of Inauguration Violence, Man With Gun Is Arrested in Washington, but Calls It ‘Honest Mistake’

A man with a gun arrested by Capitol Police at a security checkpoint calls it an ‘honest mistake.’

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A police barricade blocking a street near the White House on Friday.Credit...Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

The U.S. Capitol Police arrested a man at a security checkpoint in Washington on Friday after he flashed what an officer described as an “unauthorized” inauguration credential and a search of his truck found an unregistered handgun and ammunition, the authorities said.

A federal law enforcement official said that the man, Wesley A. Beeler, 31, worked as a contractor, and that his credential was issued by the Park Police, but was not recognized by the police officer. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the arrest. Mr. Beeler had no known extremist ties, the official said.

“It was an honest mistake,” Mr. Beeler told The Washington Post after being charged with unlawful possession of a firearm and released on Saturday afternoon. He said he had been working a security job in Washington, was running late to work, and had forgotten that his firearm was in his truck.

“I pulled up to a checkpoint after getting lost in D.C. because I’m a country boy,” he told The Post. “I showed them the inauguration badge that was given to me.”

The arrest comes as law enforcement officials have tried to fortify Washington ahead of Inauguration Day on Wednesday, when they fear that extremists emboldened by the attack on the Capitol by President Trump’s supporters on Jan. 6 could seek to cause violence. A militarized “green zone” is being established downtown, National Guard members are flooding the city, and a metal fence has gone up around the Capitol grounds in advance of the swearing-in of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Mr. Beeler, of Front Royal, Va., had driven up to a security checkpoint less than half a mile from the Capitol grounds on Friday evening and presented “an unauthorized inauguration credential,” according to a statement from a Capitol Police officer filed in a District of Columbia court on Saturday. The officer, Roger Dupont, said that he had checked the credential against a list and found that it did not give Mr. Beeler authority to enter the restricted area.

Officers searched his truck, which had several gun-related bumper stickers, and found a loaded Glock pistol, 509 rounds for the pistol and 21 shotgun shells, the police said. Mr. Beeler had admitted having the Glock in the truck’s center console when he was asked if there were weapons in the car, they said.

Mr. Beeler was charged with five crimes, including possession of a weapon and ammunition in Washington without proper registration. He and his lawyer did not respond to requests for comment on Saturday, but in his interview with The Post, Mr. Beeler denied having 500 rounds of ammunition.

In an interview, Mr. Beeler’s father, Paul Beeler said his son, a father of four, was working security near the Capitol grounds in recent days and had held other security jobs in Washington over the years. Mr. Beeler has an active private security license in Virginia and is approved to carry firearms while on assignments there, according to a state website.

“He was proud of the work he was doing with the police and the National Guard,” his father said. Asked if he thought his son supported a peaceful transition of power, he said, “That’s the reason he’s there.”

The elder Beeler said he had grown worried when his son did not return text messages on Friday night, and that he had called him on Saturday morning, when he thought his son would be returning to Virginia after his shift. He and his wife discovered that Mr. Beeler had been arrested when she received a call from a reporter, he said.

Law enforcement officials have said they are alarmed by chatter among far-right groups and other racist extremists who are threatening to target the nation’s capital to protest Mr. Biden’s electoral victory. Federal agencies have tried to keep some people who breached the Capitol with weapons earlier this month from returning to the city, including by restricting their ability to board commercial planes, according to an administration official.

Mr. Biden has resisted calls to move the inauguration ceremony indoors for the sake of safety. His inauguration committee had already been planning a scaled-back celebration with virtual components because of the coronavirus.

Trump will leave office with his lowest approval rating ever.

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The riot the president incited in Washington helped push his approval rating to a new low.Credit...Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

Throughout four years of scandals and investigations, President Trump has maintained an approval rating that rarely budged from a 10-point band between 35 and 45 percent. Nothing he could say, do or tweet appeared to dramatically change public opinion of him.

But the events of Jan. 6 — when a violent mob of Trump supporters incited by the president stormed the Capitol — appear to have damaged him in his final days in office in a way that finally moved the needle.

Mr. Trump is set to depart office on Wednesday with an approval rating of 29 percent, the lowest of his presidency, according to a new poll from the Pew Research Center.

About 75 percent of the public said Mr. Trump bore some responsibility for the violence and destruction of Jan. 6, which put the lives of the vice president and members of Congress at risk and resulted in five deaths, according to the survey.

And his behavior since the election — a period during which he has repeatedly tried to contest his loss, relied on conspiracy theorists for advice, encouraged supporters who do not view President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. as legitimate, and refused to concede — has cost Mr. Trump support even with those individuals who have loyally supported him up until now.

According to Pew, the share of his supporters who described his conduct as “poor” has doubled, to 20 percent from 10 percent, over the past two months.

Mr. Biden, in contrast, has benefited from how he has handled the transition period. About 64 percent of voters said they had a positive opinion of his conduct since the November election. A majority of voters said they also approved of his cabinet selections.

Mr. Trump’s polling while in office has been surprisingly stagnant, despite regular eruptions from the president. He was the only president in the history of Gallup’s polling who never earned the support of a majority of Americans for even one day of his term. But he also held onto his durable base, who appeared willing to overlook any behavior they did not approve of, or any promises that Mr. Trump never followed through on.

That group now appears to have shrunk, although Mr. Trump still has some stalwart supporters who believe the conspiracy theories he has encouraged about election fraud. About 34 percent of respondents said they believed Mr. Trump was “definitely” or “probably” the rightful election winner.

Mr. Trump’s advisers have tried to play up that base of loyal support to him, noting that there are “welcome home” events planned for his arrival in Florida on Wednesday. They have also planned an upbeat send-off on the morning of Jan. 20 to commemorate his final departure from Washington as president, aboard Air Force One.

But whatever show of support he sees on his way out will belie the reality of his situation.

Not only has he made history as the first president to be impeached twice. But he appears to be on track to leave office with the lowest approval rating of any modern-day president.

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Biden plans to roll out dozens of executive orders in his first 10 days as president.

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Credit...Amr Alfiky/The New York Times

President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., inheriting a collection of crises unlike any in generations, plans to start his administration with dozens of executive directives on top of expansive legislative proposals in a 10-day blitz meant to signal a turning point for a nation reeling from disease, economic turmoil, racial strife and now the aftermath of the assault on the Capitol.

Mr. Biden’s team has developed a raft of decrees that he can issue on his own authority after the inauguration on Wednesday to begin reversing some of President Trump’s most hotly disputed policies. Advisers hope the flurry of action, without waiting for Congress, will establish a sense of momentum for the new president even as the Senate puts his predecessor on trial.

On his first day in office alone, Mr. Biden intends a flurry of executive orders that will be partly substantive and partly symbolic. They include rescinding the travel ban on several predominantly Muslim countries; rejoining the Paris climate change accord; extending pandemic-related limits on evictions and student loan payments; issuing a mask mandate for federal property and interstate travel; and ordering agencies to figure out how to reunite children separated from their families after crossing the border, according to a memo circulated on Saturday by Ron Klain, his incoming White House chief of staff, and obtained by The New York Times.

The blueprint of executive action comes after Mr. Biden announced that he will push Congress to pass a $1.9 trillion package of economic stimulus and pandemic relief, signaling a willingness to be aggressive on policy issues and confronting Republicans from the start to take their lead from him.

He also plans to send sweeping immigration legislation on his first day in office, providing a pathway to citizenship for 11 million people living in the country illegally. Along with his promise to vaccinate 100 million Americans for the coronavirus in his first 100 days, it is an expansive set of priorities for a new president that could be a defining test of his deal-making abilities and command of the federal government.

Biden and Harris introduced members of their White House science team.

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Science Is About ‘Hope,’ Biden Says

President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris introduced key members of their White House science team on Saturday.

“We know that science is discovery, it’s not fiction. It’s also about hope, and that’s America. It’s in the DNA of this country, hope. We’re on the cusp of some of the most remarkable breakthroughs that will fundamentally change the way of life for all life on this planet. We can make more progress in the next 10 years, I predict, than we’ve made in the last 50 years.” “Today, I’m proud to announce a team of some of the country’s most brilliant and accomplished scientists to lead the way.” “The opportunities we have and the challenges we face are greater than ever before. The president-elect knows that science and technology will be crucial in meeting this moment. And he has tasked us in this letter, and I don’t mean, just his scientific advisers, I mean, the whole scientific community and the American public with answering important questions about how science and technology can best be used to advance our health, our economic welfare, and our national security.” “Perhaps never before in living memory have the connections between our scientific world and our social world been quite so stark as they are today. The Covid-19 crisis has inflicted extraordinary suffering. But it has also held up a mirror to our society, reflecting in its deadly wake, resource gaps and medical disparities, the inequality we’ve allowed to calcify. Science at its core is a social phenomenon. It is a reflection of people, of our relationships and of our institutions. When we provide inputs to the algorithm, when we program the device, when we design, test and research, we are making human choices, choices that bring our social world to bear in a new and powerful way. It matters who makes these choices.” “The science behind climate change is not a hoax. The science behind the virus is not partisan. The same laws apply. The same evidence holds true regardless of whether or not you accept them. And President-elect Biden and I will not only listen to science, we will invest in it.”

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President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris introduced key members of their White House science team on Saturday.CreditCredit...Amr Alfiky/The New York Times

President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. said on Saturday that he was “always going to lead with science and truth” as he announced top science and technology officials on his White House staff, reaffirming trust in the kind of expert research that the Trump administration often ignored or disdained.

Extolling what he called “some of the most brilliant minds in the world,” Mr. Biden said his new team’s mission would be to ask: “How can we make the impossible possible?” He vowed to elevate scientific research and thinking on topics like the coronavirus, cancer research, climate change, clean-energy jobs, artificial intelligence, 3-D printing and other fast-advancing technologies.

The appointees included Eric S. Lander, whom Mr. Biden will nominate to be director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, a position that will for the first time hold cabinet rank.

President Trump left the position of science adviser unfilled for 18 months and his administration routinely ignored the guidance of government scientists on issues ranging from the coronavirus pandemic to climate change.

Without specifically mentioning Mr. Trump, Mr. Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris drew an implicit contrast with his administration’s dismissive attitude toward expert opinion.

“The science behind climate change is not a hoax,” Ms. Harris said during the introductions, held at the Queen Theater in Wilmington, Del. “The science behind the virus is not a lie.”

Dr. Lander, who will also serve as presidential science adviser, was a leader of the Human Genome Project. As Dr. Lander’s deputy in the science and technology office, Alondra Nelson, whom was also named by Mr. Biden, is a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, who has studied the intersection of science with social inequality and race.

Mr. Biden also named two co-chairs of the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology: Frances H. Arnold, the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and Maria Zuber, a geophysics and planetary science expert and the first woman to lead a NASA spacecraft mission.

Mr. Biden also said that Dr. Francis S. Collins would remain as the director of the National Institutes of Health.

Earlier on Saturday, the Biden-Harris transition team announced several nominations to the State Department, including that of Brian P. McKeon, who has worked with Mr. Biden for more than 25 years, to be deputy secretary of state for management and resources. Bonnie Jenkins, a veteran arms control expert, was nominated for under secretary for arms control and international security affairs; Ms. Jenkins is also the founder of a group for women of color in national security.

Uzra Zeya, who has held multiple roles at the State Department, was nominated for under secretary for civilian security, democracy, and human rights. Mr. Biden also formally announced the nominations of Wendy Sherman to be deputy secretary of state and Victoria Nuland as under secretary for political affairs; his plans to nominate both Ms. Sherman and Ms. Nuland were previously reported.

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Sonia Sotomayor will swear in Kamala Harris on Inauguration Day.

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Justice Sonia Sotomayor has sworn in a vice president before.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will be sworn in on Wednesday by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a ceremony in which the first woman of color to become vice president will take her oath from the first woman of color to sit on the Supreme Court.

Ms. Harris chose Justice Sotomayor for the task, according to a Harris aide who was confirming a report by ABC News. The vice president-elect and Justice Sotomayor have a shared background as former prosecutors. And Ms. Harris has called the justice a figure of national inspiration.

“Judge Sonia Sotomayor has fought for the voices of the people ever since her first case voting against corporations in Citizens United,” Ms. Harris wrote on Twitter in 2019. “As a critical voice on the bench, she’s showing all our children what’s possible.”

Justice Sotomayor, who was confirmed to the Supreme Court in 2009, swore in Joseph R. Biden Jr. for his second term as vice president in January 2013 (first in a private ceremony and again in public the next day because of a quirk of the calendar).

Loews Hotels says it won’t host a fund-raiser with Senator Josh Hawley.

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Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri challenged the legitimacy of Pennsylvania’s electoral votes hours after a mob attacked the Capitol this month.Credit...Win Mcnamee/Getty Images

Loews Hotels said on Saturday that it would not host a fund-raiser with Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, the latest indication that many companies are distancing themselves from Republicans who voted to overturn the election results.

Fighting for Missouri, a political action committee affiliated with Mr. Hawley, had planned to host a “fun-filled, family-friendly Orlando weekend event” with the senator at the Loews Portofino Bay Hotel in Orlando, Fla., from Feb. 12 to Feb. 15, according to an invitation for the event. Tickets were being sold for $1,000 to $5,000, depending on the size of the group.

But Loews said that the fund-raiser had been called off after the deadly riot at the Capitol, which many Democrats and Republicans have blamed in part on Mr. Hawley and other members of his party who supported President Trump’s efforts to stop the certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.

“We are horrified and opposed to the events at the Capitol and all who supported and incited the actions,” the company said on Twitter. “In light of those events and for the safety of our guests and team members, we have informed the host of the Feb. fund-raiser that it will no longer be held at Loews Hotels.”

Mr. Hawley sharply criticized the decision by Loews, which was established in 1960 and owns or operates 26 properties in the United States and Canada.

“If these corporations don’t want conservatives to speak, they should just be honest about it,” he said in a statement. “But to equate leading a debate on the floor of the Senate with inciting violence is a lie, and it’s dangerous. I will not be deterred from representing my constituents, and I will not bow to left-wing corporate pressure.”

Mr. Hawley persisted in his challenge to the election results even after the mob was cleared out of the Capitol this month, forcing the House and Senate into two hours of debate over Pennsylvania’s electoral votes even though he never made a specific charge of wrongdoing.

The rejection by Loews came after Simon & Schuster said that it would cancel the publication of an upcoming book by Mr. Hawley, “The Tyranny of Big Tech,” which had been scheduled to be published in June.

Simon & Schuster said that it had made the decision because “we take seriously our larger public responsibility as citizens, and cannot support Senator Hawley after his role in what became a dangerous threat.”

Mr. Hawley had said the cancellation “could not be more Orwellian,” and added, “We’ll see you in court.”

In recent days, a flurry of companies have suspended donations to some of the Republicans who voted to block the certification of the Electoral College results.

Morgan Stanley said it was suspending all PAC contributions to members of Congress who did not vote to certify the results. Marriott said it would pause donations from its PAC “to those who voted against certification of the election.” And the chemicals giant Dow said it was suspending all PAC contributions “to any member of Congress who voted to object to the certification of the presidential election.”

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Far-right activist is among the latest Capitol rioters to be arrested.

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Trump-supporting rioters broke into into the Capitol on Jan.6. Tim Gionet, a far-right media personality known as “Baked Alaska,” was arrested by the F.B.I. on Saturday for participating.Credit...Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

Anthime Joseph Gionet, a far-right media personality nicknamed “Baked Alaska” who is known for livestreaming himself participating in illegal activity, was arrested by the F.B.I. on Friday and accused of illegally storming the Capitol during the attack on the building by President Trump’s supporters last week.

Mr. Gionet, who has been banned from Twitter and YouTube for his content, livestreamed himself in the mob on DLive, a streaming service becoming more popular after a mass exodus of right-wing figures from more mainstream platforms. He posted a video that showed supporters of Mr. Trump taking selfies with officers in the Capitol who calmly asked them to leave the premises. The video showed the Trump supporters talking among themselves, laughing, and telling the officers and each other: “This is only the beginning.”

Mr. Gionet was arrested in Houston on Friday, according to the Justice Department’s website, and charged with two federal crimes. In a court filing, Nicole Miller, an F.B.I. agent, said Mr. Gionet had recorded a 27-minute video in which he appeared to chant, “Patriots are in control,” and said, “We are in the Capitol building, 1776 will commence again.”

The authorities on Saturday also arrested Lisa Marie Eisenhart, the mother of Eric Gavelek Munchel, the man pictured holding zip ties in the Capitol during the riot. Jack Jesse Griffith, another person arrested Saturday, was identified through an Instagram video posted by someone else at the riot, according to documents. Both were arrested in Tennessee.

Over 70 arrests have been made in relation to the riots, and at least 170 cases have been opened. Many of the mob participants have been easily identified through their social media posts.

Emily Hernandez, a woman photographed with part of the wooden name plate torn from the entrance to Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office, was charged in federal court on Friday.

Ms. Hernandez was seen in numerous videos and photographs holding Ms. Pelosi’s splintered nameplate like a prized keepsake. According to documents from the F.B.I., the agency received tips about Ms. Hernandez from her friends and acquaintances after she posted pictures and videos of herself parading around with the nameplate on Facebook and Snapchat. One tipster recognized her from a widely circulated video by ITV News, which is based in Britain.

Jenna Ryan, a real estate broker from Frisco, Texas, who took a private plane to Washington to participate in the mob, was also charged on Friday. She was easily identified after she posted about her participation in various ways, including by posting a picture to her Twitter account that showed her standing in front of a broken window at the Capitol.

She also could be seen walking into the building in a video. Just before she entered, she turned to the camera and said: “Y’all know who to hire for your Realtor. Jenna Ryan for your Realtor.”

Intelligence agencies are under review for their conduct before the Capitol riot.

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Pro-Trump rioters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times

Congressional Democrats said on Saturday that they had initiated a review of the nation’s top intelligence agencies to determine what they knew about threats of violence and how they shared that information leading up to President Trump’s rally this month, and whether those threats were related to foreign influence or misinformation.

Democratic leaders asked the F.B.I., the Homeland Security Department’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis, the National Counterterrorism Center and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for any documents related to their preparations for the rally, which spiraled out of control and led to the assault on the Capitol, according to a letter sent to those agencies.

They also asked those agencies to schedule briefing meetings with the House Oversight and Reform, Intelligence, Judiciary and Homeland Security Committees.

“The committees will conduct robust oversight to understand what warning signs may have been missed, determine whether there were systemic failures and consider how to best address countering domestic violent extremism,” the committee heads said in their letter.

Democrats said that the security and logistical preparations for the rally were “not consistent with the prospect of serious and widespread violence,” even though there have been many reports in the news media saying that law enforcement had information indicating the event could pose a “dire security threat against the Congress’s meeting to certify the election results.”

Lawmakers also wanted to know whether any people holding security clearances participated in the attack.

And they wanted to know what work was being done to apprehend and identify violent extremists, noting that some members of the mob were armed and had tactical gear, and at least one had plastic zip ties that could be used as handcuffs to restrain potential victims. Photos and video from the attack also show a number of people in the crowd wearing neo-Nazi, white supremacist and anti-government gear.

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Who is Mike Lindell, one of Trump’s last remaining supporters from corporate America?

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Mike Lindell, the chief executive of MyPillow, waiting outside the West Wing of the White House on Friday.Credit...Drew Angerer/Getty Images

For years, Mike Lindell, the chief executive of the bedding company MyPillow, has been a fringe character in Trumpworld. A major Republican donor who made his millions inventing a pillow made from shredded foam, Mr. Lindell would regularly pop up as a V.I.P. at Trump rallies. And he was seemingly ever-present on television in the West Wing as the star of MyPillow commercials, which aired constantly on Fox News.

In July, he met with President Trump at the White House to push an unproven treatment in which he had a financial stake, oleandrin, as a therapeutic for the coronavirus. He is close with Dr. Ben Carson, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, but he has long been dismissed by most of the advisers around the president as a “nutso.”

And yet, there he was on Friday afternoon, again, standing outside the West Wing, set to have face time with the commander in chief during his final hours in power. Mr. Lindell arrived with a concerning agenda: A photograph of his partially visible notes showed that he wanted to speak to the president about invoking the Insurrection Act and appeared to recommend “martial law if necessary.” He also appeared to suggest moving Kash Patel, a Trump loyalist serving as chief of staff at the Defense Department, to the position of “C.I.A. Acting.”

It has been easy to treat Mr. Lindell as a comedic bit player in the story of the Trump presidency. He was a man the president thought was extremely famous because of his advertisements on cable news. He was a man the president would not dismiss, the way his advisers did, because he did not dismiss anyone who was rich and constantly on television.

“That guy is on television more than anyone I’ve ever seen,” Mr. Trump marveled during the 2016 campaign. “Including me.”

Mr. Lindell, however, was never really just interested in bedding. “The pillow is just a platform for a much bigger thing,” Mr. Lindell told students in 2019 at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va. “My calling is to speak out the word of Jesus.”

In reality, Mr. Lindell is a conspiracy theorist who has been spreading inaccurate information about election fraud since November, when Joseph R. Biden Jr. won the presidential race. Even after the violent mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol last week, Mr. Lindell went on television to promote the lie that “Donald Trump will be our president for the next four years.” On Friday, he said he was the emissary of a lawyer working to prove that Mr. Trump won the 2020 election, but would not say who the lawyer was.

Mr. Lindell is a former crack cocaine and gambling addict, who created his company while battling his addictions. He tells his own story in a memoir, “What Are the Odds? From Crack Addict to CEO.”

Friday’s meeting was a disappointment for Mr. Lindell, who spent less than 10 minutes in the Oval Office with the president before being shunted off to the White House Counsel’s Office, where he found no hearing for his proposals.

But it’s not clear whether the meeting was totally useless for Mr. Trump. In his memoir, John R. Bolton, the former national security adviser, wrote that the president had once encouraged him to stir up trouble by flashing a yellow legal pad in the White House briefing room, on which Mr. Bolton had scrawled notes about sending 5,000 more U.S. troops to Colombia.

“Go have fun with the press,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Bolton, who claimed he purposefully made visible what appeared to be “confidential” notes.

Even if he did not intend to act on any of Mr. Lindell’s suggestions on Friday night, Mr. Trump, through the antics (intended or not) of his loyal pillowmaking friend, managed to stir another round of shock on his way out.

James Murdoch accuses media outlets of ‘propagating lies.’

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James Murdoch speaking at aan event in Beverly Hills, Calif., in 2019.Credit...Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for Vanity Fair

James Murdoch, the youngest son of the billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch, accused “media property owners” and outlets of “propagating lies” that have promoted disinformation and conspiracy theories about the results of the 2020 presidential election and that have unleashed “insidious and uncontrollable forces.”

Mr. Murdoch did not name specific news outlets or owners, but Fox News — founded by his father and now run by his brother — has broadcast unfiltered falsehoods about the election results (though its news division called the race for Joseph R. Biden Jr. along with other major media outlets). Fox News also aided Donald Trump’s rise in his political career, often acting as an echo chamber of his right-wing narratives during his presidency.

“I hope that those people who didn’t think it was that dangerous now understand, and that they stop,” Mr. Murdoch said in an interview with The Financial Times published on Friday.

He added that the news media would have “a reckoning” after being “co-opted by forces that only want to stay in power, or are manipulating our discourse from abroad and are only too happy to make a mess and burn things down.”

“The damage is profound,” Mr. Murdoch said. “The sacking of the Capitol is proof positive that what we thought was dangerous is indeed very much so.”

Mr. Murdoch broke with the family’s media empire last year over frustrations with Fox News’s coverage of climate change.

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Representative Lou Correa tests positive for the virus after the Capitol attack.

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Representative Lou Correa, Democrat of California, at a House hearing in July. He plans to skip the inauguration after testing positive.Credit...Pool photo by Matt McClain

Representative Lou Correa, Democrat of California, announced on Saturday that he had tested positive for the coronavirus the day before, becoming the latest lawmaker to contract the virus in the first two weeks of the 117th Congress.

Mr. Correa, who disclosed his test results on Twitter, gave few details about his symptoms, but he said he would “be responsible & self-quarantine, away from my family, for the recommended time.”

He was at the Capitol during last week’s siege by a pro-Trump mob, but was not among the lawmakers corralled into secure rooms with some of the Republicans who refused to wear masks, an action that has created concerns of a super-spreader event. According to a statement from his office, he stayed outside and tried to help the Capitol Police.

But Mr. Correa was among the lawmakers on the House floor who voted to impeach President Trump, for a second time, after the siege. The day after, he was accosted by Trump supporters at Dulles International Airport. He later told CNN that he was surprised that security was not tighter.

Mr. Correa received one dose of the Pfizer vaccine on Dec. 19, according to a statement from his office.

At least three Democratic lawmakers tested positive after sheltering in place, and all blamed the unmasked Republicans. Representative Ayanna S. Pressley, Democrat of Massachusetts, also cited Republicans after her husband, who was with her during the riot, tested positive. And Representative Adriano Espaillat, Democrat of New York, announced on Thursday he had also tested positive, but it was unclear whether he took shelter in the secure room.

Capitol Hill has long struggled to curtail the spread of the virus, with haphazard guidance and a failure to enforce and adhere to a uniform set of health protocols across both chambers and the complex. After the riot, the House enacted a fine system for those who refuse to wear masks in the House chamber.

Georgia prosecutors are moving closer to investigating Trump.

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The Fulton County prosecutor is weighing opening an investigation into whether President Trump committed a crime when he pressured Georgia’s secretary of state to change the election results.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

Prosecutors in Georgia appear increasingly likely to open a criminal investigation of President Trump over his attempts to overturn the results of the state’s 2020 election, an inquiry into offenses that would be beyond his federal pardon power.

Fani Willis, the new district attorney in Fulton County, which includes Atlanta, is already weighing whether to proceed. Among the options she is considering is hiring a special assistant from outside to oversee the investigation, according to people familiar with her office’s deliberations.

At the same time, David Worley, the lone Democrat on Georgia’s five-member election board, said this week that he would ask the board to make a referral to the Fulton County district attorney by next month. Among the matters he will ask prosecutors to investigate is a phone call Mr. Trump made in which he pressured Georgia’s secretary of state to overturn the state’s election results.

Jeff DiSantis, a district attorney spokesman, said the office had not taken any action to hire outside counsel and declined to comment further on the case.

Some veteran Georgia prosecutors said they believed Mr. Trump had clearly violated state law.

“If you took the fact out that he is the president of the United States and look at the conduct of the call, it tracks the communication you might see in any drug case or organized crime case,” said Michael J. Moore, the former United States attorney for the Middle District of Georgia. “It’s full of threatening undertone and strong-arm tactics.”

He said he believed there had been “a clear attempt to influence the conduct of the secretary of state, and to commit election fraud, or to solicit the commission of election fraud.”

The White House declined to comment.

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Republicans are headed for a bitter internal showdown.

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Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the No. 3 House Republican, is facing a backlash from Trump loyalists for her vote to impeach him.Credit...Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

As President Trump prepares to leave office with his party in disarray, Republican leaders including Senator Mitch McConnell are maneuvering to thwart his grip on the G.O.P. in future elections, while forces aligned with Mr. Trump are looking to punish Republican lawmakers and governors who have broken with him.

The bitter infighting underscores the deep divisions Mr. Trump has created in the G.O.P. and all but ensures that the next campaign will be a pivotal test of the party’s direction.

The friction is already escalating in several swing states in the aftermath of Mr. Trump’s incitement of the mob that attacked the Capitol last week. They include Arizona, where Trump-aligned activists are seeking to censure the Republican governor they deem insufficiently loyal to the president, and Georgia, where a hard-right faction wants to defeat the current governor in a primary election.

In Washington, Republicans are particularly concerned about a handful of extreme-right House members who could run for Senate in swing states, potentially tarnishing the party in some of the most politically important areas of the country. Mr. McConnell’s political lieutenants envision a large-scale campaign to block such candidates from winning primaries.

But Mr. Trump’s political cohort appears no less determined, and his allies have been laying the groundwork to take on Republican officials who voted to impeach Mr. Trump — or who merely acknowledged the plain reality that Joseph R. Biden Jr. had won the presidential race.

Republicans on both sides of the conflict are acknowledging openly that they are headed for a showdown.

“Hell yes we are,” said Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump.

An early test for the party is expected in the coming days, with Trump loyalists attempting to strip Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming of her House leadership role in retaliation for her vote to impeach the president.

If that effort proves successful, it could further indicate to voters and donors that the party’s militant wing is in control — a potentially alarming signal to more traditional Republicans in the business community.

The Capitol attack could fuel extremist recruitment for years.

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The siege at the Capitol could become a springboard for further far-right extremism.Credit...Jason Andrew for The New York Times

The ragged camps of far-right groups and white nationalists emboldened under President Trump have been further galvanized by his false claims that the election was stolen from him — and by the violent attack on the nation’s Capitol that hundreds of them led in his name.

The Capitol riots served as a propaganda coup for the far right, and those who track hate groups say the attack is likely to join an extremist lexicon with Waco, Ruby Ridge and the Bundy occupation of an Oregon wildlife preserve in fueling recruitment and violence for years to come.

Even as dozens of rioters have been arrested, chat rooms and messaging apps where the far right congregates are filled with celebrations and plans. An ideological jumble of hate groups and far-right agitators — the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, the Boogaloo movement and neo-Nazis among them — are now discussing how to expand their rosters and whether to take to the streets again this weekend and next week to oppose the inauguration of Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Some, enraged by their failure to overturn the presidential election, have posted manuals on waging guerrilla warfare and building explosive devices.

Since last week, dozens of new channels on secure-messaging apps have popped up devoted to QAnon, the far-right conspiracy theory that says Mr. Trump is fighting a cabal of Satanists and pedophiles. Militias have found thousands of new followers in darker corners of the internet, such as one Telegram channel run by the Proud Boys, a violent far-right group, which more than doubled its followers to over 34,000 from 16,000.

“People saw what we can do,” boasted one message on a Proud Boys Telegram channel earlier this week. “They know what’s up, they want in.”

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Trump’s actions have exposed the deception of his ‘law and order’ message.

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If President Trump spent much of his presidency casting the G.O.P. as the party of law and order, he is concluding it by clarifying just who, in his view — and in his base’s view — the law was designed to order.Credit...Jason Andrew for The New York Times

Ever since descending the gilded escalator of Trump Tower to announce his presidential bid in 2015, Donald Trump has tethered his success to the politics of law and order, stoking fears and then positioning himself as the only person capable of confronting them.

As for what — or whom — Americans should fear, Mr. Trump has virtually always targeted people of color and people who protested for their rights: Mexicans, migrants from Central America, Black Lives Matter activists, the diverse array of protesters in major cities last summer.

But this month, it was a largely white mob that trawled the Capitol grounds with Trump banners and zip ties, and killed a police officer. The president did not preside over a tear-gas-fogged show of force, as he had during a protest for racial justice before the White House last summer. Instead, he praised these supporters on the evening of the riot — “you’re very special,” he assured them, “we love you” — before trotting out the “law and order” comment the next day under pressure from advisers.

If Mr. Trump spent much of his presidency casting the G.O.P. as the party of law and order, he is concluding it by clarifying just who, in his view — and in his base’s view — the law was designed to order. It’s the Black Lives Matter protesters who are confronted and arrested by the police in Mr. Trump’s law-and-order America; the white mob can expect officers who pause for selfies.

“This ‘Blue Lives Matter’ stuff was just a code word for race that they were using,” said Stuart Stevens, a longtime Republican strategist. “‘Law and order’? Here you have a police officer murdered on Capitol grounds, and the White House doesn’t even acknowledge it. It’s incredible.”

Some Republican candidates succeeded last year in positioning their party as the one more committed to law and order. But Mr. Trump, in refusing to accept the results of the election and encouraging his supporters to “fight back,” has seemed committed to proving them wrong.

And so the law-and-order presidency ends like this: hundreds of National Guardsmen posted behind a seven-foot fence looped by razor wire, protecting the Capitol not from the people Mr. Trump spent his presidency demonizing, but all the ones he didn’t.

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