On the first new Brief of the new year, hosts Markos Moulitsas and Kerry Eleveld discussed President Joe Biden’s Jan. 6 speech observing the anniversary of the attack on the U.S. Capitol, and Daily Kos staff writer and right-wing militia expert Dave Neiwert joined to talk about extremist groups, the Department of Justice’s new division focused on domestic terrorism, and predictions about how the Jan. 6 commission will play out.

With the one-year anniversary of the attempted pro-Trump insurrection setting the tone for this year’s political battles, Moulitsas thinks that Biden’s speech last week “seemed to set the Democratic messaging and agenda moving forward into this election cycle.”

Eleveld expressed optimism that the speech signaled “a new day in the Biden administration,” with the president seemingly taking a much bolder stance that signaled that he understands how serious the situation is and how high the stakes are:

Eleveld and Moulitsas praised Biden’s firm words in defense of democracy, and Eleveld in particular was glad he was finally taking a stronger stance on ending the filibuster, at least to pass voting rights legislation.

As Eleveld noted, Biden also stated in his speech this week in Atlanta: “They want chaos to reign, and we want people to rule. … Hear me plainly: the battle for the soul of America is not over,” speaking with a level of urgency that many Democrats felt had not been acknowledged until now.

Moulitsas noted that “it is unprecedented for a sitting president to attack the previous president,” though it was necessary and became a bit of a rallying call that “gave voice to a lot of anger, frustration, and fear about the state of our democracy.”

“From a political standpoint, what do you think Joe Biden was speaking to? Was it simply a rallying-the-base moment or is there a broader strategy that you might be seeing in his words?” Moulitsas asked.

Eleveld replied:

I’m very much of the frame of mind that we have to do both—we have to both win this conversation and this debate over what’s happening in this country, and what’s most important. We have to win that with swing voters, with suburban voters who are not living in a parallel universe that is completely off the rails. They’re at least grounded in reality, and they’re probably slightly fiscally conservative and would rather vote Republican, but we need to win the debate with them over whether or not the Republican Party is salvageable, and how detrimental and what a threat it is to the country. At the same time, Joe Biden needs to rally the base.

She also noted that there were were a handful of Black Lives Matter-aligned groups that chose not to attend the speech in Atlanta, whose absence put direct pressure on the White House to really do everything in their power to get voting rights legislation passed as they frame it in the context of a historical battle for the soul of the country.

Dave Neiwert joined for the second half of the show to talk about the Jan. 6 attack, its anniversary, and the militia movement’s role in planning the siege on the Capitol.

To kick off the conversation, Moulitsas asked, “What role did [these militia groups] play? What do we know about Jan. 6 and the militia movement?” 

“The Patriot Movement, which is the larger, sort of generic movement that the militia movement is frequently identified with, was the nexus of the entire insurrection as far as the mob that attacked the Capitol,” Neiwert explained, but the main groups that have been identified are the Oathkeepers and the Proud Boys, along with another group whose role in the events of that day is still emerging, called “1st Amendment Praetorian” or 1AP. “This is the most complex prosecution and investigation in American history, and it’s not going to be something that we can handle easily overnight,” he added.

Regarding concerns over the lack of terrorism charges against the insurrectionists, Neiwert theorized that it had more to do with the difficulty of building that legal case than anything else: “They’ve been charging people with this obstruction charge, which they’re charging the vast majority of these people who are being held, is with terrorism enhancement. It carries the same penalties as the sedition charge, but sedition is harder to prove, is harder to establish the motivations [for].”

“Can you clue us in as to where we are in the progression of these arrests and prosecution? Because as everybody knows, you start lower on the food chain … working your way up to people who were actually involved in the plotting and planning of this thing. Where is the Justice Department in that food chain with the potential of Trump being at the very top of it? Where are we in that food chain?” Eleveld asked.

As Neiwert described, the cases are being prosecuted from easiest to hardest: “They have been mostly processing through a lot of the early cases, [which] have been the easier ones that involve lesser charges. We’ve seen some fairly light sentences come out of that, but we’ve seen some serious sentences handed down for some of the bigger actors, including the ‘QAnon Shaman’ Jacob Chansley. He wound up getting five years … so they are working their way up the food chain.”

Moulitsas highlighted the importance of connecting the dots between who was running the ground game at the Capitol and the people running the operations behind the scenes and asked, “Do we know where that nexus is? Who connected the inside and the outside game?”

Neiwert responded:

Neiwert also discussed the Three Percenters, a dangerous far-right anti-government militia group whose members were present and participated in the insurrection attempt at the Capitol last January.

Republicans hurrying to embrace the insurrectionists and making them out to be martyrs and patriots, while also spreading conspiracy theories to place false blame on antifa or the FBI, have done a great magnitude of harm, Neiwert also said. “Mainly because of right-wing media and its ongoing gaslighting of the public about what happened on Jan. 6, these movements are actually gaining [credibility] within the mainstream wing of the Republican Party.”

Moulitsas mused, “I always find it interesting that they want to take credit for the insurrection, but [also], it was [staged by] antifa.”

Neiwert also raised the issue of law enforcement participation in these militias and the widespread expectation of members of these groups that, overall, American law enforcement is on their side:

Moulitsas put out a final question to Neiwert, asking him to weigh in on potential solutions: “As somebody who’s been tracking this movement for decades … if you had all the power, what would you do to deal with these extremist organizations?”

Neiwert explained that he would ban Fox News, as it serves as the engine that drives much of the ongoing radicalization on the right and enables its spread into the mainstream. Actually taking steps to root out these militias, which are technically illegal in all 50 states, would also be a welcome change, he added, saying that it is long past time that we enforce those laws. Lastly, Neiwert noted how fundamentally problematic it is that people can go on media and online platforms to blatantly lie and spread false information: “I don’t think lying should be protected speech [despite what the First Amendment says], because we’ve seen how toxic it is.”

To Neiwert, it all comes down to stopping the spread of false information through conspiracy theories and propaganda campaigns and banning militias, which are essentially private armies.

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