By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Patient readers, I apologize for being late. Some things took longer to nail down than I expected. But enjoy! –lambert
It’s been a long time since I’ve looked at the events of January 6, 2021. (See “The Class Composition of the Capitol Rioters” and “The Organizational Capacity and Behavioral Characteristics of the Capitol Rioters.”) Let’s begin with a photo of the (Democrat-led) January 6th Committee (full name: The United States House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol):
(Photo credit is to AP; I’ll try to supply original sourcing throughout, but it’s not easy.) The photo is one representation of the subject of this post: The gallows of January 6. You will notice that this is a telephoto shot, and with the compression characteristic of that lens, the putative relation between gallows, noose, and Capitol dome is self-evident; this is the story the Democrats are telling themselves, and the voters. After a moment to absorb the (undeniable) impact, you will also notice that there is no context at all; you cannot tell where the gallows is located with respect to the Capitol. Nor is there any indication of scale; how big is the gallows, really? After closer inspection, you may notice that both gallows and noose look a little flimsy, very much unlike this image of an actual, working gallows:
(Pretzelpaws at WikiMedia commons). Following this train of thought might lead you to find the House Committee’s Jumbotron view, and with it, the media coverage in which such images are embedded, less self-evident than you had thought at first.
The media coverage I’ve read after searching on “January 6 gallows” — and I’ve plowed through a lot of aghastitude — falls into three buckets. The first, and most honest, is lacks agency: “A somewhat flimsy gallows was erected on the Capitol steps (Governing. This refers to an Agence France Presse photo from Andrew Caballero-Reynolds, who, God bless him, seems to have gotten the words “flimsy” or “mock” into his caption, which many venues picked up); “A gallows and noose built in front of the Capitol” (New York Times); “The ghosts were rising up from across the American centuries. Solemn-eyed Christians with their wooden cross. The gallows with its noose” (The Intercept); “An image of a mock gallows on the grounds of the Capitol” (Associated Press, but wrong; the gallows is not on the Capitol grounds); “A noose is seen on makeshift gallows as supporters of President Donald Trump gather” (Associated Press). The second, less honest, asserts agency without evidence: “Protestors erected a gallows outside the U.S. Capitol” (Military Times); “Capitol mob built gallows” (Associated Press); “A noose and gallows erected by Trump supporters” (National Geographic). If you go to any of those links, you will see no sourcing for the assertion; it’s taken for granted, conventional wisdom. The third asserts agency without evidence and butchers the timeline: “As rioters bludgeoned, beat and berated police inside the Capitol and out, a gallows with a bright orange noose was erected” (NBC Washington; in fact, the gallows seems to have been erected near dawn, certainly before the riot began); “Shocking new video taken inside the Capitol during the January 6 riot shows the moment a MAGA mob rifled through paperwork in the Senate chamber as they searched for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi before erecting gallows outside the building” (Daily Mail; again, the gallows was erected well before the Capitol was “breached,” as we say).
So with a wildly tendentious photo at the January 6 Committee, and ghastly error-riddled press coverage, you might hazard a guess that the origin story of the January 6 gallows is yet to be written (at least publicly). And you would be right! There are timelines for the events of January 6 at Wikipedia, NPR, CNN, CBS, and [genuflects] the New York Times. None of them mention the gallows at all, let alone when it was erected.
The focus of this post will be very, very narrow: The gallows itself. I will show where the gallows was located (not evident from the telephoto image projected before the House); what materials it was made of; how it would have worked (or, more precisely, not have worked), and then ask why it was not dismantled by law enforcement, and who assembled it. Not all these questions can be answered, unfortunately. A caveat: The “who” question has a good deal of right-wing activity around it just now, and I am not at all expert in those sources, so I’m wary of them. Most liberal and left sources I can properly discount, but not these.
Where Was the Gallows Located?
Here is a non-telephoto shot of the gallows that gives a reasonable approximation its position:
(Agence France Press). That would place the gallows roughly here:
(The gallows appears to be placed atop a freeway, but the freeway is underground.) As you can see, the gallows is, in fact, quite far away from the Capitol, making most of the aghastitudinizing photos at best tendentious, or even grossly deceptive, like this telephoto shot from WaPo:
Indeed, since the Capitol Grounds are bounded by First Street NE/SE on the east, and First Street NW/SW on the west (see yellow highlights on the map), the gallows are not within the “demonstration areas” of the Capitol Police at all, but on the National Mall, which is under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service (NPS), a fact that will become relevant in a moment.
From What Materials Was the Gallows Constructed?
Here is a photo of a gentleman drilling the crossbeam, presumably nail or screw it in place. This shows the scale of the gallows and its construction:
Here I quote from a long thread on Democratic Underground, of all places. All of the features desribed here can be seen in the various photos: The lumber, the bolts, the construction:
I am guessing it was mostly pre-assembled with the braces loosely attached on single posts, and there were pre-drilled holes on the other posts so that the braces could swing in place and be secured with bolts using the pre-drilled holes. The main beams look like 4×8 fence posts that were cut to size.
The two main posts are treated 4x4s.
Agreed that it looks like it was mostly pre-assembled then the parts put together quickly on site. Braces and platform frame appear to be 2×4. Stairs may be 2×6.
Agreed that it looks like it was mostly pre-assembled then the parts put together quickly on site. Braces and platform frame appear to be 2×4. Stairs may be 2×6.
I don’t see any evidence of nails. It looks like it was precut, drilled and then just bolted together.
And of course the $64,000 question:
If Someone Erected It On The Spot Or Carried It In…. a journalist with a camera – I think – would have deemed that newsworthy and take a picture of the construction or set-up.
I’m not a journalist or a news cameraman – but if I saw such a thing happening – I would have thought it was newsworthy and taken a picture of the happening.
With all the footage we have of the J6 insurrection. With just about everyone carrying a phone with a camera now – I just can’t understand why we’ve never seen a picture of it being set-up or erected with the people that brought it to the so-called party.
One obvious answer is that the gallows was erected very early in the morning (and the need for speed would indicate maximum pre-assembly; leaving open the question why drill the crossbeam later?).
Perhaps carpenters and builders in the readership will wish to comment here.
How Would the Gallows Have Worked?
Shorter: It would not have. Here is how a gallows works. From the Brittanica:
In the traditional usage of the gallows, the condemned stands on a platform or drop (introduced in England in 1760), the rope hangs from the crossbeam, and the noose at its end is placed around the neck. Hanging is achieved when the body drops several feet, the knot in the noose being so adjusted that the spinal cord is broken by the fall and death is instantaneous.
Here is a photo of the gallows from another angle:
(Via Twitter.) As to the drop, as you can see that the gallows is, in fact, shorter than a short-ish human (being, as AFP captioned it, a “mock”) gallows). It’s difficult to see how a drop of “several feet” could be achieved. (I don’t see a trap door, but given the “flimsy” construction, I doubt there is one.) As to the knot in the noose, Democratic Underground once more:
Being a former Boy Scout, I know a thing or two about knots. That is not a hangman’s noose. It’s a loop of red rope. Then, someone wound some more red rope around a beer can to attempt to simulate the coils of a real knot. The shiny beer can is visible in other photo angles.
(You can see a white object, possibly a beer or soda can, in other images in the post.) A Redditor comments:
It looks like they literally stopped at a home depot on the way in and bought the tiny remainder of rope off of the cheapest spool available on the shelf.
So, as you can see, the “mock,” “flimsy” gallows is too small to be functional, and the hangman’s knot wouldn’t have worked anyhow. The gallows was purely performative and symbolic. Mike Pence need not have concentrated his mind.
Why Was the Gallows Not Dismantled by Law Enforcement?
Above, we saw that the gallows was located on the National Mall, and hence under the jurisdiction of the NPS (not the Capitol Police). Here is another photo of the gallows:
(Via Twitter.) There are two salient features: One is that the gallows is placed directly on the turf; the second is the sign on the left side of the frame, which says “THIS IS ART” (by R. Mutt, presumably). Let us take each in turn.
Here is what the National Park Service Event Planning Guide has to say about turf. I’m putting myself in the shoes of an NPS officer trying to find the right bucket to throw a gallows into. He might consider it a stage. If so, section 4.1.3 would apply:
The stage must be arranged so that as much turf can be protected as possible, this is accomplished by utilizing hardscape areas. Plywood, because of its ability to be modified to the proper size, is allowable for protection of turf from screw jacks or ballasts. Event planners should plan on some turf replacement with thick cut sod where the plywood is used.
And:
All structures must minimize all points that come in contact with the turf, structures on the turf should be on a riser with as few points as possible touching the turf, if not on the protective decking, these points should have Enkamat and plywood pads underneath…
Or our perplexed officer might have applied section 4.1.4, considering the gallows a temporary structure. If so:
Protective decking (guidelines above) will be installed slightly larger than the footprint of the structure and pedestrian pathways to the tent entrance(s).
In other words, what the gallows builders should have done was put a couple of sheets of plywood under the gallows, so the legs didn’t dig into the turf. Entirely reasonable, if you ask me, but more centrally: If the NPS wanted — or had been told — to get rid of the gallows, there was ample justification in the regulations. They did not. (The word “gallows” does not appear in the Inspector General’s Report on January 6 for the Interior Department.)
As far as the “This Is Art” sign, I would speculate that it was a hasty attempt to regularize the display of the gallow given this language from the NPS permit:
As part of a permitted event, ethnic arts and crafts may be displayed but may not be sold.
But, says the NPS officer, “I don’t care if it’s art. Its legs are digging into my turf. Get it outta here!”
Who Assembled the Gallows?
We now enter the longed-for speculative phase of this post. Questions have been percolating about the gallows for some time. From a Medium post in 2021:
Forget for a moment whether it is properly constructed, and hefty and stable enough to hang someone from. To me it looks to be about 10 feet tall, and unless someone really faked us out by making balsa wood look like substantial 4 by 4s (at least), the lumber used to make this thing was pretty heavy; and based on sheer size were just not carried around in some guy’s pocket or backpack.
How did whoever brought the wood and tools, and the rope, know to bring them?… The corollary: someone was in touch with someone else, likely well before the Stop the Steal Rally got underway.
Eminently sensible question and corollary!
From Daily Kos in May, 2022:
Who exactly built the gallows? That is one question that I hope the Jan. 6 committee is investigating. Because I have spent my life in theater and know that it is not an easy spur of the moment thing to erect a gallows complete with hanging noose in front of the US Capitol building.
So someone had a plan to do that. And they had specifications at the ready. They went to Home Depot and purchased the supplies they needed to erect a platform, hang a noose from it, not easy to make a noose, have you ever tried it?
Jan. 6 committee, get the Home Depot receipts while you are at it.
Well, it’s easy to make a noose if you have a beercan. But should you really leave the beercan inside the hangman’s knot?
From the Final Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, December 2022:
Other posts on TheDonald.win included specific plans to build gallows outside the U.S. Capitol. “Gallows are simpler and more cost effective, plus they’re an American old west tradition too,” one user wrote on December 22, 2020.[360] A week later, another wrote: “Let’s construct a Gallows outside the Capitol building next Wednesday so the Congressmen watching from their office windows shit their pants.”[361] Another said that “building a hanging platform in front of Congress on the 6 should send a strong message.”[362] The site hosted a diagram showing how to tie a hangman’s knot,[363] with one site member writing that they should build gallows “so the traitors know the stakes.”[364] On January 5, 2021, hours before the attack began, a user posted an image of gallows and titled it, “Election Fraud Repair Kit.”[365]
Text messages between Trump Campaign Senior Advisor Jason Miller and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows show that these kinds of posts reached deep into the President’s inner circle. Miller sent Meadows a text on December 30th, declaring, “I got the base FIRED UP.”[366] The thread contained a link to a TheDonald.win comment thread filled with reactions to a post by Miller promoting January 6th.[367] Users in the thread made comments such as “gallows don’t require electricity,” and that millions will “bust in through the doors if they try to stop Pence from declaring Trump the winner,” all in response to Miller.[368]
All very well, and these are not very nice people at all, but on a message board, nobody knows you’re a gumshoe, and in any case nobody’s been charged or even interviewed. Further, I looked at note [363]. Here is the diagram:
As you can see yet again, a proper hangman’s knot is nothing like the knot on the gallows; where’s the beer can, for starters? If anything, [363] is proof that this particular site member wasn’t involved at all; could the whole thing just have been a winger bull session, like those poor fools in Michigan?
Finally, there is this slick effort from Open.Ink, whose About Page is extremely uninformative, but whose videos get immediate play with Steve Bannon’s War Room. From “Open.Ink Continues to Receive Credible Tips from Gallows Video: Questions Remain“:
The Gallows Is Built Early Morning Jan. 6
Five individuals, three of whom arrive in a white van and two others who appear to arrive by taxi, emerge to assemble the gallows around 6:30 a.m. Three of them take out “wooden pieces [on wheels no less] of what would later be assembled into the gallows.” The gallows do not appear to be an afterthought but, rather, a well-thought-out prop. After all, it is later strategically placed, perfectly framed by the Capitol in the background. Dutch journalist Michael Persson, who picked it up, giving it to the FBI after protesters departed, said, “The gallows was too small and weak to be used. It was erected as a symbol.”
One of the involved individuals is referred to in the video as “Mr. Coffee” because of his multiple trips to get coffee as the gallows are being built. Many questions remain: What are the identities of Mr. Coffee and the other four individuals?
Here’s the video; good idea, since there’s CCTV everywhere in Washington, DC; hard to see how the brain geniuses on the January Six committee missed that part. That said, all I see is a grainy blur, like the worst black-and-white television in the world; I don’t have a microscope, so I don’t see any gallows at all. In any case, digital evidence is not evidence, especially not in the days of Project Veritas and deepfakes. And Mr. Coffee…. Open.Ink’s idea is that Mr. Coffee went to get his stimulant of choice very early in the morning, so not much was open, and where did he go? To [drumroll] a coffee shop opposite FBI headquarters. Which proves either that Mr. Coffee was from the FBI or — follow me closely, here — wanted to appear to be from the FBI. The whole gallows story is extremely odd, but I’m not sure that Open.Ink’s video, excellent though its production values are, makes those oddities go away.
Conclusion
The New York Times commented in 2022:
No one has publicly claimed responsibility for erecting the gallows or been charged with setting it up.
Also from the New York Times:
Prosecutors have called the riot inquiry the largest in the history of the Justice Department, and there is no doubt it is vast by any measure…. Every week, a few more people are arrested…. As of December, about 1,240 people had been arrested in connection with the attack, accused of crimes ranging from trespassing, a misdemeanor, to seditious conspiracy, a felony.
So, the Justice Department and alert citizens having hunted down so many, but not those who built the gallows? Odd. Surely we can charge them with something?
This gap in our knowledge is very, very curious; perhaps even dangerous. For example, the petition from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) in Anderson v. Griswold (the case where the Colorado Supreme Court disqualified Trump from the Presidential ballot) asserts:
The mob assembled gallows on the Capitol grounds as an intimidatory display.
But there’s no evidence the mob assembled the gallows, assembled them on the Capitol grounds, and the gallows was on the National Mall in any case. So CREW’s brief has a gaping hole.
Recall also that both the Colorado Supreme Court and Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows treated House testimony as the functional equivalent of evidence. So when there’s testimony like this…
Mr. Raskin. That they used terrorism to stop a specific piece of democratic business, fellow Americans beat and bloodied their own police, they stormed the Senate floor, they tried to hunt down the Speaker of the House, they build a gallows and chanted about murdering the Vice President. They did this because they have been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth because he was angry he had lost an election. Do you disagree with any of that?
Mr. Miller. I agree that it was an act of terrorism.
… falsehoods can get grandfathered into the record as factual.
I don’t especially like that the gallows question is being inserted into the discourse either by Bannon or by Representative Loudermilk (R-GA). That said, there’s too much about the story that doesn’t add up (especially since the NPS could have ordered the gallows taken down at any point during the day, perhaps sparing Mike Pence’s nerves). Horrid media coverage, oddles of aghastitude, unanswered questions, but no prosecutions, and not even a hint of an investigation. Why?
APPENDIX
Not only do we not know who erected the gallows, we don’t know who dismantled it, either.
56 comments
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I would be more worried about The Security Apparatus hanging people
They are too busy to hang people.
Cocaine investigation
Pipe bomb investigation
(classified) investigation ;)
IYKWIMAITYD
Don’t miss the video of Ashli’s Babbitt’s killing…particularly the prelude when she’s talking to 3 members of CERT, the Capitol Police SWAT team.
As for the fate of the ‘gallows,’ let us postulate an upcoming brisk trade in fragments of the ‘True Gallows’ to the MAGA Faithful. Like relics of all sorts, we will eventually have to promulgate some sort of Rite of Consecration of wood that comes into contact with pieces of the “True Gallows” thus multiplying the ‘healing’ powers of the MAGA Relic.
The Congressional Inquiry that did not inquire is a perfect example of Conan Doyle’s “Dog that did not bark in the night,” from the Sherlock Holmes story “Silver Blaze.”
I’ll wager that if some upright, serious Victorian gentlemen like Dr. Watson and Holmes had been involved, that gallows would have been fully functional.
Lo, how the mighty have fallen.
“…Rite of Consecration of wood that comes into contact with pieces of the “True Gallows”… Good one! Suggestive of the Nazi Blutfahne.
I believe that we already have an “Ashley Babbitt Lied.”
If they did a proper investigation of that gallows, can you imagine how stupid they would feel if an exact replica was made and assembled in front of a committee? It would be so short and obviously just a stage prop and the rope wrapped around a beer can would have been just embarrassing. Bonus points if they used a can of Bud Lite.
Another thing. As it was obviously a stage prop, I think that a major reason for it was to have an image showing the Capital Building through that frame as a dramatic flourish. But we saw something like that a coupla years ago with the murder of Boris Nemtsov on the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge. That led to that image of his body with the buildings of the Kremlin in the background. It’s all about setting up that dramatic image.
Stage prop indeed. I want to know who is writing the plot.
Did someone put out a call through Actor’s Iniquity for “re-enactors” to play out the “drama?” My money’s on the ‘actors’ being from the “Langley Method Workshop.”
Stanley Kowalski tears his tee shirt after having “ruthlessly exploited” citizen Dubois and been rejected by the Citizen’s sibling. He cries out in frustration: “Democracy! Democracy!”
(Continuing in the Tennessee Williams vein, how many others here are expecting US to weather a ‘Long Hot Summer’ this year?)
This is going to be a year dear to the shriveled hearts of Cynics everywhere.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/washington-secrets/2447016/new-suspicions-on-who-built-jan-6-gallows/
Man you’re good ! -respectfully, a.v.
[lambert blushes modestly].
“Not only do we not know who erected the gallows, we don’t know who dismantled it, either.”
#GallowsDidntKillItself
I’ll see your gallows inserted into the record and raise you claims about supporting a President’s prerogative to order elimination of political rivals. That Overton window does not have a pretty view. With the rampant projection afflicting our dear Blob, I hope Trump has his own security and food tasters.
> about supporting a President’s prerogative to order elimination of political rivals.
Assuming that all U.S. citizens are equal before the law, I don’t see that as being any different from Obama whacking Abdulrahman al-Awlaki (although I’m sure Obama was very deliberate and thoughtful).
As far as supporting it, I don’t (any than I support eliminating political rivals through lawfare). The question is what the remedy is; and as usual Trump has pushed the system to the point where absurdities result no matter where one turns. My concern for seeking a remedy for Presidential lawbreaking in the executive branch while the President is in office is the sort of thing that happens in other Third World countries where the rule of law is a mere cloak for factional power struggles: Legislation passed that is, functionally, a bill of attainder aimed at a President who is a political enemy, where the prosecution is carried out by a faction opposed to that President. We don’t really have separation of powers, then. At least with an impeachment remedy we still have some vestige of them.
No, it’s not pretty.
I wonder if the people inside the congressional offices wanted a distinction made between the gallows being functional or just threatening while hundreds were filing into the buildings
No offense Lambert but think you are dropping the ball on that noose. Being into process I had to look it up.
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=hangman's+knot
Clearly the amateur scaffold builders had no clue.
> The classic hangman’s knot was largely developed in the United State
Not sure I understand where I’m dropping the ball. Does Wikipedia explain where the beer can comes in?
In any case, if they can’t make a proper hangman’s knot, they must hate American. Case closed.
I’d wager the false noose was intended to avoid weapon charges.
But There are charges that could be laid regarding the use of a noose to intimidate. I don’t know all the federal ones, but Oregon law only requires the “noose” to be a coil of rope.
ors 163.191
By contrast, dc law doesn’t on first glance seem to have a statutory definition of noose. Which would imply to me that you would need a real noose to fall afoul of it.
dc statute
> the false noose was intended to avoid weapon charges.
Excellent argument!
> the use of a noose to intimidate
The DC statute is a very good catch. Thank you:
They might not win in court, but they could certainly make an arrest (and then fight about what the meaning of “noose” is in court). But I don’t think the gallows builders were around to arrest; they set up the gallows and went away. So the DC statute doesn’t in itself allow the gallows to be removed, which is the goal.
According to this testimony from the NPS, the District Police could also make an arrest on the National Mall, besides the NPS (the overlapping jurisdictions remind me of France in 1788).
NOTE Also from that testimony:
I am not familiar enough with the House material to know if the NBS CCTV material was reviewed by them, or released. Oddly, Open.Ink doesn’t say where they got their footage:
I ought to be able to determine where the CCTV camera is, hence (I assume) who owns it. Obviously, it’s high up:
Perhaps in the tallest tree on the other side of the Reflecting Pool?
If flag burning is a category of free speech, then building a gallows in front of the Capitol would naturally fall under it. Law enforcement wanted to avoid being drawn into a sterile constitutional debate by arresting the builders.
Thanks for the analysis.
I’m no engineer. I’m no expert on anything.
In my youth, I framed custom and track style houses in the Seattle area.
Thats not a real structure. It lacks shear protection on 2 of 4 sides.
None of the horizontal members, platform or steps resist shear. The strength of any structure is based on the resistance to shear. The vertical members support weight but can be pushed over if shear resistance is low. That is not a rigid structure. Its pretend
Look at the picture of the real platform. It’s all about shear.
> That is not a rigid structure. Its pretend
Excellent. You are obviously an expert in something!
I’m going to play FBI investigator for a moment and tell my agents what I want. First, I want the records of all the taxis in that part of DC that time of day and locate that particular taxi’s driver and interview him about the fares he picked up. Did he have video footage in that taxi? Where was that guy picked up from? Then I would send another agent to that coffee shop to get a copy of their security videos for that day and get an ID on Mr. Coffee. As that shop is right across from the FBI building, I would also yank the FBI Building’s coverage of that street. Next I would ID the vehicle used to transport that mock gallows. There would be CCTV everywhere along that street and further so surely one of them must have been able to give the number plates of that vehicle, especially since it was stopped in one place long enough to unload that gear. Finally I would go back to my office and pack up my gear as by then my superiors would have shut down my investigations and are now transferring me to the FBI office in Anchorage, Alaska.
> I’m going to play FBI investigator for a moment
Damn. That dog really isn’t going to bark, is it? No matter what you do!
Thanks for this Lambert, I have always wondered about this aspect, but never spent the time to investigate.
To this:
I’m just guessing here, but a theory. This was pre-fabbed somewhere else as you have documented. Most likely on a level floor. The picture showing the guy drilling the hole (at final assembly) appears to show the two vertical poles go clear to the ground, which would make them the longest part of the gallows.
Once erected on ground/grass, the poles, are no longer level. The pre-drilled holes probably didn’t line up, so they had to make the hole bigger so the (guessing) lag screw could get started in the hole that was pre-drilled in the long posts, thus, securing the horizontal crossbar on top of the two vertical posts.
Also, as an observation, if there was no trap door, this was not a working gallows.
> The pre-drilled holes probably didn’t line up, so they had to make the hole bigger so the (guessing) lag screw could get started in the hole that was pre-drilled in the long posts, thus, securing the horizontal crossbar on top of the two vertical posts.
And joe.wi points out it was not a “rigid structure,” so indeed the long posts would go out of line, hence the repair of the crossbeam.
I don’t know when the photo of the gentleman drilling the hole was taken; certainly not at dawn. However, we can deduce that the gallows was under some form of watch by the gallows builders, since they came back to fix it; whether a continuous watch, I don’t know.
Also, it’s hard to believe the gentleman with the drill is just some random dude; he either had the drill with him, or went away to get it and brought it back.
So, given the aghastitude over the gallows — note, again, the reference to it in the CREW brief — and its potential to intimidate*, why on earth wasn’t the gentleman with the drill hunted down and prosecuted?
NOTE * There is a separate line of discourse from the liberal Democrats about that a noose is racist by definition, so presumably he — and his co-conspirators? — could be prosecuted for that alone.
Lambert, it is blurry, but I do not think the gentleman in the photo is wielding a drill. Judging by the length of the motor body of the tool, I believe it to be a cordless impact driver. You can clearly see single lag bolts at each corner where a 2×4 frame member meets the 4×4 posts. This piece of “art” is obviously not intended to be very stable, and I would bet with all of the bolts tightened it would be quite rickety, but this method of construction would allow 1 person to put this together in 15-20 minutes, and 2 people could easily do it in 5-10 minutes. That cordless impact driver would push each bolt in in 1-2 seconds, and if it is a decent quality tool, it would not even discharge a single battery putting this thing together. That gallows was not designed for strength-it was designed for fast assembly. Remember the engineering maxim: you may choose 2 of the following 3 features- speed, high quality, or low cost. Our artists optimized for speed, sacrificing quality, and the optimization for speedy construction would probably explain the dearth of photos of the construction processs.
My two cents, for what they are worth.
> Lambert, it is blurry, but I do not think the gentleman in the photo is wielding a drill. Judging by the length of the motor body of the tool, I believe it to be a cordless impact driver.
Absolutely awesome. Truly, the NC commentariat is the best commentariat. Now all the FBI has to do is look for cordless impact driver sales (rather like Snoop Dogg in the Wire buying a nail gun…).
As a follow up to my previous comment, I absolutely agree that this was not intended as a serious threat, nor was it interpreted as a serious threat, for all of the reasons you stated. I was simply making note of the construction method to explain the lack of photos documenting the assembly process.
I agree. There may have been some drilling going on, but more likely a “Drill driver” being used to drive in a lag bolt type fastener. I think your analysis of the project not lining up due to uneven ground is correct. Notice the top beam is not quite as long as needs to be to go full length across the top. It appears to sit flush on one side, and sit mid point on the top of the upright they were needing to make a late adjustment to. There is at least one picture provided in this thread where you can see the uprights are not perfectly parallel, they are angling slightly outwards as they go up. This creating the appearance that the cross beam is too short. These workers are full on amateurs. No true MAGA would build such a shoddy piece of “art”. They have too many blue collar friends. Only a PMC agent provocateur /organizer would do this. This thing is a danger to the 2nd person that climbs up onto it. And anyone nearby when it falls on them.
At a minimum they would have added at least two pieces running at an angle to provide “shear” strength. And they would have grabbed a ratchet strap and pulled those two uprights in a few inches before attaching them.
Yep, I’m with you all the way. You explained it better than I did.
For mercy’s sake a guillotine would better serve.
“The design of the guillotine was intended to make capital punishment more reliable and less painful in accordance with new Enlightenment ideas of human rights…” Wikipedia
Those despicable deplorables would eschew the new Enlightenment ideas of human rights.
Perhaps they just don’t like France.
Madam Guillotine is a lefty meme, isn’t it?
The noose is longstanding KKK symbol, as well. Still routine news stories popping about about drivers hanging them from their review mirrors or rival white schools hanging them in trees at black schools.
But this was, as Lambert pointed out, not a hanging noose. These ALL show them with the proper hangman’s know:
https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/member-of-the-ku-klux-klan-with-a-noose-75-cars-of-the-ku-news-photo/82091553
https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2019/02/20/blackface-racist-photos-yearbooks-colleges-kkk-lynching-mockery-fraternities-black-70-s-80-s/2858921002/
https://www.adl.org/resources/hate-symbol/noose
There was only a permit for the rally, not the march to the Capitol. The steps in the NPS Event Planning Guide for building structures for a permitted event wouldn’t have been taken. Maybe there are other procedures for dealing with unexpected structure-building. Since it’s not mentioned in the IG report, maybe the procedure was (at least that day) just post-event clean-up of whatever’s there, rather than take action against the protesters.
The link to “Inspector General’s Report on January 6 for the Interior Department” doesn’t work. Here’s a link that includes an embedded copy of the report and a link to a documentcloud copy.
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/interior-department-inspector-general-releases-jan.-6-report
> The link to “Inspector General’s Report on January 6 for the Interior Department” doesn’t work.
Hmm. It just did for me. Weird!
My sole objective was to show that the gallows could have been removed from the National Mall by the NPS, under whose jurisdiction it was, regardless of permitting. (It’s also not clear to me how a claim of that there was no steenkin’ permitting would go. I suppose the gallows builders, if present, could have made the shameless claim that their presence was merely an unhappy coincidence. Or that the gallows were “art.” That’s the helpful aspect of focusing on the materiality of the gallows alone. NPS cop: “Forget about permit or no permit. You dug into my turf. Take it down.”)
It is weird. Tried on my laptop and phone, with 2 different browsers. It gets to an NC page that says “can’t find that page.”
Anyway, I tried to find some info about the guy who has the videos. Here’s a link to threads within threads. If it’s the same guy, he was adjacent enough to the rally, I guess he’d know that least his faction of right wing activists didn’t build the gallows!
https://twitter.com/capitolhunters/status/1716309545394344137
Fascinating and excellent attention to detail. Such a rotten phony day. This is the literal enactment of my 1/6 pun: they Reichstaged a gallows to frame their evidence photos. Leni Riefenstahl would be proud.
Very interesting. It doesn’t seem significantly different from the mock guillotines I remember being mentioned as deployed in many other protests, including ones in America? Do those ever provoke a similar aghastitude? I suppose they weren’t quite as prominently placed…
> I suppose they weren’t quite as prominently placed…
The gallows was not prominently placed. In fact, it’s quite far away from the Capitol. Photographic technique makes it appear to be prominently placed, physically dangerous, in proximity to Pence, etc. etc.
Sorry, misspoke. I did get that point. It’s more that they were connected, how ever exaggeratedly, to an unusually high-profile event, compared to most of the guillotines I’ve heard of.
Thank you, Lambert. Your tenacity is amazing.
A more cynical person might think it was always to get that image for Congressional hearings. And if anyone had really investigated they might have had their investigation closed as it led not just to the coffee place across from the FBI building, but right into that building.
Either way, yet another dog that didn’t bark in the night.
[lambert blushes modestly]. I have been complimented for my tenacity before!
Excellent article. Thanks.
To answer your question I’d say the drill probably wasn’t used for drilling at all, just for driving the fixings.
It’s all rather shoddy. The drill looks feeble (probably a 12 volt judging by the bit of battery sticking out the other side of the guy’s hand). You can see the fixing hasn’t gone all the way in at the top right.
At the top left the cross piece isn’t all the way on top of the upright suggesting that the structure wasn’t deemed strong enough for two people at once. It wouldn’t have been difficult for a second person to pull the two uprights together and make it work right.
> I’d say the drill probably wasn’t used for drilling at all, just for driving the fixings
Interesting
> It wouldn’t have been difficult for a second person to pull the two uprights together and make it work right
It took several people to set it up, so one wonders where they went to. Perhaps they set up the gallows, discovered that the vertical members were out of line so the crossbeam didn’t fit, and then discovered they didn’t bring a drill, so the one guy came back…
Here’s a theory. They put the whole thing together apart from the top 4×4. They put that up and then realise the drill isn’t strong enough to drive the fixing in properly. They go back to the van to look for a shorter fixing and end up having a couple of drinks. The guy in the coat goes back on his own to put in the last screw.
Looking again I see there’s no cross piece at the bottom of the two tall 4x4s and all it would have taken to line things up would’ve been a couple of kicks at the bottom of one of them. He’s too lazy to climb down and do that so I guess he got lucky and the pre drilled hole still worked well enough.
Many thanks, Lambert Strether. The manipulation of lens and the depth of field are reminders to me of something that I have had to say in editorial conferences over and over: Nowadays, a word is worth a thousand pictures. There are photos everywhere on the WWW, and the vast majority is crap. So we have to get back to relying on words, testimony.
Also, too, having been to many demonstrations, I can assure you that there are always props. A demonstration should be theatrical. At peace demonstrations in Chicago, I’d regularly see giant puppets and other disguises. It may be that the easily shocked congresscritters and media workers assumed that the gallows was a working gallows. They should get out more.
As Mae West said, People who are easily shocked should be shocked more often. (She wasn’t much for aghastitude.)
Who, what, when, where, why? The big issue here is that the venue is constantly under surveillance, and if an investigator were serious, it would not be difficult to get mug shots of the builders. That detail of one of the builders returning for coffee more than once is behavior that demonstrators cannot engage in. When one is at a demonstration, one has to be ready to move, with one’s props. All that to-and-fro for coffee? Or for Mr. Coffee’s handlers?
Surely, there is photographic evidence from the surveillance cameras. I recall being at the demonstration against NATO in Chicago some dozen years back. I was photographed by various “photographers” along the parade route at least a hundred times. I didn’t know that Chicago still had so many photojournalists.
Then the cops kettled the demonstrators. I walked through a gap in the barriers and then, from the platform of the Cermak-Chinatown elevated stop, watched a police riot break out. Photos of which never made the news. What a coinkydink.
Lambert do an article about the pipe bombs and bomber who the FBI never found. I feel safe whenever I hear the FBI is on the case haha.
Lambert, I think the AP image is worse than just being a telephoto image, it’s been photoshoped! You have 3 images of the gallows taken up close and in perspective… the noose in all 3 of them is to the left of that little knot of wood on the spanning piece, almost dead center of the span. In the AP photo it’s to the right of center and to the right of that knot. While it could have been moved (for the photo), I suspect it was digitally moved so that it didn’t overlap the capital image which was probably also digitally added in my opinion.
Darn you, Lambert. I had successfully ignored the Jan. 6 committee hearings as an obviously-orchestrated fraud, and consequently never even saw the gallows. Now I have to think about it.
Same for the link to Clusterf*ck Nation the other day on the end of the saga of Ray Epps, except I did see the darning video evidence against him at the time, and wondered how he could avoid conviction. At least now I know.
In the days before January 6th, Christian Smalls, head of the Amazon Workers Union, led a march in DC to Jeff Bezos mansion, where they displayed a primitive, hand-made guillotine. Like the Capitol gallows, it was a symbolic construct – as commentators have pointed out, that gallows would instantly collapse if used for its ostensible purpose – and nobody got especially bent out of shape over it, unlike our #McResistance hysteriacs and propagandists after 1/6.
Sorry if someone mentioned this before, but there’s short-drop hanging and long-drop hanging. Short drop hanging would usually result in strangulation, while long-drop hanging was developed as a “more humane” option because it would usually break the neck, thus skipping the strangulation and suffering part, which could take a while. Long-drop hanging came into use in the 1860s-1870s.
The “deceptive telephoto shot” from WaPo is a photoshop job, and I can prove it. In the picture, the man’s legs are hanging in front of him, off the edge of the platform. From the other pictures we can see that that means he would be facing the Capitol. If he were facing away from the Capitol, as in the picture, his legs would be on the platform itself. Ergo, there is no way to frame a picture of a man facing the Capitol, showing the man’s face, with the Capitol in the background. Also, the Capitol steps are way too large, given the distance. That’s not telephoto compression, it’s a photoshop job.
“Because I have spent my life in theater and know that it is not an easy spur of the moment thing to erect a gallows complete with hanging noose in front of the US Capitol building.”
I think you’ve done a good job establishing that the object in question is not, by definition, a hanging gallows. That said, one skilled person with a plan and a modicum of foresight could build the object in question in an hour or less. Cordless tools are spectacular these days. The one component of the object in question that demands a modicum of foresight is the “staircase,” which is by far the most dangerous thing about the build. I’m impressed anyone was brave enough to walk them.
“Five individuals, three of whom arrive in a white van and two others who appear to arrive by taxi, emerge to assemble the gallows around 6:30 a.m.”
I think this is the clearest indication that this was, if not a government job, then at the very least a union job. The alleged actions of “Mr. Coffee” tend to support this theory.
“One guy to hold the light bulb, and three guys to spin him in place…”
As usual I’m really late for the discussion about Jan 6 gallows. I thought I’d share a couple observations that I don’t think others mentioned.
— Re: the Ed Martin open.ink gallows video —
The vid has some security cam video that shows a few people dragging pre-fab pieces and doing something in the blurry distance. I have no reason to doubt that this is when the gallows came to be. The significant info is that this happened before dawn, so long before any MAGA crowds gathered.
Then there is a section where one guy is walking away down the street. Some time later he is seen coming back. Ed calls him Mr. Coffee because presumably he went for coffee. They then provide a map of where Mr. Coffee went. Says he got his coffee across the street from the FBI building. I plotted it on Google Earth and the one-way trip from Gallows to coffee would be a bit over a half mile.
There is no video of Mr. Coffee on his trip so I can’t see any reason to think they should know where he went. At the coffee end location of the alleged trip I went into street view on GE. There is an office building. I didn’t see any obvious indication of a coffee shop.
When the guy comes back into the security cams near the gallows I don’t see him with a cup or a bag to share with his buddies.
So it’s nice to see the cam captures and the timing info, but I call BS on the Mr. Coffee part of the story.
— Gallows Builder Guy —
Lambert shared a pic of a guy with a tool working on the top beam of the “gallows”. There was a good bit of discussion about what he was doing and why. I spent some time thinking about it. But I’m not sure it matters. I think we can all agree that the gallows could in no way function for hanging anyone. The signs on it that say ‘this is art’ seem honest.
But there is another picture of Builder Guy that I found more interesting. Here’s a link:
https://www.offthepress.com/who-is-mr-coffee-suspicions-that-anti-trump-clan-build-j6-gallows-on-mall/
This one is pretty high resolution and Builder Guy is mostly facing the camera. I was facinated by his appearance. Some notes:
— He’s wearing a double-breasted trenchcoat with a style that could be worn by Inspector Clouseau in the 70’s. Several belts and shoulder epaulets.
— Zooming in, he’s wearing a button vest like for a three-piece suit. There’s also another layer between the trenchcoat and vest. Not enough detail to tell but it could be a suit jacket.
— He’s wearing very dressy stylish shoes. They look something like this image:
https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/elegant-men-shoes-brown-isolated-136506400.jpg
Seems an odd choice for a day starting with a little light construction followed by hours of protest milling about.
He’s also wearing a baseball cap with an anchor logo on the front and some text in an arc. I’m not sure if there’s any info to be gleaned from that.
All together his appearance seems odd for helping to building a gallows and I get a vibe about his style that could be taken as rather “spook”y.