> are you serious? what do you think the tactical gear is - anything with a pattern?

I am referencing militia groups like the Oath Keepers, who dressed in fatigues, vests, helmets, gas masks, eye protection, gloves, boots, bore insignia, moved in formation, communicated over radios... they were prepared and organized.

> ah yes. the true sign of domestic terrorists executing a coup planned for months - intentionally not bringing your guns.

Oath keepers did in fact bring guns [1].

There are many other instances of guns and other weapons being found. Anyway, I'm not sure what the fixation is on guns because a mob without guns is more effective at doing exactly what was needed -- to get into the Capitol and delay the certification of the vote. An unarmed mob will not be met with lethal force by police for some reason in America, no matter how violent it is. The summer BLM protests proved that. So really if your objective is to get into the capitol, the worst idea in the world would be to shoot your way in; if you attempt this, the police will automatically go straight to lethal force. It's true that the mob outnumbered police, but police outnumbered militia members, and they would have lost that fight. I think if bodies started hitting the floor and bullets started flying, the regular rubes that comprised 99% of the mob that day would have scattered into the streets of DC.

> to temporarily delay a vote that could be done over video conference

Well that's just the thing... once you delay the vote there's no guarantee that the session would ever be reconvened. I already explained the plan in another post, but it's clearly laid out in the Eastman memos [2]. The point is that Pence on the morning of January 6 finalized his position that he would not decertify the election. That was their last hope at preventing Joe Biden from being president because it's essentially irreversible.

I believe not even the Supreme Court could overturn a bicameral certification of the election results. What authority would they use? There's nothing in the Constitution that would give them the power to review such a solemn power granted exclusively to the legislative branch. So if Trump had any hope of remaining as POTUS, it rested on preventing that certification from going forward at any cost. Hence the mob.

> ...what? theres no rule that if the certification gets delayed, the election is suddenly invalid. what is this, the 5-minute rule?

US Code Title 3 Chapter 1 Section 15 lays out exactly what happens on Jan 6. It does not have anything to say about what happens if Jan 6 is delayed. There is no process enshrined in law to handle that outcome. Evidently, the authors of the law did not anticipate a violent mob incited by the the loser of the election would attempt to delay the process.

It was extremely important to delay that certification as long as possible, because it allowed this behind-the-scenes pressure campaign to continue, and it prevented the transition of power from commencing.

On January 6, Rudy Giuliani articulated in a voicemail exactly why they needed a delay in certification so badly [3]:

the only strategy we can follow is to object to numerous states and raise issues so that we get ourselves into tomorrow—ideally until the end of tomorrow.

And why did they need that delay? Giuliani continues:

I know we would delay you a lot, but it would give us the opportunity to get the legislators who are very, very close to pulling their vote, particularly after what McConnell did today. It angered them, because they have written letters asking that you guys adjourn and send them back the questionable ones and they'll fix them up.

This was about an hour before the joint session reconvened after insurrectionists were cleared from the building. Giuliani was urging to delay the proceedings at least 20 hours, probably more, during which he would continue his pressure campaign against state legislatures to decertify their election results. Because at this point, Pence had already said he would not do it, and he followed through. But it would be a completely different scenario if states like WI, PA, AZ, MI, or GA turned around and claimed that they had indeed sent fraudulent certificates of the vote, and instead submitted votes for Trump, which ironically would be fraudulent certificates of the sort they decried.

Here's my bottom line:

The Constitution and law prescribed that Joe Biden was to hold the title of President Elect on Jan 7. If the former President had launched an assault on the Capitol that would have delayed the certification past that date, he would have successfully halted the transition of power. The transmutation from mere candidate to President Elect represents the beginning of the transition of power, which is a process and not a moment. But it begins in earnest on Jan 7, and if it hadn't, that would have meant the United States was under extraconstitutional order. I can't tell you what would have happened, because there's no precedent for that. But I think this is a scenario where a the slope could be exceedingly slippery. First it's one day, then a week, then a month.... the longer you step outside of the constitutional order, the harder it is to get back. I believe this is why Mitch McConnell and Mike Pence were so insistent on completing the certification that very night. Once it was done, it was essentially impossible to undo, and they knew that.

[0] https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/oath-keeper-jessica-watk...

[1] https://extremism.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs2191/f/Jason%2...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastman_memos

[3] https://thedispatch.com/p/giuliani-to-senator-try-to-just-sl...