REVEALED: Mo Brooks Wore Body Armor, Slept On Office Floor Prepping For Capitol Riot

Mo Brooks is not the sharpest knife in the drawer and the more he talks about the day of the insurrection and of his preparation for same, the more it becomes obvious that he not only knew he was inciting violence, he was taking every precaution to protect himself against same. Do normal congress members, preparing for speeches on normal occasions feel the need to don Kevlar and sleep on the floor of their offices? Asking for a friend. Slate:

Brooks, like Republican leaders who tried to counterprogram the hearing with a press conference yesterday, thinks a proper investigation would look at why House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office wasn’t “doing a better job with respect to the Capitol Police and their level of preparation.”

Then, to prove his point about preparation, he revealed a new detail to me: that because of a tip he’d received about potential violence, he’d been wearing body armor at the very same Ellipse speech in which he encouraged rally attendees to “start taking down names and kicking ass.”

“I was warned on Monday that there might be risks associated with the next few days,” he said. “And as a consequence of those warnings, I did not go to my condo. Instead, I slept on the floor of my office. And when I gave my speech at the Ellipse, I was wearing body armor.

“That’s why I was wearing that nice little windbreaker,” he told me with a grin. “To cover up the body armor.”

He didn’t say who warned him, or what the “risk” was that he’d been warned about. There were probably a “half-dozen different motivations that affected people in varying degrees” to engage in insurrection. He named, for example, “financial losses suffered because of the government’s reaction to COVID-19,” “the belief that there was significant voter fraud and election theft activity,” or “a great love and respect for President Trump.”

“It might be,” too, he added, “that some of them were just militant anarchists and saw this as an opportunity to infiltrate an otherwise peaceful protest and turn it into a riot.”

In Brooks’ affidavit asking the Justice Department to shield him from liability, his lawyers emphasize the parts of his speech where he encouraged peaceful protest, not physical violence. “Once again, Brooks makes no call for a physical attack on the Capitol,” a typical footnote reads. “To the contrary, Brooks calls on Ellipse Speech attendees to do one thing: ‘utter words’!” The affidavit argues that the “taking down names and kicking ass!” remark was really about taking the names of Republicans who wouldn’t support Trump’s Electoral College objections, and punishing them in future elections.

But if he was so sure the mob would understand the peaceful intent of his words, why’d he need the Kevlar?

A great many things don’t make sense about that day, and why police officers were under armed and out numbered, and why sitting members of congress were wearing body armor or texting the locations of other congress members to the mob are only a few of the details that need to come out.

In all events, Brooks will be paying his own legal bills, because Merrick Garland has made it clear that in no way was Brooks working within the course and scope of his duties as a congressman when he incited he insurrection, therefore the Department of Justice will not be defending him against the lawsuit that fellow congressman Eric Swalwell brought.

Brooks should enjoy himself now. All indications are that his star in the congressional firmament, while never that high, is now setting.