The Washington Post - USA (2022-06-07)

TUESDAY, JUNE 7 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ M2 B3

THE DISTRICT

Man shot in February has died, police say

A man who was shot i nside a building in February in Northeast Washington h as d ied, and his case is being investigated as a homicide, D.C. police said in a statement issued Monday. The victim was identified as Maurice McRae, 31, of Northeast Washington. Police said McRae was f ound wounded about 7:30 p.m. o n Feb. 19 in the 3 000 block of Bladensburg R oad NE, near Fort Lincoln Park. He w as taken to a hospital with critical injuries. Police said McRae died at a hospital on A pril 27, and his death was l ater ruled a homicide. No possible motive was d escribed, and n o arrest has been made. — Peter Hermann

VIRGINIA

22-year-old charged in older brother’s death

A 22-year-old man in Alexandria was charged i n the fatal s hooting of his older brother early Monday, p olice s aid. The suspect, Enoc Cruz Villafuerte, was c harged with second-degree murder and u sing a firearm to commit a violent felony in the d eath of 2 4-year-old Jonathan Cruz Villafuerte, who was s hot i n the upper body, police said. They s aid the gunfire occurred s hortly before 2 a .m. in the 1400 block of N orth Beauregard Street. A police spokesman said the motive for the shooting was still under i nvestigation. The killing was t he fourth homicide of the year in A lexandria. — Martin Weil and Paul Duggan

Pipeline firm r equests new panel of j udges

A company building a n atural gas p ipeline i n Virginia and West Virginia is s eeking a new panel of judges to hear the next round in its l egal battle with environmentalists. Mountain Valley P ipeline f iled a motion l ast month requesting that the U .S. C ourt o f Appeals for the 4 th C ircuit a ssign a new panel at r andom, the R oanoke Times reported. The 303-mile p ipeline, which i s mostly finished, would transport natural gas d rilled from the Marcellus and Utica s hale formations through West Virginia and Virginia. Legal battles have delayed completion by nearly four years and doubled t he pipeline’s cost, now e stimated at $6.6 billion. — Associated Press

LOCAL DIGEST

Results from June 6

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LOTTERIES

They call it
“target fixation”
or “screen
fixation.” That’s
when you’re so
obsessed with
following the
advanced digital
readout in the
cockpit of your
attack jet that
you don’t notice the mountain
looming right in front of you.
Today we can all experience
target fixation in the comfort of
own vehicles, when we blindly
turn our driving route over to the
map apps on our phones. Who
are you gonna believe? GPS or
your own two eyes?
Dave Statter sees this play out
every day from his high-rise
apartment in Crystal City. The
former newsman has video
cameras trained on I-395 below.
In March, I wrote about how,
time and time again, Dave sees
cars making the same dangerous
move: c utting nearly
perpendicularly across four lanes
of interstate traffic to get from
Boundary Channel Drive to a left
exit onto Route 1 South.
He thinks a lot of those drivers
are steered wrong by their GPS.
Dave has re-created driving
directions on Google Maps that
suggest taking that route. I’ve
done the same with Apple’s Maps

app. Waze apparently addressed the issue long ago, in part thanks to a man named Alan Boyd. By day, Alan is a contractor for a Navy program. In the evenings, he’s among the volunteers who keep Waze as updated as possible. “There’s a small little group of people who help out in the area,” said Alan, who is a Virginia state manager for Waze. Alan said Waze has not recommended that dicey, four- lane move since 20 14. VDOT’s Ellen Kamilakis said the agency is aware of Dave’s videos and is working to improve that stretch of road. “A s we have done in the past, we reached out to Waze, who verified that drivers who enter I- 395 at Boundary Channel Drive are not instructed to immediately cross multiple lanes of traffic to use the Route 1 exit ramp,” she wrote in an email. “We also reached out to Google to request that that movement be prevented in Google Maps.” Though Waze is owned by Google, Alan said it can take some time for the changes he suggests to the Waze app to show up on Google. A Google spokesperson tells me its routing has been updated. “We take a wide range of factors into account to deliver driving routes — including road

size, directness and estimated travel time,” Google emailed in a statement. “A fter investigating, we’ve updated the route in question on I-395. As always, we encourage everyone to stay alert and attentive when on the road.” Apple did not respond to my requests for comment.

Alan lives in Lorton and drives throughout the D.C./Maryland/ Virginia area. When I last checked, he was the fifth-most active volunteer editor on Waze, which relies on crowdsourcing. He’s always monitoring the latest traffic wrinkles. Friday evenings are reserved for sitting at his computer and poring through news releases issued by VDOT about various road closures and detours. While Alan is helping other Waze users, he’s also helping himself. “It helps me by making it so that it’s more efficient for me driving around in the area,” he said. “I don’t go to an exit and it’s no longer there.” Waze users can report problems they encounter by clicking the orange circle in the lower-right corner of their screen and then clicking on “Map issue.” Dave hopes alterations to GPS programs will c ut down on that cross-lane maneuver. “I think it will particularly affect those who don’t know the area at all,” he said. Even so, he’s noticed that some of the worst offenders are the drivers of hotel courtesy shuttles, who should know better. What seems to help, Dave said, is when an Arlington County police car parks in the gore zone

near the Route 1 South exit. That dissuades the risky behavior. Bad design should get some of the blame. Left exits are always tricky, since that’s where the fast lanes are meant to be. There’s only about a football field’s length between the Boundary Channel Drive entrance and the Route 1 exit. That’s doable if there’s absolutely no traffic, foolhardy when there is traffic. It’s just enticing enough for some drivers. Changes are in store for this nasty bit of pavement. “In the long term, the Boundary Channel Drive at I-395 Interchange Improvements project will reconfigure the ramps at I-395 and Boundary Channel Drive, extending the distance between the Boundary Channel Drive entrance ramp and the Route 1 exit ramp from 30 0 feet to 1,150 feet,” wrote Ellen from VDOT. “This project is set to begin construction this summer.” Alan thinks map apps get a bad rap, scapegoated by drivers who have only themselves to blame. “In all truthfulness, it’s a lot easier when they do something silly to say ‘My GPS told me to do it,’ even though the GPS doesn’t do it,” he said. What all drivers should remember is: If it looks like a bad move, it probably is.

Va. Waze m anager warns: Steer clear of tricky G PS navigation

John
Kelly's

Wa shington

J. ROXBURY Waze’s Alan Boyd of Lorton keeps the app up-to-date in the area, partly for safety reasons. Unlike other apps, Waze no longer steers drivers across four lanes of I-395 to reach a left exit onto Route 1 South.

Newly reinstated Georgetown Law administrator leaves post

Center for Constitutional Studies.
University investigators re-
cently found that Shapiro was not
“properly subject to discipline”
for his January tweets because
they were posted before his em-
ployment started, thus clearing
the author and lawyer to resume
his post, Tr eanor said in an email
to the campus Thursday. On the
same day, Shapiro had tweeted
that he would go to work Friday.
By Monday, however, he an-
nounced that he had resigned.

GEORGETOWN FROM B1 “You cleared me on a jurisdic-
tional technicality,” Shapiro
wrote to Tr eanor, adding that the
report from the diversity office
“and your own statements to the
Law Center community — implic-
itly repealed Georgetown’s v aunt-
ed Speech and Expression Policy
and set me up for discipline the
next time I transgress progressive
orthodoxy.”
He continued by rejecting the
dean’s earlier takes on his tweets.
“It’s a complete miscompre-
hension to read what I said to
suggest that ‘the best Supreme

Court nominee could not be a Black woman,’ as you did in your very first statement back on Janu- ary 27, or that I considered all black women to be ‘lesser than’ everyone else,” Shapiro wrote. “Al- though my tweet was inartful, as I’ve readily admitted many times, its meaning that I considered one possible candidate to be best and thus all others to be less qualified is clear.” A Georgetown spokesperson said the school “does not prohibit speech based on the person pre- senting ideas or the content of

those ideas, even when those ideas may be difficult, controver- sial or objectionable.” The school’s Conservative and Libertarian Student Association said in a statement that members are disappointed with the way Georgetown Law handled its in- vestigation, a four-month process the group said was “needlessly cruel and punitive.” Luke Bunting, 29, a recent graduate and former co-president of the student group, said he is worried about the message the school is conveying to potential

applicants. “It sends the message that free speech at Georgetown Law isn’t r eally free. It’s s ubject to the complaints of students or fac- ulty,” said Bunting. He a dded that some conservative students have said they felt pressure to censor themselves during classroom discussions, fearing their comments would be taken out of context. “I think that there was a real trumpeting of the worst-faith reading of Ilya’s tweets and that was damaging,” B unting said. “It’s a real shame and it’s a real loss to the school.”

rioting. Leaders of two right-wing groups, Joshua Macias of Vets for Tr ump, a scheduled speaker the following day, and Bianca Gracia, head of Latinos for Tr ump and a Jan. 6 event organizer with White House ties, were also there. Snippets of audio released do not capture what the group dis- cussed. Tarrio has said he was only interested in connecting with Sorelle because she was a “good attorney” after he was released from jail and ordered to leave Washington pending trial for a sep- arate incident, the burning of a Black Lives Matter banner stolen from a church in the District in late

Tarrio pleaded guilty in that
case and completed a four-month
jail term earlier this year.
Meanwhile, multiple Oath
Keepers members provided secu-
rity for Tr ump confidant Roger
Stone on Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, court
records show, while at previous
pro-Tr ump rallies he surrounded
himself with Proud Boys, including
Tarrio, who has served as an aide to
Stone.
In the Oath Keepers case, a de-
fendant this spring made public

the transcript of a Nov. 9 , 2020, call of the Oath Keepers, in which Rhodes has Sorelle debrief members on “multiple pods working” to challenge Biden’s election victory. Sorelle said those in the pods in- cluded the Tr ump campaign, the Republican National Committee, QAnon supporters and the legal team of Rudy Giuliani. Tarrio also used an encrypted app to communicate with Rhodes and Stone, who had drawn up a “Stop the Steal” plan on Nov. 5 , two days after the election, according to footage from a documentary crew that The Washington Post reported on. Stone, Macias, Sorelle and Garcia have not been accused of wrongdoing. The Monday indictment largely restated the role Tarrio allegedly played in discussions that preced- ed the violence at the Capitol. On Dec. 30 and 31, prosecutors said, Tarrio exchanged messages with an individual who sent him a plan called “1776 Returns” to occupy “crucial buildings” in Washington, including the House and Senate, with “as many people as possible.” After sending it, the individual al-

Ethan Nordean of Washington
state, Joe Biggs of Florida a nd
Zachary Rehl of Pennsylvania —
with “opposing the lawful transfer
of presidential power by force,”
eventually mustering and coordi-
nating the movements of as many
as 30 0 people around the Capitol
that day. The defendants are ac-
cused of fomenting and spear-
heading a riot that stormed the
Capitol, eventually forcing the
evacuation o f Congress as i t met to
confirm the 2 020 e lection r esults.
Federal prosecutors previously
leveled the rare charge of seditious
conspiracy for the first time in the
Jan. 6 attack against Stewart
Rhodes, the founder and leader of
the extremist group Oath Keepers,
and 10 associates. Since filing the
charges in January, a year after the
violence, two of the other defen-
dants, Joshua James of Alabama
and Brian Ulrich of Georgia, and
one other Oath Keeper member,
William Todd Wilson of North
Carolina, h ave pleaded guilty to the
charge and are cooperating with
the Justice Department.
In April, a Tario co-defendant,
Charles Donohoe of North Caro-
lina, pleaded guilty to two felony
counts including obstructing an
official proceeding of Congress. H is
plea provided insights into the
plans and intention of the group to
disrupt the electoral vote confir-
mation. Tarrio and the others
pleaded not guilty to a previous
indictment that charged them with
offenses including conspiring to
obstruct Congress or impede po-
lice in a civil disorder.
The new charges add two
counts, seditious conspiracy, pun-
ishable by up to 20 years in prison,
and conspiracy to prevent an offi-
cer from discharging any duties. A
new hearing was set for Friday.
Rehl attorney Carmen Hernandez
called the action by prosecutors
ahead of an August trial date ex-
ceedingly heavy-handed against
her client, who she said committed
no violence and at w orst is alleged-
ly to have associated with the
Proud Boys as his right under the
First Amendment.
“To bring such a serious charge
against Mr. Rehl at this late date

CHARGES FROM B1

without alleging a single new fact against him is simply wrong and deserves a response,” Hernadez wrote in a filing. Tarrio attorney Nayib Hassan said his client “is looking forward to trial and his day in court.” Attorneys for Nordean declined to comment. The charges show prosecutors pulling together a wider picture of organization within extremist groups that shared overlapping if not common goals. The investigations have exposed hints of coordi- nation among groups, even as the FBI and Justice Department are expanding their investigations into the political orbit of former president Donald Tr ump. The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack is expected to shine a spotlight on such connec- tions in public hearings starting Thursday. In recent weeks, prosecutors have introduced as evidence in the latest case a video of a meeting in an underground parking garage near the Capitol among Tarrio, Rhodes and Kellye Sorelle, an attorney who has worked with the Oath Keepers, on the eve of the

legedly messaged Tarrio that the “revolution is [sic] important than anything,” to which Tarrio allegedly replied, “That’s what every wak- ing moment consists of ... I’m not playing games.” On Jan. 3, an unidentified “Per- son 3” wrote on an encrypted Proud Boys leadership chat that the group should “plan the opera- tions based around the front entrance to the Capitol building,” according to the indictment. The following day, i t alleged, Tarrio posted a voice message to a “Ministry of Self Defense” leaders group, stat- ing, “I didn’t hear this voice note until now, you want to storm the Capitol.” After the Capitol was breached, Tarrio wrote in a Tele- gram group chat, “We did this,” prosecutors said. That night, in a new detail alleged in the 32 -page indictment, a fellow Proud Boys member identified as “Person 1” messaged Tarrio exulting with a profanity, “1776.” Tarrio, according to the charging document, then replied “The Win- ter Palace,” a reference to a Proud Boys planning document that had a section called “Storm the Winter Palace,” referring to the Russian Revolution of 191 7 and the former imperial palace in St. Petersburg that was raided by Bolsheviks, CNN first reported. Someone identified in the indictment as “Person 1” also sug- gested to Tarrio that the election result could be invalidated if law- makers failed to vote by midnight, a seeming attempt to interpret the Electoral Counting Act in a way to deny Biden’s victory that echoed Tr ump’s o wn lawyers. The Proud Boys are known for brandishing batons at rallies and gatherings and for being eager to spar with their perceived enemies in the leftist antifa movement. Dur- ing a presidential election debate in fall 2020, Tr ump refused to de- nounce the Proud Boys, urging them to “stand back and stand by.” The group t ook those words as a rallying cry, which appeared to en- ergize members in the months leading u p to Jan. 6. While its leaders disavow racism, some members have ties to groups that espouse white-nationalist rhetoric common among hate groups.

Proud Boys leader, 4 d eputies charged with seditious conspiracy

2020 PHOTO BY ALLISON DINNER/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Henry “Enrique” Tarrio is the former longtime chairman of the extremist group Proud Boys.

Subscriber Exclusives

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The Washington Post - USA (2022-06-07)

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