Vladimir Putin has increasingly relied on the Wagner Group, a private and unaccountable army with a history of human rights violations, to pursue Russia’s foreign policy objectives across the globe.

Text messages reviewed by ProPublica represent the strongest indication yet that members of the Trump family inner circle were involved in financing and organizing the Jan. 6 “Save America” rally, which immediately preceded the Capitol riot.

Caroline Wren, who had worked on the Trump campaign, told associates she distributed funds to a number of political organizations backing the rally, including Tea Party Express and Turning Point.

Text messages and interviews show that Stop the Steal leaders fooled the Capitol police and welcomed racists to increase their crowd sizes, while White House officials worked to both contain and appease them.

The material obtained by ProPublica sheds light on the radicalization of a Jan. 6 defendant whom prosecutors have characterized as a “serious danger ... not only to his family and Congress, but to the entire system of justice.”

More than 15 hours of testimony failed to answer fundamental questions about the Capitol attack. Among them: Why national security officials responded differently to BLM protesters than to Trump supporters.

Interviews with 19 current and former officers show how failures of leadership and communication put hundreds of Capitol cops at risk and allowed rioters to get dangerously close to members of Congress.

Allegations of racism against the Capitol Police are nothing new: Over 250 Black cops have sued the department since 2001. Some of those former officers now say it’s no surprise white nationalists were able to storm the building.

California’s governor and San Francisco’s mayor worked together to act early in confronting the COVID threat. For Andrew Cuomo and Bill de Blasio, it was a different story, and 27,000 New Yorkers have died so far.