Here's How You Know the January 6th Committee Has Nothing

I was lucky enough to have other things to do last night which prohibited me from watching the latest installment in the Democrat obsession with January 6th, and yeah, I’m including Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger in that group now.

The January 6th committee held a primetime hearing, garnering complete buy-in for the stunt from all the networks and cable stations except Fox News, and it didn’t take long for the clips to start coming out. What transpired was a political show trial that would make Stalin blush.

Of course, one can have their opinion of January 6th, and that opinion can include it being a terrible event that should be roundly condemned. What happened was profoundly stupid and harmful. It doesn’t matter what a person believes about the 2020 election. Being an idiot isn’t a political strategy and running one’s head into a woodchipper accomplishes nothing, even if it wasn’t a “coup.”

But that has little to do with this sham committee. It is now June 2022, and the condemnations have been done to death. Republicans, especially those that had absolutely nothing to do with January 6th, are not bound by an oath to keep hyperventilating over it for all of eternity. And more to the point, the most obvious takeaway from last night’s hearing was that this committee has nothing to actually offer.

Take Liz Cheney’s opening statement for example. It was widely lauded as an exercise in truth-telling, but what did she actually say? The answer is not much.

Speeches about how terrible and no-good the orange man is are not new. They offer nothing to the conversation and they do nothing to advance the Democrat narrative regarding January 6th. Note the vast generalities used by Cheney. Trump “summoned” and “assembled” the mob, but what exactly does that indicate? Yes, there was a peaceful protest over a mile away, and to be fair to the Wyoming representative, the former president did tell them to go to the Capitol. But did he tell them to go inside? Did he tell them to fight with the police? Did he tell them to commit “insurrection” via some kind of unarmed “coup?”

Cheney never quite gets there, and she doesn’t get there because the answer to all those questions is: “No.” Thus, she’s left with the vague charge that he “lit the flame.” Whether that’s actually true or not is an open question given he pointedly told people to remain peaceful, yet it’s not even that relevant.

Why? Because even if we connect several dots and assume that Trump saying the election was stolen motivated those people to enter the Capitol, that’s still not in any way a direct call to violence. Are we going to criminalize political speech now? Is the legality of such speech now dictated by what other parties choose to do with it? The crime of incitement has real, statutory standards, and none of what Trump said comes close to meeting them.

The committee playing that clip of Barr saying what he’s been saying for a year and a half is a good indication on its own. That’s why they led with? We already know that Barr doesn’t believe there was sufficient evidence of fraud to have overturned the election. But I digress, back to Cheney, notice the softening of expectations. The “investigation is still ongoing” she says, which is just another way of saying they don’t have a smoking gun but want to drag this out into perpetuity, or at least through the November election.

What a bombshell, right? I mean, it’s so stunning that it shouldn’t be hard at all to provide direct proof that Trump or anyone in his orbit told the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers to fight with cops and enter the Capitol. Yet, that evidence never came last night, and it’s not going to come over the next several days. Because again, this committee has nothing. Rather, it exists to vomit out a bunch of unconnected dots in the hopes of pushing a disproven narrative.

There was no organized, pre-planned insurrection on January 6th. There was a protest where several hundred people splintered off and did a bad thing, and they are paying dearly for it. Donald Trump, as much as one may hate him, did not order or even insinuate an order for people to enter the Capitol. In fact, he did the opposite. All the rest of the pomp and circumstance about Trump associates talking about challenging certification is not illegal. How do I know? Because Jamie Raskin and Bennie Thompson, both members of the January 6th committee, have previously challenged the certification of presidential elections.

This committee is a farce. Listen closely and you won’t hear anything at all. It’s a waste of time, rehashing what we already know in dramatic fashion in the vain hope that people will forget they are paying $5 a gallon for gas and $12 for a pack of bacon. It’s not going to work.

I would suggest the ‘game’ here is to present ‘evidence’, and that in the weeks after the 2024 convention...IF Trump were the candidate...various state AG’s would stand and disqualify him from the state ballot by using information presented at the hearings.

Maybe five or six would be successful, and it’d be immediately challenged via the Supreme Court. The logic would be that the hearing branded him a criminal....without any legal convention utilized.

They seem to think it’s Trump in the end...which I’m guessing DeSantis would spoil the effort and make this all worthless.

Now, what would be interesting out of the hearing...how Ray Epps met up with a top BLM/Antifa guy on the 6th. But I doubt that they want to explain how the two knew each other, and who funds the efforts of the two.

Let’s put this in perspective. A quarter of a million unarmed people came to Washington to peacefully protest. Over 99% exercised their constitutional right peacefully and went home quietly. If those people were intent on overthrowing the government, they would have come armed, stormed the Capitol, overwhelmed the pitiful defenses, and killed every member of Congress.

Of the 250,000 protestors, less than 1000 apparently entered the Capitol. The decision had been made in advanceby some person or persons in the legislative branch not to beef up security, knowing a large crowd would be outside, knowing passions were high in the country, and knowing the District of Columbia had been rocked by violent riots for over a year. Based on these facts alone, there was reason to be concerned about security and the National Guard could, and should have been put in place to protect the Capitol in the event of trouble. A year later we do not know who made the decision not to beef up security, much less the rationale.

There is video evidence in the public sphere showing people breaking into the Capitol and destroying property. There is other video evidence showing people being waved into the Capitol by what appear to be Capitol employees. There is video showing many who entered the Capitol peacefully walking around.

There is some video evidence of organized individuals who appear to be encouraging protestors to storm the Capitol as well as facilitate entry into the Capitol, including Ray Epps who has not been charged. If there were as claimed, a highly organized conspiracy to storm the Capitol and overthrow the government, the charges brought against arrested protestors provide no insight into this alleged conspiracy, even after a year of investigations and trials. The individual charges and trials portray singular spontaneous acts of trespass and some property damage, not a planned and highly orchestrated attack on the building.

No evidence has been presented any protestors who entered the Capitol were armed with firearms. Without weapons equal to those actually used by the Capitol police to kill one unarmed protestor, it is difficult to understand the assertion the protestors came very close to toppling the government.

There has been no objective and impartial investigation into the events of the day. The substantial video footage from inside the Capitol has not been examined by impartial investigators or released to the public. The decision makers who decided not to beef up security have not testified publicly under oath to their actions. The incident involving a Capitol policeman who killed an unarmed protestor was not rigorously investigated and the policeman was not tried or disciplined despite at least one prior negligent act with a firearm while on duty.

Hundreds of protestors who entered or were close to the Capitol have been arrested, and incarcerated indefinitely, without due process of law. Constitutional rights to bail, speedy trial, access to evidence, and access to legal representation have been denied by prosecutors and judges. Many of the guilty pleas appear to have been effectively coerced from defendants who pled guilty because they couldn’t physically, psychologically, and financially handle being incarcerated indefinitely under what are reported to be inhumane conditions. Judges, overseeing some of the cases have made extremely prejudicial statements about individual defendants, bringing into question their objectivity and fairness. Officials in the legislative, executive and judicial branches of the federal government have actively collaborated in denying fundamental rights to the arrested protestors, effectively punishing them without presumption of innocence or a fair and speedy trial.

Very few leaders in government, the legal profession, academia, politics, and the media have expressed concern, much less outrage at the intentional denial of constitutional rights to American citizens arrested for activities at the January 6 event. Many, if not most, of these same voices frequently make claims democracy and freedom were almost destroyed by the January 6 protestors. They miss the irony that when they applaud the arbitrary denial of fundamental due process rights to protestors accused of crimes, they are celebrating the death of the republic and freedom.

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The process is the punishment.