The January 6th committee is finally on the cusp of releasing its much-hyped “report” on the unrest that took place at the Capitol Building following the 2020 election.
Or is it? I mean, yes, there’s going to be a report released (and a separate release of criminal referrals), but if the first leaked details of what it will actually contain are any indication, it isn’t actually going to be about the unrest at the Capitol Building at all. Rather, it’s going to be just one big continuation of the committee’s obsession with Donald Trump, who was not even present.
Sources spoke to Politico about what the chapter list will be, and boy, do I have some thoughts.
- Trump’s effort to sow distrust in the results of the election
- Trump’s pressure on state governments or legislatures to overturn victories by Joe Biden
- Trump campaign efforts to send pro-Trump electors to Washington from states won by Biden
- Trump’s push to deploy the Justice Department in service of his election scheme
- The pressure campaign by Trump and his lawyers against then-Vice President Mike Pence
- Trump’s effort to summon supporters to Washington who later fueled the Jan. 6 mob
- The 187 minutes during which Trump refused to tell rioters to leave the Capitol
- An analysis of the attack on the Capitol
When the January 6th committee was first proposed, it was billed as an even-handed exercise meant to expose the systemic flaws that allowed the events of that day to take place. In regard to the House’s oversight role, jurisdiction really starts and stops with questions about why the USCP was so unprepared despite multiple warnings. Liz Cheney and her cohorts are not law enforcement. It’s not their place to “investigate” non-government individuals for supposed “incitement.”
But who am I kidding? Traditional boundaries don’t matter when anyone in Washington wants to go after Donald Trump, and this report is apparently going to be almost entirely about the former president. Reading through the chapter list that’s been leaked, it’s not until the very last one that you get anything that isn’t directly about him, and even then, that “analysis” will probably still be mostly about Trump.
This news pretty well exposes the committee for what it is and always has been, which is a partisan exercise meant to affect the 2022 and 2024 elections. The hearings have produced nothing new or valuable, and the supposed “bombshells” have all turned out to be duds.
Think about the ridiculous standards at play here that would never stand up in any other setting. In chapter seven, for example, the accusation is that Trump didn’t tell people to leave the Capitol for 187 minutes. In fact, that’s been the January 6th committee’s primary piece of evidence in this entire ordeal. What is that supposed to prove, though? Putting aside that Trump did put out a message telling the rioters to stop fighting with police officers, a person who isn’t in control of a group of people not telling them to leave somewhere is not incitement. It’s a Kafka trap, whereby Trump’s non-involvement is somehow spun as proof of his involvement.
And that’s the January 6th committee in a nutshell. It’s a bunch of partisans looking to spin the most mundane, inconclusive (at best) evidence into a damning indictment of one man. Someone can argue that Trump should have done more that day. But that’s not proof he orchestrated the attack, and the idea that we are going to change the definition of incitement to “anyone doing anything because of anything unrelated you did” is outright tyrannical.
In regard to the January 6th unrest, it does not matter what Trump wanted to do with state electors or what he asked of Mike Pence. Those things are not incitement. If they are, then Bernie Sanders should be in jail right now for “inciting” the attack that nearly killed Steve Scalise. Politicians say and do things. If those things are not actually telling people to commit violence, then the agency lies with those who committed violence.
But I digress, I might as well be talking to a wall. The goal of the committee was never to get to the truth and prevent future attacks. It was to interfere in elections and try to take down Trump once and for all. In that sense, I guess it’s done exactly what it was designed to do.
Nothing matters as long as Biden gets away with money laundering, selling out America to anyone willing to buy favors, bankrupting the country into oblivion, getting us involved in a war with Russia, dissolving our sovereignty, filling the top positions within government with freaks instead of qualified individuals, hiring 87 thousand additional IRS agents to go after middle class citizens, ending our energy industry, leaving behind Americans in Afghanistan, begging Iran for a nuclear deal, mandating Covid shots for our military, ordering the FBI to intimidate social media companies to block negative information about Biden and omit any and all information that would benefit Trump during the 2020 election, etc. etc., etc.
The January 6 committee is an obvious clown show.
and DEFUND the FBI, as well