Don’t Allow the January 6 Capitol Insurrection to Be Erased
The House of Representatives January 6 select committee will hold its first hearing on July 27.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi has wisely decided to exercise her veto power over the two most incendiary nominations (Rep. Jim Jordan and Jim Banks) suggested by Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
UPDATE: McCarthy has decided to take his marbles and go home, and maybe start his own committee.
https://twitter.com/svdate/status/1417912568971157506?s=20
No matter who ends up on the committees, expect Republicans to work on expanding the scope of the Big Lie (Trump won the election) to incorporate the Great Gaslighting. Facts will be irrelevant as the events of January 6 are spun in the most incredible ways.
It is important that we --the American public-- inoculate ourselves in advance of this attempt to rewrite history. Truth has its own value, and those seeking to erase it should suffer the consequences. Do pay attention, take note of the purveyors of deception and the traffickers of distraction, and share their names widely as the next election nears.
Greg Sargent at the Washington Post:
We are not obliged to accept GOP venality, bad faith and contempt for the public interest as just normal features of our politics, ones that we must all tolerate, because, well, that’s just how Republicans conduct politics these days.
This is thrust upon us by the news of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) choices for the committee to investigate the insurrection. One is Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), who has already signaled his intent to sabotage the proceedings.
Banks released this extraordinary statement:
If Democrats were serious about investigating political violence, this committee would be studying not only the January 6 riot at the Capitol, but also the hundreds of violent political riots last summer when many more innocent Americans and law-enforcement officers were attacked.
Oozing with phony victimization, Banks added that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) created the committee “solely to malign conservatives.”
A majority in the Republican Party are already either celebrating Jan. 6 or denying that it happened at all. Congressional members who ran for their lives as a mob broke into their chambers have seemingly forgotten what happened.
Fortunately, the GOP is a (shrinking) minority party. A majority of Americans call what happened on that day an "insurrection" and an attempted overthrow of the government.
Lest we forget, the storming of the Capitol happened at the same time as the validation of the electoral college results was occurring. January 6 was an attempt to disrupt and/or discredit one of the processes of democracy with the intention of preventing the traditional peaceful transfer of power.
More than six months after the attempted Capitol insurrection, the wheels of justice are grinding slowly. More than 580 people have been charged with offenses as a result of a mob breaking into the building, committing widespread vandalism, attacking police, and threatening the lives of elected representatives.
The Department of Justice is still trying to organize thousands of hours of body-worn camera footage, closed-circuit surveillance camera footage, more than a million social media videos, data from phones and email accounts, and the responses to more than 6,000 grand jury subpoenas.
A few plea bargains have been made, mostly aimed at building cases against organizers of known extremist groups. What is already obvious is that the impetus for the insurrection wasn’t those groups expressing their anger to mobilize their audiences; most participants were not known to be associated with militias or confederations of like minded people.
What the nation witnessed on January 6, was culmination of years of encouragement via the stoking of grievances real or imagined leading to the stochastic terrorism that I and others have been warning about for a long time.
Donald Trump didn’t need to tell anybody what to do, nor did he care what the specifics of those actions would be. He just told his followers --over and over again-- that something was being taken from them. It didn’t matter if the “something” was nonexistent; it just mattered that base instincts of a group of people were triggered.
Having failed at their quest, the former President and his enablers are now doubling down on the claim --originally made by Fox News Tucker Carlson-- that Jan. 6 wasn’t an insurrection—it was just a protest that got a little out of hand.
So what we saw and heard wasn’t real. Really? I guess four years with over 30,000 lies coming from the leader of the free world was supposed to numb us to the latest cock and bull story.
There has been much angst online over the eight month prison sentence meted out to Paul Hodkins for participation in the insurrection, namely being caught on video wandering in the Senate chamber with a giant Trump flag.
While I’m just as angry as the next person over the events of that day, I thought we were moving to a place where incarceration wasn’t considered to be a needed consequence for non-violent actions.
The speech given at sentencing by U.S. District Judge Randolph D. Moss is worth remembering:
Moss declared, “Democracy requires the cooperation of the governed. When a mob is prepared to attack the Capitol, to prevent our elected officials from both parties from performing their constitutional and statutory duty, democracy is in trouble.”
He continued: "The symbolism of that act is unmistakable. In that act, he captured the threat to democracy that we all witnessed that day. … People have to know that assaulting the United States Capitol and impeding the democratic process, even if you don’t come bearing arms, will have consequences.”
Moss thoroughly rejected the notion that this was an act of free speech, noting, ”There were people storming through the halls of the Capitol saying, ‘Where’s Nancy?’ People were threatening the lives of members of Congress. That is more than a simple riot.”
The House select committee needs to do its job of unearthing not just the facts, but the context of what happened on January 6, 2021. I can only hope these hearings get half of the media coverage granted to the inquisitions into Benghazi and Hillary Clinton’s emails.
The Guardian interview with Congressman Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the House select committee gives me hope that the hearings will be consequential:
The central thrust of the investigation will focus on the facts and circumstances surrounding the Capitol attack, Thompson said, and the first hearing scheduled for 27 July will feature current and former US Capitol police and DC Metro police officers.
But in pursuing a broad mandate to also examine the root causes of the insurrection, Thompson reiterated that he remains prepared to issue subpoenas to compel testimony from an array of Trump officials connected to the attack should they refuse to appear voluntarily.
Thompson indicated that Trump and the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, are among the top witnesses for his investigation, in large part because McCarthy was on the phone with the former president as the riot unfolded.
McCarthy called Trump in a panic as rioters breached the Capitol and begged him to call off his supporters, only for Trump to chastise the top Republican in the House for not doing more to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
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In case you missed it last time I posted it-- If for some reason you remain unpersuaded about the seriousness of the January 6th attack on the Capitol, this compilation of videos by the New York Times will be worth the 40+ minutes you append watching it.
https://youtu.be/jWJVMoe7OY0
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