With their razor-thin congressional majority at stake, a “select committee” of House Democrats joined by two GOP members has launched the first in a series of six high-profile show trials attempting to preempt a 2024 Trump presidential candidacy by blaming him for inciting Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riots they have branded as an “insurrection.”
The former President Trump has already been acquitted in the Senate of those same House insurrection incitement charges. Nevertheless, given that every one of those Nancy Pelosi appointees previously voted for the former president’s impeachment, the hearing conclusions are entirely predictable.
Organizers of the spectacle spared no expense in hiring a veteran television producer, former ABC News President James Goldston, to resurrect and dramatize what they hope to cast as blockbuster events in advance of bruising November challenges.
As characterized in the Wall Street Journal, the initial hearing intent is to “tie together disparate developments and characters into a cohesive story line centered on Mr. Trump’s actions, hoping they can grab viewers’ attention like with Watergate in the 1970s and Iran-Contra in the 1980s.”
Republicans have broadly characterized the purpose as a politically motivated witch hunt intended to embarrass the GOP party and to cripple Donald J. Trump.
Or as the liberal New York Times candidly and sanguinely headlined the goal, “Jan. 6 Hearings Give Democrats a Chance to Recast Midterm Message.”
The Rigged Committee
Any thinly veiled pretense of fairness went whoof when Speaker Pelosi broke a 200-year precedent by rejecting two Republican picks for the panel, Reps. Jim Jordan (Ohio) and Jim Banks (Ind.).
Jordan and Banks were part of a group of five GOP lawmakers nominated by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to serve on the 13-member select committee, and both had voted against certifying President Biden’s January election victory.
Whereas Pelosi said she would accept the other three other GOP selections, Reps. Rodney Davis, Ill., Kelly Armstrong, N.D., and Troy Nehls, Texas, to join eight others she had previously appointed, including the panel’s chairman, and GOP Rep. Liz Cheney, Wyo., and fellow Republican Trump critic Rep. Adam Kinzinger, Ill., McCarthy yanked all of his picks from the panel.
Revulsions and Revelations
So, after all the build-ups, what did we really learn?
We already knew that the Capital riot was disgustingly ugly, and videos and narrative descriptions of the event provided nauseating reminders of this.
Having said this, there is nothing whatsoever to justify calling it an insurrection … no guns found on anyone, no evidence of a plan to “overthrow the government,” no apparent organized group or leader in charge.
Although media pundits had repeatedly and erroneously claimed there had been multiple resulting fatal riot police casualties, there were in fact none, and none were mentioned. Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick whose death had repeatedly been falsely attributed to being bludgeoned with a fire extinguisher was subsequently determined to have died of natural causes after suffering two strokes.
Also not addressed in the horror show, the only known fatal riot casualty was protestor Ashli Babbitt, an unarmed U.S. Air Force veteran who was shot in the neck by Capitol Police officer Michael Byrd.
More than 800 other Jan. 6 Capitol protestors have been arrested, and 80 or so have been jailed … some still are. Conspicuously absent in this tally of people arrested or investigated is Ray Epps, an Arizona man appearing in multiple videos apparently provoking the crowd and advocating for protesters to breach the Capitol building as others assembled nearby chant at him “Fed!, Fed!, Fed!.”
Missed Information
We learned nothing from the not-ready-for-prime-time spectacle regarding who opened the Capitol building doors that were locked from the inside, allowing the crowd in.
And who is the mysterious person appearing on a previous video who planted pipe bombs outside both the Republican and Democratic national committee headquarters the night before?
Perhaps the biggest take-away news bite was committee chair Cheney’s admission that the riots were “not spontaneous.”
This is a BIG thing – namely validating known ,information that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the Capitol Police, and Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser were informed in advance to expect and prepare for trouble that day.
It was previously known and reported that intel reports directly communicated to Pelosi, Capitol police and Mayor Bowser days prior to the riots revealed potentials for Jan. 6 violence.
It is also clear that in this knowledge then-President Trump authorized dispatchment of up to 2,000 national guard troops to supplement local Capitol protection … an offer that was refused by Pelosi and Bowser for “bad optics.”
Making matters worse, those Capitol police who were available were woefully unprepared to deal with their forewarned emergency. Weapons and riot gear, including shields and helmets, were inaccessibly stored in a locked bus, and responders lacked training with less-than-lethal munitions.
Kangaroo Court Injustice
The one-sided, blatantly prejudiced Capitol 6 riot investigation and subsequent “hearing” not only provided no opportunity for factual questioning and rebuttals, but also introduced glaringly deceptive omissions and cherry-picked material presented out of context.
Whereas vice-chairwoman Cheney said in her opening remarks that Donald Trump statements at the time justified rather than condemned the lawlessness.
Cheney quoted Trump tweeting: “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously and viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly and unfairly treated for so long.”
Cheney conveniently omitted the final sentences where he tweeted to protestors to “Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!”
We can safely bet that Republicans will remember other days of infamy to come as Democrats continue to use banana republic show trial theatric distractions away from self-inflicted economic, crime and southern border disasters following a massive midterm voter revolt.
Also expect consequential future GOP-led House investigations to unearth true Capitol scandals and scoundrels that the current sham inquisition seems so determined to bury.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 11 books, "Beyond Flagpoles and Footprints: Pioneering the Space Frontier" co-authored with Buzz Aldrin (2021), is available on Amazon along with all others. Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.