Everybody knows that President Donald J. Trump assigned a mob to attack Congress on Jan. 6, as it certified the Electoral College’s votes. How do we know this? We know this because everyone left of Senator Joe Manchin, D-W. Va., has screamed this non-stop, since the first pane of glass shattered that deadly afternoon at the U.S. Capitol.
Everybody knows this . . . even though it is not true.
This breathlessly, relentlessly repeated lie makes zero sense and is baseless. Here’s why:
•First, during the Capitol invasion, President Trump’s GOP allies were objecting to Arizona’s Electoral College votes. They were presenting arguments about and evidence of vote irregularities and illegalities in the Grand Canyon State.
After the House and Senate debated the matter and then took recorded votes on accepting or rejecting Arizona’s electors, Republican challengers planned similar disputes, presentations, and votes regarding electors from Georgia and Pennsylvania.
The same could have transpired for Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin, if GOP House members could find at least one senator to join them in raising questions about the electors from any of those states.
These debates and votes over relevant facts, figures, and concerns would have taken all of that afternoon and probably continued into the evening and perhaps spilled into Thursday, Jan. 7. This grand tutorial on vote fraud would have been America’s first televised and recorded teach-in on this vital subject, with never-higher stakes.
Why would Trump send hooligans to disrupt the very process that he hoped would place his case, at long last, before the eyes of the world?
•Second, the president told his supporters that day, "I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard." Does this sound like an attack order?
•Third, as The Washington Post’s Carol D. Leonnig reported Jan. 15, recently revealed evidence indicates that this onslaught was pre-meditated, not impromptu. The Post explains that the U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) asked the House and Senate sergeants at arms six times to press the chain of command for National Guard reinforcements.
The Post says that these key congressional staffers denied those requests.
Meanwhile, on Jan. 3, a 12-page USCP intelligence report foresaw "a significantly dangerous situation for law enforcement and the general public alike."
According to the Post, the USCP’s document "does not appear to have been shared widely with other law enforcement agencies, including the FBI."
In a riveting January 12 dispatch, The Washington Post’s Devlin Barrett and Matt Zapotosky summarized a second key indicator that something was afoot before the havoc erupted, this time courtesy of the FBI. Among Barrett and Zapotosky’s findings:
A situational information report approved for release the day before the U.S. Capitol riot painted a dire portrait of dangerous plans, including individuals sharing a map of the complex’s tunnels, and possible rally points for would-be conspirators to meet in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and South Carolina and head in groups to Washington.
"As of 5 January 2021, FBI Norfolk received information indicating calls for violence in response to 'unlawful lockdowns' to begin on 6 January 2021 in Washington, D.C.," the document says. "An online thread discussed specific calls for violence to include stating 'Be ready to fight. Congress needs to hear glass breaking, doors being kicked in, and blood from their BLM and Pantifa slave soldiers being spilled. Get violent. Stop calling this a march, or rally, or a protest. Go there ready for war. We get our President or we die. NOTHING else will achieve this goal.'"
A vigorous game of ball dropping, excuse making, and finger pointing then ensued.
Steven D’Antuono, chief of the FBI’s D.C. field office, told journalists Jan. 8 that his agency had no intelligence that anything unusual would happen at the Capitol.
Confronted Jan. 12 with the report excerpted above, D’Antuono quickly swapped sheet music and sang a different aria. He said the FBI shared the Jan. 5 document "with all our law enforcement partners" in the Joint Terrorism Task Force, including USCP and other federal and local organizations.
"I did not have that information, nor was that information taken into consideration in our security planning," Steven Sund, who resigned as Capitol Police chief, told the Post.
This fact also muted the Klaxons: "Some law enforcement officials took the view that protesters who support Trump are generally known for over-the-top rhetoric but not much violence," the Post reported, citing relevant security personnel.
Beyond this tragedy of errors, according to an administration official I interviewed, senior National Security Council staffers had not been briefed by law enforcement agencies on increased domestic threats in the weeks leading up to this incident. Furthermore, the Presidential Daily Brief is prepared by the CIA, which almost never includes FBI intelligence in the PDB.
Due to these factors, President Trump seemingly was not briefed about these threats.
If he were, he might have foiled them.
•Fourth, Trump’s allegedly incendiary remarks to the Save America rally on the Ellipse, immediately south of the White House, began at High Noon EST. According to Rev.com’s recording and transcript, the president did not finish his speech until some 73 minutes later. That’s when he said, "We’re going to the Capitol, and we’re going to try and give [wavering congressional Republicans] the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.” Trump concluded: "So let’s walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. I want to thank you all. God bless you and God bless America. Thank you all for being here, this is incredible. Thank you very much. Thank you."
This presumably was the moment when Trump ignited his pyrotechnic mob and sent its red-hot members blazing uphill to the U.S. Capitol.
The time was approximately 1:13 p.m.
However, rioters already had rushed police barricades at the base of Capitol Hill, even as Trump spoke, at about 1:00 p.m. — some 13 minutes earlier and 16 long blocks away.
Somehow Trump’s alleged hooligans assaulted the Capitol before he dispatched them there. How exactly does this work?
If America’s unhinged left is to be believed, the vicious hoodlums whom Trump "spontaneously incited" were plotting before he planned this incursion.
Maybe these thugs had ESP, read President Trump’s mind, and enacted his wishes before he stated them out loud. Which he didn’t.
Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News Contributor, a contributing editor with National Review Online, and a senior fellow with the London Center for Policy Research. Read Deroy Murdock's Reports — More Here.
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