Tag Archives: January 6th Committee

The Price Of Ignoring The Law

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We have watched in recent years as criminals who committed serious crimes were released from jail without bail. We have seen the constitutional rights of the January 6th defendants ignored. We have seen justice administered unevenly for a number of years now, so it should be no surprise that on his way out the door, President Biden thumbed his nose at our justice system.

On January 20th, CBN News reported the following:

During his final hours in office, and with President-elect Donald Trump set to be inaugurated as his successor today, President Biden has issued preemptive pardons for some controversial figures who have dominated headlines in recent years.

Though none of them have been convicted of crimes, Biden announced he’s pardoning Dr. Anthony Fauci, Gen. Mark Milley, and everyone involved in the January 6 congressional investigation, which would include outspoken Trump critics like ousted Rep. Liz Cheney.

Biden says he took the extraordinary step to prevent the Trump administration from prosecuting those people because he’s concerned they’ll be targeted with “unjustified and politically motivated prosecutions.”

To refresh your memory, the people involved in the January 6 congressional investigation destroyed evidence and withheld evidence from their fellow Congressmen and from the American public. There is nothing unjustified or politically motivated in prosecuting them for their crimes.

General Milley has gone on the record as having called a secret meeting at the Pentagon during which he instructed senior military officials not to take orders from their Trump unless he (Milley) approved them. He also reportedly reassured the Chinese that he would tip off Beijing in case of an impending attack by President Trump (article here). Under normal circumstances, that behavior would result in a court martial at least. There would be nothing unjustified or politically motivated in prosecuting the general for those actions.

The preemptive pardons may not stand up to court challenges. Whether they stand up or not, they provide a preview of the talking points of the political left. Any action against the crimes of people who were allies of President Biden during his administration will be characterized as political. Any actual crimes will be ignored and not mentioned.  It is up to Americans whether or not they want to see the laws of America and the Constitution upheld. All of us need to make noise when those laws are ignored.

The Saga Of Fani Willis Continues

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On Wednesday, Townhall posted an article about the ongoing legal troubles of Fani Willis.

The article reports:

A Fulton County court has found Democrat DA Fani Willis in default for failing to comply with court deadlines in an open records lawsuit brought by government watchdog Judicial Watch. As a result, the anti-Trump prosecutor is ordered to produce potential documentation of communications Willis may have had with Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office and the U.S. House select January 6 committee.

In March, Judicial Watch launched a lawsuit after Willis denied possessing any records responsive to an August 2023 public records request. 

The organization, which investigates government misconduct, suggested in the civil action complaint that Willis likely lied about the purported lack of responsive records on hand.

As proof, Judicial Watch referenced a December 2021 letter Willis wrote to Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), then chairman of the congressional January 6 committee. In the letter, Willis officially requested the committee’s help with her Trump investigation and offered to trek to Capitol Hill to convene at the committee’s convenience.

“It may well be most efficient for your staff and effective for our understanding of my staff and me to meet with your investigators in person. We are able to travel to Washington…” Willis wrote, also asking for access to congressional records, such as recordings, transcripts of witness interviews and depositions, communications, and travel documents.

The letter to Thompson is clearly a responsive record, Judicial Watch noted, yet it was neither produced in response to the request nor claimed to be subject to exemption under state law.

The article concludes:

In October 2023, Judicial Watch sued the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), seeking communications between Smith and Willis regarding requests and receipt of federal funding in the Fulton County-level investigation of Trump. To date, the DOJ is refusing to confirm or deny the existence of such records, claiming that to do so would interfere with enforcement proceedings. Judicial Watch’s litigation challenging this claim continues.

House Republicans have called on Willis to disclose her crew’s contacts with the J6 committee. Willis refused, claiming the request “violates well-established principles of federalism and separation of powers.” She told U.S. House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH): “You cannot—and will not—be provided access to any non-public information about this.”

This month, the Georgia Court of Appeals was supposed to hear oral arguments about the slew of prosecutorial misconduct claims against Willis after a Fulton County judge’s non-disqualification decision allowed her to remain in charge of the Trump case. However, the appeals court abruptly canceled the December 5 hearing “until further order.” It’s still unclear why the proceeding was scrapped.

The claims of equal justice under the law have had a rough week.

As The Facts Emerge

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On Monday, Jonathan Turley posted an article on the information that has recently come out regarding January 6th and the Congressional investigation of the riot.

The article reports:

On Jan. 6, 2021, the nation was rocked by the disruption of the certification of Joe Biden as our next president. With Donald Trump set to return to the White House in 2025, it is astonishing how much of that day remains a matter of intense debate.

Those divisions are likely only to deepen after a slew of recent reports that have challenged the selective release of information from the House January 6 Committee.

January 6 remains as much a political litmus test as it is a historical event. Whether you refer to that day as a riot or an insurrection puts you on one side or the other of a giant political chasm. I viewed the attack on that day as a desecration of our constitutional process, but I did not view it as an insurrection. I still don’t.

It was a protest that became a riot when a woefully insufficient security plan collapsed. And that is a view shared by most Americans. One year after the riot, a CBS poll showed that 76 percent viewed it as a “protest gone too far.”

A Harvard study also found that those arrested on that day were motivated by loyalty to Trump rather than support for an insurrection.

A recent poll found that almost half of the public (43 percent) felt that “too much is being made” of the riot and that it is “time to move on.” Of course, that still leaves a little over half who view the day as “an attack on democracy.”

The continued distrust of the official accounts of Jan. 6 reflects a failure of the House Democrats, and specifically former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), to guarantee a credible and comprehensive investigation.

The House Select Committee to investigate January 6 was comprised of Democrat-selected members who offered only one possible view: that January 6 was an attempt to overthrow our democracy by Trump and his supporters. The committee hired a former ABC News producer to create a slick, made-for-television production that barred opposing views and countervailing evidence. The members, including Republican Vice Chair Liz Cheney, played edited videotapes of Trump’s speech that removed the portion where Trump called on his supporters to protest “peacefully.”

The committee fostered false accounts, including the claim that there was a violent episode with Trump trying to wrestle control of the presidential limousine. The Committee knew that the key Secret Service driver directly contradicted that account offered by former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. Although I do not entirely agree with Attorney Turley’s conclusions, he is correct to say that we know very little of what actually happened that day.

I Guess Everyone Doesn’t Want Transparency

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On Monday, Just the News reported the following:

Forensic investigators hired by a Republican-led committee recovered more than 100 encrypted files that the Democratic-led House Jan. 6 Select Committee deleted days before the GOP took over the House majority, according to a new report released Monday.

House Administration Oversight Subcommittee Chair Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., sent a letter to former Select Committee Chair Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., demanding he provide answers and passwords for the data, which was deleted against House rules, according to Fox News Digital. 

The Oversight Subcommittee, which is investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and the former select committee, should have received four terabytes of archived data from the select committee after Republicans entered the majority in January 2023, but it obtained less than three terabytes of data.

The subcommittee hired a digital forensics team to determine what information was not handed over, and the team discovered 117 files that were encrypted and deleted on Jan. 1, 2023, two days before Republicans were sworn into the majority, according to the report. 

Loudermilk said in his letter to Thompson that the Mississippi Democrat acknowledged over the summer that the select committee “did not archive all Committee records as required by House Rules” and had “sent specific transcribed interviews and depositions to the White House and Department of Homeland Security but did not archive them with the Clerk of the House.”

One recovered file detailed an individual whose testimony was not archived, but “most of the recovered files are password-protected, preventing us from determining what they contain,” Loudermilk also said. 

It is (remotely) possible that this is totally innocent; however, people generally delete things for a reason. The fact that the deletions took place two days before the Republicans took control of the House really does not inspire confidence in the work of the January 6th Committee.

The article concludes:

“It’s obvious that Pelosi’s Select Committee went to great lengths to prevent Americans from seeing certain documents produced in their investigation,” Loudermilk (House Administration Oversight Subcommittee Chair Barry Loudermilk) told the news network. “It also appears that Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney intended to obstruct our Subcommittee by failing to preserve critical information and videos as required by House rules.”

This is not the first report of missing data from the Jan. 6 select committee. Loudermilk told the “Just the News, No Noise” TV show last year that all videotapes from select committee depositions are missing. 

When The Shoe Is On The Other Foot

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When Nancy Pelosi was Speaker of the House, she did a number of things that set precedents for the future. She removed Republicans from committees, something that in the past had only been done by the party involved. She refused to allow some Republicans on the January 6th committee, again setting a precedent. Well, some of the precedents set by the January 6th committee are about to come back to haunt the Democrats.

On Sunday Just the News reported:

The precedent set by the House Jan. 6th Select Committee in obtaining relevant documents as evidence against former President Donald Trump and issuing subpoenas for their investigation could be a boon for Republicans in the congressional probe into the Biden family’s overseas business dealings.

The Jan. 6 panel demonstrated that it could conduct oversight and gain access to evidence and witnesses even as the Justice Department conducted a sprawling criminal probe into the same figures and issues, and House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer told Just the News he plans to ride those precedents.

“They set a lot of precedent during that Jan. 6 committee that I think they’re gonna regret with respect to this Biden investigation,” he told the Just the News, No Noise television show.

Comer and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan are currently investigating President Joe Biden’s possible involvement in Hunter’s foreign business deals. Biden has repeatedly said he had no knowledge or involvement with his son’s businesses, but documents and testimony given to the committee call those denials into question.

Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed David Weiss, U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware, to special counsel on Friday. Weiss has been leading the investigation since 2019.

Just on the basis of what has come out in the press, how could anyone investigate Hunter Biden for four years and not come up with anything?

The article notes:

Harvard Law School Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz told Just the News that making Weiss a special counsel will strengthen the congressional investigation into the extent of Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings.

“I think it should increase the power of Congress to look into this,” he said during an interview on Friday. “I think it shows that there is still room for more investigation, and that Congress can play an important role in getting to the bottom of that.”

He noted that Congress has a “constitutional power to check and balance the executive and so the fact that there’s an ongoing investigation should not be an absolute barrier for Congress to do its job.”

Dershowitz said that Congress can insist on “subpoenaing prosecutors and then if they refuse, they can be held in contempt and it could go to the courts and we’ll see how the courts decide it.”

Please follow the link to read the entire article. If the Democrats choose to change the rules, the Republicans should embrace the change!

Democrats Are Good At Destroying Evidence

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Remember when Hillary Clinton wiped her servers clean and destroyed cell phones? She was never held responsible for either action. Obviously some of the House Democrats have learned from her experience.

On Wednesday, The Conservative Treehouse posted the following headline:

The article reports:

Most close watchers already knew the motive and intention of the J6 committee was to build narratives useful against their political opposition and the 2022 midterm election cycle.  Factually, the makeup of the J6 committee was specifically structured for this intention.

That said, this remarkable statement by former J6 Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson is essentially admitting the committee destroyed evidence that undermined their preconceived notions.

The article explains:

After being questioned by republicans about the absence of evidence provided to the committee, former Chairman Bennie Thomson says:

…”Consistent with guidance from the Office of the Clerk and other authorities, the Select Committee did not archive temporary committee records that were not elevated by the Committee’s actions, such as use in hearings or official publications, or those that did not further its investigative activities. Accordingly, and contrary to your letter’s implication, the Select Committee was not obligated to archive all video recordings of transcribed interviews or depositions.

…Based on guidance from House authorities, the Select Committee determined that the written transcripts provided by nonpartisan, professional official reporters, which the witnesses and Select Committee staff had the opportunity to review for errata, were the official, permanent records of transcribed interviews and depositions for the purposes of rule VII.”…  (READ MORE)

“Guidance from House authorities” is political code speak for House counsel.

Who do you think was counsel for the House J6 Committee?  👀👇

Mary McCord, former Assistant U.S. Attorney

One of the key House J6 counselors, giving advice to destroy evidence that ran against their narrative, was at the epicenter of all Trump targeting while in office.

The Democrats have opened up a can or worms in their charges against President Trump. He now has the power to subpoena the records of the January 6th Committee as part of the discovery process. Isn’t it interesting that many of those records have been destroyed?

The Other Side Of The Story

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On Wednesday, The New York Post posted an article about some aspects of the January 6th Capitol riot that the January 6th Committee somehow left out. One of the questions asked by anyone who had followed the events of the previous summer and the political contention that was building was, “Why wasn’t extra security called in?” This article seeks to answer that question.

The article reports:

House Republicans issued a scathing report Wednesday exposing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s key role in the catastrophic security and intelligence failures that left the US Capitol vulnerable to a violent attack on January 6, 2021.

Days after Pelosi’s Jan. 6 select committee recommended insurrection charges against former president Donald Trump over the Capitol riot, Republicans have hit back with a counter-investigation apportioning blame for the internal security breakdown on Jan. 6 to Pelosi and a dysfunctional Capitol Police intelligence division.

“Leadership and law enforcement failures within the U.S. Capitol left the complex vulnerable on January 6, 2021,” says the report, which is based on a trove of texts and email messages, and testimony from Capitol Police leaders and rank-and-file officers.

House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving, who answered to Pelosi as one of three voting members of the Capitol Police Board, “succumbed to political pressures from the Office of Speaker Pelosi and House Democrat leadership,” was “compromised by politics and did not adequately prepare for violence at the Capitol.”

Pelosi and her staff “coordinated closely” with Irving on security plans for the Joint Session of Congress on Jan. 6, but Republicans were deliberately left out of “important discussions related to security.” 

None of that should be a surprise to anyone.

The article also notes:

The Republicans responsible for the withering report — Jim Banks (R-IN), Jim Jordan (R-OH), Rodney Davis (R-IL), Kelly Armstrong (R-ND) and Troy Nehls (R-TX) — are the five congressmen originally nominated to sit on the Jan. 6 committee, until Pelosi vetoed Banks and Jordan. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy pulled the rest of his nominees in protest. Pelosi then installed two Never Trump Republican outcasts, Liz Cheney, and Adam Kinzinger. 

Given Pelosi’s assiduous grooming of Cheney, no doubt it suited both their interests to focus the final Jan.6 committee report on Trump — and not on Pelosi’s culpability.

But now the Republicans Pelosi rejected have skewered her in their rival report, dredging up some of what she tried to hide, despite complaining of obstruction from the personnel she controls.  

The report insinuates that the Speaker left the Capitol Police without backup on Jan. 6 because “widespread concern from Democratic leadership over ‘optics’ in the aftermath of the Summer 2020 ‘Black Lives Matter’ protests prevented early deployment of the National Guard.”

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It is a part of the story that you are not likely to hear from the mainstream media.

Perspective From A Brilliant Legal Mind

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On Monday, The Washington Times posted Alan Dershowitz’s response to the January 6th Committee’s final report. The Committee voted unanimously Monday to refer four charges to the Justice Department for prosecution: inciting the attack on the Capitol, obstructing an official proceeding of Congress, conspiracy to defraud the government, and making false statements on fake presidential electors. That is not a surprise considering that the Committee purposefully looked at only one side of the evidence and included only people who were out to destroy President Trump. Alan Dershowitz’s reaction was interesting in that he relied on the law as the basis for his statement–something the Committee chose not to do.

The article reports:

According to Mr. Dershowitz, the panel operated against the spirit of one of only two civil-liberties provisions in the original Constitution, before the Bill of Rights was added — a ban on “bills of attainder.”

That provision banned Congress from passing indictments of unpopular people by name.

…Mr. Dershowitz, a liberals who twice voted against Mr. Trump but has become a vocal critic of liberal attacks on him, suggested that “the Justice Department should reprimand Congress for even trying to suggest who should be prosecuted.”

He acknowledged, though, that the Justice Department under President Biden would likely not do that.

“I don’t expect it to happen. I would hope it would happen. I do expect that they won’t take it seriously,” he said before outlining what he thought a properly operating non-political Justice Department would do.

“Don’t tell us who to investigate and who to prosecute. You had a kangaroo hearing. One-sided. You didn’t allow a cross-examination. You didn’t allow any adverse witnesses, so don’t expect us to take seriously any recommendations you make about prosecution. The American public should make no conclusions based on this one-sided recommendation and it should ignore it as well,” Mr. Dershowitz said.

It’s “worthless. It’s a worthless piece of paper,” he added.

It’s a shame that taxpayer money was spent on this sham committee. There are a lot of unanswered questions about January 6th (such as the involvement by the FBI, why Speaker Pelosi refused extra security, etc.) that should be explored, but this committee worked very hard not to investigate those questions.

Don’t Let That Pesky Constitution Get In Your Way

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One of the constant cries from the political left is that the political right is a danger to our democracy. First of all, we are a representative republic–not a democracy. Secondly, which political wing is ignoring the Constitution–that requires us to secure our borders, requires equal justice, limits the federal government to enumerated powers as stated in the Tenth Amendment? Today we have a new Constitutional breech.

Breitbart is reporting the following today:

The Democrats’ January 6 Committee will conclude its “investigation” on Monday by asking the Department of Justice (DOJ) to prosecute former President Donald Trump, though the committee lacks constitutional authority to do so.

Congressional committees must be organized for a legislative purpose, not as part of a law enforcement action, which is a function of the executive branch under the separation of power in the Constitution.

Nevertheless, the January 6 Committee — in what is expected to be its final act before a Republican-led House takes over next month — is expected to ask the DOJ to prosecute Trump for what it says are multiple crimes.

I suspect that the one crime that President Trump is actually guilty of is being President Trump.

The article concludes:

Schiff saw no irony in accusing the former president of trying to overthrow the government when he himself had tried to overturn Trump’s administration through the “Russia collusion” hoax and a failed impeachment.

Neither of the two Republicans chosen by Pelosi for the committee was reelected to Congress; one Democrat retired, and one Democrat, Rep. Elaine Luria (D-VA), was defeated in November by her Republican opponent.

The mainstream media has treated the January 6 Committee hearings as legitimate, despite the fact that they were scripted “show trials” — complete with TelePrompTers — and that they offered no representation to the other side of the argument. Several witnesses 466 that the committee lied about what they had said in closed-door depositions; some witnesses changed their stories to be more amenable to the committee’s agenda.

The committee’s request to the DOJ will come nearly two years after the Senate failed to convict Trump on similar charges, especially after evidence that he told a rally crowd to protest “peacefully and patriotically.”

There isn’t enough popcorn in the world to watch the ridiculous circus that the current session of the House of Representatives has become.

Did Anyone Ever Believe This Was Objective?

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On Saturday, The Daily Caller reported that the January 6th Committee has entered a new level of biased investigating.

The article reports:

  • The committee probing the Jan. 6 Capitol riot hired a consultant who may have a major “conflict of interest,” watchdogs told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
  • The Jan. 6 Committee is investigating security failures by the House Sergeant-at-Arms (SAA) in connection with the Capitol riot — and its consultant Brian Young is married to House Deputy SAA Kim E. Campbell.
  • “Young needs to come clean about what he is doing for the J6 Committee,” Tom Jones, executive director of the American Accountability Foundation, told the DCNF. “There is no way a husband can give an independent and objective assessment of his wife’s performance.”

Wow. Let’s ask the fox to investigate security in the hen house.

The article concludes:

“If it is true that he communicated with his wife about a matter involving her office, this is Ethics Conflicts 101,” Michael Chamberlain, director of the watchdog Protect the Public’s Trust, told the DCNF. “The reason ethics laws were enacted in the first place was to prevent precisely this type of conflict of interest from impacting government activities.”

“It also raises the question of how he was even allowed to be in the position where this type of conflict could exist,” said Chamberlain. “Why would those in charge of such a high profile and controversial committee jeopardize the credibility of their investigation like this? It certainly does not add to the committee’s already questionable efforts.”

The Jan. 6 Committee did not respond to a request for comment, nor did the House SAA office, Campbell or Young. Polar Solutions did not respond.

In case you have forgotten, the refusal of Speaker Pelosi to allow the minority to choose their representatives on that committee was a first. It ended any pretense of impartiality. Unfortunately this may well set a precedent for future investigations if the Republicans take Congress. Remember it was a decision by Senator Harry Reid to change the rules for confirming Supreme Court judges that allowed President Trump to appoint three relatively conservative justices to the Supreme Court. Speaker Pelosi’s actions regarding the January 6th Committee may also backfire.