2023 Person of the Year: Julie Kelly
Most people don't know who this journalist is. But Julie Kelly has made a massive impact in exposing the lies of a corrupt government. And 2023 was her year.
The Republican Party took over control of the House of Representatives this year. While much of their tenure has been marked by predictable broken promises, the GOP has—at least partially—kept one major promise. That’s the release of footage regarding what happened on January 6, 2021. While this promise is still far from being fulfilled, we’ve seen enough footage to know that people who were sounding the alarm bells about government abuse and overreach were right.
No one has been more right than Julie Kelly, a journalist for American Greatness. That’s why this writer that much of this audience may have never heard of, is Corned Beef Catholicism’s choice for 2023 Person of the Year.
Exposing the Truth
The truth of January 6 and its aftermath is this—the FBI was the prime instigator of this riot. The vast majority of the people who entered the Capitol weren’t even rioters at all. They were let in by the authorities and walked around peacefully—“peacefully and patriotically,” to borrow a phrase—and walked out. There was no sense of any doing anything wrong, much less committing an act of insurrection. At least until this disgraceful FBI began poring over footage and knocking on doors around the country.
People arrested—including those who might have actually committed acts of vandalism were then held without trial for lengthy periods—to this very day. This is a clear violation of constitutional rights. The ones that were brought to trial were denied the chance to see or present evidence that might have exonerated them—another grave violation of legal procedure, which obligates the prosecution to turn over all evidence to defense counsel, including that which is inconvenient for the government.
People in Washington D.C., who overwhelmingly hate not just Trump, but anyone who supports him, rushed to get on juries, so they—like any good mob—might start mass-convicting people. The judges on the Washington D.C. circuit let it happen, and then further abused their power at sentencing time.
The abuses of power can’t all be covered here. That will take a book. But I think you get the gist—an insulated Washington D.C. is running roughshod over the very rule of law and instituting a regime that can only be characterized as “fascist” in its nature. Julie Kelly has done more than anyone to expose that.
It bears emphasizing the kind of work that Kelly has had to do to unravel all this abuse. This isn’t something you can do by reading some headlines, or even some good articles. This isn’t work you can do behind a keyboard. It’s work that involves activities like this:
*Constantly reviewing the filings in court cases, from different motions on what evidence is to be allowed, to the sentencing decisions themselves. Legal reading is very tedious. I speak as someone who actually likes the law, and all is nuances—but it’s still not what you do for fun. Even a cursory glance at Kelly’s Twitter (X) timeline shows all the detailed research she has done, with screenshots and highlights of the relevant—and damning—legal passages that show corruption hidden in plain sight.
*Sitting in courtrooms personally to observe body language and tone from the Washington D.C. judges and prosecutors. The sheer arrogance—and, quite frankly, childishness of the regime’s lackeys can’t be captured by reading transcripts. Kelly has done the hard work of watching them up-close.
*Reviewing January 6 footage—we see the clips that expose the lies told by corporate media and the government. But finding those clips means poring over a lot of footage that is mostly innocuous. Kelly has done that work.
*And then there’s the worst part of her job. I’ll let her own words describe it:
One of the hardest parts of my job is hearing grown men cry about what is happening to them and, more importantly, to their families. The torment inflicted by this regime is ongoing with no relief in sight.
In one case, Judge Chris Cooper, an Obama appointee, instructed a man with two very young special needs children not to spend any of the money his partner raised in a GiveSendGo account for their family. Even though his partner is not a party to any criminal matter and she plans to use the money to mitigate travel expenses and other costs incurred by his prosecution, Cooper, without citing any legal authority, warned the defendant not to use any of the funds.
This is the sort of cruelty—and quite frankly, lawlessness—I witness on a routine basis in the federal courthouse in our nation’s capital.
Telling Truth to Power
There was a time when journalists once prided themselves on “speaking truth to power.” What’s written above is how Kelly has spoken truth to the fascist regime that hides out in Washington D.C. She’s also spoken blunt truths to political figures her audience loves.
On a visit to Mar-a-Lago, Kelly had the opportunity to meet with President Trump face-to-face. She told him in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t doing enough. That the families of J6 defendants felt abandoned by him.
In the time since then, Trump has changed. He began talking about the abuse of J6 political prisoners on the campaign trail. He’s talked of pardons and of restitution. He even recorded a song with the “J6 Prison Choir” that soared to #1 on I-Tunes. This is the kind of stuff of which political movements are made. Does this happen without Julie Kelly taking the lead and having a conversation with Trump that had to have been difficult? Maybe. But I wouldn’t bet on it.
Kelly has made similar overtures to Florida governor Ron DeSantis, whose home state has a vastly disproportionate number of the J6 prisoners. Unfortunately, DeSantis has not been nearly as receptive to the truth about January 6 as he was to the truth about COVID-19 and the vaccine, as those regime lies unraveled.
Telling hard truths to people on the other side of the political aisle is one thing. Telling them to the leaders of your own side is quite another and takes real guts. Julie Kelly has courage in spades. She is, as Steve Bannon once put it, “a tough broad from Chicago.”
Acting Against Interests
One of the core reasons—perhaps the core reason that President Trump holds the support of so many of us, is that we know he’s acting against his own personal interest in continuing this campaign. That if only he would just go play golf and hang out with celebrities like he used to, all these indictments would go away, and his personal fortune would stop dipping. The same actions against interest have defined people like Kari Lake, who gave up a seven-figure TV gig because she couldn’t stomach spouting COVID-19 lies any longer. Julie Kelly is cut in this same mold.
Kelly has made more than her share of personal sacrifices to expose the truth of what is happening in our government and to our country. We can start with the work that I went through above—it’s miserable, painstaking work. Reading through legal filings, attending trials, and meeting with abused defendants and their families isn’t high on anyone’s list of fun activities.
Moreover, it has to be emphasized that, unlike many corporate media journalists who have either ignored this story or lied about it, Kelly doesn’t actually live in the D.C. metro area. She lives in the suburbs of Chicago. That means she has had to personally upend her life to set up shop in the nation’s capital to do all this work firsthand and on the ground.
I don’t know exactly what part of the Chicago ‘burbs that Kelly lives in, but being originally from southeast Wisconsin, I can tell you that it’s a pretty financially comfortable area. A part of it is even called “The Golden Corridor.” In a world where far too many GOP-leaning suburbanites ignore hard stories like this because they’re uncomfortable to think about, Kelly has looked the discomfort squarely in the face and exposed it.
Kelly’s commitment to the truth can further be demonstrated by her professional selflessness. When Kevin McCarthy, then the Speaker of the House, first made a partial release of the J6 footage, Kelly, along with Tucker Carlson, were the journalists given exclusive access. McCarthy’s promise to the broader public was that Kelly’s exclusive access would only last until security steps could be taken.
This involved more personal sacrifices—it’s not like the government sent the footage to Kelly’s home where she could review it while sipping coffee in her pajamas. It meant navigating D.C. traffic every day to get to the area where classified video is kept and poring over footage which, as noted, was going to be 99.9 percent dry and boring.
But it was also a professional goldmine. This was coveted footage, and she was one of the few people in the world who could see it. As it became apparent that McCarthy had no intention of keeping his promise to release all the footage to the public, Kelly would have had every incentive to go along with it. She didn’t. She blew the whistle on McCarthy, and it would be one of the many factors that facilitated his downfall and the eventual release of more footage by new Speaker Mike Johnson.
Confronting A Scared Regime
The fear that is in the Washington D.C. regime that has perpetrated all of this, and more, is palpable. You can see it by their hysterical insistence that Trump will use the DOJ to go after his enemies. Like all bullies, the moment they get hit in the face, they run crying. Julie Kelly has delivered more than her share of metaphorical bloody noses to people that deserve them.
I know I’ve written about Kelly in what can seem like hagiographical terms. Look, I don’t know her any more than anyone else that reads her work and sees her TV appearances, but I’m sure that—like all of us—there are the usual flaws that come with being human in this fallen world. But it’s going to take all of us, persevering through our flaws, to get the country through this dark night.
Ultimately, it’s because of people like Julie Kelly that I am confident in saying this—we are going to win. I’m not talking about the elections of 2024. I’m not even sure if it will be this coming year. But this win—which means the Soviet-style collapse of this vile ruling class—is coming sooner rather than later. There will be martyrs, to be sure, so it’s nothing that I write casually, or even with celebration. But when the ultimate victory party does happen, it’s Julie Kelly who should give the keynote address. That’s why she’s Corned Beef Catholicism’s 2023 Person of the Year.
P.S. Truth-telling journalists don’t get corporate media platforms. They need our support. Julie’s work is right here on Substack. You can visit it here. Her subscriptions are only $8/month or $80/year. The efforts noted in this space aren’t cheap, and she can use our help. I know we all have a ton of worthy causes and we can’t support them all like we want to. Please put Julie’s cause on the list of those you consider.