More January 6 Truth Comes Forward
On Friday afternoon, all the security camera footage from 1/6/21 started to be released. What was revealed and not revealed has implications that go beyond politics and into society as a whole.
January 6 is the day the Catholic Church celebrates the Feast of the Epiphany—when the Three Wise Men came to adore the Baby Jesus. The feast’s deeper meaning is seen as Jesus Christ—Truth Himself—manifesting himself to the world. While I’ve found it aggravating that this holy date—the conclusion of the Twelve Days of Christmas—is used so casually in discussing the events at the U.S. Capitol on that date in 2021, perhaps there’s a reason for it. We seem to get an awful lot of truth manifesting itself to us through what took place on that day. Truth about our government, our political parties, and society as a whole. More truth poured forth this weekend.
Speaker Mike Johnson fulfilled what had been one of the many broken promises of his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, and released all footage from Capitol security cameras that day. McCarthy had selectively released some to Tucker Carlson but failed to follow through with more. On late Friday afternoon, the new Speaker began releasing the footage at this link.
Clips from the footage are flying around social media. At this point, there’s nothing that those of us who have followed this story from the beginning would find surprising, nor do I expect there to be. After Carlson’s show, I wrote about the 5 Undeniable Facts About January 6. Those are the following:
*The riot cannot possibly be blamed on Trump
*The FBI was the instigator
*Police officers were not killed
*The Capitol Police freely let people in
*Constitutional rights have been trashed.
Those all remain true, and as of now, there’s nothing more to add. So, why am I writing about this? I am hopeful that as more and more video gets released, it will force its way into the public conversation. What happened on January 6 and because of January 6 remains a deep wound in America’s political life, and it’s not going to get better without really getting flushed out.
To illustrate why, let’s tell the story of Matthew Perna. I mentioned him in the article above, written after Carlson’s show. He was a man originally sentenced to serve 6-12 months for trespassing—the “crime” of being in the Capitol. He was ostracized by his neighbors and had a wife and children at home. Then the Department of Justice decided they would use the “terrorism enhancement” sentencing provisions that came into being after 9/11 and were going to seek years in prison. In despair, Perna took his own life.
In that regard, the video clips that have surfaced showing Perna are simply infuriating. You can see here that he’s calmly walking through the Capitol. He wasn’t doing anything wrong. He was let in by police, strolled around, and walked out.
We can ask the obvious question—what does this say about the character of the Department of Justice, the FBI, the Capitol Police, the Biden Regime, the Washington D.C. Circuit Judges, and the January 6 Committee that they allowed this man to be charged, and to seek years in prison? We can ask what it says about the character of people like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, the Republicans who sat on that January 6 Committee and allowed a human being, and so many others like him, to be treated like this.
We can ask this, but we all know the answers. The questions really have to go one level deeper, and into society as a whole. For example:
*To Democrats and Never Trump Republicans (“Never Trump” means people who literally won’t vote for Trump in a general election, not simply GOP voters who dislike him):
How far are you willing to persist in this delusion that Trump incited an insurrection on January 6? The damage you are doing to society as a whole is immense. Those of us on Trump’s side know what you’re angling for—you want to discredit us on issues generally, and the 2020 election specifically. I would suggest you might have started by running an Administration that didn’t rob us of our purchasing power and sleepwalk into World War III. You instead chose this path.
But at what point does it go too far? At what point do you start to decide that your bizarre hatred of one man might not be worth all of this? Consider an innocent man hanging at the end of noose, in despair, his reputation ruined, before you answer.
*To the Republicans who have otherwise hoped this issue would just go away:
At what point do you accept that this is a wound that will not heal, and that we’re going to have find out the full scope of what the government did? I realize you’d like to talk about something else. Quite frankly, I would too. But put yourself in our shoes for a moment. When we woke up on the morning of 1/6/21, we knew the score. We knew stopping certification was a huge longshot. But we were hoping that the presentation of evidence might persuade (you know, the purpose of a democratically elected assembly), and we certainly expected that the presentation of evidence would show that we weren’t crazy conspiracy theorists. That we had an opinion worth hearing.
Instead, what we watched was our government spend that day, and the nearly three years since, showing us exactly what it thinks of us. Good luck trying to unite the party—much less the country—with this wound festering.
David Giglio, who is challenging McCarthy for his House seat next year, said it best:
I’m proud to have volunteered to help David in whatever way I can long-distance in his challenge. There have to be consequences for the way the government has handled January 6, the way Democrats have sought to push us to the margins of society, and the way Republicans have let them. No one symbolizes the latter like Kevin McCarthy.
To the courts:
At what point, does someone step in and shut all this nonsense down? The immediate release of all prisoners should be an obvious result of this footage being public. But let’s go beyond the persecution of those who were let into the Capitol or incited by the FBI, and instead go into the myriad of cases surrounding President Trump. It is obvious that Trump didn’t incite an insurrection. Yet there are several attempts underway to remove him from state ballots on the grounds that he did.
The good news is that, thus far, these efforts have failed. Colorado was seen as the most likely place to take this drastic action, due to a rabid Trump-hating judge hearing the case. But after several other states rebuked this tyrannical move, the Colorado judge backed down on Friday and said Trump had to be on the ballot in the Rocky Mountain state.
But…she also included in her opinion that Trump did incite insurrection. She merely added that she didn’t think she had the power to effect removal. All of this is nonsensical. In the first place, if someone really does incite an insurrection, you actually can remove them from the ballot. But the source the judge cited for this claim is the report of that dishonorable January 6 Committee.
The proper response from the judge would be to tell the plaintiff (the Democratic Secretary of State) to get out of town until Trump is actually convicted in a court of law for insurrection. And, by the way, even in the Washington D.C. case, the anti-Trump prosecutor, Jack Smith isn’t seeking insurrection charges. Because even Smith knows this is absurd.
By giving her opinion that Trump is guilty of insurrection, but can’t be removed, the Colorado judge is inviting this decision to be reversed on appeal and heard all over again. In short, she was probably ready to push forward with removal, until the actions from other states made her blink. We’ll see what happens moving forward.
If we’re going to be a self-governing republic, we can’t sit around waiting for biased judges to tell us what’s already obvious—that we should have the right to vote for Trump, or most anyone else. Some court is going to have to step in, shut all these cases down and sanction the lawyers who brought the them. Then, Congress and state legislatures are going to have to hold impeachment hearings for the people who facilitated it.
Until all of this—a change of heart from Democrats/Never Trumpers, a shift in conviction from other Republicans, and a commitment to the rule of law from judges, our society is going to keep roiling in the way it is. And the wound will get worse, rather than better.
THE SOLUTION
There is one simple way for people of differing political perspectives, different opinions about Trump and different opinions about the legality of the 2020 election to unite—come together in support for a real January 6 Committee. One that will put people like Liz Cheney, Jamie Raskin, and other members of that original committee under subpoena and ask why, when Republicans took control of the House last January, that documents were shredded left and right. One that will ask why they didn’t investigate FBI involvement. One that will put people like Capitol police officers, who perjured themselves giving fake, tear-filled testimony, on the stand and demand real answers. And, as the scope of their perjury and obstruction of justice becomes apparent, to bring criminal charges.
By all means, do it right. Unlike the original Committee, which refused to have any pro-Trump voices on its panel, make sure the other side gets heard, has its own counsel, and its own right of cross-examination. And when criminal charges are brought against Cheney, Raskin, the Capitol police officers, and others, don’t issue “gag orders” and make sure the trial is held in a place where a truly impartial jury can be convened. We want real justice.
THE SOURCE OF HOPE
Further up, I mentioned how the U.S. government has been showing us exactly what it thinks of some of us. The hierarchy of the Catholic Church has been doing the same for more than a few years, and their own form of tyrannical overreach came recently when they removed Bishop Joseph Strickland in Tyler, TX.
Bishop Strickland sat for an interview on Steve Bannon’s War Room on Saturday. The good bishop’s serenity and peace amidst trials was truly something to behold, and his call for Faith was inspiring. You can watch the interview here and here.
My only problem with Bishop Strickland is that he stole some of my own thunder for doing a video that would articulate some basic principles of Faith that can be held on to, even as worldly leaders and institutions fail us. I had the good fortune to be joined on Friday night by my theologically savvy friends, John Tuturice and Bob LeBlanc, for a discussion of the Catholic dogma of papal infallibility—what it means, what it doesn’t mean, and why—even in a difficult time for Church leadership—it’s always meant to be a source of comfort for the faithful. You can watch the video here.