Questions I Want To Hear From The January 6 Committee

The 1/6 Committee has been predictably one-sided from the start. A truly fair committee would also ask these questions.

I didn’t bother watching the hearings held by the January 6 Committee in prime-time last Thursday night. Judging from the TV ratings, I’m not the only one. MSNBC’s ratings did well, but all the other networks suffered. Which suggests that hard-core Democrats, mixed with some hard-core anti-Trump Republicans are the only ones left who care about this. I might have been persuaded to take these hearings seriously, but only if they were going to ask the following questions…

*Why is the FBI still suppressing over 14,000 hours worth of surveillance video? The impeccable reporting of people like Julie Kelly have given us a strong indication that this video might not be particularly flattering to the FBI or universally condemning of Trump supporters. I’d imagine that’s the reason it’s not being released. But if January 6 was really an attempted coup, it would be a question worth asking.

*What was Ashli Babbitt doing that caused her to be fatally shot? The only fatality of January 6 remains a Trump supporter. She was unarmed and shot in the back. Is it asking too much for the cop that pulled the trigger to have to answer for himself at least as often as the police officers who arrested and shot Jacob Blake did?

*There’s also a rumor of cellphone video that suggests Babbitt was trying to prevent people from going into the Capitol, at least those who were acting in a disruptive manner. Is this just a rumor that flies around Trump-supporting media outlets? That’s plausible. It’s also plausible—and far more in keeping with Babbitt’s life as an Air Force veteran who responded to the call issued by George W. Bush and Liz Cheney’s father to fight in their Middle East Wars—that the rumors are true. It’d be nice to know. A serious committee might have bothered asking the question.

*Who is Ray Epps? Well, let me rephrase this. We know who he is. He’s the man in this video wearing a red MAGA hat and telling Trump supporters the night before the rally that they have to be ready to go into the Capitol. Based strictly on what meets the eye, Epps would seem to be tailor-made to get served up to the committee. In fact, given that some people at the Capitol who did nothing more than casually walk in the building are still being held without trial, it’s worth asking why Epps hasn’t been arrested.

Investigative reporting (good articles here and here) suggest pretty strongly that Ray Epps was there at the behest of the FBI. Personally, I find the fact he hasn’t been arrested or even summoned to testify before the January 6 Committee to be damning enough. He was there to goad Trump supporters into a riot. The decision of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to refuse Trump’s offer of 10,000 troops to protect the Capitol proceedings fits right into this theory.

Is this circumstantial evidence? Yes. But it’s enough to make it entirely reasonable for some us to believe it’s true. And it would be enough for a serious committee with subpoena power to start drilling down and get more concrete evidence that might result in charges brought against the Speaker and FBI personnel. But I don’t think anyone is really pretending that this January 6 Committee is serious about anything like that.

That brings us to our last two questions ,which are really at the heart of all this—why was it so important to instigate an “event” outside the Capitol on January 6, 2021? And what does that mean for American politics moving forward?

As to why the FBI felt this was undercover operation was necessary, I think the best way to start is to look at the immediate short-term consequences of what they helped start. The Congressmen and Senators that planned to object to the certification of electoral votes all backed down. What was fraud in the morning was now fine to overlook at night.

More important, without anyone to formally object to each state’s certification, there was no opportunity to introduce the evidence. People who believed there was fraud could still be dismissed as nutcases or sore losers. Had the proceedings continued, the evidence compiled by the Trump team would have taken its permanent place in the public record of the United States and been seen by everyone on the global stage.

There was also the expectation that this instigated riot would permanently destroy the political ambitions of President Trump. On the evening of 1/6/21, it seemed any thought that Trump could run and win again was farfetched. That plan hasn’t worked out so well—polls today, from the credible to the not-so-accurate show that Trump is the runaway choice to win the GOP nomination, and poised to not only win another term, but to do it with a decisive popular vote victory and an Electoral College landslide.

Why the permanent political class of Washington fears a Trump revival can be subject to enough speculation to write several books. For now, I'll just say I believe the elite—a group that covers Washington D.C. and Wall Street--want to get back into the game of raking in profits from investment in China and to make money hand over fist in the defense industry by ever-expanding foreign wars. And they can’t stand that the Trump voting bloc won’t tolerate it anymore. To borrow a phrase, they hate him because they hate us. And he—however awkward it often was—spoke for us and put us at the negotiating table.

What It Means Going Forward

Perhaps the best way to communicate what I’m thinking here is to talk about what I was thinking and texting on the morning of January 6, 2021. I had texted a friend who casually follows this stuff and explained what the plan was—how each state’s results would be debated. In a fit of idealism, I even said it would be a great learning opportunity for kids—to see how the United States is governed by the states.

I had done a lot of work in researching this and trying to build what could be considered a responsible case for fraud—not something that relied on pulling anecdotes here and there, but that drew on as much reliable data as possible and then integrated the anecdotes we all heard into that case.

In the run-up to January 6, that work had taken its place in the form of letters to state legislators, Congressmen and Senators. Letters that could also be used by family and friends who had more sense than to go down the rabbit hole that this subject is, but knew instinctively how wrong this all was. In short, it was an effort to engage with the process and work within the system, as angry at that system as I might have been.

As far as what I was thinking—naturally, I hoped we could stop the certification. But I knew the odds were heavily against us. Mostly, I was looking forward to finally getting a chance to put our case into the public square as a cohesive whole and let interested people judge on its merits.

What was the response of the FBI and the Democratic Party? To run an undercover operation designed to smear me and everyone who thinks like me as a security threat. What was the response of most of the Republican Party? To go along with it. What was the response of corporate media? To run ceaseless propaganda campaigns that have culminated with these committee “hearings” that are designed to feed the emotions of those who either hate Trump or want to live in la-la land pretending that everything is okay, when it is in fact not okay.

So to those that bought into every lie just so they could finally be rid of Trump, I would say this—take a good look at the country around you right now. I hope it was worth it. You took all the trust that a functioning two-party system depends upon and cashed it in to get…well, to get this. I hope your post-Trump world is everything you always dreamed it would be back on the night of January 6, 2021.