I almost feel sorry for them at this point. The level of desperation that Democrats and their bosom buddies in the activist media are displaying is downright pathetic – like watching Mitch McConnell in a boxing match with Floyd Mayweather. Since five seconds after the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol building occurred last year, the left has been frantically using it as a political cudgel with which to bash Republicans and conservatives.
But, try as they might, they have failed to land a significant blow despite forming an entire House Select Committee ostensibly to investigate the matter. Nevertheless, activist media outlets like CNN are still trying to milk the riot for all it is worth. Media activist Chris Cillizza published a piece on Thursday titled “The single most damning email exchange in the new January 6 committee filing” in which he made a valiant attempt to convince his audience that a series of emails between lawyers representing former President Donald Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence was a smoking gun proving Trump’s camp was somehow responsible for the riot.
“Buried in a court filing late Wednesday from the January 6 committee is an explosive email exchange between Greg Jacob, a top lawyer for then-Vice President Mike Pence, and John Eastman, a lawyer who was working with then-President Donald Trump’s legal team, that absolutely nails the culpability of Eastman in the events of that terrible day,” Cillizza wrote.
The email exchange, which took place on Jan. 6th, is a conversation between Jacob and Eastman with the latter trying to convince his counterpart that Pence had the authority to reject electors from swing states. From the report:
On January 6 at 12:14 pm ET, as it was becoming increasingly clear that there was a Trump-inspired riot brewing at the US Capitol, Jacob was unequivocal in his rejection of Eastman’s theories.
“I have run down every legal trail placed before me to its conclusion, and I respectfully conclude that as a legal framework, it is a results-oriented position that you would never support if attempted by the opposition, and essentially entirely made up,” Jacob wrote Eastman. “And thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.”
To which Eastman responds: “The ‘siege’ is because YOU and your boss did not do what was necessary to allow this to be aired in a public way so the American people can see for themselves what happened.”
In his next response, Jacob drops the hammer: “The advice provided has, whether intended or not, functioned as a serpent in the ear of the President of the United States, the most powerful office in the entire world. And here we are.”
Jacob continued, insisted that it was “gravely, gravely irresponsible” for Eastman to “entice the President with an academic theory that had no legal viability.” He noted that the attempt to compel Pence to reject the electors played a significant role in “whipping large numbers of people into a frenzy over something with no chance of ever attaining legal force through actual process of law.”
There you have it, folks.
Eastman’s insistence that Pence had the power to reject those electors was at least partly responsible for inciting the riot, according to Cillizza, who also excitedly wrote:
What’s so incredibly damning about the Jacob-Eastman email exchange is that the former is utterly convinced that the latter knows that what he is doing is wrong – and is doing it anyway, with disastrous consequences for the party.
The image of Eastman as Iago pouring his poison in the ear of Trump’s Othello is a powerful one. Especially when you consider that Jacob wasn’t some lawyer working for Democrats. He was the chief counsel to the Republican vice president of the United States.
That fact makes his accusations against Eastman all the more powerful.
Any sane person can see that this is clearly wishful thinking on Cillizza’s part. But regardless of the validity of Eastman’s theory about electors, this is not the nail in the coffin Cillizza wishes it was. This revelation is about as significant to this story as the color socks George Lucas was wearing when he created Star Wars. To put it simply: Nobody cares. And yes, this includes the crowd of TDS sufferers who desperately wish Jan. 6 were important enough to the public to sink Republicans’ chances of retaking the House and Senate in November.
The bottom line is that the Democrats have already gotten everything they can out of the Jan. 6 riot. At this point, they are trying to squeeze water from a piece of granite. No amount of politicking over the events of that day is going to do them any good. But, given that they have absolutely nothing to run on, it is hard to blame them for continually trotting out the riot. The question is: When will they finally realize that Jan. 6 isn’t an effective weapon anymore?
