I have been extremely critical of those who participated in the January 6th riots at the US Capitol. I was sickened by the images, though part of me has begun to understand better the anger of that day. Regardless, the actions that were taken by a few of the thousands that were there that day reflect poorly on what we were trying to accomplish. We fell right into the left’s trap, which was to stir up the right to violence so that they could say they were right about us all along. We know the left is worse. That isn’t the issue. We should have held our ground and not given the left a red-herring to point to any time we bring up things like election security or voter ID. Forever, we have scarred those demands with the idea that people who advocate for those changes are the same people who raided the Capitol.
I’ve also been clear about my definitions on the matter. No, this wasn’t an insurrection. No, it wasn’t an attempted coup. No, it wasn’t a broad conspiracy organized by Trump. That hasn’t stopped the left from repeating those falsehoods. We’ve seen tearful testimony those on the left claim to be victims of continued trauma from that day, but then also hear these same “victims” deny the rights of the McCloskey’s to defend their property from similar threats. These same people are doxxing police officers involved in justifiable shootings, but then claim that releasing the name of the Capitol Police officer who unjustifiably shot Ashli Babbit, is somehow abusive. They will sit there and tell you with a straight face that violent riots in the wake of completed investigations that don’t end in their favor are justified, but that denying investigations into serious and legitimate accusations of voter irregularities doesn’t justify the same angry and violent response.
Is it whataboutism? Sure. But more importantly, it is demanding that the left operate by the same standards which they demand we live by. The old saying, “If Democrats didn’t have double standards, they would have none,” is incredibly accurate in this case.
Now it appears that the entire narrative regarding the January 6th riots is coming apart at the seams. My colleague here at RedState, Nick Arama, reported this morning that the FBI’s report on the January 6th riots has found “scant evidence” that there was any broader conspiracy about the riots, including anything suggesting that Donald Trump, his staff, or any Republican Members of Congress engaged in any efforts to encourage or plan the violence that occurred that day.
According to four current and former law enforcement officials, the FBI has “found scant evidence that the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was the result of an organized plot to overturn the presidential election result.” The FBI doesn’t believe that the riot was “centrally coordinated by far-right groups or prominent supporters of then-President Donald Trump, according to the sources, who have been either directly involved in or briefed regularly on the wide-ranging investigations.”
We could have told you that, it was always a political lie. This even as Democrats have gone full-bore organizing a committee to ‘get to the bottom’ of it.
Remember, this is the same FBI that was demonized by Trump, so they have quite a bit of motivation to prove that Trump was responsible, even tacitly, for the events that transpired on January 6th. Yet, as Nick suggested, we already knew this. Anyone with half a brain could have looked at this and said, “well, it was wrong what these people did, but it wasn’t some ‘vast right-wing conspiracy.'”
So while we are asking questions about what should happen to the people who raided the Capitol, what should happen to the people who perpetrated a fraud under which the President of the United States was unjustifiably impeached? Remember, just 5 days after January 6th, Democrats prepared and filed Articles of Impeachment against the President for “Incitement of Insurrection” and “Lawless Action at the Capitol, and issued threats to Vice President Pence and the President’s Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment or else.
Here we had the Democrat party, which had fabricated a false and defamatory story that Trump and/or his staff engaged in efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 Election, yet, they were opposed (and still remain opposed) to any effort to investigate the irregularities around the election. Based upon these lies, they launched their own efforts to remove a constitutionally elected leader, whom they had spent four years investigating for completely unsubstantiated (and later proved false) reports that Donald Trump had “colluded” with Russia in 2016. Their actions were a legislative insurrection, and a procedural coup, during both of their witch hunt impeachment trials. They first tried to claim that Trump engaged in an act, which he never admitted to doing, nor did the Ukrainian officials say occurred, but facts be damned, Democrats were going to impeach Trump. They made outright definitive accusations which later proved false by the Mueller Report. The Impeachment over the events of January 6th has now proved to be a complete fabrication. Even so, their efforts to “remove Trump from office” occurred after Trump had willfully already left office.
Will the new FBI’s report matter to the left? Probably not. They likely will continue engaging in perpetuating falsehoods on the American people. As has proved in the past, they don’t care what the facts and evidence state. If it doesn’t match their narrative, they will dismiss it and move forward regardless. Their hopes in investigations and their faith in those results have almost exclusively, proven misplaced. Chants of “It’s Mueller Time” and guarantees of Trump being arrested and paraded around in handcuffs have faded to an evidenceless insistence that Trump’s legacy is that of unabated corruption. All of the fears that the left sowed for years about Trump and his family’s behavior have been realized in Joe Biden and his, yet we hear nothing of their complaints about that.
