The Jan. 6 committees false accusations against Trump
The January 6 committee seemed to hit the point of diminishing returns this week. The Democrat-controlled panel is straining to establish that its target, former president Donald Trump, is not just morally and politically but criminally culpable for the deadly Capitol riot, but it can’t make the case. Its evidence of criminal intent is too weak, and its tactic of conflating Trump’s state of mind with the unhinged words of extremists who reacted to his rhetoric is sleight-of-hand.
Plus, Trump has an intent defense: He was trying to ratchet up political pressure on Congress, not provoke a forcible uprising. And the committee is not only ignoring that defense but bolstering it (however inadvertently).
To be clear, I am speaking here narrowly about crimes involving the intent to use force, a necessary element of such offenses as seditious conspiracy, with which the Justice Department has charged several rioters. Trump’s liability for other potential crimes arising out of the events that culminated in the Capitol riot remains an open question. The committee is correct that Trump orchestrated a raucous rally on the National Mall on January 6, 2021. But the evidence that he intended the rally to turn lethally violent, as the committee implies, is slim.
To draw the committee’s conclusion, one must pretend, as the panel mulishly does, that Trump never said, during his speech at the rally that preceded the riot, “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” (Memo to the Committee: In real criminal proceedings, which, unlike scripted political presentations, have cross-examination and the right to present a defense, your case gets laughed out of court when you get caught burying the exculpatory evidence. Competent prosecutors confront the exculpatory evidence head-on. Rather than signaling fear of it, they try to persuade the fact-finder that it’s trumped by other, more compelling evidence. Being persuasive involves playing it straight to maintain your credibility.)
The committee’s theory also indulges a presumption of guilt, the opposite of what Trump would be entitled to if charged with a crime. The committee would have you believe that when Trump used common political rhetoric, such as telling people they must “fight like hell” for their country, he meant it literally — whereas, when former community-organizer and “direct action” devotee Barack Obama told his fellow progressives, “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,” or Joe Biden told black people that Republicans “want to put y’all back in chains,” they were just employing well-intentioned metaphors.
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There is much more.
Members of the committee have claimed that they are trying to preserve "our democracy." Nothing can be further from the truth. Their goal is to block Trump from being allowed to run for election in 2024. They are actively trying to thwart democracy in the process. Voters are perfectly capable of deciding whether Trump should be reelected. The people on that committee are the ones that are the biggest threat to democracy.
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