What the Jan. 6 committee ignored
House Democrats' marquee summer show of primetime investigative hearings ended Thursday night where it began: unable or unwilling to answer essential questions about the Jan. 6 Capitol breach.
Chief among them: If Donald Trump wanted to incite violence that fateful day, as his critics suggest, then why did he order the Pentagon to have a large military force ready to quell a disturbance? And why did a Democrat-led Congress turn down the assistance of pop National Guard troops in the face of intelligence warnings about violence?
By their own admission, Democrats set up the hearings to evade such scrutiny. They declared any questions about what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi knew about the potential for Jan. 6 violence and when she knew it were off limits.
Secret Service agents were never called to testify in public about whether former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson's story about Trump trying to force his limousine to go to the Capitol were true. And questions about how those in charge of Capitol security responded to FBI and Homeland Security pre-event warnings about potential violence were never asked, much less answered.
Instead, the Jan. 6 committee put on hearsay testimony from Hutchinson and released partial transcripts or video snippets of testimony without allowing Republicans or Trump's own lawyers to cross-examine witnesses or challenge the narrative offered to the American public.
"It's the first time this has happened in my lifetime since McCarthyism, and it's despicable," said famed Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, a lifelong Democrat who voted for Joe Biden in 2020. "The idea that they would interview this witness and allow her to testify to hearsay about the president jumping toward the wheel, without first asking the eye- and ear- witnesses. I've never heard of a lawyer doing that in my 16 years of practicing law. ... It's not only unethical, it's not only unfair, it's bad lawyering.”
Dershowitz said the committee Democrats and two anti-Trump Republicans — Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger — created a clear perception with their performance of being "partisan zealots" rather than truth-seekers.
Former career federal prosecutor David Sullivan said Thursday that the entire Jan. 6 accountability process — both at the Justice Department and the congressional hearings — raised questions of fairness and gave viewers a reason to tune out what proved to be "very scripted" interrogations. He said Democrats likely would have gained more credibility and traction if they had let Republicans offer contrary evidence and engaged in true cross-examination.
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A Capitol Police timeline obtained by Just the News shows the Trump Pentagon first offered National Guard troops to the Capitol Police on Jan. 2, 2021, four full days before the event. The police turned down the offer but then began to have second thoughts. The Capitol Police then asked their political minders — the House sergeant at arms chief among them — for permission to accept the troops on Jan. 4 but were turned down on the ground that such a show of force would create bad "optics," the records show.
But the most compelling piece of evidence that Trump wanted to thwart — rather than incite —violence is contained in a lengthy memo written by the Pentagon inspector general that chronicled the assistance the Defense Department offered Congress both ahead of and during the riot.
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In advance of the Jan. 6 rally, the president told the most senior civilian and uniformed leaders of the military he knew the event was going to draw a "large number of protestors," and he instructed the secretary of defense to ensure it was "safe" by having troops available. Democrats have not offered any evidence to counter that story.
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It looks like the Jan. 6 committee ignored evidence that was not consistent with their narrative of attacking President Trump. It looks like it was not a search for the truth but a search for facts to support their narrative of attacking Trump. Because they ignored facts not convenient to their narrative their allegations lack credibility.
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