Tag Archives: January 6 protests

Jan. 6 Defendants Taken Out of Cells on Stretchers: Court Filing, by Zachary Stieber

Posted on November 14, 2021 | Leave a comment

The January 6 defendants are being held in deplorable conditions. Tyrants take their revenge any way they can. From Zachary Stieber at theepochtimes.com:

Multiple Jan. 6 defendants were taken out of their cells on stretchers at the District of Columbia jail on Nov. 11, according to a court filing.

The situation started when one of the defendants refused to wear a mask, family members of Kelly Meggs, who is being held in the D.C. jail, told Meggs’s lawyer. Prison guards then began spraying a chemical substance described as “some kind of mace or pepper spray,” according to a filing in federal court.

“They sprayed mace or some type of gas at an inmate and kept missing so it went into an intake that fed into other cells, and the lady with the key left because she didn’t like the gas, so the inmates in the cells who were being fed the gas from that intake were locked in for like 15 minutes while it was going into their rooms and they couldn’t see or breathe,” the family told Jonathon Moseley, the lawyer.

More than one of the defendants was taken out on stretchers for medical attention.

Julie Kelly, a writer for American Greatness, reported on Nov. 11 that prison guards filled an area of the jail with chemical spray, and three detainees had to be taken out on stretchers.

Moseley and the D.C. Department of Corrections didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The lawyer said his client wasn’t in one of the cells that the gas was being cycled into by the ventilation system. He urged the court to explore with the Bureau of Prisons and Congress whether any federal funds are already or can be allocated to repair and upgrade the D.C. jail facilities.

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‘Unprecedented’ Capitol Protest Sets New Precedents, by Julie Kelly

Posted on November 13, 2021 | Leave a comment

The 1/6 protesters scared the crap out of a lot of congress critters and their staffs and they’re bent on taking their revenge, the hell with Constitutional rights or anything else. From Julie Kelly at amgreatness.com:

nprecedented: It is the word most often applied to the events at the Capitol on January 6.

In his remarks that afternoon, as the chaos was still ongoing, Joe Biden warned that “our democracy is under unprecedented attack.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Attorney General Merrick Garland, and leaders of both political parties also describe the four-hour mostly nonviolent disturbance at the Capitol complex as something without precedent.

“On January 6, 2021, the world witnessed a violent and unprecedented attack on the U.S. Capitol, the Vice President, Members of Congress, and the democratic process,” wrote Republican and Democratic senators in a joint committee report released earlier this year.

“We mourn the deaths of the two Capitol policemen and others connected to these unprecedented events,” the nation’s top military leaders, including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, said in a January 13 statement. (We now know that those two officers did not die as a result of the protest.)

The national news media also flaunts the word with ease and frequency, historical context and common sense be damned. One federal prosecutor who handled the Oklahoma City bombing case, which resulted in the murder of 168 innocent people including 15 children under the age of five, told the New York Times in April that “the Capitol attack was, thankfully, an unprecedented event.”

Joe Biden’s Justice Department argues for unusually harsh sentences on the basis that “the crimes . . . committed on January 6 are unprecedented.” Therefore, the government routinely claims in sentencing motions, judges should ignore precedent for similar offenses. “These crimes defy statutorily appropriate comparisons to conduct in other cases that occurred before January 6, 2021,” one prosecutor wrote in August.

Long delays in the discovery process are blamed on the “unprecedented” volume of evidence, which includes tens of thousands of hours of video footage and hundreds of thousands of FBI documents. Ditto for delayed trial dates; foot-dragging on discovery renders many defense lawyers unable to prepare for trial. Judges repeatedly cite the “unprecedented” nature of the Capitol protest and massive trove of evidence as an excuse to stall trial dates until the middle of 2022.

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Civil Liberties Are Being Trampled by Exploiting “Insurrection” Fears. Congress’s 1/6 Committee May Be the Worst Abuse Yet. By Glenn Greenwald

Posted on October 17, 2021 | Leave a comment

Democrats have been screaming “McCarthyism!” in various contexts since McCarthy. Their 1/6 committee looks a lot like Tailgunner Joe’s. From Glenn Greenwald at greenwald.substack.com:

Following the 9/11 script, objections to government overreach in the name of 1/6 are demonized as sympathy for terrorists. But government abuses pose the greater threat.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) arrive for the House Select Committee hearing investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol on July 27, 2021 at the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, DC. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

When a population is placed in a state of sufficiently grave fear and anger regarding a perceived threat, concerns about the constitutionality, legality and morality of measures adopted in the name of punishing the enemy typically disappear. The first priority, indeed the sole priority, is to crush the threat. Questions about the legality of actions ostensibly undertaken against the guilty parties are brushed aside as trivial annoyances at best, or, worse, castigated as efforts to sympathize with and protect those responsible for the danger. When a population is subsumed with pulsating fear and rage, there is little patience for seemingly abstract quibbles about legality or ethics. The craving for punishment, for vengeance, for protection, is visceral and thus easily drowns out cerebral or rational impediments to satiating those primal impulses.

The aftermath of the 9/11 attack provided a vivid illustration of that dynamic. The consensus view, which formed immediately, was that anything and everything possible should be done to crush the terrorists who — directly or indirectly — were responsible for that traumatic attack. The few dissenters who attempted to raise doubts about the legality or morality of proposed responses were easily dismissed and marginalized, when not ignored entirely. Typically, they were vilified with the accusation that their constitutional and legal objections were frauds: mere pretexts to conceal their sympathy and even support for the terrorists. It took at least a year or two after that attack for there to be any space for questions about the legality, constitutionality, and morality of the U.S. response to 9/11 to be entertained at all.

For many liberals and Democrats in the U.S., 1/6 is the equivalent of 9/11. One need not speculate about that. Many have said this explicitly. Some prominent Democrats in politics and media have even insisted that 1/6 was worse than 9/11.

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Judge Hands Down Probation In Capitol Case, Questions Prosecutors’ “Credibility” Over Leniency Toward BLM, by Tyler Durden

Posted on October 3, 2021 | Leave a comment

Remember the maxim, “the punishment should fit the crime.” Politics has thrown that out the window. Politically favored cause: no punishment. Politically disfavored cause: Siberia. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

An Oklahoma judge has just reminded Americans that there’s at least one judge in on the US District Court in Washington (which is handling the bulk of the Jan. 6 cases) who isn’t a Democrat.

Judge Trevor McFadden admonished prosecutors this week after handing down a more-lenient-than-expected sentence to Danielle Doyle, 37, who was given two months of probation on Friday for her involvement in the Jan. 6 demonstrations. Prosecutors had asked the judge to sentence Doyle to home confinement.

Doyle pleaded guilty in July to illegally demonstrating inside the Capitol, which she admitted to entering through a broken window.

She spent a total of 24 minutes in the building and there’s no evidence she committed any acts of violence or property damage.

In his statement, the judge openly questioned the prosecution’s “credibility,” wondering aloud why the DoJ hasn’t indicted any more of those arrested during the riots in Washington during the Black Lives Matter-inspired protests from last summer.

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9/11 Was Bad, But It Wasn’t QAnoners Wandering Around The Capitol For A Few Hours Bad, by Caitlin Johnstone

Posted on September 11, 2021 | Leave a comment

Nothing typifies Washington’s overblown sense of its own importance than the reaction to the January 6 protestors. From Caitlin Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:

Okay, okay, let’s all cool our jets here for a minute. I know we’re all worked up about the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and that’s all well and good. But let’s not let our emotions cloud our vision and let today’s commemorations cause us to forget the real horror we must all remain focused on: the Capitol riot this past January.

It is true that losing nearly 3,000 American lives to weaponized passenger jets was pretty bad, but I think we can all agree that this pales in comparison to the earth-shattering terror we all experienced when watching footage of wingnuts wander aimlessly around the Capitol Building for a few hours.

Serious experts agree.

In a July appearance on MSNBC’s ReidOut with Joy Reid, former Bush strategist Matthew Dowd said he felt the Capitol riot was “much worse” than 9/11 and that this is the “most perilous point in time” since the beginning of the American Civil War.

“To me, though there was less loss of life on January 6, January 6 was worse than 9/11, because it’s continued to rip our country apart and get permission for people to pursue autocratic means, and so I think we’re in a much worse place than we’ve been,” Dowd said. “I think we’re in the most perilous point in time since 1861 in the advent of the Civil War.”

“I do too,” Reid replied.

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BREAKING! The January 6th Commission Is In Session… And Nobody Cares, by PF Whalen

Posted on September 7, 2021 | Leave a comment

Most Americans are worried about things other than January 6, like all of the Biden administration’s serious screw-ups. From PF Whalen at thebluestateconservative.com:

The Democrats are throwing a party, and everyone is invited. And they would very much like all of you to come. They’ve spared no expense. This party is supposed to be the highfalutin shindig against which all future highfalutin shindigs are measured. There’s only one problem. The only ones at their party are a collection of desperate Democrats and few delusional Republicans… and everyone keeps looking at their watch like Joe Biden at a dignified transfer.

The party the Democrats are throwing is the “Select” January 6th Commission, and they want you to embrace the hype and join in with the festivities which actually began over a month ago. Contrary to Democrat talking points, the purpose of their get-together is to highlight the evils of Orange-Man-Bad, aka former President Donald Trump. The only real questions remaining about the Capitol riot on January 6th is 1) what really happened regarding the death of Ashli Babbitt, and 2) how could there have been such a failure in fundamental security by the Capitol Police? Neither of these questions will be answered – at least not by this farce of a commission – because they don’t care about answers, they only care about politics and perception.

So, you say you haven’t heard much about these proceedings? The heroic deeds of that top-notch team of Congressional crusaders have totally missed your radar? Don’t feel bad, you’re not alone.

Worthy news items that have come from the January 6th Commission have been virtually non-existent. Perhaps the biggest story has been House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s recent decision to name soon-to-be-former three-term Congresswoman Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) as Vice-Chair of the commission. Republicans threw in the towel on Cheney providing any value to anyone long ago, and Democrats continue to work towards holding her up as the model Republican. But Americans are just yawning. Liz Cheney is old news.

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So why did the Capitol Hill cop come out? by Monica Showalter

Posted on August 28, 2021 | 1 comment

The name that was kept secret for months is now public, but not because anyone in the government has any high-borne notions of honesty and transparency. From Monica Showalter at americanthinker.com:

After months of supposed hiding, the Capitol Hill cop who shot unarmed pro-Trump protestor Ashli Babbitt at the Capitol, Lt. Michael Byrd has come out of the woodwork to talk about his shooting, in a softball interview with NBC’s Lester Holt.

Which is weird stuff, given that for months his identity had been concealed, by investigators, Congress, and other supposed watchdogs, on the grounds that revealing it to angry Trump supporters was too dangerous, and whose investigative conclusions excused him from accountability.

Now he’s come out — telling Lester Holt of his great heroics. He doesn’t even need to, having been exonerated repeatedly.

The most likely reason is this lawsuit, and these efforts by Babbitt’s family to get answers:

Babbitt’s family is suing for the identity of the officer to be publicly released but so far that effort has not borne fruit. They are also filing a $10 million wrongful death lawsuit, claiming the officer didn’t issue a verbal command according to the Washington Examiner.

A lawsuit would concentrate anyone’s mind, even in the name of his agency, making it quite likely that he would think of preparing a defense.

It’s a typical lawyer tactic, when it can be done and a judge doesn’t slap it down, to try to sway public opinion, particularly when a defense is weak

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“No Further Action Will Be Taken”: Officer Who Fatally Shot Ashli Babbitt Cleared of Any Wrongdoing By Capitol Police, by Jonathan Turley

Posted on August 23, 2021 | 1 comment

You knew this one was coming. From Jonathan Turley at jonathanturley.org:

Yesterday I wrote a column in the Hill about the FBI reportedly finding no evidence a planned insurrection at the Capitol on January 6th. In a related story, the Capitol Police has now entirely cleared the still unnamed officer who shot and killed Ashli Babbitt despite her being unarmed.  The decision was marked by the same lack of information that characterized an earlier decision from the Justice Department. There is little media coverage of the obvious disconnect in the handling of this shooting and other uses of force against protesters in recent riots. Even law professors are largely silent on the implications of a finding that the shooting of an unarmed protester is justified.  Babbitt seems to be treated as “fair game” because she was part of the January 6th riot.

Babbitt, an Air Force veteran, was a decorated security forces controller who served multiple Middle East tours from 2004 to 2016

A memo from the commander of the Capitol Police’s Office of Personal Responsibility simply says “no further action will be taken in this matter” after the officer was exonerated for use of force. However, there are very troubling questions about the shooting, as previously discussed.

Not only was there no claim that Babbitt was believed to be armed, but there were officers directly behind her and in front of her at the time. As I noted earlier, if the officer intended to shoot Babbitt, it would not likely meet the standard for a justified shooting under governing cases like Tennessee v. Garner (1985). If the officer fired blindly or wildly, it would appear to have many of the same negligent elements as the Wright shooting.

I was highly critical of the maddening findings of the Justice Department in the case. In rejecting charges, the Justice Department statement notably does not say that the shooting was clearly justified. Instead, it noted that “prosecutors would have to prove not only that the officer used force that was constitutionally unreasonable, but that the officer did so ‘willfully.’”  It stressed that this element requires a showing of “a bad purpose to disregard the law” and that “evidence that an officer acted out of fear, mistake, panic, misperception, negligence, or even poor judgment cannot establish the high level of intent.”

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‘I Thought I Was Going To Die’, Says Capitol Police Officer Who Held Door Open For Protestors On Jan. 6

Posted on July 31, 2021 | Leave a comment

From The Babylon Bee:

WASHINGTON, D.C.—In a harrowing testimony before the January 6th Committee, Capitol Police Officer Lenny Burbo revealed his paralyzing fear as MAGA terrorist insurrectionist racists stormed the Capitol.

“I stood there, paralyzed by fear as I held the door open so people could enter,” said Burbo. “As boomer after boomer entered the facility in an orderly line and began to take selfies, I saw my life flash before my eyes. I literally thought I was going to die.”

When asked why he had politely held the door open for everyone to enter the building unimpeded, he replied that he feared for his life and that one of the larger rioters had come up to him and said “step aside cupcake” in an intimidating voice.

“I knew my only option was to step aside or be drawn and quartered by a throng of evil bad people who voted for Trump and are also racist,” he said as tears welled up in his eyes.

Officer Burbo has been awarded a medal of bravery since even though he opened the door for rioters, he really didn’t want to do it, and his heart was in the right place.

The FBI has issued a warrant for the man who called Officer Burbo a “cupcake” and is asking anyone with information to call Nancy Pelosi’s office immediately.

https://babylonbee.com/news/i-thought-i-was-going-to-die-says-capitol-police-officer-who-held-door-open-for-protestors-on-jan-6

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The Jan. 6th Show Trials Threaten All of Us, by Ron Paul

Posted on July 27, 2021 | Leave a comment

The old line about how an abridgement of the rights of one of us is an abridgement of the rights of all isn’t a mere rhetorical flourish. Empirically, when governments start running roughshod over the rights of one, a few, or some, they eventually get around to doing it to all. From Ron Paul at ronpaulinstitute.org:

The recent felony conviction and eight month prison sentence of January 6th protester Paul Hodgkins is an affront to any notion of justice. It is a political charge and a political verdict by a political court. Every American regardless of political persuasion should be terrified of a court system so beholden to politics instead of justice.

We’ve seen this movie before and it does not end well.

Worse than this miscarriage of justice is the despicable attempt by the prosecutor in the case to label Hodgkins – who has no criminal record and was accused of no violent crime – a “terrorist.”

As journalist Michael Tracey recently wrote, Special Assistant US Attorney Mona Sedky declared Hodgkins a “terrorist” in the court proceedings not for committing any terrorist act, not for any act of violence, not even for imagining a terrorist act.

Sedky wrote in her sentencing memo, “The Government … recognizes that Hodgkins did not personally engage in or espouse violence or property destruction.” She added, “we concede that Mr. Hodgkins is not under the legal definition a domestic terrorist.”

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