We had a fake commission of Pelosi handpicked partisans who voted for impeachment. Now that we have the 44,000 hours of video, let’s have a real commission.
Make it small. 2 Democrats and three Republicans. And open up the hearing with Trumps full statement on a peaceful protest. What say you?
Truth nothing but the truth on that mostly peaceful protest January 6. It looks as if all the video will be released for all to see. Will the MSM show or give links to it? Also who does this help? Former President Trump of course. Who does it hurt? The rogue cop who killed an innocent woman. Hopefully the part where he leaves the scene without offering medical assistance.
I’m sure we have not seen the end of this.
Follow the link below to view the January 6th tapes for yourself.
To restore America’s trust and faith in their Government we must have transparency. This is another step towards keeping the promises I made when I was elected to be your Speaker.
BREAKING: In this never-before-seen footage of the January 6th insurrection, you can see capitol police officers fighting for their lives as the violent insurrectionists endanger American democracy in real-time pic.twitter.com/DDqPWafrHI
When I ran for Speaker, I promised to make accessible to the American people the 44,000 hours of video from Capitol Hill security taken on January 6, 2021. Truth and transparency are critical. Today, we will begin immediately posting video on a public website and move as quickly as possible to add to the website nearly all of the footage, more than 40,000 hours. In the meantime, a public viewing room will ensure that every citizen can view every minute of the videos uncensored.
If it does happen, MSM will only show the negative parts of the videos. Yes, absolutely make the Jan 6th tapes public , it’s about time , let’s also highlight exactly what Pelosi did and didn’t do.
“The way that the Jan. 6 tapes will be released will be through a website where any member of the public can go and observe the videos that are being released,” Mr. Gaetz, Florida Republican, said on the SiriusXM show “The Wilkow Majority.”
“My expectation is they’re going to be released in tranches and that the first tranche … to be released will be in, you know, days, not weeks,” he told host Andrew Wilkow.
WASHINGTON — House Speaker Kevin McCarthy called for Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., to be punished after he pulled a fire alarm in a Capitol office building Saturday, comparing the incident to the Jan. 6 riot at the building.
McCarthy, R-Calif., cited “how other people were treated when they come in and wanted to change the course of what was happening in the building.” He said the Ethics Committee should take the pulled fire alarm “seriously.”
“This should not go without punishment,” McCarthy said. “I’m going to have a discussion with the Democratic leader about it. But this should not go without punishment. This is an embarrassment. ”Bowman said later in a statement that the action was unintentional.
“Today, as I was rushing to make a vote, I came to a door that is usually open for votes but today would not open,” he said Saturday night. “I am embarrassed to admit that I activated the fire alarm, mistakenly thinking it would open the door. I regret this and sincerely apologize for any confusion this caused.
“But I want to be very clear, this was not me, in any way, trying to delay any vote. It was the exact opposite — I was trying urgently to get to a vote, which I ultimately did and joined my colleagues in a bipartisan effort to keep our government open,” he added.
A screen grab of security video was distributed to officers so they could find the person who pulled the alarm, a person familiar with the matter said.
A photo linked to Rep. Jamaal Bowman pulling a fire alarm at the Capitol on Saturday.
Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said he has not yet seen the video. “Until I see the video, I have no further comment,” he said when he was asked.
U.S. Capitol Police are investigating, according to a statement that did not mention Bowman by name, and the House Administration Committee is conducting a probe, as well.
“Rep. Jamal Bowman pulled a fire alarm in Cannon this morning,” an account controlled by the Republicans on the committee wrote on X, the website formerly known as Twitter, in a post that spelled Bowman’s first name incorrectly. “An investigation into why it was pulled is underway.” Committee Chairman Bryan Steil, R-Wis., signed the post.
Fellow Rep. Nicole Malliotakis of New York, a Republican, said on X that she will introduce a resolution to expel Bowman from the House over the incident. “This is the United States Congress, not a New York City high school. This action warrants expulsion & I’m introducing a resolution to do just that,” she wrote.
The alarm sounded in the Cannon office building, which is connected to the Capitol by an underground tunnel, as the Republicans were trying to begin a vote on a 45-day spending measure to keep the government open.
“Today at 12:05 p.m., a fire alarm was activated on the 2nd floor of the Cannon House Office Building,” a Capitol Police spokesperson said in the statement. “The building was evacuated while USCP officers checked the building. The building was reopened after it was determined that there was not a threat. An investigation into what happened and why continues.”
Democrats appeared to try to delay starting the vote, which they had been given very little notice about. Many complained that Republicans were trying to vote before Democrats had time to read the bill.
Jeffries delivered a 52-minute speech in what was seen as an effort to give his fellow members and their staffs time to figure out whether his party would support the bill.
Ultimately, the vote began 2½ hours after it was scheduled to start. And Democrats overwhelmingly voted in favor of the bill.
Several former intelligence officials who signed a letter suggesting that the Hunter Biden laptop was likely a “Russian information operation” are joining a federal “expert” board handling issues of national security, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced Tuesday.
Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan and former CIA Operations Officer Paul Kolbe, who will now serve on the board, all signed an October 2020 letter casting doubt on the legitimacy of the Hunter Biden laptop and suggesting its release was a Russian disinformation ploy. The group will advise DHS on intelligence and national security efforts regarding issues such as “terrorism, fentanyl, transborder issues, and emerging technology,” DHS announced.
The group will meet four times per year to advise DHS on countering threats to national security, according to the agency.
“The security of the American people depends on our capacity to collect, generate, and disseminate actionable intelligence to our federal, state, local, territorial, tribal, campus, and private sector partners,” Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas said in a statement Tuesday regarding the group’s formation. “I express my deep gratitude to these distinguished individuals for dedicating their exceptional expertise, experience, and vision to our critical mission.”
Biden himself used the letter, whose conclusion is false, to characterize reports on the laptop’s contents as a “bunch of garbage.”
However, former Deputy CIA Director Michael Morrell testified to the House Judiciary Committee that then-Biden senior adviser Antony Blinken, who is now the Secretary of State, “triggered” the creation of the letter. Former CIA chief of staff Jeremy Bash, who signed the letter, connected Morrell and then-Biden campaign chairman Steve Richetti; Bash was later appointed to Biden’s Intelligence Advisory Board.
Moreover, both Clapper and Brennan have been previously criticized for misleading the American public.
Clapper gave incorrect information to Congress on multiple occasions, including in one instance when he gave “inconsistent testimony” about contacts he had with the media while in office. Brennan, for his part, denied that CIA officials had hacked the computers of Senate Intelligence Committee staffers, a statement that was later proven false.
The Letter signed by Brennan, Clapper and Kolbe argued that the release of emails from the laptop was an attempt by Russia to influence the U.S. election.
“We write to say that the arrival on the US political scene of emails purportedly belonging to Vice President Biden’s son Hunter, much of it related to his time serving on the Board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation,” the 2020 letter read.
“If we are right, this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in this election, and we believe strongly that Americans need to be aware of this,” the letter added.
In a February letter to the Department of Justice (DOJ), lawyers representing Hunter Biden appeared to admit that data from his laptop is real.
Several social media platforms censored the New York Post’s reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop archive.
DHS didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the specifics of the board.
Last week Noam Dworman of Comedy Cellar USA, on his Live at the Table podcast, interviewed Washington Post columnist Philip Bump. It was a debate, with Bump invited because he’s “most associated with pouring cold water on the Hunter Biden story,” as Noam put it.
The show went viral as Bump, semi-reprising the performance of Russiagate champion and Guardian reporter Luke Harding walking on an interview with Aaron Mate, left abruptly after conceding Hunter’s line, “unlike pop, I won’t make you give me half your salary” was evidence. To be fair the show had run long, but Bump insisted earlier that there was “no evidence” of wrongdoing on Joe Biden’s part, so it wasn’t a timely exit — not that I’m unfamiliar with interviews that go sideways.
I know Noam and my name got dragged into this somewhat absurdly (Bump said I had “an agenda,” as Noam brought up tapes between Petro Poroshenko and Joe Biden I’d referenced), but didn’t want to say anything. Then a subsequent show also went sideways, for much the same reason. More on that in a moment. Back to Bump v. Dworman:
Many exchanges in the podcast stand out, not in a good way. Bump repeatedly tells Noam his problem is that he’s not accepting his, Bump’s, versions of things. At about the 56-minute mark, Bump chides Noam for bringing up things that have been “debunked.” When Noam asks, “What’s been debunked?” Bump says, “I’ve written about this!” He adds, “It’s been debunked in the sense that I’ve already addressed this, and presented the counter-arguments to it.”
At about 1:05 in the video above, Noam brings up “the issue of the press. The press actually bothers me more than Joe Biden…” To which Bump interjects [emphasis mine]: “But you don’t listen to the press. I’m sitting here and telling you you’re wrong about these things and you don’t listen.” About five minutes later Noam again brings up media, and Bump says, “But again, you’re attacking the press, because you refuse to listen to what we’re saying.”
Nearly an hour into the show Bump began complaining he’d been set up, and I know what he was thinking, having of course also been in the position of being invited to an interview with someone who perhaps wants to make an ass of you. I actually don’t think that’s Noam’s game, but even if it were, the answer isn’t to keep repeating, “How can we talk when you keep insisting I get down from this high horse I’m on?”
Bump acts like he and his paper haven’t gotten all sorts of thingswrong in recent years, implicitly rejecting the notion that people like Noam have reason to question anything “already addressed” by papers like the Post. If you need an explanation for declining ratingsand circulation of mainstream press outlets, this vibe is it.
The other episode involved professor and frequent media commentator Dan Drezner, who laughs hysterically and at great length the instant it registers that Noam plans on countering a claim that Trump was a bad president. It’s at about the 52-minute mark:
Drezner is doing what Bump did, albeit with more humor: gagging in disbelief when a mainstream piety sent up the flagpole isn’t instantly saluted.
I think a lot of people in the world I once inhabited, in center-left media and academia, don’t realize they’ve slipped into a deeply unattractive habit of substituting checklists of unquestioned assumptions for thought. In the blue bubble Trump’s limitless evil is an idea with such awesome gravitational pull that it makes nuanced discussion about almost anything impossible. It’s why no one in media could suggest even the possibility he hadn’t colluded with Russia. He’s become an anti-God, of a faith that requires constant worship. When do we get to go back to being atheists?
Eastman explains it all. He did not urge Vice President Pence to reject electors whose certification was still pending. Eastman was on with Laura Ingraham the other night and explained exactly what he told Mike Pence. Here’s part of his discussion with Ingraham.
“Several things,” Eastman replied. “Some people had urged that Vice President Pence simply had power to reject electors whose certification was still pending.” “I don’t believe that,” Ingraham shot back. “That’s one thing I don’t agree with.”
“I don’t either,” the lawyer said. “And I explicitly told Vice President Pence in the Oval Office on January 4th, that even though it was an open issue, under the circumstances we had, I thought it was the weaker argument and it would be foolish to exercise such power even if you had it.”
“What I recommended, and I’ve said this repeatedly,” he continued, “is that he accede to requests from more than 100 state legislators in the swing states to give them a week to try and sort out the impact of what everybody acknowledged was illegality in the conduct of the election.”
And from Eastman asking Pence to wait a week the far left took that to mean Pence needed to rig the election.
Former President Donald Trump, left, can’t expect much of a fair trial on charges being brought before U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, right. Chutkan has effectively pronounced Trump guilty already — and in open court. (Alex Brandon / AP ; Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts / AP)
The trial of former President Donald Trump in the District of Columbia isn’t even close to starting yet, but Americans who support the 45th president can already be sure of one thing: The judge has already reached her own verdict.
It’s been clear from the get-go that U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan is biased in the case being brought by Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith that accuses Trump of four counts related to the Capitol incursion of Jan. 6, 2021: conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.
But a review of Chutkan’s handling of Capitol incursion defendants by the website RealClearInvestigations yielded an explosive result: Chutkan is not only biased, she’s tacitly pronounced Trump guilty, in open court, of what are essentially the charges against him.
And she’s done it more than once.
In one case, Chutkan sentenced Christine Priola, a Cleveland woman, to 15 months in prison after Priola pleaded guilty to obstructing an official proceeding and aiding and abetting, according to WJW in Cleveland.
But judging by Chutkan’s words from the bench at the Oct. 28 hearing, the real culprit was Donald Trump, and he deserved to be in prison, too.
The participants in the incursion “were there in fealty, in loyalty, to one man — not to the Constitution, of which most of the people who come before me seem woefully ignorant, not to the ideals of this country, and not to the principles of democracy,” Chutkan said, according to RealClearInvestigations.
“It’s a blind loyalty to one person who, by the way, remains free to this day.”
WHY IS SHE NOT REMOVED FROM THIS CASE?
“Free to this day”? Sounds an awful lot like Chutkan was wishing she was putting Donald Trump behind bars, not a former occupational therapist from Ohio.
In another case, she sentenced Texas resident Matthew Mazzocco to 45 days behind bars when, according to The Washington Post. Prosecutors had only asked for probation.
And, in Chutkan’s words, she made it clear that Trump was the man who should have been standing before her instead.
Mazzocco, Chutkan said, “went there to support one man who he viewed had the election taken from him. In total disregard of a lawfully conducted election, he went to the Capitol in support of one man, not in support of our country or in support of democracy.”
And that “one man” is going to be relying on Chutkan to dispense impartial justice in her courtroom?
With that kind of record, it’s more than understandable that Rep. Matt Gaetz, the Florida Republican firebrand, has introduced a measure to censure Chutkan for her comments — not only regarding Trump himself but also comparing the Capitol incursion, unfavorably, to the Black Lives Matter rioters who burned American cities during the summer of 2020.
“But to compare the actions of people protesting, mostly peacefully, for civil rights, to those of a violent mob seeking to overthrow the lawfully elected government is a false equivalency and ignores a very real danger that the Jan. 6 riots posed to the foundation of our democracy,” she said at Mazzocco’s sentencing hearing, The Washington Post reported.
Gaetz clearly knows, just like any honest observer knows, that Chutkan has reached her own decision on the Trump case — and the decision is clearly going to color every decision she makes as it proceeds.
A kangaroo court is a parody of justice, where predetermined verdicts get the color of due process, the fiction that a legal proceeding has ensured the rights of the accused, as well as the rights and duties of the society whose rules he is supposed to have violated.
The question is an urgent one due to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s election interference case against Donald Trump and 18 others, which she has dubiously framed as a racketeering conspiracy.
Why has DA Willis invoked Georgia’s version of the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, which is typically applied to mobsters engaged in the familiar rackets of murder, extortion, trafficking in narcotics and stolen goods, gambling, prostitution and so on? Because there’s a giant hole in her case: the lack of a clear crime to which Trump and his co-defendants can plausibly be said to have agreed.
Let’s put RICO to the side for a moment and focus on conspiracy. Very simply, a conspiracy is an agreement to violate a criminal statute. It takes two to tango, so a conspiracy must minimally involve a pair of people. Beyond that, though, it can involve three people, 19 people, 100 people — any number. Regardless of how many people are said to be implicated, however, there is always one requirement: There must be a meeting of the minds about the crime that is the objective of the conspiracy.
If prosecutors allege a large-scale conspiracy, various conspirators may play different roles. In a conspiracy to sell cocaine, for example, some people may handle importation; others handle sales or security, and still others, accounting and management of the cash proceeds. But what unites these role-players in a single conspiracy is the criminal objective — in our example, to sell cocaine. If there is no agreement about a crime, there is no conspiracy.
Usually, this is not a problem for prosecutors. While constitutional due process guarantees that every American is presumed innocent, it also dictates that no American can be charged with a crime and forced to stand trial unless there is probable cause that a crime has been committed.
As a result, even though prosecutors bear the burden of proving the case beyond a reasonable doubt before there can be a conviction, we can easily understand why the defendants have been charged. If they are charged with conspiracy, the indictment will clearly state the crime they allegedly agreed to commit — e.g., drug trafficking, bank robbery, murder, extortion. Whatever the objective crime may be, we understand that the prosecutors, the police, and the grand jury have established to the court’s satisfaction that there is enough evidence to establish probable cause that the alleged conspirators agreed to commit a crime.
Willis’s indictment. She alleges that the 19 people named in her indictment are guilty of conspiracy because they agreed to try to keep Donald Trump in power as president — specifically, to “change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump.” Maybe they shared such an aim, maybe their 19 minds met regarding that objective, but in and of itself, trying to reverse the result of an election is not a crime. You may have noticed that neither Al Gore nor Stacey Abrams was ever led away in handcuffs.
To be clear, it’s entirely possible that people can perform criminal acts in the pursuit of a lawful objective. If they do, they may be charged with those crimes — and if the crimes are serious, they should be charged. That, however, does not mean their overarching objective was a crime. And again, if you don’t have two or more people agreeing on an objective that is a crime, you don’t have a conspiracy.
Willis tries to get around this inconvenience in two ways, neither of which works.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis speaks during a news conference at the Fulton County Government building on Aug.14, 2023 in Atlanta.Joe Raedle/Getty Images
The first is a tautology: She conclusively asserts, on page 14 of the indictment, that this was a “conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump.” That is, the lawful objective of changing the election outcome somehow becomes unlawful because she invokes the apparently talismanic word “unlawful.” But there is no crime of unlawfully trying to change an election outcome — not in Georgia law nor any other American law.
Trying to change an election outcome is legal; the end doesn’t become illegal if pursued by illegal means — instead, those illegal means can be charged as crimes. But there is no conspiracy unless the objective itself is clearly a crime. You don’t see prosecutors alleging, say, that defendants were in a “conspiracy to unlawfully” commit murder or robbery. Murder and robbery are crimes. If two or more people agree to commit murder or robbery, that is an agreement to commit a crime — a conspiracy. To the contrary, an agreement to try to reverse the result of an election is not an agreement to commit a crime.
Willis thus turns to her second artifice, the RICO conspiracy charge. RICO is unique in the criminal law because, instead of targeting crimes, it targets entities — associations of people, referred to as enterprises — that generate revenue through the commission of crimes. The offense is not so much the crimes (referred to as the pattern of racketeering activity), but the enterprise (such as a mafia family) that carries out the crimes. A RICO conspiracy is an agreement to participate in such an enterprise — to belong to the group and sustain the group so that it continues to generate power and profits.
That doesn’t fit the Georgia case. Trump and his 18 co-defendants did not intend or desire to belong to a group, or even see themselves as a group. Their objective allegedly was to maintain Trump in power, not to participate in an enterprise. And unlike a RICO enterprise, the 19 defendants had no intention of sustaining their group — if it even was a unified group. Their only objective allegedly was to keep Trump in office. By Jan. 20, 2021, that objective was either going to succeed or fail, but whatever the outcome, the group would then cease to exist as such. By contrast, a real RICO enterprise must be a continuing threat — one that labors to preserve its existence and operations.
The defendants indicted by Willis did not have an overarching agreement to commit a crime, and they were the antithesis of a RICO enterprise. If, as the DA alleges, they committed discrete crimes in the effort to reverse the election result — such as forgery, false statements, solicitation of others to commit felonies, or hacking into election systems — then they should be prosecuted for those crimes.
But an agreement to do something legal — to reverse the result of an election — is not a conspiracy. And if the presumption of innocence means anything, we must presume people are innocent if the prosecutor fails to allege that they agreed to do something that was actually a crime.
Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, is a senior fellow at National Review Institute, contributing editor at National Review, and a Fox News contributor.
A federal appeals court on Friday, Aug. 18, 2023, ordered a new sentence for a North Carolina man who pleaded guilty to a petty offense in the Capitol riot — a ruling that could impact dozens of low-level cases in the massive Jan. 6, 2021, prosecution. The appeals court said James Little was wrongly sentenced for his conviction on a misdemeanor offense to both prison time and probation, which is court-ordered monitoring of defendants who are not behind bars. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)
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Court Tosses Jan. 6 Sentence; Ruling May Impact Other Cases.
A federal appeals court on Friday ordered a new sentence for a North Carolina man who pleaded guilty to a petty offense in the Capitol riot — a ruling that could impact dozens of low-level cases in the massive Jan. 6, 2021 prosecution.
The appeals court in Washington said James Little was wrongly sentenced for his conviction on a misdemeanor offense to both prison time and probation, which is court-ordered monitoring of defendants who are not behind bars.
Little, who entered the Capitol but didn’t join in any destruction or violence, pleaded guilty in 2021 to a charge that carries up to six months behind bars. He was sentenced last year to 60 days in prison followed by three years of probation.
But the 2-1 opinion from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said that probation and imprisonment “may not be imposed as a single sentence” for a petty offense, adding “there are separate options on the menu.” Judge Robert Wilkins, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, dissented.
The decision could invalidate the sentences of dozens of Jan. 6 defendants who received what is known as a “split sentence” for a petty offense. More than 80 other Jan. 6 defendants have been sentenced to both prison time and probation for the same misdemeanor offense as Little, according to an Associated Press analysis.
The practical effect, however, may be limited as almost all of them have likely already served their prison terms long ago. Little’s attorney had asked the appeals court to simply order an end to his probation monitoring since he already served his 60 days behind bars.
An attorney for Little declined to comment on Friday. The Justice Department could appeal the decision. A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington said: “We are reviewing the Court’s ruling and will determine our next steps in accordance with the law.”
Some judges who have imposed such sentences in misdemeanor cases have stressed the need to keep tabs on Jan. 6 defendants after they serve their time to prevent them from engaging in such conduct during the next election. While on probation, defendants have to check in with a probation officer and follow certain conditions.
“The Court must not only punish Little for his conduct but also ensure that he will not engage in similar conduct again during the next election,” the judge who sentenced Little, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, wrote in a ruling last year.
“Some term of imprisonment may serve sentencing’s retributive goals. But only a longer-term period of probation is adequate to ensure that Little will not become an active participant in another riot,” he wrote.
On Jan. 6, 2021, Little went to President Donald Trump’s speech ahead of the riot and then walked to the Capitol, where he fist-bumped other rioters and went into the Senate Gallery, according to court records. After leaving the Capitol, he and others prayed on the Capitol steps and sang “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” by Twisted Sister, according to court documents.
More than 1,000 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the Jan. 6 riot. More than 600 of them have pleaded guilty or been convicted after trials decided by a jury or judge. About 600 have been sentenced, with over half getting terms of imprisonment ranging from three days to 18 years.
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