January 6

January 6 by Julie Kelly

https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R2ZQUBREZ5OC2W?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

As a lived experience, the January 6 incident seemed anti-climactic. Americans had spent an entire year watching the Left burn down blocks of cities, police stations, buildings, attacking federal courts, looting stores, and murdering people. During the summer of 2020, antifa rioters had spent weeks attacking the White House. They sent scores of Secret Service agents to the hospital. They burned down a historic church on the other side of Lafayette Park. I read reports from the Portland police that lasted for months about how antifa rioters were blocking the escape doors of the downtown police station while trying to set the building on fire.

This was not excusable hijinks. It was an attempted mass murder.

The media explained that all of this was not worth discussing because the riots were mostly peaceful.

But, then, Trump supporters, took a leaf from a year of leftist rioting and spent a few hours doing far less than what antifa had done for a year and suddenly it became fashionable to talk about insurrection...without acknowledging what had been going on for a year.

Worse still, we were required to say what we were commanded to say by the Democrats and their media allies. We had to agree that January 6 was an “insurrection” and an attack on “Our Democracy.” We had to ignore the videos of peaceful protesters lined up to enter the side doors or walking peacefully through the ropes in the entry chamber. We had to accept that Brian Sicknick was killed by a fire extinguisher until that claim was debunked and then we had to pretend that there had been no “disinformation.”

So, all this left me with a question, what really happened?

Julie Kelly's book is a useful step in answering the question. Kelly's reporting addresses the stinking fish in the punchbowl, e.g., it was an “unarmed insurrection” in that no one was arrested with a firearm within the Capitol. “Fact checkers” attempt to debunk this by pointing out that there were arrests “on Capital grounds” or in “secured areas” of people with guns, but they don't acknowledge the shell game being played with these terms. “Capital grounds” are the large open areas OUTSIDE the Capitol. These grounds had always been open to protests previously. They were declared “secured areas” for January 6, 2021. So, when a media figure talks in generalities about secured areas, pay attention. Kelly explains:

“Christopher Alberts of Maryland was arrested around the same time on the evening of January 6. Alberts was on Capitol grounds near the visitor's center when a Metropolitan Police officer found a 9mm handgun in his pocket while searching people in violation of Bowser's curfew. He originally was indicted on three weapons charges and one count of trespassing.26 In May, after law enforcement officials publicly admitted no firearms were recovered in the building during the protest, Alberts was hit with a superseding indictment, which added six more counts including civil disorders. The filing generated a new round of headlines even though Alberts' gun possession charge was old news.

Kelly, Julie. January 6: How Democrats Used the Capitol Protest to Launch a War on Terror Against the Political Right (p. 86). Bombardier Books. Kindle Edition.

Kelly exhaustively details the indictments for weapon charges, and they almost entirely ad hoc weapons of opportunity, like the mythical fire extinguisher imagined to have been used to attack Sicknick.

Today (October 24, 2022), I was doing research on the claim that Trump supporters “smeared” feces on the Capitol walls. This could have happened, people being people, but the reports were all on the first days, along with the claim that Sicknick was killed by a fire extinguisher and that there were bullet holes in the building, both of which are disinformation in light of the absence of weapons and the truth about Sicknick's sad passing. Kelly classifies the excrement charge as a myth:

“The long-winded diatribe repeated a number of falsehoods and exaggerations about January 6, including the suggestion Officer Brian Sicknick died as a result of the protest; that the building was “desecrated” by regular Americans, and how workers had to “wipe away blood, and clean feces off the walls” after the protest.

Kelly, Julie. January 6: How Democrats Used the Capitol Protest to Launch a War on Terror Against the Political Right (p. 375). Bombardier Books. Kindle Edition.

Truth is the first fatality of war. January 6 has been turned into a weapon of war. Skepticism - putting claimants to the test of their claim - is the best policy. How hard can it be to provide proof - the Capitol must be the most photographed building in the world. If it is true, there are photos.

Speaking of costs, Kelly notes the following:

“It started to look like USCP couldn't tell the truth about anything related to January 6. The Architect of the Capitol, technically a member of the USCP department, floated the idea that protesters caused $30 million in damages including “broken glass, broken doors, and graffiti,” J. Brett Blanton told a congressional committee in February. “Statues, murals, historic benches and original shutters all suffered varying degrees of damage, primarily from pepper spray accretions and residue from chemical irritants and fire extinguishers. This damage to our precious artwork and statues will require expert cleaning and conservation.”81 Blanton's estimate made big headlines. “Capitol Riot Costs Will Exceed $30 Million, Official Tells Congress,” the New York Times reported on February 24. An NPR headline screamed, “Architect Of The Capitol Outlines $30 Million In Damages From Pro-Trump Riot,” on the same day. That wasn't true, either. In seeking restitution from January 6 defendants, the Justice Department admitted the building only sustained about $1.5 million in damages. It is unknown how much of that was actually caused by police officers using chemical sprays inside the building.

Kelly, Julie. January 6: How Democrats Used the Capitol Protest to Launch a War on Terror Against the Political Right (p. 233). Bombardier Books. Kindle Edition.

Far worse than January 6 has been the damage done to civil liberties, accompanied by the silence of former civil libertarians as lives and careers are ruined simply because Trump supporters traveled to Washington DC on January 6, 2021. Kelly describes the excessive reaction and the hideous conditions that January 6 defendants are kept in. During a time when violent criminals were released on the public because of concern about Covid, the Biden administration has taken people with no criminal record - who are guilty of a misdemeanor at most - and locked them up, where they have been abused by presumably Democrat guards, held in solitary confinement, forced to undergo reeducation and confess their ideological correction, and, then, ultimately, convicted of a misdemeanor before a heavily Democrat Washington DC jury pool.

This is not due process. We would not have subjected Communists to this treatment, and they were agents of the Soviet Union.

This is an important book to read. I would like to read other books on the subject. I would like to see a debate on the subject so that the truth claims of both sides can be tested. But as it is, we are likely only to be told what we must believe and then smeared as a threat to democracy if we don't go along with the canards.