During a Tuesday night segment on NBC Nightly News, justice and intelligence correspondent Ken Dilanian had an exclusive sitdown interview with the former federal prosecutor and chief investigator of the January 6 Committee, Tim Heaphy who told Dilanian that the federal government could’ve prevented the January 6 riot at the Capitol if they took the intelligence they received seriously and acted on the threats that were received about the rioters’ intentions that day.
What was just as out of the ordinary for NBC was the admission that among the more than 800 pages in the January 6 Committee’s report, none of it included their findings on the failure of law enforcement to prevent the riots. Anchor Lester Holt made as much clear in the opening moments of the segment before tossing to Dilanian:
“The January 6 Committee’s final report was more than 800 pages, but some material did not make the cut, including much of its findings on the failures of federal law enforcement leading up to the attack,” Holt admitted.
“The images of the attack on the capitol stunned America and the world. And tonight, in an exclusive interview, the chief investigator of the January 6 Committee says the government could have prevented it,” Dilanian reported before turning to Heaphy to ask “had law enforcement agencies acted on the available intelligence, do you believe the attack on the capitol could have been could have been successfully repelled?”
Heaphy responded: “I think it would have been a lot different had law enforcement taken a more assertive protective posture. The Intel in advance was pretty specific, and it was enough in our view for law enforcement to have done a better job operationalizing a secure perimeter.”
“Law enforcement had a very direct role in contributing to surely the failures—the security failures that led to the violence,” Heaphy added.
Dilanian revealed how “people familiar with the committee’s work tell NBC News members downplayed that finding because they wanted to keep the focus on former President Trump. Committee members dispute that.”
That admission was followed by Dilanian reporting how “Heaphy says the committee found the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and other agencies did not act on the intelligence they had, including this online threat forwarded to capitol police January 5, calling for thousands to go to Washington and help storm the capitol.”
Yet, according to Dilanian, “the FBI said it sent all the intelligence it had to the capitol police. DHS and capitol police say they’ve taken steps to make sure threat intelligence is better analyzed and shared.”
Now they tell us that law enforcement didn’t take the intelligence seriously or failed to act on it. Well over a month after the January 6 Committee report was released, these key findings were conveniently left out of the over 800-page report. Instead, the hyper-partisan committee was more focused on what former President Donald Trump says was a political witch hunt against him.
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“The Real Story of January 6,” a documentary by The Epoch Times, reveals the truth that has been hidden from the American people. While a narrative has been set that what took place that day was an insurrection, key events and witnesses have been ignored until now. The documentary takes an unvarnished look at police use of force and the deaths that resulted in some measure from it. The film asks tough questions about who was responsible for the chaos that day. With compelling interviews and exclusive video footage, the documentary tells the real story of January 6. The film is narrated by Joshua Philipp, host of “Crossroads” on EpochTV and a senior investigative reporter at The Epoch Times.
Jasper Fakkert, editor-in-chief of The Epoch Times, said: “There has been a narrative perpetuated about January 6 that omits many of the facts about what happened that day.
“With in-depth interviews and exclusive video footage, we take an objective look at the issues, the people, and the impacts of the events.”
The film takes a close look at the shooting of 35-year-old Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt and the deaths of three other supporters of former President Donald J. Trump. It analyzes the police response to the massive crowds and use of force around the U.S. Capitol.
It examines the human impacts of Jan. 6, including the suicide of one defendant and the long pretrial imprisonment of dozens of others. It also investigates claims that some attacks on the Capitol and police were carried out by unindicted suspicious actors.
While there is growing speculation that federal agents and Capitol Police were involved in instigating acts of violence during the Jan. 6, 2021 protests and recording responses for the purposes of entrapment, evidence now proves that “plainclothes” members of a special Electronic Surveillance Unit (ESU) were embedded among the protesters for the purposes of conducting video surveillance. Evidence also points to a day of security deficiencies and police provocation for the purpose of entrapment.
According to a report—First Amendment Demonstrations, issued Jan. 3, 2021, by Chief of Police Robert Contee of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), Homeland Security Bureau, Special Operations Division, obtained exclusively by The Epoch Times—the MPD began to activate Civil Disturbance Unit (CDU) platoons on Jan. 4, 2021. Full activation of 28 platoons was scheduled to occur on the following two days.
According to the Department of Justice website, “A CDU is composed of law enforcement officers who are trained to respond to protests, demonstrations, and civil disturbances for the purpose of preventing violence, destruction of property, and unlawful interference with persons exercising their rights under law.”
The objective of MPD was “to assist with the safe execution of any First Amendment demonstration and ensure the safety of the participants, public, and the officers.” CDU personnel and Special Operations Division (SOD) members were to “monitor for any demonstration and/or violent activity and respond accordingly,” according to the report.
There has been speculation that federal agents and Capitol Police were involved in instigating acts of violence during the protests for the purposes of entrapment. As Red State reported in October 2021, “multiple surveillance videos show masked men opening up the doors to the U.S. Capitol Building to allow protesters to enter. In fact, one video shows them entering while Capitol Police officers simply stand around. Yet, we have no idea who those men are.”
The ‘Covert Cadre’ of ‘Provocateurs’
On a Dec. 7, 2021, episode of Tucker Carlson Tonight, the attorney for several Jan. 6 prisoners, Joseph McBride, identified a man tagged on the internet by so-called “Sedition Hunters” as “Red-Faced 45.” The man, dressed in red from head to toe—with even his face painted red—appears in a video engaging in continuous dialogue with uniformed personnel and others whom McBride insists are agents embedded in the crowd. McBride said the man is “clearly a law enforcement officer.”
“He passes out weapons, sledgehammers, poles, mace. Some of those things come in contact with some of the other protesters who have subsequently been charged with possessing dangerous weapons and are using dangerous weapons at the Capitol. That is clearly entrapment.
That is clearly the government creating conditions of dangerousness and entrapping members of the crowd to possess weapons and possibly use them for reasons that we cannot comprehend.”
On Jan. 13, 2021, J. Michael Waller, senior analyst for Strategy at the Center for Security Policy, published a first-hand account of his observations. Waller is also President of Georgetown Research, a political risk and private intelligence company in Washington, D.C.; and was founding editorial board member of NATO’s peer-reviewed Defence Strategic Communicationsjournal (2015–2018), and a senior analyst with Wikistrat. He is convinced people were embedded in the crowd to execute “an organized operation planned well in advance of the January 6 joint session of Congress.”
The Epoch Times reported on Jan. 1 that senior federal law enforcement officials refused to answer questions about an Arizona man named Ray Epps, captured on video the day before the rally wearing a Trump hat repeatedly encouraging protesters to “go into the Capitol” the next day. Many were suspicious of him. Chants of “fed, fed, fed” drown him out. On Jan. 6, he is seen telling the crowd “we are going to the Capitol, where all of our problems are.”
Bobby Powell host of “The Truth is Viral” podcast, has several videos exposing two men, clad all in black, whom he believes are FBI informants. They are seen breaking windows, attacking the Capitol building, and even pushing people inside.
McBride finds it strange that these “provocateurs,” as he calls them, have yet to be charged, despite their having a much more active role in the Capitol incident than some who were charged, including some individuals who never even set foot on Capitol grounds.
The Proof
Unknown to the public until now, the First Amendment Demonstrations report also reveals that an undisclosed number of “plainclothes” MPD ESU “members” were embedded into the crowd to “document the actions of the demonstrators and MPD’s response to any civil disobedience or criminal activity.”
It is unclear who the MPD ESU “members” were. However, they are never referred to as “officers” or “police.” Of the 37 “Specialized Units” listed as part of the MPD, an ESU is not among them. In order for other security personnel to recognize embedded ESU members among the protesters, they wore a specific “bracelet on their left wrist identifying them as MPD personnel,” the report stated.
“While it is admittedly an important type of unit to have in the nation’s capital, electronic surveillance requires warrants,” Waller told The Epoch Times. “The word surveillance itself implies intrusive rather than passive monitoring of people, in which case it would be required for the police to get warrants to conduct electronic surveillance on people. What kind of warrants were asked for and under which jurisdiction? Were they issued? If not, why? Are such warrants necessary for the type of surveillance this unit was doing and how does it work? This raises a huge amount of questions about an entirely new kind of surveillance unit by the police chief of the nation’s capital.”
Waller also said the reference to “members” of the unit, as opposed to “officers” or “agents,” is also very disturbing. While he said “the rest of the memorandum sounds very disciplined in it’s language and specific,” that it doesn’t identify “officers” as members of the Electronic Surveillance Unit “is very troubling.”
“Are they using private contractors? Are they using political volunteers?” Waller posed. “Are using paid agents of different types? We don’t know. This is something the public has a right to know and we need to get to the bottom of it. If the D.C Police is running electronic surveillance on American citizens without warrants, this could be a very serious breach of our civil liberties.”
An Oct. 29, 2021 report by Politico exposed that a 17-page strategy report called “The Civil Disturbance Unit Operational Plan,” showed that police made plans for plainclothes “officers” to monitor protesters and carry out five objectives:
To provide an environment in which lawful First Amendment activity can be safely demonstrated.
To prevent any adverse impact to the legislative process associated with unlawful demonstration activity.
To effectively mitigate actions associated with civil disorder; safely respond to crimes of violence and destruction/defacing of property.
To safeguard and prevent any property damage directed at the US Capitol, West Front Inaugural Platform, and all Congressional buildings.
Establish and maintain a fixed march route while excluding access to counter-protestors to minimize potential for violent interactions.”
However, because the CDU was understaffed and unprepared, it failed in all its objectives.
According to a 140-page report issued by then-Capitol Police Inspector General Michael Bolton—”Review of the Events Surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, Takeover of the U.S. Capitol”—Capitol Police’s CDU was ordered by supervisors not to use the department’s most powerful tools, like stun guns. Bolton’s report, which has not yet been widely released to the public, also contends “heavier, less-lethal weapons,” including stun grenades, “were not used that day because of orders from leadership.”
The CDU was given riot shields, many locked in a bus some distance away, that “shattered upon impact.” They had expired weapons that didn’t work and inadequate training.
Bolton’s report also noted that officials were warned in an intelligence assessment three days before the protest that “Stop the Steal’s propensity to attract white supremacists, militia members, and others who actively promote violence may lead to a significantly dangerous situation for law enforcement and the general public alike” and that “Congress itself is the target.”
However, reports surfaced that then acting House Sergeant-at-Arms Timothy Blodgett sent a memo to lawmakers informing them that security officials found that “there does not exist a known, credible threat against Congress or the Capitol Complex that warrants the temporary security fencing.”
Some Capitol Police officers were reportedly told to go home amid staffing shortages, reported Business Insider.
According to the “UNITED STATES CAPITOL POLICE TIMELINE OF EVENTS FOR JANUARY 6, 2021 ATTACK,” also obtained by The Epoch Times, “USCP Deputy Chief Gallagher replies” to the Department of Defense (DOD) “via text” on Jan. 3, 2021, “that a request for National Guard support is not forthcoming at this time after consultation” with Chief of Police (COP) Steven Sund.
On Jan. 4, 2021, “COP Sund asked Senate Sergeant at Arms (SSAA) Michael Stenger and House Sergeant at Arms (HSAA) Paul Irving for authority to have National Guard to assist with security for the January 6, 2021 event based on briefings with law enforcement partners and revised intelligence assessment.”
• COP Sund’s request is denied. SSAA and HSAA tells COP Sund to contact General Walker at DC National Guard to discuss the guard’s ability to support a request if needed. • COP Sund notifies General Walker of DC National Guard, indicating that the USCP may need DC National Guard support for Jan. 6, 2021, but does not have the authority to request at this time. • General Walker advises COP Sund that in the event of an authorized request, DC National Guard could quickly repurpose 125 troops helping to provide DC with COVID-related assistance. Troops would need to be sworn in as USCP.
However, the timeline shows it took over three hours and five frantic requests before the National Guard was deployed.
During his opening remarks before two Senate committees on March 3, 2021, Walker told members of Congress he received a “frantic call” from Sund in the early afternoon advising that the security perimeter of the Capitol was being breached. However, military leaders informed him that deploying troops would not be “good optics.”
During testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Piatt and Flynn denied making such comments.
At the hearing, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene informed the committee three people were involved in turning down repeated requests for the deployment of the National Guard: “Chuck Schumer in the Senate, Nancy Pelosi in the House, and Mayor Muriel Bowser. Also involved, are the SSAA Stenger, who answers directly to Schumer, and HSAA Irving, who answers directly to Pelosi.”
In stark contradiction to then acting House Sergeant-at-Arms Timothy Blodgett’s assessment that no “credible threat against Congress or the Capitol Complex” existed to warrant “temporary security fencing,” there are multiple admonishments in the First Amendment Demonstrations report of the importance “for the members to monitor the fence line” and orders that “all members” were to “monitor 16th Street and the surrounding area for any potential issues or demonstrations.”
“Members assigned to the bicycle rack” were ordered to “restrict pedestrian and vehicle movement upon making the closure of the police lines.”
“The bicycle rack, in conjunction with police cars and blocking vehicles will create a barrier in which no person or vehicle will be allowed to pass,” the report said.
However, video evidence shows police waving protesters past bike racks and even removing them to open a path into the restricted areas to encourage people to move toward the Capitol Building.
A March 2, 2021, USCP Report of Investigation regarding the incident, also obtained by The Epoch Times, confirms that on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021, “an Unknown Officer violated USCP Directive 2053.013, Rules of Conduct, when they allegedly waived unauthorized persons into a restricted area secured by bike racks toward the US Capitol during an insurrection.” Evidence in the case included the “video posted to twitter, dated 01/06/21 ” and “CCTV of the East Front of the US Capitol, dated 01/06/21.”
On Monday, Feb. 1, 2021, then Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) Commander of the United States Capitol Police, Inspector Michael Shaffer, sent an email with the Twitter video of the unidentified officer (UO) to Inspectors Amy Hyman (Senate Division), Thomas Loyd (Capitol Division), Kimberley Bolinger (House Division) and Acting Inspector Jessica Baboulis (Library Division) requesting assistance in identifying the UO. All parties responded to Shaffer that they were unable to identify the UO.
The recommendation was that the report “be APPROVED and the case CLOSED.”
On Feb. 4, 2021, this case was put on hold pending a review by the U.S. Attorney’s Office of Public Corruption. No further information is available.
Provocation and Entrapment
In a June 10 interview with EpochTV’s “Facts Matter,” Julie Kelly—a political consultant in Illinois and senior contributor for American Greatness—described Jan. 6, 2021, as “an inside job” and “something Democrats and some Republicans and federal agencies put together to entice” and “entrap” people who went to hear President Donald Trump’s speech. She noted that the FBI used agents to try to infiltrate the so-called militia groups.
Jeremy Brown exposed a video of FBI Terrorist Task Force agents attempting to recruit him to spy on fellow Oath Keepers.
The Department of Justice still won’t answer questions about Ray Epps, an Arizona resident captured on video encouraging protesters to breach the Capitol Building.
Video footage found at Gateway Pundit shows flash grenades being launched by Capitol Police into a group of protesters, consisting of women, children, and elderly people, who were standing peacefully behind barriers. According to American Greatness, Capitol Police were also firing on the crowd with rubber bullets. The approximate time of the confrontation was around 1:36 p.m. However, the USCP Timeline does not mention the deployment of these flash grenades.
Another video, which still exists on TeaParty.org, was filmed by Kash Kelly from ground level where the flash grenades went off. Kelly, who is now himself in prison regarding pretrial release violations regarding a previous charge and the subsequent charges related to his presence in Washington, is shown ensuring the evacuation of women in the area where the flash grenades exploded.
“The police started shooting at people,” Kelly says. “There were kids in the crowd.”
More extensive video footage, analyzed by Ray Dietrich of Red Voice Media, shows “the beginning of violence on January 6.”
An unidentified USCP officer is seen repeatedly yelling down to the crowd, assembled peacefully below his position, advising that if they “want to get a good picture” they should “go up into the bleachers.”
“The video shows the moment either stun grenades or tear gas canisters were deployed into the crowd of protestors,” Dietrich says as the video plays out. “The question I have, after a 20-year career in law enforcement, is why were these munitions deployed? I have picked this video apart and many more, and cannot see why the USCP used this force against the crowd. There is no fighting and no violence, so why did they target these people with less-lethal weapons?”
“What happened next?” Dietrich asks rhetorically. “Chaos. Violence. The crowd fought back. The Capitol was breached.”
As the stunned crowd scurries in the attack, police can be seen spraying people in the face with pepper spray. In another segment, three police officers are beating a protester who is being held on the ground. In a measure that further escalates the tension, police begin deploying tear gas into the already frantic crowd. In a course of 20 minutes, a once peaceful scene descends into total chaos.
In June 2021, reports surfaced that the Justice Department had begun to release its own video footage, including footage from body-worn cameras that allegedly show assaults against police officers defending the U.S. Capitol.
A summary of findings shows that:
Evidence shows that until the deployment of munitions, the crowds were peaceful.
MPD Electronic Surveillance Unit (ESU) members were embedded into the crowd to “document the actions of the demonstrators and MPD’s response to any civil disobedience or criminal activity.”
Of the 37 “Specialized Units” listed as part of the Metropolitan Police Department, an ESU is not among them.
You know it tells you a lot about the priorities of a ruling class that the rest of us are getting yet another lecture about January 6th tonight from our moral inferiors, no less. An outbreak of mob violence, a forgettably minor outbreak by recent standards, that took place more than a year and a half ago, but they’ve never stopped talking about it.
In the meantime, in the 18 months since January 6, gas prices have doubled. Drug ODs have reached their highest point ever. The U.S. economy is now careening toward a devastating recession at best and scariest and least noted of all, this country has never in its history been closer to a nuclear war.
Yet the other networks can’t be bothered to cover any of that tonight. Instead, they’ve interrupted their regularly scheduled programing to bring you yet another extended primetime harangue from Nancy Pelosi and Liz Cheney about Donald Trump and QAnon. The whole thing is insulting.
In fact, it’s deranged and we’re not playing along. This is the only hour on an American news channel that will not be carrying their propaganda live. They are lying, and we are not going to help them do it. What we will do instead is to try to tell you the truth. We’ve attempted to do that since the day this happened.
We hated seeing vandalism at the U.S. Capitol a year and a half ago, and we said so at the time, but we did not think it was an insurrection because it was not an insurrection. It was not even close to an insurrection. Not a single person in the crowd that day was found to be carrying a firearm – some insurrection. In fact, the only person who wound up shot to death was a protester.
She was a 36-year-old military veteran called Ashli Babbitt. Babbitt was just over 5 feet tall. She was unarmed. She posed no conceivable threat to anyone, but Capitol Hill Police shot her in the neck and never explained why that was justified. Those are the facts of January 6, but since the very first hours, they have been distorted beyond recognition, relentlessly culminating with last night.
Last night, CBS Nightly News told its viewers that insurrectionists at the Capitol on January 6 “caused the deaths of five police officers.” That is a pure lie. There is nothing true about it, and they know that perfectly well. Here’s reporter Bob Costa, who should be deeply ashamed to say something this dishonest.
ROBERT COSTA, CBS: Thursday’s primetime hearing will take Americans back to January 6, when an estimated 2,000 rioters breached the Capitol building, causing the deaths of five police officers.
It’s hard to believe he said that. Rioters cause the deaths of five police officers. You just heard CBS News tell its viewers that. This must be the big lie theory. The more bewilderingly false a claim is, the more likely you will be to believe it. Apparently, that’s what they’re betting on. In fact, precisely zero police officers were killed by rioters on January 6, not five, none. Not a single one. So, how’d they get to five? Well, CBS is counting the suicides of local police officers that took place after January 6, in some cases, long after January 6.
Suicide, unfortunately, is pretty common among cops. Policing is a tough job, as we’ve noted. But in these specific cases, the ones CBS is referring to, the chief of Washington DC’s police department told The New York Times that actually he had no idea if his officers were driven to kill themselves by January 6. CBS just made that up.
The fifth death that CBS News is referring to is of Capitol Hill police officer Brian Sicknick. You will remember his name. Sicknick’s body lay in state at the Capitol after the media told us he’d been beaten to death by Trump voters with a fire extinguisher. Here’s what they told you.
FREDERICKA WHITFIELD, CNN: Officer Sicknick died after being hit in the head with a fire extinguisher.
CNN REPORTER: Sicknick died after being hit in the head with a fire extinguisher.
ANA CABRERA, CNN: Officer Brian Sicknick died after being hit in the head with a fire extinguisher during the hour-long attack.
NICOLLE WALLACE, MSNBC: They beat a Capitol Police officer to death with a fire extinguisher.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN: Officer Brian Sicknick died after being hit in the head with a fire extinguisher during the fight.
CRAIG MELVIN, MSNBC: He died at the age of 42 after he was bludgeoned with a fire extinguisher.
Once again, that’s not true. Everything you just heard was completely fabricated. The D.C. medical examiner performed an autopsy and the autopsy report showed that Officer Brian Sicknick had not suffered any kind of blunt force trauma. He was not beaten to death. He died of a stroke in his office later. No one has been charged in Officer Sicknick’s death because Officer Sicknick wasn’t murdered.
They are lying to you. That is provable. Not a single person you just saw has apologized for lying. Not a single one. And it’s not just the news media. Here’s Congressman Pete Aguilar of California claiming that officers lost their lives on January 6.
PETE AGUILAR: These hearings will be a chance for the country to come together to rally around the truth and unite around the rule of law. We owe it to the officers who lost their lives and the officers who were injured to tell that story and to ensure that this never happens again.
Let’s rally around the truth, he says, as he lies to you. May those words burn your tongue, liar. But what did happen exactly on January 6? What’s the truth of that day? Well, that’s still unknown. From the extensive video we have of January 6, it’s clear that some in the crowd, more than a few, were encouraging protesters to breach the Capitol, to commit felonies. We’re not guessing at that, we’ve showed you the tape.
We have pictures of their faces. In the case of a man called Ray Epps, we know his name, but they’ve never been charged. Ray Epps was standing in exactly the same place that a lot of people who went to jail were standing, but he wasn’t charged. His name was taken off the FBI’s Most Wanted list. Why is that? It doesn’t make any sense at all.
The January 6 committee will not explain that after a year, millions of dollars and a thousand interviews. They won’t tell us, nor will they tell us how many FBI agents and assets were in the crowd that day and what were they doing there. Why can’t we know that? And why are they still hiding thousands of hours of surveillance footage from within the Capitol? If the point of the committee was to get the truth out there, why can’t we see the tape?
Why did authorities open the doors of the Capitol to rioters and let them walk in, usher them in the doors? That’s utterly bizarre. You saw that live. No one’s ever explained it. What’s the explanation for that? And by the way, whatever happened to the mysterious pipe bomber whose bombs we later learned many months later, Kamala Harris’ bodyguards discovered. Kamala Harris told us she was at the Capitol that day, but she wasn’t. She was at the DNC with a pipe bomb outside. Her bodyguards found that bomb, but she lied about that. She hid that. Why?
That’s got to be one of the weirdest stories ever. What does it mean, Liz Cheney? Silence. And of course, above all, they lied about the reason that January 6 happened in the first place and you know what it is. The entire country watched Joe Biden get what they claim was 10 million more votes than Barack Obama himself got. Joe Biden got 10 million more votes than Barack Obama got, and a lot of those votes arrived after the election.
In a lot of places, voting was stopped in the middle of the night. Why? In the biggest states in the country, voter ID was optional. Why is that okay? A lot of the protesters on January 6 were very upset about that and they should have been. All of us should be, but the January 6 Committee ignored all of that completely. Instead, on the basis of zero evidence, no evidence whatsoever, they blamed the entire riot on White supremacy. Here’s Joe Biden.
PRESIDENT BIDEN: We’re confronting the stains of what remains, a deep stain on the soul of the nation, hate and White supremacy. The violent, deadly insurrection on the Capitol nine months ago was about White supremacy, in my view.
What? There’s no evidence for that – none. The people at the Capitol, including the ones who broke the law by entering the Capitol, which is a crime, those people to a person said they were upset because they believed their democracy had been stolen from them and whether all of their claims are true or not, that’s a valid reason to be upset. But rather than reassure the rest of us that actually our democracy is sound, elections are fair and transparent, there’s no cheating and we can prove it, rather than do that, they call half the country names and not just names, the worst thing you can be called, a White supremacist. And then, most bewilderingly of all, virtually no Republican in Washington pushed back against any of that.
In fact, Lindsey Graham, violence worshiper to the end, said that his only regret was that the Capitol Police didn’t shoot more Trump voters in the neck and kill them. “You’ve got guns, use them,” Graham said. So here you have a sitting U.S. senator, a Republican, urging police officers to shoot unarmed Americans, many of whom were ushered into the Capitol building by law enforcement.
How can people talk like that? For more than a year, they justified rhetoric like Lindsey Graham “shoot more” by claiming that January 6 was an insurrection. That’s not a word they were used to describe, say, the monthslong siege of a courthouse in Portland, or the ongoing coordinated effort to intimidate Supreme Court justices at their homes with guns, a story they ignored today. But January 6 was different, they reminded us. It was unique because it was their offices and because it bothered Nancy Pelosi.
ADAM SCHIFF: The president incited an insurrection against Congress to prevent the peaceful transition of power.
CEDRIC RICHMOND: And then he sat back and watched the insurrection.
REP. HALEY STEVENS: Insurrection, a violent mob.
CORI BUSH: A White supremacist president who incited a White supremacist insurrection.
REP. ILHAN OMAR: A insurrection against our government.
REP. ILHAN OMAR: A insurrection against our government.
PELOSI: The insurrection that violated the sanctity of the people’s Capitol.
JIM MCGOVERN: This was not a protest, this was an insurrection.
BIDEN: It’s not protest. It’s insurrection.
We are not defending and would never defend vandalism, violence, rioting. We disapproved of it when it happened. We disapprove of it now, all riots, not just this one. But this was not an insurrection.
But, you know what will get you to insurrection? If you ignore the legitimate concerns of a population, if you brush them aside as if they don’t matter when gas goes to $5 and you say “buy an electric car.” When cities become so filthy and so dangerous that you can’t live there, when the economy becomes so distorted that your own children have no hope of getting married and giving you grandchildren, when you don’t care at all about any of that and all you do is talk about yourself, nonstop – you might get an insurrection if you behave like that, speaking of insurrection.
The Cambridge Dictionary defines “insurrection” as: “an organized attempt by a group of people to defeat their government and take control of their country, usually by violence”.
By that definition, there was no “insurrection” at the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, according to the FBI.
Reuters reports: The FBI has found scant evidence that the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was the result of an organized plot to overturn the presidential election result, according to four current and former law enforcement officials.
“Ninety to ninety-five percent of these are one-off cases,” said a former senior law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation. “Then you have five percent, maybe, of these militia groups that were more closely organized. But there was no grand scheme with Roger Stone and Alex Jones and all of these people to storm the Capitol and take hostages.”
This report is a devastating blow to President Joe Biden and Democrats, who have attempted to make the existence of an “insurrection” on Jan. 6 a key issue in the 2022 midterm elections. Reuters does note that some “cells of protesters,” including members of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, did coordinate to “break into the Capitol,” but the FBI found “no evidence that the groups had serious plans about what to do if they made it inside.”
Liberty International News 