On Thursday night, the House Select Committee investigating the January 6, 2021 events gave a one-sided presentation of that incident. So one-sided, in fact, that Democrat lawyer Alan Dershowitz dismissed it as a “kangaroo court,” and a “fixed jury.”
“This is a group of people,” Dershowitz told Newsmax, “who are selected with a predetermined narrative, including the two Republicans, and so nobody should take seriously any of [the] conclusions reached by this partisan committee.”
It is not that the committee did not present any facts, but those facts were carefully selected to present a damning case against former President Donald Trump in particular, and the Republican Party in general. The presentation clearly has the political purpose of influencing the 2022 mid-term elections, in which Democrats are expected to lose several seats in Congress, and perhaps even the 2024 presidential race, as Democrat president Joe Biden is languishing below 40 percent in approval ratings.
Never before in American history has there been anything quite like this committee. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi created the committee on her own, and selected not only the Democratic Party members of the committee, but also the Republicans, of which there are only two — Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois — both avowed haters of Donald Trump. Pelosi rejected the selections of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, which included the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, Representative Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).
The decision of the major networks, including CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NBC, and ABC, to broadcast the proceedings live (Fox News declined to do so), for free, amounted to an in-kind campaign contribution to the Democratic Party. The committee plans future live presentations of their one-sided “investigation,” and it is presumed that the left-leaning TV networks will air those presentations for free, as well.
Without anyone on the committee to present any other viewpoint, the TV networks could have provided some semblance of balance. Not surprisingly, the networks performed their typical role in support of the Democratic Party. Lester Holt of NBC, for example, referred to the events as “the insurrection of January 6.”
Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the chairman of the committee, opened the proceedings by playing the race card. Thompson, who is black, compared the January 6 riot to the Ku Klux Klan and slavery, and the Civil War. He asserted that the mob stormed the Capitol at the encouragement of President Trump. Thompson cited President Abraham Lincoln’s expectation in May of 1864 that he would not be re-elected, but that he would accept the results, and compared that to Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election.
Thompson insisted that Trump had organized a “conspiracy to remain in power,” and that January 6 was simply the “culmination of an attempted coup,” and an effort to “overthrow the government.”
In introducing the committee’s vice-chairman of the committee, Liz Cheney, Thompson described her as a “patriot.” He did not add that Trump has endorsed her Republican opponent in her bid for re-election in Wyoming.
Cheney said that Trump did not condemn the attack, but instead he justified it.
Actually, Trump did condemn the attack, urging “everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence!” before the attacks, and afterward, saying, “The incursion of the U.S. Capitol struck at the very heart of our Republic.” Speaking in the Oval Office, Trump said of the riot, “It angered and appalled millions of Americans across the political spectrum. I want to be very clear — I unequivocally condemn the violence that we saw last week.”
The committee also had a lot to say about the Proud Boys, calling them a white supremacist group. Regardless of what the Proud Boys stand for, Trump had condemned them, as well, in October, even before the election. Yet, the committee made it appear that Trump supported the Proud Boys.
Cheney continued that there was “no debate — those who invaded the Capitol were motivated by Trump’s claim that the election was stolen.”
While that is likely true, Trump’s claims were not unique in recent American history. Hillary Clinton repeatedly said of her loss to Trump in 2016, “you can have the election stolen from you.” Stacey Abrams has still not conceded the 2018 gubernatorial election in Georgia.
For that matter, the committee chairman, Bennie Thompson, boycotted Trump’s inauguration in 2017, calling Trump an “illegitimate president.”
Nancy Pelosi supported the effort to not certify the results of Ohio’s Electoral College vote in 2004, which went to George W. Bush.
As a good example of the “select” committee’s “select” use of facts, Cheney quoted Trump as saying that love was “in the air,” while showing video of rioters breaching the Capitol on January 6. The problem, however, is that Trump was speaking about the Stop the Steal rally, not about the incursion of the Capitol.
The committee also spent time on the issue of Trump urging Vice President Mike Pence to use his position as president of the Senate to refuse to accept the electoral votes from states that were in dispute, noting that Pence believed such an action would be illegal and unconstitutional. That is certainly true — a vice-president cannot, on his own, declare electoral votes illegal, and overturn the results of an election. If that were the case, then we can expect Vice President Kamala Harris to overturn the results of the 2024 presidential election, were Biden (or another Democrat) to lose then.
But if the committee were interested in fairness, rather than scoring political points, they would explain that Trump simply wanted those states in contention to conduct an investigation into possible voter fraud in those states. One might agree or disagree with Trump’s contentions, but it is not true that Trump wanted Pence to simply declare him president.
Other evidence presented during the made-for-television event was that Trump pressured Georgia election officials to “find” 11,700 more votes for him, so as to swing that state in his favor. It should be noted that Trump believed those votes were there to be found — he wasn’t advocating that officials just make up that he had nearly 12,000 more votes that he did not actually have.
The committee aired video of the battle between Capitol Police and some of the rioters as the rioters simply overwhelmed the inadequate number of Capitol officers, and took testimony from one of the Capitol police officers, Caroline Edwards. It was indeed a sad day in American history, but the committee apparently has no interest in investigating why the Capitol was so poorly defended — perhaps because its defense was the responsibility of Speaker Pelosi, not President Trump.
Chairman Thompson summed up what he called some “key facts.” One “fact” he cited was Trump calling for his supporters to “fight like hell.” Of course, this is actually typical political rhetoric, often used across the political spectrum. Thompson neglected to add that Trump said in his speech to his rally that they should protest “peacefully.” It is difficult to say that rioters who forced their way into the Capitol were simply protesting “peacefully.”
It is not that the committee did not present some important facts, but that they presented many of them out of context, and that there was no opportunity for anyone to counter any of their slanted versions of events. Since the networks allow a “response” by the other political party after a president’s State of the Union message, perhaps it would be only fair to allow such a response with free TV airtime to this committee.
I would not hold my breath.
As Dershowitz said, “This is a group of people who are selected with a predetermined narrative.… I’m a jury lawyer, and I know that prosecutions get the last word, so I always tell the jurors when I have the opportunity before prosecution’s last word: Just imagine what I would have said if I had a chance to respond.”
Because of the biased format of this committee, we can only imagine.
