Since opening July 27, 2021, the Jan. 6 House Select Committee was commissioned to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, following 76-year-old President Donald Trump’s speech on the Ellipse in Washington, D.C. An estimated 1 million audience watched Trump deliver another sour grapes speech, blaming his Nov. 3, 2020 loss to 79-year-old President Joe Biden to election fraud. Many of the Jan. 6 House Select Committee served on Trump’s Jan. 9, 2021 to Feb. 13 impeachment trial, ending in acquittal. So the same House Democrats that begged the U.S. Senate to convict Trump of “incitement of insurrection” want, in their highly biased hearings, to eventually make a criminal referral to 70-year-old Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland. For the last year-and-half, the Select Committee took testimony from thousands of anti-Trump partisans looking to blame him for the Jan. 6 Capitol riots.
When you consider that one million watched Trump deliver his last major speech as president Jan. 6, only a few hundred descended on the Capitol to stir the rioting an malicious mischief that disrupted certification of the Electoral College vote. While there’s no question that the Jan. 6 rabble-rousers tried to disrupt the count, 63-year-old Vice President Mike Pence did his ceremonial duty and certified the count. Trump complains to this day about widespread electoral fraud, something not corroborated by any court looking into his fraud claims. Whether Trump believes he was defrauded out of the presidency or not, doesn’t mean, as Select Committee Co-Chairwoman Liz Cheney (R-Wy.) thinks, that he planned and orchestrated the Jan. 6 Capitol riots. Democrats want to pin everything on Trump, even though there’s zero evidence that he orchestrated the Jan. 6 Capitol riots.
Cheney often says that the 187-minute gap between the Jan. 6 Capitol riots and when Trump asked rioters to go home peacefully, proves that Trump was derelict in his duty to stop the riots. Cheney and other Democrats think Trump should have waved a magic wand and stopped the Jan. 6 riots. If Trump told the crowd to stand down, and they listened to his demands, Democrats would have said it proves that Trump called off the dogs, meaning that he planned and orchestrated the riots. Once the rabble-rousers started their rampage, there was nothing Trump could have done to call off the riots. Only a tiny fraction of his crowd at the Ellipse went to Capitol Hill to riot. Yet every time Cheney mentions the Capitol Hill rioters, she refers to them as “Trump supporters.” Whether or not the rioters preferred Trump over Biden, doesn’t mean Trump gave the orders to riot.
Democrats and the press like to discredit Trump for the “Big Lie,” that election fraud put Biden in the White House. Whatever Trump believes, it doesn’t mean he incited right wing extremists to break the law at the Capitol. Trump will probably go to his grave thinking he won the 2020 election. If Trump has a shred of objectivity, he’d know there were plenty of independent and Republican voters that were turned off to him in the 2020 election. Many voters blamed Trump for the sluggish Covid-19 pandemic response not to mention the racist murder of George Floyd, sparking four months of riots around the country. When you add to that economic woes from government lockdowns, Trump was not in a good place to win reelection. Turns out Trump’s predictions about Biden trashing the U.S. economy and foreign policy, it all proved correct in a little more than a year-and-half.
Every time Trump makes a statement about the 2020 election, Democrat and the press are ready to pounce. “Dear Chairman Bernie Thomson: THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2020 WAS RIGGED AND STOLEN,” Trump said in a 16-page letter, adding to his credibility problems. No one found “significant” voter fraud in 2020 that affected the outcome of the Nov. 3, 2020 election. Raising the issue of voter fraud does nothing to refute the idea that Trump “supporters” attacked the Capitol Jan. 6, 2021. If Trump stuck to the highly partisan nature of the House Jan. 6 Select Committee he’d be a lot better off than questioning the election results. “The Unselect Committee has perpetuated a Show Trial the likes of which this Country has never seen before,” Trump said in his letter to Thomson. Trump loses on the idea of voter fraud but states the facts on the Committee’s Show Trial.
Whether the Jan. 6 House Select Committee tries to build a criminal case against Trump or not, they’ve certainly kept CNN and MSNBC in business. All the forceful denunciations of Trump show undeniable bias against the former president. Considered a front runner for the GOP nomination in 2024, the Committee has done everything possible to stop Trump from running. Instead of going after low-hanging fruit denouncing Trump daily, the Committee should have used its time more wisely to figure out why the Selective Service, Capitol Hill Police and National Guard were not properly deployed on Jan. 6 to prevent the riots. Trump claims he authorized the National Guard to protect the Capital, something disputed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). House Select Committee should have spent more time on why the FBI didn’t give better advance warning of the riots.
About the Author
John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.
