The Congress Strikes Back
Commentary on the House Committee's first presentation of their findings regarding Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Far from being “unthinkable,” I explicitly predicted MAGA would attack Congress, nearly two months before the riot at the Capitol occurred. (See my post from November 11th, 2020, “Calm Before The Storm: Million MAGA March could be cover for assault on the Congress.”)
Trump is not going to concede. He is going to try faithless electors, SCOTUS, and force.
[ ]
The liberals are idiots for not realizing a narrow, disputed Biden victory elevates risks for the civil war turning hot.
[ ]
We are own our own. The liberal class is completely unprepared for the threat of fascist violence[.]
[ ]
Whether the nazis actually go through with their threats of violence remains to be seen. I am leaving the country until February because the risks [of a hot civil war] are too high in my assessment.
Further, on November 13, the day after the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency statement “[t]here is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised,” before Trump or his attorneys began talking about Dominion Voting Systems, I predicted Trump would use the issue of voting machines as the basis to challenge the election results. (See also “Voting Machines: unfalsifiable claims of fraud are key wedge issue that will divide the nation.”) Add those calls to the list along with my highly accurate forecast Trump would win 2016.
This is the first in a series of hearings following the completion of the House Committee’s 11-month long investigation into the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. Chairman of the Committee, Bennie Thompson (D-MI), kicks us off . . . .
Thompson reminds the audience each Congressperson swore an oath to defend the Constitution from “enemies, foreign and domestic.” Thompson explains the oath came about as a consequence of the 1814 attack on Congress. He thanks police officers for upholding their oath by putting down the riot.
Thompson says President Trump "encouraged his supporters” to try to “stop the transfer of power” to then President-elect Joe Biden. Thompson says the 2020 election of Biden was “not the result of a rigged system” nor because of “election fraud.”
Thompson plays a video of Trump’s Attorney General, William Barr. “I did not agree with the idea the election was stolen,” Barr says. Barr claims he told Trump the idea the election was rigged was “bullshit.” “I didn’t want to be a part of it and that’s one of the reasons that went into deciding to leave when I did.” Barr says the claim was “unsupported by specific evidence.”
Thompson continues, saying Trump “lost at the courts just like he did at the election box.” He claims Trump wanted to “replace the will of the American people with his will to remain in Power after his term ended.”
Thompson accuses Trump of being “at the center of the conspiracy,” which position Trump used to “spur enemies of the Constitution . . . to subvert American democracy.” “January 6th was the culmination of an attempted coup.” Thompson claims “the violence was no accident.” It was Trump’s “last stand . . . to halt the transfer of power.”
Thompson says the Commission’s work is not a “political attack” on Trump. He claims he is not acting in his capacity as a Democrat but as an American. (Republicans opposed the Committee’s work on the ground it was politically biased against Trump. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi refused to seat House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy’s picks for the Committee, Congressmen Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Jim Banks (R-IN), who are Trump allies. Pelosi picked the Committee’s two Republicans, namely Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), who are establishmentarians not populists.)
According to Thompson, Trump and his supporters adopted the slogan, “Do you believe me or your lying eyes.” (Ironic, considering I just used that term in my last post and do not support Trump.)
Thompson says, “lies led to insurrection,” which put “200 years of constitutional democracy at risk.” “America has long been expected to be a shining city on a hill, a beacon of hope and freedom, a model for others when we are at our best. How can we play that role when our house in such order?” (It begs the question whether America has met the world’s expectations over the last few decades — obviously not, in my opinion — and how decades of failure can reasonably be attributed to Trump’s presidency.)
Cheney is up next.
Cheney starts by observing Trump did not condemn the attack as it was happening, choosing instead to “justify” it. Cheney alleges Trump told aides that his supporters at the Capitol “were doing what they should be doing.” Cheney says Trump “refused for hours” to do what his family and staff begged him to do: order his supporters to stand down and leave the Capitol.
Trump supporters gave evidence they were “motivated by what President Trump had told them that the election was stolen, and he was the rightful President,” Cheney reveals. “President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack,” she alleges. Multiple members of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys have been charged with and pled guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit sedition, viz., overthrowing the government by force.
“The attack on our Capitol was not a spontaneous riot. Intelligence available before January 6th identified plans to invade the capitol, occupy the capitol, and take other steps to halt Congress’s count of electoral votes that day,” Cheney claims. (This point raises questions over why security at the Capitol was so inadequate.)
Cheney says Trump had a “sophisticated, seven-part plan” to reverse the results of the election. Cheney claims Trump and his advisors “knew he had lost the election.” But Trump decided to “spread false and fraudulent information” to convince Americans the election was stolen.
Cheney plays a video of Jason Miller, Trump campaign’s data expert, in which Miller describes a phone call he had with Trump a few days after the election. Miller says,
I was in the Oval Office and, at some point in the conversation, Matt Oczkowski, who was the lead data person, was brought on and I remember he delivered to the President [in] pretty blunt terms that he was going to lose.”
Q: Matt and the data team’s assessment of the sort of county by county, state by state, result as reported?
Correct.
(The exchange does not reach Trump’s argument the election results were fraudulent.)
Cheney then plays a video of Alex Cannon, a former Trump Campaign attorney, who spoke with Mark Meadows, Trump’s Chief of Staff. Cannon says Meadows asked him what he was finding in terms of fraud. Cannon told Meadows in mid-to-late November he was “not finding anything that would be sufficient to change the results in any of the key states.” Meadows responded, “So there’s no there, there.”
Cheney says Matt Morgan, the Trump Campaign’s chief counsel, gave similar testimony to Cannon. According to Cheney, Morgan explained “all the fraud allegations and the campaigns other election arguments, taken together and viewed in the best possible light for President Trump, still could not change the result of the election.”
Cheney plays more clips of Barr again. Barr says he told Trump that Trump’s “allegations about Dominion voting machines were ‘groundless.’”
I saw absolutely zero basis for the allegations, but they were made in such a sensational way, that they were obviously influencing a lot of members of the public, that there was this systemic corruption in the system, and that their votes didn’t count and that these machines controlled by somebody else was actually determining it. Which was complete nonsense, and it was being laid out there, and I told [Trump] it was crazy stuff, and they were wasting their time on that, and that it was doing a great, great disservice to the country.
Cheney says, “Trump persisted, repeating the false Dominion allegations a dozen more times, even after his Attorney General told him they were ‘complete nonsense.’” Cheney says acting Attorney General, Jeff Rosen, told Trump again “the evidence did not support allegations [Trump] was making in public.”
Next, Cheney plays a video of Ivanka Trump. Ivanka told the Commission, “[Barr’s statement] affected my perspective. I respect Attorney General Barr. So, I accepted what he was saying.”
Cheney says Trump “lost more than 60 cases in state and federal courts.” (None of the cases reached the merits as courts dismissed the cases for lack of standing.) “The President’s claims in the election cases were so frivolous and unsupported that the President’s lead lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, not only lost the lawsuits, his license to practice law was suspended,” Cheney says. In suspending Giuliani, the Supreme Court of New York said Giuliani “communicated demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers, and the public at large[.]”
Cheney says Trump planned to replace Barr and other Department of Justice (“DoJ”) attorneys so that “the Justice Department would spread his false election claims.” Trump wanted the DoJ to send a letter to the six contested states saying the DoJ had “identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election[.]” Senior attorneys at the DoJ and the White House counsel threatened to resign in protest, according to Cheney.
Cheney says Congressman Scott Perry (R-PA) and others sought a Presidential pardon from Trump for their efforts to overturn the election.
Cheney turns to Trump pressuring Mike Pence not to count disputed electoral votes, playing a clip of the former Vice President. Pence says, “President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election.” Cheney says Trump’s demand of Pence was “illegal and unconstitutional,” according to the Vice President’s former general counsel. Cheney says Trump engaged in “a relentless effort to pressure Pence.”
Cheney then mentions an attorney named John Eastman who, according to Cheney, was “deeply involved in President Trump’s plans.” Cheney also brings up former federal judge, Michael Luttig, for whom Eastman worked as a clerk. Luttig gave advice to the White House counsel team in the days before January 6. Cheney says Luttig told Trump that Eastman was “wrong at every turn.” The Vice President’s counsel emailed Eastman on January 6, “And thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.” Cheney says the Committee has evidence Eastman “did not actually believe the legal position he was taking.” A month before the election, Eastman held the “exactly opposite view” on the election issue, Cheney says.
Cheney says, “we have had occasion to present evidence to a federal judge.” The judge, David O. Carter, reached the conclusion that “President Trump’s efforts to pressure Vice President Pence to act illegally by refusing to count electoral votes likely violated two federal criminal statutes.” The judge also said that Eastman and other Trump attorneys “knew their legal arguments had no real chance of success in court,” Cheney claims. Cheney says Trump’s legal team “continued to work to halt the count of electoral votes” in the hours directly following the riot.
Cheney says the Committee will provide evidence at later hearings of Trump attempting to have States change their electors and “find votes” for him that did not exist.
Next, Cheney discusses the December 18th meeting at the White House where Rudy Giuliani, Sydney Powell, Michael Flynn, and Patrick Byrne attempted to persuade Trump to continue contesting the election. Cheney says the group advised Trump to take “dramatic steps, including having the military seize voting machines and, potentially, rerun elections.” Cheney says Trump was alone with the group before White House lawyers realized the meeting was taking place and intervened. Shortly after the group left the White House, in the early hours of December 19th, Trump sent his tweet calling for a “big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”
Cheney says Trump’s tweet encouraged the Proud Boys, who led the assault on the Capitol, to start planning “to oppose, by force, the authority of the government of the United States.” Cheney points to former Trump Campaign strategist Steve Bannon’s statement on his January 5th podcast, “All hell is going to break loose tomorrow. Just understand this: all hell is going to break loose tomorrow.”
Cheney promises to provide more information about what the White House and intelligence agencies knew in advance about the looming attack on the Capitol. She says the Committee will explain “why the Capitol was not better prepared” for known threats. “But we will not lose sight of the fact that the Capitol police did not cause the crowd to attack. And we will not blame the violence that day, violence provoked by Donald Trump, on the officers who bravely defended us.”
Cheney says White House staff urged Trump to call off the attack while it was underway. She shows an image of a note from a member of staff, written on the Chief of Staff’s letterhead, which advised Trump to say, “Anyone who entered the Capitol illegally without proper authority should leave immediately.”
According to Cheney, “leaders on Capitol Hill begged the President for help, including Republican leader McCarthy, who was, quote, ‘scared.’” Cheney says McCarthy called “multiple members of President Trump’s family after he could not persuade the President himself.” Cheney notes Trump “placed no call to any element of the United States government, to instruct the Capitol be defended.”
In contrast, Pence called the DoJ and Department of Defense seeking assistance to put down the riot, Cheney says. Cheney plays a tape of General Mark Milley who recounts events on the day.
There were two or three calls with Vice President Pence. He was very animated, and he issued very explicit, very direct, unambiguous orders. There was no question about that. . . . [H]e was very animated, very direct, very firm to Secretary Miller: get the military down here and get the Guard gown here, put down this situation, etc.
Cheney then plays the tape of Milley talking about his conversation with Meadows.
He said, we have to kill the narrative, that the Vice President is making all the decisions. We need to establish the narrative that, you know, the President is still in charge and that things are steady or stable or words to that effect. I immediately interpreted that as politics, politics, politics. Red flag for me personally, no action. But I remember it distinctly.
(No explanation for why the military was taking orders from Pence when Trump was still the commander-in-chief on January 6th or why Meadows thought it appropriate to make it appear as if Pence was not giving orders when in fact Pence ordered the military to the Capitol.)
Cheney says many White House staff resigned in protest on January 6th. She says members of Trump’s cabinet discussed the possibility of invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office. “Multiple members of Trump’s own cabinet resigned immediately after January 6th. One member of the cabinet suggested that the remaining cabinet officers needed to ‘take a more active role in running the White House and the administration.’” (Cheney is confirming there was a soft coup against Trump in the last few days of the Trump administration despite the fact the due process of the 25th Amendment was not followed.)
Cheney next shows texts from January 7th between Fox News host, Sean Hannity, and Kayleigh McEnany, then President Trump’s Press Secretary.
Hannity: Me too. Eric and Lara were great. Also Jared. Key now. No more crazy people
McEnany: Yes. 100%
Hannity:
No more stolen election talk.
Yes, impeachment and 25 th amendment are real, and many people will quit.
He was intrigued by the Pardon idea!! (Hunter)
Resistant but listened to Pence thoughts, to make it right.
Seemed to like attending Inauguration talk.
McEnany “Loved” this text.
McEnany: Love that. Thank you. That is the playbook. I will help reinforce. THANK YOU for your help. You are doing a great service for your country!
(It is not clear why Trump’s Press Secretary is taking marching orders not to talk about the stolen election from a Fox News host.)
Cheney continues, “The White House staff knew that President Trump was willing to entertain and use conspiracy theories to achieve his ends. They knew the President needed to be cut-off from all those who encouraged him,” such as Powell, Flynn, and Byrne. “[White House staff] knew that President Trump was too dangerous to be left alone, at least until he left office on January 20th,” Cheney says. (The Committee is providing evidence I suspect Trump supporters will use to build a 2024 election narrative that the swamp couped Trump without due process.)
Cheney opines, “When a President fails to take the steps necessary to preserve our Union, or worse, causes a Constitutional crisis, we are at a moment of maximum danger for our Republic.”
Next, Cheney turns to Jared Kushner’s response to multiple threats to resign by White House counsel Pat Cipollone and his legal team. “I know that he was, him and the team, were going to resign, were not going to be here if this happens, or that happens, so I kinda took it to be just whining to be honest with you,” Kushner says.
Cheney predicts: “Tonight, I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible. There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone. But your dishonor will remain.” (It seems to me as if Cheney is using this opportunity to portray herself as the standard-bearer for neoconservatives, if the Republican Party ever returns to its establishmentarian roots. I am not nearly as confident as she is that MAGA and neoNazism will die with Trump.)
Cheney concludes, “Finally, I ask all of our fellow Americans: as you watch our hearings over the coming weeks, please remember what is at stake. Remember the men and women who have fought and died, so we can live under the rule of law, not the rule of men.” (Pretty rich coming from the daughter of the warmonger who sent young men to die for oil profits based on the lie Iraq possessed WMDs. No one since WWII has been killed in action defending the Constitution. Far from defending the Constitution, participants in America’s imperialist wars, which have largely been unconstitutional for lack of Congressional approval, undermine the Constitution by expanding executive privilege at the expense of the constitutional authority of the legislature.)
Thompson continues by playing unseen footage of the ~300 Proud Boys gathering at the National Mall, chanting “whose streets, our streets!” (10:00 a.m.) A woman in the crowd says, “I am not allowed to say what is going to happen today. Because everyone’s just going to have to watch for themselves. But, it’s going to happen. Something is going to happen.” The video shows the Proud Boys advancing to the east side of the Capitol, more than a mile from where Trump was due to give his speech. (11:48 a.m.)
The video cuts to footage of Trump saying, “I hope Mike is going to do the right thing. I hope so, I hope so. Because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election.” (12:05 p.m.) “All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify. And we become President and you are the happiest people.” (12:06 p.m.) “Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us and, if he doesn’t, that will be a sad day for our country.” (12:14 p.m.) “Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong.” (12:15 p.m.)
The video cuts to more footage of MAGA protestors leaving Trump’s rally, spliced with police radio that says, “It does look like we are going to have an ad hoc march stepping off here. There’s a crowd surge heading east.”
Back to Trump. “Mike Pence, I hope you are going to stand up for the good of our Constitution and for the good of our country. And if you’re not, I’m going to be very disappointed in you, I will tell you right now.” (12:49 p.m.) Cut back to the protestors first breach of the Capitol grounds at the Peace Circle. (12:54 p.m.)
Cut to Congress calling their session for the counting of the electoral votes. (1:00 p.m.) Followed by footage of police defending barricades outside the Capitol’s perimeter. (1:37 p.m.) Police declared a riot shortly thereafter. (1:49 p.m.) At this time, MAGA protesters breached the barricades at the steps of the east plaza of the Capitol and began moving towards the building’s doors. However, protestors still had not breached the doors 17 minutes later. (2:06 p.m.) The first breach of the Capitol building was by a Proud Boy, Dominic Pezzola, through a window on the upper west terrace. (2:13 p.m.) The House went into recess five minutes later. (2:18 p.m.)
Trump tweeted shortly after the breach of the Capitol building, saying: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!” (2:24 p.m.) Immediately, a MAGA protestor with a loud horn reads Trump’s tweet to the crowd to spur them on.
The footage cuts to the crowd chanting, “Hang Mike Pence! Hang Mike Pence!” The video inserts a still image of a mock-up gallows complete with a noose, with the Capitol building in the background. The video cuts back to inside the Capitol building to show the breach of the crypt. (2:25 p.m.) Members of the Congress and staffers are shown fleeing through McCarthy’s office. (2:28 p.m.) MAGA chant, “Nancy! Nancy! Nancy!” as they walk up the stairs of the Capitol building to occupy Pelosi’s office. Outside, the first stack of Oath Keepers in full battle kit (less arms) enters the building through the central east door. (2:38 p.m.) MAGA reach the hall outside the House floor. (2:40 p.m.) The call goes out to evacuate the officers still remaining on the House floor. Two police officers barricade the main entrance to the floor with their guns drawn. (2:50 p.m.)
The footage continues with multiple shots of MAGA stomping cops. Overlayed over the top of the footage is Trump’s July 11th, 2021, interview on Fox News, where he described the crowd as “great people, peaceful people.” “The love in the air, I’ve never seen anything like it.” (It is not clear from the clip whether Trump is talking about the MAGA who attended his speech at the Ellipse, which was peaceful, or the people who assaulted the Congress.)
The hearing turns to witness testimony from Officer Edwards (assigned to the First Responder Unit, the first line of defense at the Capitol) and Nick Quested (a documentary maker embedded with the Proud Boys).
Thompson begins the questioning by playing a summary of the House Investigative Counsel’s theory of the case.
Childress explains that extremists like the Proud Boys interpreted Trump’s December 19th tweet calling for people to come to D.C. as a “call to arms.” In a private chat, Proud Boys leadership “created a new chapter” that “was referred to as the Ministry of Self Defense” (“MOSD”). Enrique Tarrio, then leader of the Proud Boys, described the purpose of MOSD as “national rally planning.” Childress alleges MOSD served as a “command structure” for the Proud Boys trip to D.C.
According to Tarrio’s indictment by the DoJ, Tarrio received a document titled, “1776 Returns.” “The document set forth a plan to occupy a few ‘crucial buildings’ in Washington, D.C., on January 6, including House and Senate office buildings around the Capitol[.]” The indictment also accuses Stewart Rhodes, leader of the Oath Keepers, of saying, “We aren’t getting through this without a civil war.” Childress continues, alleging that “the goal was for the Oath Keepers to be called to duty, so that they could keep the President in power, although President Trump had just lost the election.” Further, Childress alleges “the Oath Keepers set up quick-reaction forces outside the city in Virginia where they stored arms. The goal of these quick-reaction forces was to be on stand-by just in case President Trump invoked the Insurrection Act.” The DoJ indictment alleges the first stack of Proud Boys to enter the Capitol building was searching for Pelosi. According to the indictment, Tarrio took credit for the attack on the Capitol, writing, “Make no mistake. . . . We did this.”
Childress reviews the timeline of the attack before Thompson turns back to the witnesses. Thompson asks Quested, “On January 5th, the night before the attack, you were with the head of the Proud Boys, Mr. Tarrio, in Washington, D.C. What happened?” Quested responds:
We picked up Mr. Tarrio from jail. He had been arrested for carrying some magazines — some extra-capacity magazines — and he took responsibility for the burning of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ flag that was stolen from the church on December 12th. We were attempting to get an interview with Mr. Tarrio. We had no idea of the events that were subsequently going to happen. We drove him to pick up his bags from the property department of the police, which is just south of the Mall. We picked up his bags and went to a hotel. We encountered Mr. Stewart Rhoades from the Oath Keepers. By the time I had gone to park the car, my colleague [who had got into the car with Mr. Tarrio] was saying they were going to move to a location around the corner: the parking garage of the Hall of Legends. So, we quickly drove over there. We drove down into the parking garage and filmed the scene of Mr. Tarrio and Mr. Rhoades, and certain other individuals, in that garage. We then continued to follow Mr. Tarrio. [ ] We then conducted an interview with Mr. Tarrio in a [Baltimore] hotel room.
[ ]
We met up with the Proud Boys somewhere around 10:30 a.m. [on January 6th]. They were starting to walk down the Mall, easterly direction towards the Capitol. There was a large contingent — more than I had expected. I was confused to a certain extent why we were walking away from the President’s speech because that’s what I felt we were there to cover.
Thompson asks, “So at 10:30 a.m., that’s early in the day, that’s even before President Trump had started speaking. Am I correct?” “Yes, sir.”
Thompson: “At the time, was the Capitol heavily guarded?”
No, that was . . . I remember we walked down the Mall, to the right of the [Lincoln Memorial] Reflecting Pool, and then north along the road that leads to the Peace Circle. And as we were walking past the Peace Circle, I framed the Proud Boys to the right with the Capitol behind, and we see one sole police officer at the barriers, which subsequently breached. We then walk up and past a tactical unit preparing. You see that in the film [the Committee played] where the man questions their duty and their honor. And you see maybe a dozen Capitol police putting on their riot gear.
Quested recounts how he followed the Proud Boys down to the east side of the Capitol, took some photos, and then left the scene to go for lunch before the attack began . . . whoops.
Thompson argues the Proud Boys who left before Trump’s speech began to scout vulnerabilities in the Capitol defenses. Thompson observes the Peace Circle is the closest point to the Ellipse where Trump was due to give his speech. The theory is Proud Boys positioned themselves at the Peace Circle where they expected Trump supporters would arrive after Trump sent them to the Capitol. Thompson describes this as a “coordinated and planned effort.” “It was the culmination of a month’s long effort spear-headed by President Trump.” (It is not clear whether Thompson is saying Trump coordinated with the Proud Boys. The obvious rebuttal to Thompson’s theory is anyone walking from the Ellipse to the Capitol building would go through the Peace Circle, as that is the shortest path. This fact suggests, to me, the Proud Boys did not specifically target an entrance guarded by only one officer, merely that they took the most natural path to the Capitol like other Trump supporters would do later. Relatedly, the Committee does not seem to appreciate the fact the Proud Boys started marching on the Capitol before Trump began speaking, which undermines their argument Trump’s speech precipitated the riot.)
Cheney takes over to question Officer Edwards. She asks: “Can you describe the crowd that had assembled at the Peace Circle as you and your fellow officers stood behind and guarded the bike racks at the Peace Circle?”
There were about, I want to say, five of us on that line. So, there was our bike rack and at the bottom of the Pennsylvania Ave walkway, right by Peace Circle, there was another bike rack. And so, the crowd had kind of gathered there. It was the crowd led by Joseph Biggs [a leader of the Proud Boys] and they were mostly in civilian clothes. There were some who had military fatigues on. We could see people with bullet-proof vests on, you know, things like that. They didn’t seem extremely cohesive but they had gathered there in their outfits together, and Joseph Biggs started — he had a megaphone — he started talking about, first it was things kind of relating to Congress, and then the tables started turning, once the Arizona group [of Proud Boys] — the crowd with orange hats — they came up changing, “Fuck Antifa!” And they joined that group, and once they joined that group, Joseph Biggs’s rhetoric turned to the Capitol police. He started asking us questions like, ‘You didn’t miss a pandemic during the pandemic?’ Our pay-scale was mentioned and [he] started turning the tables on us. And I’ve worked, I can conservatively say probably hundreds of hours of civil disturbance events, I know when I’m being turned into a villain. And that’s when I turned to my sergeant and I stated the understatement of the century: “Sarge, I think we are going to need a few more people down here.” And after that, they started conferring among each other. I saw the person now identified as Ryan Samsall [another Proud Boy], he put his arm around Joseph Biggs and they were talking, and then they started approaching the first barricade. They ripped the first barricade down and approached our bike racks. At that time, we started holding on, grabbing the bike racks. There weren’t many of us, so I grabbed the middle between two different bike racks and, you know, I wasn’t under any pretense I could hold it for very long, but I just wanted to, you know, make sure we could get more people down and get the CDU units more time to answer the call. So, we started grappling over the bike racks. I felt the bike rack come on top of my head and I was pushed backwards. And my foot caught the stair behind me and my chin hit the handrail. And, at that point, I blacked out, [and] the back of my head clipped the concrete stairs behind me.
(It is not clear how Edwards’s characterization of the Proud Boys who led the attack on the Capitol, which attack was not “extremely cohesive,” and her observation Samsall and Biggs conferred with each other after seemingly not having a plan of what to do next, jives with Thompson’s theory the Proud Boys were actively scouting weaknesses in the Capitol defenses as part of a “coordinated and planned effort” to direct MAGA to the Capitol building.)
Cheney notes Edwards got knocked out but returned to duty at the Senate steps on the lower west terrace when she regained consciousness.
More and more people started coming onto the west front. They started overpowering us. That was right around when NPD officers showed up. They are bike officers. They pushed the crowd back and allowed our CDU units, as well as theirs, to form that line that you see — that very thin line — between us and the protestors, or the rioters. At that time, I fell behind that line and, for a while, started decontaminating people who had gotten sprayed and treating people medically who needed it.
Cheney notes Edwards was injured again on the west terrace after she went back to the line. Edwards recounts seeing Officer Brian Sicknick “with his heads in his hands,” observing “he was ghostly pale.” “I looked back to see what had hit him, what had happened, and that is when I got sprayed in the eyes as well.” MAGA then teargassed Edwards and her fellow officers, forcing them to retreat. (Edwards’s testimony here is misleading. Despite initial misinformation rioters caused Sicknick’s death by spraying him with pepper spray, he died of natural causes the day after the riot, and the autopsy revealed “no evidence of an allergic reaction to chemicals, nor or internal or external injuries.”)
Edwards opened her remarks by proudly sharing the irrelevant fact her grandfather fought in the imperialist war in Korea. She bookends her testimony by calling the riot a “war scene,” saying she was “slipping in people’s blood.” She felt she was not prepared to handle the riot because she is “not combat trained.” The fact remains: only the police had and used guns to kill someone on January 6th, which homicide was completely unnecessary.
The elephant in the room is election security. None of this would have happened if American elections were secure beyond a reasonable doubt. But, in fact, they are not. This fact was the basis for my conclusion that election machines would become the “key wedge issue that will divide the nation.”
I am currently writing a 10-part series that will detail, at length, the general evidence of voting machine vulnerability, as well as circumstantial evidence of fraud in multiple U.S. elections going back to 1996, meaning specific evidence of multiple instances where voting machines changed vote tallies; to be published before the mid-term elections.
The point of the series is not to prove or disprove the 2020 election results were fraudulent, which is impossible given my lack of expertise and lack of access to the internet traffic data that would be necessary to make the case either way. I could not care less whether the Oval Office is occupied by a neoliberal fascist or a neoconservative fascist. The point of the series is to prove we have a serious vulnerability in our elections. My argument is January 6th, as bad as it was, will be nothing compared to the next attack on government officials should Congress fail to prioritize serious election reforms.
This is Law and Politics. Until next time . . . .