by Jack Cashill
Outright falsehood.
[Jack Cashill’s new book, Ashli: The Untold Story of the Women of January 6, is now available for purchase.]
“That mob showed up. They were armed. They were angry. They believed the ‘Big Lie’ that the election had been stolen. And when Donald Trump pointed them toward the Capitol and told them to “fight like hell,” that’s exactly what they did.”
—Bennie G. Thompson, chairman, Select Commitee (sic) to Investigate
the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, December 22, 2022.
As America skitters toward the planned June 27 presidential debate, this would seem an opportune time to reflect on what will inevitably be one of the debate’s central issues, President Donald Trump’s role in the events of January 6, 2021. If the Biden team relies on the Select Committee report, they will put themselves at a serious disadvantage. The report contains little in the way of uncontested truth, and much in the way of outright falsehood.
In researching my book, Ashli: The Untold Story of the Women of January 6, I routinely cross-checked what I was learning against what the committee had reported or strategically omitted. A compilation of the report’s inaccuracies would run longer than the report itself, but, fortunately for the reader, Rep. Thompson managed to compact the essence of the report’s failings into the one paragraph cited above. To parse the paragraph is to understand the depths of the report’s dishonesty.
Yes, a large crowd did show up at the Ellipse to hear Trump speak, but they were not angry, not armed, and not a mob. As to believing the “Big Lie” that the election was stolen, the protestors could not prove the particulars of vote fraud, but they did watch as 51 members of the intel community conspired with the FBI and Big Tech to suppress a game-changing story weeks before the election. If the protestors were uncertain about “stolen,” they were certain about “rigged.”
“It was a happy, joyful day,” Dr. Simone Gold told me. Gold recalled grandmas pushing baby carriages, groups literally singing “Kumbaya,” and people of every race mixing peacefully together. Gold would be sentenced to two months in a maximum security prison for giving a speech on medical freedom inside the Capitol. The report does not mention her.
Victoria White stayed to the very end of Trump’s speech on the ellipse and heard his final plea to fight like hell. Yet, as she marched toward the Capitol, she found herself amid a crowd of happy, singing people. Before the day was through White would suffer the most brutal police beating captured on video since Rodney King. The report does not mention her either.
Rosanne Boyland seemed in her element that day as well. Her friend Justin Winchell sent her father a final photo of Rosanne, walking along in her stars-and-stripes sunglasses, a “Save America” sign in one hand, a Gadsden flag resting on her right shoulder, and a big smile on her cherubic face.
Before the day was through, Boyland, while laying unconscious, would be beaten brutally over the head by a stick-wielding policewoman. Her death was never investigated. The policewoman was never punished. And neither was so much as mentioned in the House report.
“There is a sea of nothing but red, white and blue patriots for Trump,” Ashli Babbitt told viewers on a live Facebook feed. “God bless America, patriots.” Said Babbitt’s mother, Micki Witthoeft, “I can see in that video that she was absolutely in her element, having a wonderful time.” Husband Aaron Babbitt agreed. From her texts he concluded, “She was having the best day of her life.”
A 14-year Air Force veteran, Babbitt came to the Capitol alone and unarmed. Rep. Thompson knew what all the committee members knew. As Witthoeft wryly observed, “The gun-toting populous of the United States showed up that day without guns.” The only shot fired that day was shot by the Capitol Police lieutenant (now captain) Michael Byrd, who killed Witthoeft’s daughter. That shot was captured on video as were the beatings of Rosanne Boyland and Victoria White. Byrd goes unmentioned in the House report.
Ignoring harsh truths, Thompson and his colleagues doomed their report to frivolity by their obsession with Trump. “The rioters were inside the halls of Congress,” wrote Thompson, “because the head of the executive branch of our government, the then-President of the United States, told them to attack.” In the foreword, Thompson alluded to a quote that would be reported in the body of the report, “We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
The report does not quote Trump’s more specific directive, “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” The report writers dismiss this instruction, observing, “Trump used the word ‘peacefully,’ written by speech writers, one time.”
In the final analysis, it did not much matter what Trump said or did not say. If Thompson read his own report, he knows that the riot began at the Capitol 15 minutes before Trump made his “fight like hell” remark on the Ellipse, a 45-minute walk away. Leading the charge at the Capitol was the ubiquitous Ray Epps, the day’s most visible agent provocateur but hardly the only one. He goes unmentioned in the report.
The report does concede that “[a]s violence escalated at the West Front, non-lethal grenadiers began launching chemical munitions at the crowd.” What the report fails to mention is that Trump was still speaking at the Ellipse when the grenadiers began their assault. No one in that crowd heard Trump’s “fight like hell” remark. Most probably heard none of the speech at all.
When the speech goers reached the Capitol, doors had already been open and windows broken. Most of those who went in walked in, looked around, took selfies, and walked out. Of the ten women I profile in Ashli, two were killed that day, six have been imprisoned or are in prison, and two await sentencing, one a great grandmother.
The most overt criminal act any of these women committed was to help break a window. That woman, Rachel Powell, a mother of eight, is serving 57-months in a federal prison. Not until September 23, 2023, did Ray Epps plead guilty to a single misdemeanor charge. Texts such as, “I was in the front with a few others, I also orchestrated it,” embarrassed the keepers of the narrative into damage control. Epps was sentenced to a year’s probation.
With more than 1400 protestors arrested and nearly 500 imprisoned, the DOJ roundup more than rivals the notorious Palmer raids of a century ago. In the years ahead dispassionate observers will see the J6 hysteria for what it is, the federal government’s greatest mass injustice against its citizens since Japanese internment. The duplicitous report only adds to the infamy.
Jack Cashill
Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/with-debate-looming-time-to-fact-check-january-6-committee-report/
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