Tag: January 6

Commentary: Lump of Coal Awards 2021, January 6 Edition

Virginia Star Staff
Merrick Garland, Adam Kinzinger and Chris Wray

Aside from the pandemic, no other issue has dominated the daily news cycle and collective fixation of the ruling class more than the alleged “insurrection” on January 6, 2021.

The events of that day were a gift to the Biden regime and the Democratic Party—which should instantly disabuse anyone of the notion that the Capitol protest was legitimately an organic uprising instead of an inside job orchestrated by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, and the FBI to name just a few accomplices.

Since then, every lever of government power in Washington, D.C. has been wielded in a vengeful way against American citizens who dared to protest the rigged 2020 presidential election. The conduct of those in charge has exposed the moral depravity of the people who populate the power center of the world’s greatest country, showing a stark chasm between the inherent goodness and decency of the American people and the sadistic ghouls who call the shots from the Beltway.

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Commentary: Democrats Promised An Insurrection But All They Got Was a Lousy Obstruction Case

Admin
Former President Donald Trump

History, it appears, is repeating itself—at least when it comes to the latest crusade to destroy Donald Trump and everyone around him.

For nearly three years, the American people were warned that Donald Trump had been in cahoots with the Kremlin to rig the 2016 presidential election. Trump-Russia election collusion, the original “stop the steal” campaign—that is, until questioning the outcome of American elections was designated a criminal conspiracy after November 2020—dominated the attention of the ruling class and the entirety of the national news media.

Every instrument of power—the FBI, a secret surveillance court, congressional committees, a special counsel—was leveraged to uncover the “truth” about the Trump campaign’s alleged dirty dealings with Mother Russia.

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Former President Trump Slams Congressman Adam Schiff for Allegedly Altering Text Messages Shown During Committee Hearing

Cooper Moran

Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday slammed Congressman Adam Schiff for changing the substance of a text message that he read during a January 6th Committee hearing.

Congressman Schiff (D-CA-28) allegedly altered a text message between White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH-04), according to a report from The Federalist.

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Former President Trump Slams Congressman Adam Schiff for Allegedly Altering Text Messages Shown During Committee Hearing

Cooper Moran

Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday slammed Congressman Adam Schiff for changing the substance of a text message that he read during a January 6th Committee hearing.

Congressman Schiff (D-CA-28) allegedly altered a text message between White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH-04), according to a report from The Federalist.

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Commentary: Justice Department Moves to Conceal Police Misconduct on January 6

Virginia Star Staff

After months of foot-dragging, Joe Biden’s Justice Department is preparing for the first set of trials related to its sprawling prosecution of January 6 defendants: Robert Gieswein, who turned himself in and was arrested on January 19 for his involvement in the Capitol protest, is scheduled to stand trial in February.

A week after his arrest, Gieswein, 24 at the time, was indicted by a federal grand jury on six counts including “assaulting, resisting, or impeding” law enforcement with a dangerous weapon that day. He has been behind bars ever since, denied bail while Judge Emmet Sullivan delayed his trial on numerous occasions. Gieswein is among 40 or so January 6 defendants held in a part of the D.C. jail system solely used to detain Capitol protesters.

Federal prosecutors accuse Gieswein of using a chemical spray against police officers and carrying a baseball bat. Clad in military-style gear, Gieswein climbed through a broken window shortly after the first breach of the building. He told a reporter on the scene that “the corrupt politicians who have been in office for 50 or 60 years . . . need to be imprisoned.” Democratic politicians, Gieswein complained, sold out the country to “the Rothchilds and the Rockefellers,” a remark the FBI investigator on his case described as an “anti-Semitic” conspiracy theory.

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Commentary: January 6 Police Beating Victim Speaks — ‘I Could Have Died’

Virginia Star Staff

The first time Victoria White visited the nation’s capital was on January 6, 2021. Listening to President Trump’s speech—with her teen daughter and three friends alongside her—would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience, White thought.

Instead, the day turned into a personal nightmare with real-time flashbacks to her years as a victim of domestic abuse.

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Former D.C. National Guard Official Says Generals Lied to Congress About January 6th

Virginia Star Staff

A former member of the D.C. National Guard has accused two Army leaders of perjuring themselves before Congress in an attempt to rewrite the history of the military’s response to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

Col. Earl Matthews, a high-level Pentagon official during the Trump administration, has authored a 36-page report criticizing the Pentagon’s inspector general for what he believes is an error-riddled account created in order to protect a top Army official who argued against sending the National Guard to the Capitol, according to Politico.

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Commentary: Select Committee Covering Up Police Brutality on January 6th

Virginia Star Staff

The family of Rosanne Boyland, one of two female Trump supporters who died at the Capitol on January 6, just announced they have hired a lawyer to investigate the suspicious circumstances of her untimely death. Boyland, 34, traveled with her friend Justin Winchell from Georgia to Washington to hear President Trump’s speech.

The pair then walked from the Ellipse to Capitol Hill; a photo published in a local Georgia newspaper shows Boyland smiling, wearing Old Glory sunglasses and carrying a “Don’t Tread on Me” flag that day.

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Trump Comes to Bannon’s Defense, Says Contempt Prosecution Proof ‘USA Is a Radicalized Mess’

Virginia Star Staff
Steve Bannon and Donald Trump

Former President Donald Trump on Sunday came to the defense of Steve Bannon, suggesting the Biden Justice Department’s prosecution of his ex-adviser on contempt of Congress charges was evidence that America is a “radicalized mess.”

“This Country has perhaps never done to anyone what they have done to Steve Bannon and they are looking to do it to others, also,” Trump said, making a likely reference to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows who also has been threatened with contempt charges if he doesn’t cooperate with the House investigation into the Jan. 6 Capitol riots.

The 45th president suggested his former advisers were being treated more harshly than American adversaries like China and Russia.

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Obama Judge Sides with January 6 Committee, Denies Trump’s Executive Privilege Claims

Virginia Star Staff

In a 34-page ruling issued Tuesday night, D.C. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan denied Donald Trump’s request for injunctive relief to prevent the January 6 Select Committee from obtaining privileged information currently housed at the National Archives. In August, Representative Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the committee, demanded “a wide range of White House records of the previous administration . . . [related to] how the January 6th events fit in the continuum of efforts to subvert the rule of law, overturn the results of the November 3, 2020 election, or otherwise impede the peaceful transfer of power.” 

The National Archives notified the committee a few days later it would comply with the request for documents; Joe Biden twice denied Trump’s claims of executive privilege, something without precedent, which Chutkan noted: “This case presents the first instance . . . in which a former President asserts executive privilege over records for which the sitting President has refused to assert executive privilege.”

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Commentary: Very Fine People

Virginia Star Staff
Large group of people storming Washington D.C. in protest on January 6.

Jacob Anthony Chansley, who also goes by the name Jake Angeli, was one of the people who made their way into the chamber of the U.S. Senate in the Capitol on January 6, 2021, to protest the Senate’s impending certification of state electors who would install Joe Biden as the 46th president of the United States. His name may not register, but his image will: he was the fellow bizarrely attired in a coyote-fur hat sprouting black buffalo horns; shirtless, showing his muscular but heavily tattooed torso; sporting black gloves and a red knapsack; face painted in vertical red, white, and blue stripes; and carrying an American flag on a spear.

The disorderly intrusion of several hundred protesters into the Capitol was quickly characterized by the media, and by many politicians, as an “insurrection.” Moreover, the accusation of insurrection was applied to the many thousands of Trump supporters in Washington that day who had nothing to do with the intrusion into the Capitol. And that characterization became the basis for the House of Representatives to impeach President Trump for supposedly inciting the “insurrection” and the impetus for Joe Biden to order 26,000 National Guard troops to defend Washington during his inauguration on January 20.

As it happened, there was no insurrection.

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J6 Detainee Subjected to Post-Lawyer Meeting Strip Search

Virginia Star Staff
Capitol Riot

Immediately following an in-person meeting with his defense attorney, Robert Morss, a January 6 detainee held in part of the D.C. jail system used exclusively to incarcerate Capitol defendants, was subjected to a strip search where he was verbally and physically abused by prison guards.

Morss, a former Army ranger with three tours of duty in Afghanistan, was arrested in June and later indicted on numerous counts including assaulting a police officer and disorderly conduct. (Morss is named in a multi-defendant case with others who battled police near the lower west terrace tunnel, where law enforcement officers from D.C. Metro and Capitol police were attacking protesters.) In July, Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee to the D.C. District Court, denied Morss’ release pending trial.

Morss met with his attorney, John C. Kiyonaga, in advance of a status hearing scheduled for Friday afternoon. After Morss returned to the so-called “pod,” prison guards informed him he would need to be strip searched.

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Commentary: The Washington Post Finally Releases Sketchy Details That Raise Questions About the January 6 ‘Pipe Bombs’

Virginia Star Staff

Several storylines related to the events of January 6 have crumbled under closer scrutiny over the past 10 months: the “fire extinguisher” murder of Officer Brian Sicknick; the notion it was an “armed” insurrection and a grand “conspiracy” concocted by right-wing militias; claims that the building sustained $30 million in damages, and so on.

In the meantime, the Biden regime has attempted to cover up key aspects of that day, including the name of the officer who shot and killed Ashli Babbitt, which was only recently revealed. Justice Department lawyers continue to resist the release of 14,000 hours of surveillance video and the U.S. Capitol Police refuse to publish an 800-page internal investigation on officer misconduct as well as internal communications before and after the Capitol breach.

But a deep dive by the Washington Post, published last weekend, raises new questions about the alleged “pipe bombs” discovered just before Congress met on January 6 to certify the results of the 2020 Electoral College vote. Like so many supporting scenes, the veracity of the pipe bomb tale is in doubt after the Post revealed eyebrow-raising details about those involved.

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New Capitol Video Contradicts Justice Department, Media Narrative on January 6

Virginia Star Staff

Over the objection of Joe Biden’s Justice Department, a lengthy video clip showing U.S. Capitol Police allowing hundreds of people into the building on the afternoon of January 6 has been released to the public.

In July, Ethan Nordean, an alleged Proud Boy member charged for various crimes now held in a Seattle jail awaiting trial, petitioned the court to remove the “highly sensitive” designation on surveillance video that recorded Nordean entering the building with permission by U.S. Capitol Police. A group called the Press Coalition, representing news organizations including CNN, the New York Times, and the three major broadcast news networks, filed a motion in September to intervene in Nordean’s case and make the video footage public.

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Commentary: January 6 and the FBI’s ‘Operation Cold Snap’

Virginia Star Staff
Close up of Capitol with Trump and America flag in the wind

The tony, bucolic town of Dublin, Ohio would be one of the last places in America expected to host a convention of white supremacist militiamen. Nestled along the Scioto River, the Columbus suburb’s biggest claim to fame is hosting the PGA’s annual Memorial Golf tournament every summer.

But in June 2020, days after the nation was roiled by Black Lives Matter looting and rioting, a man from Wisconsin named Stephen Robeson sponsored a “National Militia Conference” at a Dublin hotel. (Yes, that was the real name of the event.) 

According to BuzzFeed’s exceptional July 2021 investigative report on the FBI-led plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020, Robeson “helped organize the national meeting, and he was enthusiastically pushing people he knew to attend.” The purpose of the conference was to recruit people who ultimately would stoke “political violence” against governors who refused to reopen their states after lockdowns supposedly necessitated by COVID.

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Federal Judge Finds DC Jail Officials in Contempt, Demands Civil Rights Inquiry

Virginia Star Staff

In a major rebuke of the Justice Department and D.C. Department of Corrections, District Court Judge Royce Lamberth today found the jail’s warden and director of the Department of Corrections in contempt of court for refusing to turn over records related to the care of Christopher Worrell, a January 6 detainee who suffers from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and a broken hand. He has been incarcerated under a pre-trial detention order sought by Joe Biden’s Justice Department and approved by the court’s chief judge since his arrest in March; Worrell has been in the D.C. jail used specifically to house January 6 defendants since April.

Lamberth scheduled the hearing on Tuesday after D.C. Jail Warden Wanda Patten and DOC Director Quincy Booth failed to comply with his October 8 order to submit the evaluation by an orthopedic surgeon, who determined in June that Worrell needed surgery for a broken hand he suffered in May, and also to submit Worrell’s medical requests related to needed cancer treatments. Jail officials and attorneys representing the department claimed the screw-up was a miscommunication but Lamberth rejected their argument. “I don’t accept that explanation,” Lamberth said. “No one noticed in jail that he’s sitting there in pain all the time? Does no one care?”

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Commentary: The Left Destroys Everything It Touches

Admin

What was the purpose for the insane opposition of the Left between 2017 and 2021? To usher in a planned nihilism, an incompetent chaos, a honed anarchy to wreck the country in less than a year?

No sooner had Donald Trump entered office than scores of House Democrats filed motions for impeachment, apparently for thought crimes that he might, some day, in theory, could possibly commit.

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Trump Wishes Ashli Babbitt a Happy Birthday, Calls for DOJ to Reopen Investigation into Her Death

Virginia Star Staff

Former President Donald Trump appeared in a video message to wish happy birthday to the late Ashli Babbitt, the woman fatally shot by a police officer at the U.S. Capitol during the January 6 breach. Trump additionally took the opportunity to call for the Justice Department to reopen its investigation into her death.

The Capitol Police officer who fired the shot that killed Babbitt was formerly exonerated by the department following an assessment by the Office of Professional Responsibility that concluded his conduct was “lawful and within Department policy.”

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Commentary: January 6th Defendants and the Court of Public Opinion

Virginia Star Staff
Capitol Riot

George Tanios’ fiancée encouraged him to go to Washington on January 6 to hear President Trump’s speech. “You’re gonna regret it if you don’t go,” she said, hoping he could take a break from working 100-hours-a-week to run his popular sandwich shop in Morgantown, West Virginia.

Tanios and I both laughed after he told me that during a two-hour interview this week. (I was in contact with his fiancée, Amanda, as she cared for their three young children while he was incarcerated for five months.)

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Commentary: Whitmer Case Exposes Pattern of FBI Misconduct

Virginia Star Staff
FBI logo outside of building

As the first shoe related to the FBI’s involvement in the breach of the U.S. Capitol dropped—the New York Times last week reported at least two informants tied to the Proud Boys were working with the FBI before, during, and after January 6—another high-profile case continues to expose the bureau’s corrupt role in what the government also considers an act of domestic terrorism: a concocted plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer from her vacation cottage in October 2020.

In fact, Joe Biden’s Justice Department has tied the two events together in an attempt to convince the public that right-wing militiamen, ostensibly loyal to Donald Trump, pose a looming threat to the country. In a recent sentencing memorandum for one man who pleaded guilty in the Whitmer case, government prosecutors wrote, “as the Capitol riots demonstrated, an inchoate conspiracy can turn into a grave substantive offense on short notice.”

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Commentary: An American Horror Story

Virginia Star Staff
Close up of Capitol with Trump and America flag in the wind

Thomas Caldwell’s wife awakened him in a panic at 5:30 a.m. on January 19.

“The FBI is at the door and I’m not kidding,” Sharon Caldwell told her husband.

Caldwell, 66, clad only in his underwear, went to see what was happening outside his Virginia farm. “There was a full SWAT team, armored vehicles with a battering ram, and people screaming at me,” Caldwell told me during a lengthy phone interview on September 21. “People who looked like stormtroopers were pointing M4 weapons at me, covering me with red [laser] dots.”

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Commentary: Joe Biden’s Political Prisoners

Virginia Star Staff
Capitol Riot

The latest “conspiracy theory” consuming the political Right, our media betters warn, is the idea that the Biden regime is creating a class of political prisoners stemming from the January 6 protest on Capitol Hill. Scoffing at accusations that January 6 protesters are treated differently from other protesters, columnists and talking heads insist it’s nothing more than right-wing media spin.

A rally scheduled this weekend for January 6 defendants has official Washington apoplectic. Dozens of Americans remain locked up in a D.C. jail and at facilities across the country as they await trials that won’t begin until at least mid-2022.

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Commentary: Justice Department’s Foremost Felony Charge Against January 6 Participants May Be on Thin Ice

Virginia Star Staff

More than eight months after the worst attack on Washington since the Civil War, as Joe Biden describes it, not a single American has been charged with sedition or treason related to the alleged “insurrection” on January 6, 2021.

As Ben Boychuk explained in his Thursday essay, despite many harsh warnings insisting  the government would build sedition cases, so far Biden’s Justice Department has failed to live up to its promise.

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Appellate Court Overturns Pre-Trial Detention for January 6 Detainee

Virginia Star Staff
January 6 riot at the capitol with large crowd of people.

In a stunning but well-deserved rebuke, the D.C. Court of Appeals on Monday ordered that the pre-trial detention of George Tanios, one of two men accused of spraying Officer Sicknick and others on January 6, be reversed.

The brief ruling, which did not include the usual opinion explaining the court’s decision, bluntly stated:

“ORDERED and ADJUDGED that the district court’s May 12, 2021 order be reversed and the case remanded for the district court to order appellant’s pretrial release subject to appropriate conditions, including home detention and electronic monitoring. On this record, we conclude that the district court clearly erred in determining that no condition or combination of conditions of release would reasonably assure the safety of the community.”

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Commentary: The Capitol Cover Up

Virginia Star Staff
United States Capitol at night

Judge G. Michael Harvey sounded floored.

During a detention hearing this week for Robert Morss, arrested last month for his involvement in the Capitol protest, a federal prosecutor told Harvey she needed permission from the government before she could turn over to him a slice of video related to Morss’ case. Joe Biden’s Justice Department continues to seek pre-trial detention for people who protested Biden’s election on January 6; prosecutors want to keep Morss, an Army ranger and high school history teacher with no criminal record, behind bars until his trial can begin next year.

But assistant U.S. Attorney Melissa Jackson hesitated when Judge Harvey asked to see the footage captured by the U.S. Capitol Police surveillance system cited as evidence in government charging documents.

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Arizona Rep. Mark Finchem in Tennessee: Our Elections Have Been Open to Manipulation and for Much Longer Than We Knew

Laura Baigert

FRANKLIN, Tennessee — Arizona State Rep. Mark Finchem (R-District 11) told a group of nearly 100 gathered in middle Tennessee that it has been revealed that our elections have been open to manipulation and for much longer than we knew, long before November 2020. 

Finchem said that “While many might think it’s a curse, America has been given a gift.”

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Commentary: Time to Confront the U.S. Capitol Police About Its January 6 Lies

Virginia Star Staff

The body of U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick wasn’t even cold before his employer leveraged his untimely death to stoke more outrage about the events in the nation’s capital on January 6.

“At approximately 9:30 p.m. this evening . . . United States Capitol Police Officer Brian D. Sicknick passed away due to injuries sustained while on-duty,” read a press release issued January 7. “Officer Sicknick was responding to the riots [and] was injured while physically engaging with protesters.  He returned to his division office and collapsed.  He was taken to a local hospital where he succumbed to his injuries. The death of Officer Sicknick will be investigated by the Metropolitan Police Department’s Homicide Branch, the USCP, and our federal partners.”

The agency intentionally included the word “homicide” to suggest Sicknick was killed by homicidal Trump supporters. The next day, the New York Times, citing two anonymous law enforcement officials, claimed “pro-Trump rioters . . . overpowered Mr. Sicknick, 42, and struck him in the head with a fire extinguisher.”

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Court Dismisses Chase’s Lawsuit over Censure by the Virginia Senate

Eric Burk

The Eastern District Court of Virginia dismissed Senator Amanda Chase’s (R-Chesterfield) lawsuit over her censure by the Senate. On Wednesday, Judge Robert Payne granted a motion to dismiss filed by Attorney General Mark Herring on behalf of the Senate and the Clerk of the Senate. In April, Herring argued that the Senate and the Clerk have sovereign immunity and that the Senate’s decision to censure is a “non-justiciable” political question.

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U.S. Capitol Police Officer Who Fatally Shot Ashli Babbitt Will Not Face Charges

Virginia Star Staff

The U.S. Capitol Police officer who fatally shot 35-year-old Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt on January 6 will not face federal charges, the Department of Justice announced Wednesday.

An investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia’s Public Corruption and Civil Rights Section and the Civil Rights Division, along with the Metropolitan Police Department’s Internal Affairs Division (IAD) “determined that there is insufficient evidence to support a criminal prosecution.”

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As Capitol Defendants Rot in DC Jail, Portland Rioters Get Leniency

Virginia Star Staff

While more than three dozen people charged with various offenses related to the January 6 protest on Capitol Hill now rot in solitary confinement in a D.C. jail, Joe Biden’s Justice Department is letting off the hook violent protestors involved in the ongoing siege of Portland.

Politico today reported federal prosecutors are seeking “deferred prosecution” for at least six people charged with disorderly conduct, attacking police officers, and interfering with law enforcement in that city last year. “Some lawyers attribute the government’s newfound willingness to resolve the Portland protest cases without criminal convictions to the arrival of President Joe Biden’s administration in January and to policy and personnel changes at the Justice Department,” Josh Gerstein wrote April 14. “Some of the assaults described in the Portland cases bear similarities to the Capitol violence.”

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Two Men Charged in Assault on Police Officer Sicknick, Who Died After January Capitol Riot

Virginia Star Staff

Two men have been arrested and charged with assaulting U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick during the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol Building. The men allegedly sprayed Sicknick with bear spray, but authorities have not determined whether the assault led to Sicknick’s death.

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Sen. Tim Kaine Discusses the $1.9T Relief Bill, His Lingering COVID Symptoms, Reflects on January 6th Capitol Breach

Eric Burk

Senator Tim Kaine (D-Virginia) appeared on the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association (VHHA) Patients Come First podcast on Sunday. Kaine explained two upcoming financial relief packages, provided an update on Virginia’s COVID-19 vaccine distribution, and explained his Medicare-X Choice Act.

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The New York Times Retracts the Story Asserting Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick was Killed by a Trump Supporter

Admin

In a quiet but stunning correction, the New York Times backed away from its original report that Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick was killed by a Trump supporter wielding a fire extinguisher during the January 6 melee at the Capitol building. Shortly after American Greatness published my column Friday that showed how the Times gradually was backpedaling on its January 8 bombshell, the paper posted this caveat:

UPDATE: New information has emerged regarding the death of the Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick that questions the initial cause of his death provided by officials close to the Capitol Police.

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FBI Spokesman Says Nationwide Billboards Targeting January 6 Protestors Likely an Agency First

Chris Butler

FBI officials have erected billboards seeking tips on possible suspects who breached the U.S. Capitol January 6 and, according to one agency spokesman, this is likely the first time the FBI has done this nationwide. But Joel Siskovic, speaking for the FBI’s Memphis Field Office, said members of his agency have used billboards before to find suspects — but only in limited regions of the United States.

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Commentary: Does Anyone Really Think Impeachment Take Two is About Upholding the Constitution?

Virginia Star Staff

How precious it is to witness the same party that rejects the United States Constitution on a daily basis, now genuflects to and contorts the Constitution when it is convenient for their Democrat agenda.  The truth is the second impeachment trial of President Donald Trump has nothing to do with upholding the Constitution.

President Trump’s attorneys have clearly responded to the absurd Article of Impeachment.  Their answer on Trump’s behalf is clear and straightforward.

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