Dems Call Jan. 6 an 'Insurrection' - But Has a Single Capitol Rioter Been Charged with Sedition?
Hyperbole and overreach are two words that come to mind when thinking about how Democrats talk about the Jan. 6 “insurrection.”
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris certainly engaged in both on Thursday when reminding the nation about the riot a year later.
Let’s be clear right up front about one central fact: Of the hundreds of Americans the FBI has rounded up and the Justice Department has charged with crimes, none has been indicted for sedition, according to the Washington Examiner.
So Fox has uttered “Insurrection” the same number of times as the DOJ has issued indictments for that crime.
Referring to 1/6 as an “Insurrection” when the Democrat-led DOJ has failed to charge *even a single person with that crime* is not a source of pride for a media outlet. https://t.co/GI3G84lmHW
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 6, 2022
USA Today has compiled a list of over 700 Capitol rioters who have been arrested. The most common alleged crimes include being on restricted grounds, disorderly conduct and “demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building.”
Others have been charged with “assaulting, resisting or impeding” law enforcement officers, and some with possessing or using a “dangerous weapon.” These weapons include a few baseball bats — no more than four, by my count — and flagpoles.
A few protesters had access to guns, but no one has been charged with entering the Capitol building itself with one.
For example, Mark Ibrahim, an off-duty Drug Enforcement Agency officer from California, had his government-issued gun and badge with him at the Jan. 6, 2021, protest but said in the documentary film “Capitol Punishment” that he never entered the Capitol.
If you want to hear the side of the story from Jan. 6 the establishment media will not tell you, you can order the bombshell documentary now.
Ibrahim was charged with possessing a firearm and entering a “restricted building or grounds.” The photos included in his indictment only show him outside the Capitol.
Even CNN, which dedicated an entire article last summer to fact-checking the claim that what occurred on Jan. 6 was an “armed insurrection,” only listed one other man besides Ibrahim, Guy Reffitt of Texas, as having been charged with possessing a firearm on Capitol grounds.
Two others had guns nearby in their vehicles and one man was arrested while carrying a handgun, according to CNN.
That’s it. Not much of an armed insurrection if just a handful of guys even had access to firearms, which they did not use.
In fact, the only person who fired a gun that day was Capitol Police officer Michael Byrd, who shot and killed unarmed Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt.
Was the Capitol incursion a bad day in American history? Unequivocally, yes.
However, rather than using the anniversary of the riot to make remarks that most Americans could agree with, Biden and Harris went the Democratic Party hyperbole route.
“This was an armed insurrection,” Biden said.
“Both at home and abroad, we’re engaged anew in a struggle between democracy and autocracy, between the aspirations of the many and the greed of the few, between the people’s right of self-determination and the self-seeking autocrat,” he added, apparently referring to former President Donald Trump.
“We’re living at an inflection point in history”
Joe Biden says “we’re engaged anew in a struggle between democracy and autocracy”, adding that Donald Trump and the mob that rioted at the Capitol “could not be further away from the core American values”https://t.co/SlaStwzc5s pic.twitter.com/aloJCV0h8K
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) January 6, 2022
Is that the same Trump who, though having major doubts about the integrity of the 2020 election, as most Republicans still do, left office peacefully?
Some autocrat.
Harris’ rhetorical overreach about Jan. 6 actually one-upped Biden’s.
“Certain dates echo throughout history, including dates that instantly remind all who have lived through them where they were and what they were doing when our democracy came under assault. Dates that occupy not only a place on our calendars, but a place in our collective memory. Dec. 7, 1941. Sept. 11, 2001. And Jan. 6, 2021,” the vice president said.
Vice Pres. Kamala Harris: “Certain dates echo throughout history—including dates that instantly remind all who have lived through them where they were and what they were doing when our democracy came under assault.” https://t.co/iTnOBC1i0A pic.twitter.com/M8Tg10A6fN
— ABC News (@ABC) January 6, 2022
To borrow a Bidenism: Come on, man!
Jan. 6 will not go down as an attack on democracy akin to Pearl Harbor or 9/11, but rather as a footnote in American history.
Last year, on the day of the riot, National Geographic detailed “the U.S. Capitol’s turbulent history of bombings, assassination attempts, and violence,” none of which most people could probably cite.
The incidences of violence include bombings at the building in 1915, 1971 and 1983, as well as when in 1954 four Puerto Rican nationalists opened fire in the House chamber, wounding five members of Congress. In 1998, a gunman trying to make his way into the office of Republican House Majority Whip Tom DeLay shot and killed two Capitol Police officers.
As tragic and troubling as these incidents were, the future of our nation’s democracy did not hang in the balance; the business of government went on afterward as it did on Jan. 6.
The Capitol incursion has no doubt already faded in the minds of most Americans — hence the hyperbole by Biden, Harris and other Democrats to try to get folks ginned up again in an election year.
The events of that day were not an armed insurrection, but rather the misguided acts of a relative few.
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