Republican Sen. Ron Johnson is pressuring Capitol Police to answer questions about Jan. 6 and why they weren’t prepared to stop people from entering the building.

Some legal commentators, including myself, questioned the process of “counting” electoral votes on January 6.

The meeting of Congress on January 6 is required by statute — 3 U.S.C. Sec 15, referred to as the “Electoral Count Act.” Pursuant to that statute, the President of the Senate — the Vice President — shall open and announce the vote of each state’s electors of the Electoral College. It also establishes a mechanism for the filing of “objections” by Members of the House and Senate to the counting of any state’s electors as announced.

But the statute alters the process adopted in the 12th Amendment to the Constitution — something a statute cannot do. The 12th Amendment only provides that the President of the Senate shall open the certificates and the votes shall be counted. It confers no power on Congress to adjust or reject the vote count as cast by the electors. Thus, the opening of the certificates and counting of votes is merely a ministerial act, not a substantive one. The outcome of the election will be the same whether the ceremonial opening of the certificates takes place or not.

If Congress is meeting for purely ceremonial purposes, a question arises as to whether the January 6 protesters were disrupting any actual “government business or official function” as contemplated by the statute. //

peregry • 4 hours ago

You're assuming that the government wanted to get big sentences for these people.

They don't.

Rather, they WANT the outrage when all these "insurrectionists" either walk or get minimal sentences. The media and administration will spin it as the courts favoring these people and/or letting them off easy because they're "white" and will wink and nod and talk about how if these defendants were minorities the book would have been thrown at them.

The entire point is to create MORE outrage at Trump and those who were at the capital on Jan. 7, and against the right in general, by creating impossible expectations among their base and then when the results of the legal system do not match the expected outcome, to call it injustice... //

skeptic62 peregry • 3 hours ago

These “trials” have more to do with November 2022 than they do with January 2021. Our justice system has been weaponized by the Left. //

Mudboy skeptic62 • 2 hours ago

They are following Lenin's successful formula to overthrow a country, by legitimizing criminal anarchy and co-opting the justice system.

Democrats were trying to push through the vote on a “Jan. 6 Commission” today in the House.

They succeeded, with 35 Republicans crossing over to vote in favor of it, not seeming to care that it’s going to be a “bash Republicans” effort, rather than any sort of real investigation. There are already multiple investigations going on, so there wasn’t any need for an additional. This is simply an opportunity for Democrats to bash Republicans.

How do we know how biased this will be? Because we can already see how slimy Democrats are being about it. //

Olivia Beavers
@Olivia_Beavers
Replying to @Olivia_Beavers
NEWS: MEMBERS of the U.S. Capitol Police have issued a statement to members of Congress expressing "profound disappointment" with McConnell and McCarthy's positions on the Jan. 6 commission, citing the "trauma" that officers endured that day. //

U.S. Capitol Police
@CapitolPolice
USCP does NOT take positions on legislation.

The conceit of the Congress on issues like this is always amusing. The Department of Justice has hundreds — maybe more than a thousand — criminal investigations underway, using all the investigatory powers given to the FBI and federal grand juries. They have access to more than 15,000 hours of video surveillance footage taken by government surveillance systems in and around the Capitol. They have subpoenaed various forms of communication between persons involved in the January 6 happenings, including social media communications and emails.

Yet a commission consisting of 10 members of Congress and a couple of dozen staff members are needed to reach a definitive conclusion about what took place?

Comedy gold.

The Jerusalem Post also wasn’t quite buying that whole AP statement, based on past history.

After Operation Protective Edge in 2014, former AP reporter Matti Friedman wrote in The Atlantic: “Hamas understood that reporters could be intimidated when necessary and that they would not report the intimidation… The AP staff in Gaza City would witness a rocket launch right beside their office, endangering reporters and other civilians nearby – and the AP wouldn’t report it, not even in AP articles about Israeli claims that Hamas was launching rockets from residential areas.”

So, either they’re incredibly ignorant or they knew and they’re not being truthful. Either way, not a good look there, AP.

Jerry Dunleavy
@JerryDunleavy
AP CEO: "AP’s bureau has been in this building for 15 years. We have had no indication Hamas was in the building or active in the building. This is something we actively check to the best of our ability. We'd never knowingly put our journalists at risk."

https://blog.ap.org/announcements/

Andy Ngô
@MrAndyNgo
Israel says your building also housed Hamas military assets. All of you were given warning to evacuate, which you did, before the place was destroyed. And AP last year released guidelines saying journalists shouldn’t focus on property destruction.
The Associated Press
@AP
AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt says he's "shocked and horrified that the Israeli military would target and destroy the building housing AP’s bureau and other news organizations in Gaza." Pruitt says AP is seeking information from the Israeli government. http://apne.ws/Li8Hj4Q //

Jack Posobiec
@JackPosobiec
AP stated we must not focus on property destruction it is only the underlying grievance that matters!
APStylebook
@APStylebook
Replying to @APStylebook
Focusing on rioting and property destruction rather than underlying grievance has been used in the past to stigmatize broad swaths of people protesting against lynching, police brutality or for racial justice, going back to the urban uprisings of the 1960s. (2/5)
3:40 PM · May 15, 2021

Suddenly they realized that property destruction does matter — when it’s their own. But the destruction of the property of Americans apparently didn’t matter, when the AP had no problem with the ideology of those doing the destruction.

President Joe Biden claimed during his first State of the Union address that the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”

Moments after the transcript of the speech’s opening went public before the address, Washington Examiner chief congressional correspondent Susan Ferrechio tweeted out a photo featuring devastation from the 1983 Senate bombing. //

Rachel Bovard
@rachelbovard
I lived through 9/11. My grandfather was sent to war after Pearl Harbor. Stop disrespecting the memories of the dead you absolute hack.

Michael Beschloss
@BeschlossDC
Joe Biden is absolutely correct in saying tonight that January 6 was “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.” //

Nearly 3,000 died on Sept. 11, 2001, and more than 2,400 at Pearl Harbor. Only five died who were present at the Capitol on Jan. 6 this year, four of whom passed from natural causes, and one from a gunshot fired by a Capitol Police officer.

New York Democrat Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York helped secure clemency for the left-wing terrorists who bombed the U.S. Capitol decades earlier, granted by President Bill Clinton.

Charlie Kirk
@charliekirk11
By a 216-210 vote, the same Democrats who voted to impeach Trump for telling supporters to "peacefully march" just voted NOT to censure Maxine Waters for literally inciting violence in Minnesota.
4:46 PM · Apr 20, 2021

“As we saw last summer, some of the local governments are actually telling, not necessarily in Florida but throughout the country, basically telling these folks to stand down, telling police to stand down while cities burnt, while businesses were burnt, while people were being harmed,” the governor said. “That’s a dereliction of duty.”

He continued:

What our bill says, and what I’ll sign into law today, is that if you’re derelict in your duty as a local government, if you tell law enforcement to stand down, then you’re responsible for the damage that ensues. And if someone’s been harmed, or their property has been destroyed, then they can sue you for compensation.

The measure defines a riot as a violent demonstration involving three or more individuals engaging in activity that causes injury to others, damage to property, or threat of both. According to Newsmax, “the law also created a new second-degree felony called an ‘aggravated riot,’ when the riot has more than 25 participants, causes great bodily harm or more than $5,000 in property damage, uses or threatens to use a deadly weapon, or blocks roadways by force or threat of force.”

This per the Washington Examiner.

Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, whose death was initially believed to be caused by rioters during the Jan. 6 insurrection, succumbed to natural causes stemming from a stroke the day after the violence, according to the top medical examiner in the nation’s capital.

Francisco J. Diaz, the chief medical examiner for Washington, D.C., told the Washington Post that Sicknick died on Jan. 7 after suffering two strokes and he did not suffer an allergic reaction to any chemical irritants.

He was not pulled over for an air freshener as the family claimed, but rather, the registration of the vehicle was expired. Upon learning who the driver was, police were made aware that an outstanding warrant existed for Wright’s arrest. //

Wright was accused of aggravated robbery stemming from a 2019 incident in which he allegedly choked a woman and held her at gunpoint in an attempt to steal $820 dollars. After being released on bail, the warrant was issued and his bail revoked because Wright was in possession of an illegal gun.

Why not? There’s only one explanation. Prosecutors didn’t tell you. Antifa-friendly Attorney General Keith Ellison, who picked those multiple private attorneys from white-shoe firms to replace regular Hennepin County prosecutors, didn’t tell you. The media obviously didn’t tell you. And the threatening mob that recorded the horrific site of George Floyd handcuffed and prone on a Minneapolis street didn’t tell you. Black Lives Matter certainly didn’t tell you. This is the group that overtly lied about the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Breonna Taylor, Patrick Kimmons, Jacob Blake, and others. //

Midway through the second week of testimony, defense attorney Eric Nelson showed video from police body-worn cameras from a different angle showing Derek Chauvin’s knee was on Floyd’s shoulder and upper back, not his neck. Prosecutors immediately began changing their verbiage from “neck” to “neck area,” according to Andrew Branca of Legal Insurrection, who is listening to the trial as I am. //

Pills found in the Mercedes SUV and the police squad car, where Floyd had been for a brief time, had meth and fentanyl in them, which he was believed to have eaten to hide evidence from cops. //

Chauvin and his partner came to back up two other cops who had tussled with Floyd in an attempt to get him in the back of their squad car. It was a priority-one call for a non-compliant, suspected drug-addled perpetrator who had just fought with cops. They encountered Floyd, whom his girlfriend testified worked out every day with weights and played sports. Chauvin weighed 140 pounds and is 5’9″, compared to Floyd’s 223 pounds and 6’4″ frame. //

Testimony in cross-examination of the prosecution’s medical care training expert, Nicole MacKenzie, revealed that the hostile crowd could have contributed to Floyd’s death. How? Due to the hostility, threats, and the possibility that the crowd could get violent, the Minneapolis officers had to “load and scoot” Floyd to get to a safe area where they would meet paramedics and treat him. Paramedics arrived at the previous location and had to find where Floyd had been moved to, burning up a crucial eleven minutes.

Law enforcement officials testifying before a joint Senate hearing on Tuesday confirmed their belief that the Jan. 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol building was planned before the day of the event. This information completely annihilates the Democrats’ narrative regarding the assault on the Capitol building. //

Former Capitol police chief Steven Sund told members of the Senate that several factors led the authorities to believe that the riots were preplanned, and not spontaneous as Democrats have suggested.

“I’m able to provide you a quick overview of why I think it was a coordinated attack. One, people came specifically with equipment. You’re bringing in climbing gear to a demonstration. You’re bringing in explosives. You’re bringing in chemical spray … you’re coming prepared,” he explained. //

Acting D.C. Metropolitan Police chief Robert Contee III concurred with Sund’s assessment. He told lawmakers that he saw “hand signals being used by several of the insurrectionists,” along with communication via radio being used by others.

“A number of individuals linked to various right-wing groups, including the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, have been arrested in the weeks following the attack in connection to the violence, while the FBI’s D.C. field office is currently searching for dozens of other people present during the attack,” according to The Hill.

Joel Pollak
@joelpollak
This is what the House could not wait to investigate. Why does @SpeakerPelosi want an outside investigation instead of bipartisan panel? Because Republicans might ask questions about the official narrative that drove the snap #Impeachment.

Michael Tracey
@mtracey
According to the DOJ, the zip ties were left sitting on a table that one of the intruders happened to randomly encounter. The falsity of the initial "zip tie" narrative was the now-discredited suggestion that they indicated some kind of premeditated mass kidnapping plot https://twitter.com/RubenGallego/status/1361533417930846209

Van der Veen stressed—when addressing the issue of what Trump did or didn’t do while the riot was occurring—that the House’s single article of impeachment is for incitement and not for anything else.

“To claim that the president in any way wished, desired, or encouraged lawless or violent behavior is a preposterous and monstrous lie,” van der Veen said. “In fact, the first two messages the president sent via Twitter once the incursion of the Capitol began were ‘Stay peaceful’ and ‘No violence because we are the party of law and order.’ The gathering on Jan. 6 was supposed to be a peaceful event. Make no mistake about that.” //

Schoen complained about a lack of due process for Trump, including the House’s impeachment and the Senate’s trial.

“The hatred that the House managers and others on the left have for President Trump has driven them to skip the basic elements of due process and fairness,” Schoen said.

A bigger problem was the lack of opportunity for Trump’s lawyers to review the integrity of the evidence, he said:

On Wednesday of this week, countless news outlets repeated the Democrat talking point about the power of ‘never-before-seen’ footage. Let me ask you this: Why was this footage never seen before? Should the subject of an impeachment trial, this impeachment trial, President Trump, have the right to see the so-called new evidence against him?

More importantly, the riot and the attack on this very building was a major event that shocked and impacted all Americans. Shouldn’t the American people have seen this footage as soon as it was available? For what possible reason did the House managers withhold it from the American people and President Trump’s lawyers? For political gain? How did they get it? How are they the ones releasing it?

Wow, what coincidental timing.

The story claiming that a police officer was murdered by Trump supporters during the Capitol Hill protest on January 6 is, for all practical purposes, retracted by the NYT the day after Pres. Trump is acquitted on the impeachment charge of having instigated those protests — which were declared by Democrats and the media an “insurrection” against the government. //

Was Officer Sicknick beaten or wasn’t he? Three individuals died from medical emergencies and one person was shot and killed by Capitol Hill Police. So Officer Sicknick was the other person “killed by hostile action.”

But the truth is that the NYT no longer has any interest in the truth of what actually happened to Officer Sicknick. The story can no longer be wielded as a political weapon against Donald Trump, and that was the entire purpose of the exercise from the beginning.

Trump War Room
@TrumpWarRoom
WATCH: @MarkMeadows highlights how former President Trump requested the National Guard two days before the events of January 6, 2021. //

Meadows had previously said that in an interview on Fox with Maria Bartiromo, according to Real Clear Politics.

Even in January, that was a given, as many as 10,000 National Guard troops were told to be on the ready by the Secretary of Defense. That was a direct order from President Trump and yet here is what we see, all kinds of blame going around but yet not a whole lot of accountability. That accountability needs to rest with where it ultimately should be and that’s on Capitol Hill. //

Here’s the timeline that shows that Trump approved the guard on Jan. 3. It also shows they offered a quick reaction force from the National Guard but Bowser on Jan. 5. said that she needed no further support. //

It appears that they had the Guard then mobilized about 3:04 p.m. when the breach was about 2:20. But while it was put on availability by Trump and Christopher Miller, it wasn’t asked for, apart from limited traffic detail kind of stuff, before everything went wild on Jan. 6.

So if Trump were trying to actually incite an insurrection it doesn’t match the reality that he authorized the Guard and even encouraged 10,000 to be delegated if Miller is correct. That’s one of the things they didn’t want people to know because it would kill the whole false story that Trump never authorized the Guard

The 10 minute video the defense showed was absolutely brutal, and Rep. Maxine Waters, Schumer, Biden, and Harris took center stage in them. They also used a full two minutes of Sen. Elizabeth Warren talking about bringing “the fight” and not backing down: //

There are legal arguments being made and political arguments being made during the trial by both sides. While the minds of the senators watching are likely to remain unchanged by any of it, it was imperative that the defense team show the American people the darker, much less “tolerant” side of Democrats that the mainstream media has desperately tried to keep hidden.

Why? Law professor Jonathan Turley broke it down earlier this week:

If this trial boils down to irresponsible political rhetoric, the public could find it difficult to distinguish between the accused, the “prosecutors” and the “jury.” That is the problem with a strategy that seems focused not on proving incitement of an insurrection but some ill-defined form of political negligence.

Joel Pollak
@joelpollak
.@RepRaskin plays a deceptively edited video of Trump's Jan. 6 speech that leaves out the passage where he said people should protest "peacefully and patriotically." This is sheer demagoguery, an abuse of power by the Democrat-run House, ands should be rejected

In regards to what we actually know right now, he notes that one person died of what appears to have been a heart attack while on the phone with his wife. Another man had a stroke, and there’s no evidence he was even part of the riot that day. Another woman died after passing out, possibly being trampled by the crowd as a result.

In other words, of the five people listed as dying that day due to the riots, three of them were unquestionably accidental. Does that fact make their deaths any less tragic? Of course not, but it does provide context to the idea that a rabid mob, as bad as their behavior was, was simply murdering people without care that day.

The fourth person to die that day was Ashley Babbitt, a woman who had entered the Capitol Building that day. As Tucker notes, she’s the only one whose circumstances of death are essentially confirmed. She was shot by a police officer while attempting to crawl through a broken window. The bullet hit her in the neck and she died shortly after.

That brings us to Sicknick. His death has been heavily politicized, including an apparently false death story spread by mainstream outlets for a month. Yet, the mystery surrounding what actually happened to him remains. What is looking more likely is that his death, like the first three people discussed, was accidental.