Insurrection

click to view APNEWS Photo Essay

As only the Left calls January 6^th, 2021, in Washington, DC an Insurrection or Sedition, I will refrain from using either of those words, I will not begin my essay with a partisan conclusion.

I want to talk facts – incontrovertible facts, facts that we all agree on – not conclusions.  Only if the facts demand a specific conclusion will I travel that road.

So, here goes.

January 6^th, 2021, Washington, DC

This time and place in space-time was not a random time and place.  It was the time and the place where Congress would officially certify what the Electoral College had already certified, that Joe Biden was our president-elect.

The election results in each state and the District of Columbia were certified by December 9^th.  The count was 306 for Biden-Harris and 232 for Trump-Pence.  The presidential electors formally cast their votes for president and vice president on December 14^th, and their votes were to be officially counted by Congress on January 6, 2021.

click to view NPR Photo Essay

Why did thousands of Americans travel to Washington, DC on that day?

Congress’s official count of the Electoral College happens every four years.  It is never an event that draws Americans to visit DC.  This time, however, President Trump had sent out an invitation to all who would listen.   To do exactly what?  To prevent Joe Biden being certified by Congress as president-elect, and to install President Trump instead.  To “Stop the Steal”?  Not really, they knew who won the election.

How many Americans accepted Trump’s invitation? How many attended his rally?

Rally organizers told the National Park Service that they anticipated 30,000 people would attend.  Law enforcement said the crowd size ahead of the protest was possibly as much as 80,000, according to then-Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy.  Perhaps as many as 120,000 citizens actually showed up.  The crowd size at the rally was at least 10,000, according to the Associated Press.

That some were locals who joined the crowd out of interest or support is highly likely.  Nevertheless, one may rightly assume that most of the crowd was there for the reason that we all understand: to hear their president address them and to protest (or prevent) Congress’s certification of Joe Biden as president-elect.

Antifa?

No.

How many citizens walked to the Capitol after the rally?

It is an interesting question, not easy to determine, but not a necessary number for our investigation.

How many citizens actually entered the Capitol building?

1200.  I have seen numbers as high as 2500 but it doesn’t matter.  So, somewhere between 90% and 99% of the assembled crowd participated in peaceful protest.  However misguided the motives of the vast majority of the assembled crowd may have been for traveling to DC, in the end they stopped short of peaceful protest.  This essay bids them a fond farewell.

Some have called it trespass.

Breaking and entering and trespassing are similar but distinct crimes.  Breaking and entering generally involves the use of force, however slight, to gain entry into a building or residence.  Trespass only requires an unauthorized entry onto someone else’s property, with or without forced entry.  Breaking and entering is often a felony.  Trespassing is usually a misdemeanor.

Those who entered the Capitol building that day entered a government building that was closed and locked-down because of the important job that Congress had to perform that day.  They broke through barriers, they pushed past Capitol police, they broke windows and they destroyed sturdy doors.  This surely was not mere trespass!  And those who followed the leaders will be tried for the same crimes, criminal breaking and entering.  If any get away with criminal trespass, it will be for political reasons, not legal ones.  If a thief breaks into your home, he will probably receive five years in the slammer.  Breaking and entering the Capitol on this day surely deserves a stiffer sentence.  Was it an Insurrection?  Were those who broke into the Capitol guilty of Sedition?  Does it matter what we call it?  Historians will figure it out.

Hang Mike Pence!

Was a scaffold and a noose attempted murder?  Or theater?  It seems to me a caricature of Jim Crow “justice.”  Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi were public targets of this mob’s anger.  But I have my doubts that this mob would have done what they threatened had they caught either one.  We may contemplate the pleasure of murdering someone whom we hate, but most of us will stop short of actually doing the deed.   It will be sufficient that we put the fear of God on our enemies.  Which may or may not be a crime – with an unknown penalty.

Pence Divorces Trump  <---  click

The Costs  <--- click

Death(s): 5 deaths (1 from gunshot, 1 from drug overdose, 3 from natural causes), suicide of four responding officers.

Injuries: Unknown number of rioters, including at least five hospitalized.  At least 138 police officers (73 Capitol Police officers, 65 Metropolitan Police Department officers), including at least 15 hospitalized.

Damage: Extensive physical damage; offices and chambers vandalized and ransacked; property stolen; more than $30 million for repairs and security measures.

Charged with crimes: 761

Pardons

Donald Trump was stingy with presidential pardons (237 vs. Obama’s 1927 and FDR’s 3687).  I do not say this to disparage him, as I am not a fan of presidential pardons.

But Trump got lots of press coverage about pardons, and the reason was that he was always Trump, putting himself first in all things.  He began to talk openly about pardoning himself as early as a year into his presidency.

In the last days of his presidency, Trump pardoned Roger Stone (political hack), Paul Manafort (campaign), Charles Kushner (father of Jared) and Stephen Bannon (strategist).  He didn’t try to pardon himself or family members, nor did he pardon those who stormed the Capitol on January 6^th.

Now (January 28^th, 2022), Trump said at his big Texas rally:

"Another thing we'll do, and so many people have been asking me about it, if I run and if I win, we will treat those people from Jan. 6 fairly," Trump said to applause.  "We will treat them fairly.  And if it requires pardons we will give them pardons.  Because they are being treated so unfairly." 

You have to wonder just what those who have been “treated so unfairly” think about this promise.  “He had two fucking weeks (January 6^th to Inauguration Day, January 20^th in 2021) to pardon us before the end of his term in office, before we were thrown in the slammer.  This gathering (January 6^th) was HIS idea.  And he can’t deliver on this promise for at least another three years!  How many of us will still be in the can by then?  More than a year ago, while he still had the time, everyone was wondering out loud if he would pardon us before he left office.  But no!  I nearly forgot: he betrayed us from the gitgo!  Fuck Trump!”

Maybe they still love him.

Conspiracy

A conspiracy is any “agreement between two or more people to commit an illegal act, along with an intent to achieve the agreement's goal.  Most U.S. jurisdictions also require an overt act toward furthering the agreement.  An overt act is a statutory requirement, not a constitutional one.”   Based on this, the deeds on January 6^th, 2021, were surely a conspiracy.  Those who traveled to DC knew why they were going, even if the vast majority of them turned around before doing anything illegal.  “If you are charged with conspiring to commit a felony, you could face a sentence of life in prison.  Many federal conspiracy charges carry a 5, 10 or 20-year mandatory minimum prison sentence.”  How guilty any of them are depends on the damage that they caused and the laws that they broke.  But one thing is sure: at the head of this conspiracy was one man and the words that he spoke to millions of his followers.

Coda

A lot of this day’s events were theater.  But the plan was not theater.  The plan was to subvert the will of the people, to undo the legal results of a free and fair election, indeed to test the U.S. Constitution.  Were the day’s events acts of treason (the violent overthrow of a legal government <that was not yet in power>)?  Those who breached the Capitol building may have been acting toward that end; but they did NOT overthrow the government or stop the lawful transition of power from a cry-baby president to the rightful president-elect.

What do I know for sure?  The great majority of those who traveled to Washington, DC broke no laws.  They stopped short of breaking into the Capitol building.  Those who did violate the Capitol did not succeed in their ends.  They did cause millions of dollars of damage to the Capitol building, five deaths, many more suicides.  January 6^th, 2021 will forever be a day of national shame.  Had they succeeded in their aims, it would have been treason.  Had they succeeded in their aim – overthrowing a lawful government –  no one would have been charged with breaking any law as their man would still be president, or dictator for life.

Treason?   Insurrection?  Sedition?  Whatever you choose to call it, there was a conspiracy, it had a very definite and illegal objective, and it had a leader.  If those who fought the fight can be charged, found guilty and be imprisoned, surely their leader must bear an even greater share of legal responsibility.

Addendum: Sunday, 02/06/2022

1)

The latest from the DOJ.

2)

RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel says January 6 committee is a 'Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens who engaged in legitimate political discourse.'

The Republican Party has officially become the party of George Orwell’s doublethink, where war is peace and truth is a lie.  Will our democracy survive?  That is in the hands of Republican voters: will they go along with their party’s whole-hearted dedication to lies?  Beginning with, the Election was Stolen.

According to Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, doublethink is:

To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself—that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word—doublethink—involved the use of doublethink.

3)

IAmPoliticsGirl has her say

4)

The Washington Post detests Donald Trump.   But that doesn't mean that they would tell falsehoods (that would undermine their reputation as an important news organization).  Here.