What the January 6 Videos Will Show

Roll the tapes.

by Julie Kelly for American Greatness

The jury trial of Richard Barnett, the man famously photographed with his feet on a desk in Nancy Pelosi’s office on January 6, 2021, is underway in Washington, D.C. Nearly two years to the date of his arrest, Barnett finally had a chance to defend himself in court on multiple charges, including obstruction of an official proceeding.

But it was not the fiery, outspoken Barnett who provided the most jaw-dropping testimony in the trial so far. To the contrary, one of the government’s own witnesses confirmed under defense cross-examination that “agents provocateur” were heavily involved in instigating the events of January 6. 

Captain Carneysha Mendoza, a tactical commander for U.S. Capitol Police at the time, testified Wednesday how a group of agitators destroyed security barriers and lured people to Capitol grounds that afternoon:

Defense Counsel Brad Geyer: Isn’t it true that you had a lot of people, a large quantity of people walking down two streets that dead-ended at the Capitol?

Mendoza: Yes, sir.

Geyer: And would it be fair to say that at least at some of the leading edges of that crowd, they contained bad people or provocateurs; is that fair? 

Mendoza: It’s fair.

Geyer: Dangerous people?

Mendoza: Yes.

Geyer: Violent people?

Mendoza: Yes.

Geyer: Highly trained violent people?

Mendoza: Yes.

Geyer: Highly trained violent people who work and coordinate together?

Mendoza: Yes

It was a stunning admission, representing the first time a top law enforcement official stated under oath (to my knowledge) that a coordinated, experienced group of agitators engaged in much of the mischief early that day. Under further questioning, Mendoza acknowledged those same individuals “pushed through barriers, removed barriers, threw barriers over the side, removed fencing, and eased the flow of people into places where they shouldn’t be.” This happened around 1:00 p.m., the same time the joint session of Congress convened to debate the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Hiding the pivotal role of still unidentified—and uncharged—agitators on January 6 is just one reason why the government has successfully sought to conceal thousands of hours of footage captured by the Capitol police’s security system before, during, and after the protest. 

As I explained in May 2021, Capitol police immediately designated roughly 14,000 hours of surveillance video as “security information” that should not be released to the public.

Thomas DiBiase, general counsel for Capitol police, the technical owner of the video trove, signed an affidavit in March 2021 objecting to the widespread dissemination of footage “related to the attempted insurrection.” DiBiase claimed the agency wanted to prevent “those who might wish to attack the Capitol again” from accessing interior views of the building.

The Department of Justice subsequently labeled the footage as “highly sensitive government material” subject to strict protective orders in court proceedings. Defendants must comply with onerous rules before viewing any surveillance video associated with their case.

There are, of course, exceptions for any party helping to enforce the “insurrection” narrative. For example, the House committee handling Donald Trump’s post-January 6 impeachment was allowed to use portions of the super-secret reel. So, too, was HBO in producing its January 6 documentary. The January 6 select committee aired extensive if highly selective surveillance footage during their televised performances.

And that brief clip of Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) running in a hallway on January 6? It was clearly an image intended to mock his alleged cowardice that day. And, of course, it was Capitol surveillance video.

If it’s safe to place the video in the hands of Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the biggest deceiver in Congress, and random HBO film producers, then it’s safe to place all the footage in the hands of the American people. Which is why calls by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) to fully release the surveillance video are a welcome, and necessary, step in providing a complete account about the events of January 6 to the public.

(The Committee on House Administration, now under Republican control, is one of two congressional committees with access to the full library of video.)

The recordings, Gaetz said in an interview this week, “would give more full context to that day rather than the cherry-picked moments that the January 6 committee tried to use to inflame and further divide our country.”

That demand undoubtedly will be met with fierce resistance by the same lawmakers, government agencies, and media organizations incessantly bleating about the need to “tell the truth” about what happened before and on January 6.

So, what exactly will the tapes reveal? 

The footage, which captured the inside and outside of the building, will show how many agitators and/or federal assets were staged at various locations early in the day. Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) might finally get an answer to the question that FBI Director Christopher Wray refused to answer during a congressional hearing last year—whether FBI informants disguised as Trump supporters were planted inside the building prior to the initial breach.

To that end, the video could show who instructed two men how to open the two-ton Columbus Doors on the east side of the Capitol Building, creating an access point for hordes of protesters. Ditto for entry points at other locations.

Will the video identify the individuals who erected the “gallows” featuring an orange noose allegedly built to “hang” Vice President Mike Pence? Just like the identity of the suspect who allegedly planted the pipe bombs at the DNC and RNC, no one has been identified or charged with constructing that stage on government property—another unanswered question the footage will answer.

The public undoubtedly will be shocked to see police officers from Capitol police and D.C. Metropolitan Police Departments viciously attacking crowds of people assembled outside the Capitol. Mendoza’s testimony also confirmed that Capitol police officers used nonlethal “munitions” on hundreds of individuals beginning shortly after 1:00 p.m. Weaponry included pepper balls—projectiles containing a chemical irritant shot from a launcher similar to a paintball gun—gas, rubber bullets, and flashbangs, a less-than-lethal grenade that likely caused the fatal heart attacks of two Trump supporters that afternoon.

Not only will the public see what happened to those two men, Kevin Greeson and Benjamin Phillips, but they will also see evidence of the numerous, serious injuries inflicted on dozens of people, including children and elderly women, at the hands of police. Are Americans prepared to see how law enforcement handled the dead bodies of Ashli Babbitt and Rosanne Boyland?

It will be tough to watch.

More importantly, the footage will indicate which cameras were disabled before the protest. The government’s claim that security cameras are not installed outside the Columbus Doors is questionable at best. A full comparison between the Capitol’s closed-circuit television system and the cameras operable on January 6 is a must.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Thursday endorsed Gaetz’s calls to release the footage. “I think the American public should actually see all what happened,” McCarthy told reporters. “Yes, I’m engaged to do that.”

If McCarthy follows through on his promise, the world will see the biggest inside job—an actual coup—in U.S. history unfold before their eyes. Not only is it necessary to expose the truth of January 6 but to exonerate innocent Americans whose lives have been destroyed in the aftermath.

Roll the tapes.

X22, And we Know, and more- Jan 13

 

Feels like that eerie paranoia I get about an actor I know of from something I watch in the present day becoming the next 'died suddenly' tragedy is starting to return given the events of this week. 😰

Here's tonight's news:

So Is This How They Get Rid of Biden?

posted by Larry O’Conner at TownhallVIP

Let's face it. Even the Democrats were surprised Republicans didn't do better in the last midterms. Chuck Schumer staying in control of the US Senate and Kevin McCarthy only having a handful of seats for his majority in the House was interpreted by many as a victory for President Joe Biden. In reality, Joe Biden had little if nothing to do with the midterm elections, evidenced by his almost complete absence from the campaign trail except for a few appearances for his similarly-cognitively-challenged soulmate John Fetterman. But Team Biden, craven political sociopaths that they are, immediately claimed complete and total victory in November, thus setting the stage for his triumphant announcement for re-election.

Indeed, his holiday junket to the US Virgin Islands was reported to be the final strategy session for his big re-election announcement.

If Biden is to run in 2024, he needs to make that clear within the first couple of months of 2023. If he lets his re-election plans hang in the balance much longer than that, he's handcuffing any potential candidates who might want to run in his absence. Putting together a campaign infrastructure, committed donors, and a 50-state election team doesn't happen overnight, and right now, Harris and Newsom and Buttigieg and perennial crazy socialist Bernie Sanders are respectfully waiting in the wings.

Now, let's be clear: Joe Biden running again in 2024 is the last thing most Democrats want. 

Let's face it, it's the last thing they wanted in 2020. But after their disastrous primary season, with all of their favorites dropping out like flies because they weren't ready for prime time (I'm looking at you, Beto and Pocahontas), Biden became the consensus pick everyone literally settled on. The whole country was forced to settle with Joe Biden because his one redeeming quality (we are told) is that he didn't tweet mean things like the bad, orange man.

The plan was pretty clear. Let the tottering old fool live in the White House and play this thing out with Nancy and Chuck doing all the heavy lifting in Congress. All old Joe will have to do is sign the bills put before him and look good in the suit whenever he's called upon to act like a president.

Then after Republicans demolish Democrats in the 2022 midterms, the party elders find a way to get Joe to bow out as a one-term president. He had done his duty by getting rid of Trump and setting the country back on course where it's supposed to be headed…to deep state socialism rewarding the elite few in Washington positioned to benefit from the left's new authoritarianism.

All that changed in November.

Now, Dr. Jill and the handful of true Biden believers actually think he's capable of running for a second term, screwing up Team Obama's grand vision.

So, we hit the second week of January, right when the re-election plan should be forming, and somebody finds classified documents in a closet of Biden's long-forgotten and irrelevant think tank. (Whoever invented the English language never conceived the words "Biden" and "think tank" would be used in the same breath.)

And then, a second wave of classified documents is found, and before you know it, people start expressing very real concerns.

Oh, let's be real, the concerns have nothing to do with the protection of classified documents and state secrets, and the concerns have nothing to do with a craven political animal with his political junkie family grubbing Chinese money every chance they have, thus prostituting our national security for the next big crack binge.

The biggest "concern" with Biden's classified document debacle is that it takes a major weapon that was supposed to be used against Donald Trump away from the left and the Justice Department.

Even those suburban moms who don't like Trump's mean tweets can recognize the hypocrisy and double standards involved with criminalizing President Trump's possession of his presidential documents but giving Biden a pass for doing the same... No, actually, for doing worse. Trump did nothing wrong, keeping his presidential documents in a secured location and engaging in an ongoing dialogue with the National Archives over the disposition of those documents. Biden, on the other hand, had at least two caches of classified documents in two different unsecured locations. 

It isn't really a double standard since Biden's recklessness is palpable and the accusations against Trump are, at best, debatable. 

It's clear that if the left is going to have any ounce of credibility going after Trump for the Mar-a-Lago documents, they have to get rid of the Biden problem, and the easiest way to get rid of the Biden problem is to get rid of Biden.

So are we really witnessing Team Obama cleaning up its Biden mess to make way for its next hand-picked proxy?

Stay tuned.

The Russian Twitter Bots Story Is A Study In Media’s ‘Lie, Set The Narrative, Then Quietly Backtrack’ Playbook

The three-step process is regime media’s MO: spread a false claim, crush dissent, then admit the truth once the news cycle achieves its purpose.

Elle Purnell reporting for The Federalist

The Washington Post admitted Monday that “Russian trolls on Twitter had little influence on 2016 voters” — years after the Post and other corporate media water-carriers pushed the false story that former President Donald Trump’s election was illegitimate, due in part to Russian interference via bots on Twitter targeting U.S. social media users. The admission cites a New York University study that found “there was no relationship between exposure to the Russian foreign influence campaign and changes in attitudes, polarization, or voting behavior.”

Media treatment of the non-story followed a predictable, three-step process that’s become the propaganda press’s MO: Spread a false claim, control the narrative while crushing dissent with bogus “fact checks,” and then admit the truth only after the news cycle has achieved its intended purpose.

How the Russian Bots Story Followed the Playbook

In 2016, then-Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook launched the conspiracy theory that then-candidate Trump was in cahoots with Russia and colluding together to steal the 2016 election. One dossier full of bunk allegations commissioned by the Clinton campaign later, the entire media establishment, in tandem with a politicized intelligence community, was running with the Russia collusion hoax.

One of the many conspiracy theories thrown at the wall was that Russia was influencing U.S. voters via social media, including through armies of “bot” accounts. As my colleague Joy Pullmann has noted, U.S. intelligence agencies propelled that claim with an “intelligence community assessment” on Jan. 6, 2017, “signed off publicly by the FBI, National Security Agency, and CIA concluding that Trump’s election was boosted by Russian social media content farms.”

Regime media ran with it the same narrative before and after that assessment that turned out to be false:

The Washington Post: “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say,” November 2016.

Politico Magazine: “How Russia Wins an Election” (spoiler: “the Kremlin’s troll army swarmed the web to spread disinformation and undermine trust in the electoral system,” the piece says), December 2016.

NPR: “How Russian Twitter Bots Pumped Out Fake News During The 2016 Election,” April 2017.

New York Times: “The Fake Americans Russia Created to Influence the Election,” September 2017.

Mother Jones: “Twitter Bots Distorted the 2016 Election — Including Many Likely From Russia,” October 2017.

The “Twitter Files” revealed just weeks ago that media pressure on this story, combined with threats from elected Democrats, were successful in getting Twitter to obey U.S. intelligence agency requests for information suppression, even though Twitter executives couldn’t find any evidence of coordinated Russian disinformation campaigns on their platform.

Hilariously, Tim Starks, the same writer who wrote WaPo’s admission this week that Russian bots had “little influence” on the election, had written a 2019 piece for Politico titled “Russia’s manipulation of Twitter was far vaster than believed.”

While media outlets were running cover for the story, they slapped “fact” “checks” on those who challenged the narrative, including the U.S. president. And (you guessed it) they cited the intel community’s Jan. 6, 2017 report as evidence — the same one now called into question by The Washington Post’s latest admission.

Those allegations, along with several other now-debunked claims about Trump-Russia collusion, were the basis for a special counsel investigation and a presidential impeachment, all part of a narrative aimed at kneecapping Trump’s time in office. The Mueller investigation even indicted a Russian bot farm for election interference.

Only now — after Trump has been successfully hounded out of the White House, now that almost half of likely voters have been convinced that Russia probably “changed the outcome of the 2016 presidential election,” and everyone else has forgotten about the story — does The Washington Post come around to admitting that those troublesome Russian bots didn’t really do much after all.

5 Other Times Corporate Media Followed the Same Strategy

The Twitter bots story was just one of many instances of regime media running with the same strategy. They do it almost daily, but here are just five of the most egregious examples in recent memory.

Covid: From masks to lockdowns to vaccines, we were hounded by media bullhorns for years about the untouchable efficacy of every recommendation the “experts” tossed our way. Those who resisted, in person or on social media, were vilified and censored. Workers lost jobs, kids fell behind in school, non-Covid medical patients were denied potentially life-saving treatments and surgeries, neighbors shunned each other, and people were forced to get experimental injections they didn’t want.

Only after the reigning narrative had been used to quash its intended targets for two years did its messengers admit the truths the rest of us had been saying from the beginning.

Inflation: Despite the obvious pitfalls of Covid-era decisions to shut down the entire nation’s economy and then hand out free money to everyone screwed over by government lockdowns, regime media insisted that inflation wasn’t happening under the newly minted Biden administration. CNBC told us to “Ignore ‘hysterical people’ — inflation is not here to stay, economist says.”

“Inflation isn’t a real danger,” insisted WaPo. “The Inflation Scare Doesn’t Match Reality,” said Forbes. The New York Times offered “179 Reasons You Probably Don’t Need to Panic About Inflation.”

Now that we’re undoubtedly experiencing the worst inflation in four decades, the talking point has changed to “actually, inflation is good.”

The Steele dossier: After British agent Christopher Steele was hired by the Clinton campaign’s opposition research firm to write now-debunked rumors about Trump in what became known as the Steele dossier, Steele shopped the story out to media outlets, which ran with the hoax. The New York Times even got a Pulitzer for it. The information in the dossier, which corporate media coverage helped legitimize, was used by the Obama FBI to obtain warrants to spy on the Trump campaign. Journalists who questioned the concocted narrative were called conspiracy theorists.

After the damage to the Trump campaign (and eventually, the Trump administration) was done, corporate media admitted, in a laughable understatement, that the “Arrest of Steele dossier source forces some news outlets to reexamine their coverage.”

Irreversible surgeries for gender dysphoria: Corporate media helped fuel the epidemic of sexual confusion giving rise to disfiguring surgeries and hormone “treatments” for people, including children, with gender dysphoria. Outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post pounced on anyone who challenged the dogma that pumping teenagers with off-label hormones and dicing up their genitalia was a totally safe and normal thing to be celebrated. People like The Federalist’s own John Daniel Davidson are still locked out of their social media accounts for telling the truth about the transgender craze.

Sandwiched between op-eds decrying critics of transgenderism, The Times allows no one but itself to wonder, belatedly: “Is There a Cost?“

Hunter Biden laptop: When the New York Post published damning revelations about the Biden family’s overseas business dealings shortly before the 2020 presidential election, legacy outlets smeared the story as “disinformation” and a Russian info op.

“Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say,” parroted Politico. CBS’s Lesley Stahl called the laptop “discredited.” NPR told readers, “we don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories.” The Post and others who shared the story had their social media accounts frozen or their posts taken down.

A year and a half later, The New York Times quietly admitted — in the 24th paragraph of an article about Hunter Biden’s taxes — that “a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop … [was] authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation.” By then, the 2020 election was safely in Joe Biden’s hands.

Don’t think those six instances are the only times regime media have run the same playbook. By now, it’s their standard practice.

CNN Cuts Away From Speaker McCarthy's First Weekly Presser as He Blasts Media Hypocrisy

Mike Miller reporting for RedState 

In this episode of As the Tables Turn…

What a difference a new Speaker of the House makes. Newly-elected Speaker Kevin McCarthy used his first weekly press conference on Thursday to eviscerate the hypocritical “mainstream” media, while blistering serial-lying Rep. Adam Schiff (Calif.) and scandal-riddled Rep. Eric Swalwell (Calif.) in the process. How bad was it? CNN — The Most Trusted Name in News™ — cut to regular programming.

After taking several questions about embattled New York Republican Rep. George Santos, who faces calls from both parties to resign after he was caught in multiple lies, McCarthy turned the tables on reporters, asking why they refused to ask similar questions about embattled Democrat lawmakers.

The festivities began with a question about McCarthy’s decision to remove Swalwell and Schiff from the House Intelligence Committee, and Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) from the House Foreign Affairs Committee, which he promised to do, months before his election as Speaker.

“You said you’re going to let Democrats appoint their own members to the committee, but you’ve also indicated you’re not going to let —” a reporter began. Game on. McCarthy cut her off:

I was very clear early on. Let me phrase something very direct to you. If you got the briefing I got from the FBI, you wouldn’t have Swalwell on any committee. And you’re going to tell me other Democrats couldn’t fill that slot? He cannot get a security clearance in the private sector — so would you like to give him a government clearance?

Crickets, as McCarthy quickly pivoted to his left to face other reporters:

You asked me questions about Santos. Did you ask the questions about Swalwell? Not only was he getting a clearance; he was inside an Intel Committee. He had more information than the majority of all the members. Did you ever raise that issue?

Again, crickets. The Speaker continued:

No, but you should have. You’re going to tell me there’s 200 other Democrats that couldn’t fill that slot? But they kept him on it? The only way that they even knew it came forward was when they went to nominate him to the Intel Committee — and then the FBI came and told the leadership then, ‘He’s got a problem.’ And they kept him on. That jeopardized all of us.

And Schiffty?

Adam Schiff openly lied to the American public—

CNN then cut away and began “analyzing” the Speaker’s comments.

Reality must really bite for CNN these days.

The Bottom Line

Yep, the tables have been turned on CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd, and a host of other liberal media lapdogs. And in this case, we see The Most Trusted Name in News™ cut away from legitimate news — solely because the story playing out before their horrified eyes was true — and their lapdog media brethren were to blame.

Latest Biden Document Cache Makes Yesterday’s Media Excuses Look Even Dumber

The media issued audible and written defenses of the president for the same behavior they eviscerated Trump for.

Jordan Boyd reporting for The Federalist

Not unlike his predecessor, President Joe Biden seems to like to keep important information close to home.

A new trove of classified materials was discovered this week in a “locked” garage and at least one room of Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware mansion. Biden confessed to reporters on Thursday that most of the sensitive documents recovered at his home from his years as vice president were kept next to his Corvette until they were found in December.

Instead of launching an hours-long raid at the sitting president’s swanky $2 million property as the FBI did when they discovered former President Donald Trump had classified documents in his private residence, Attorney General Merrick Garland reported that the FBI peacefully retrieved the materials from Biden’s home.

Similarly, the classified Obama-era documents discovered in November, shortly before the midterm elections, in a closet at Biden’s Washington, D.C.-based Penn Biden Center were quietly retrieved and turned over to the National Archives. Word of the classified materials recovered from Biden wasn’t revealed to the public until months later.

All things considered, the document scandal ranks low on Biden’s list of self-inflicted crises over the last two years, as Federalist Senior Legal Correspondent Margot Cleveland noted in her coverage earlier today.

The media’s compulsion to cover for the regime, however, propelled audible and written defenses of the president for the same behavior they eviscerated Trump for.

All week, corporate media preoccupied themselves with outlining how the Trump and Biden document discoveries were marked by several “clear distinctions.” Biden only possessed a “small number” of classified documents compared to Trump, media argued, automatically making his offense much smaller than the Republican’s.

Trump likely broke the law, publications like The New York Times and talking heads on MSNBC suggested. Biden, however, is being painted as blameless since his team agreed to “cooperate” with his own administration’s DOJ and National Archives — just not Republican investigators.

Another distinction suggested by the press, even before the latest round of documents was reported, was that Trump’s storing documents at his private residence, a secure property protected by the Secret Service, was somehow far worse than Biden leaving documents in a closet in a busy public office building in Washington D.C.

“The Biden papers were said to be stored in a locked closet. The Mar-a-Lago classified documents were found in 12 boxes piled in a storage room, as well as in Trump’s office,” one opinion contributor argued in the pages of The Hill.

“Another difference between the Trump & Biden doc cases is the nature of the storage. Biden’s docs were discovered in a locked closet. Trump kept his docs in an unsecured location at Mar-a-Lago (a known target of foreign intel ops) & refused to secure them after DOJ asked them to,” a columnist for The Independent tweeted.

Using the “where” to distinguish between Trump and Biden’s document problems was a bad argument from the start. Now that Biden is fending off criticism for keeping classified materials in his home, that weak excuse is null and void.

When the FBI launched a surprise raid on Mar-a-Lago, ostensibly over classified materials, the media used the “where” to justify their ongoing persecution of Trump. But when classified materials were discovered in Biden’s private residence, Biden and his allies in the media lamely insisted the documents were safe and secure in a “locked” garage.

The true distinction between Trump and Biden’s document snafus, of course, lies not in how, when, or where the documents were discovered but in the National Archives’ lack of cooperation with Trump.

Will that be considered by the special counsel, handpicked by the same guy who authorized the raid on Trump? Likely not.

Regardless, the corporate media will keep shilling for Biden, even as the so-called “clear distinctions” between his and Trump’s behavior become further muddled.