Tag: washington dc

Jan 6 Chairman Bennie Thompson says using the 5th Amendment implies guilt

Representative Bennie Thompson, who is the chairman of the January 6 committee in the US House of Representatives, said on Thursday that when a defendant uses their right to remain silent under the 5th Amendment, “in some instances, that says you are part and parcel guilty to what occurred.”

Thompson made the remarks to Rachel Maddow, who said it was “a fascinating pivot point in this investigation.” Thompson’s belief that a defendant’s use of their 5th Amendment rights infers guilt upon that person is not upheld by the Supreme Court.

In Griffin v. California in 1965, the Supreme Court upheld that if a defendant uses their 5th Amendment right to not incriminate themselves, neither the state, nor judge, may use the use of that right to tell the jury that silence is evidence of guilt.

Thompson, from his position as chairman of the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s special committee on the events of January 6th, has no basis to make this claim and this claim could indicate that the committee is already biased against those they have subpoenaed in their case. Pelosi alone appointed all members of the committee without input from the minority leader Kevin McCarthy.

Thompson made the remarks as the committee has issued subpoenas to more and more people who the committee believes is responsible for what they have termed an “insurrection” on January 6, when some Trump supporters left a rally at the ellipse in Washington, DC, and went to the Capitol.

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Jan. 6 Panel Admits Subpoena Contained Misinformation, but Hasn’t Updated Public

An investigator with the House of Representatives’ select committee investigating the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol breach has admitted privately that the panel erroneously asserted a former New York City police commissioner was in Washington on Jan. 5, but the assertion remains on the committee’s website.

Bernard Kerik, the former commissioner, was subpoenaed earlier this month by the panel, formally known as the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.

In announcing the subpoena, the panel, which is primarily comprised of Democrats after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) rejected several Republican picks, claimed that Kerik “reportedly participated” in a Jan. 5 meeting at the Willard Hotel in Washington.

In the subpoena itself (pdf), the panel cited three sources for its claim: the book “Peril,” penned by two Washington Post reporters, and two articles published by the paper.

The problem? None of the sources actually say Kerik was at the reported meeting.

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Family of Rosanne Boyland Who was KILLED on January 6th Is DENIED HER FULL AUTOPSY REPORT – Speak Out for First Time and Plead for Government Investigation

The family of a woman killed on January 6th, allegedly by police, has been denied her full autopsy report by the DC Medical Examiner’s office and The Department of Justice.

The Government of the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department also denied the family of Rosanne Boyland the video footage they have showing her death after her father filed a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain it.

See the family’s heartbreaking request and denial here: Freedom of Information Act Request and Denial

The Gateway Pundit exclusively reported on and uncovered the truth about the death of Trump supporter Rosanne Boyland, who died at the Capitol on January 6th.

Thanks to our investigative reporting, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) grilled attorney general Merrick Garland about Boyland’s death and the video we exposed that shows her being beaten and possibly killed by a DC Police Officer on Capitol Steps. Gohmert asked Attorney General Merrick Garland if a determination was ever made to the DC Metro Police Officer who struck Rosanne Boyland repeatedly in the head with a rod before she died. Garland then proceeded to lie to the nation in front of the House Judiciary Committee and say “he believed there was an investigation.” That is false. The Boyland family has since contacted the Department Justice and were told there was no such investigation.

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The Jan. 6 Mystery Pipe Bombs: Why Were Trump Supporters’ Vehicles Searched and Occupants Arrested and Detained but Antifa Operatives with Guns Allowed to Leave Town?

On January 5th a still unidentified suspect planted two pipe bombs at the RNC and DNC DC Headquarters in Washington DC the night before the massive January 6th rally at the Ellipse in Washington DC.  The bombs were reportedly safely detonated by a, FBI  bomb squad on January 6.

The FBI offered a reward of $50,000 for information on the individual who planted pipe bombs at the Republican and Democrat headquarters in Washington DC on January 6th.

The FBI pointed out the expensive shoes and purple backpack of the suspected bomber.

Despite all of the cameras in Washington DC the FBI has been unable to identify the alleged pipe bomber to this day.

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Conspiracy Theory or Conspiracy In Fact?

Last week, Fox Nation aired “Patriot Purge,” Tucker Carlson’s three-part series on the January 6 protest in Washington, D.C. No sooner had the program been announced than the regime media went nuts. The former conservative Anne Applebaum, writing for The Atlantic, said it was a “sinister” piece of anti-American propaganda. NPR described it as an “off the rails” “conspiracy theory.” CNN said that it promulgated a “false narrative” that was “politically, historically and logically confused.” 

Translation: Carlson disputes the accepted narrative according to which the protest at the Capitol was an “insurrection” aimed at undermining “our democracy.” Ergo Carlson must be wrong. Cue the heated rhetoric and wheel out that all-purpose epithet “conspiracy theorist.” 

As a side note, I have always wondered why people of a certain ilk believe that uttering the phrase “conspiracy theory” or charging someone with being a “conspiracy theorist” disposes of any argument. George Orwell noted that the term “fascist” had been rendered nearly meaningless by its promiscuous application to all manner of things or people one didn’t like. “Conspiracy theory” is on even shakier ground, because in addition to make-believe conspiracies, the world is full of plenty of real conspiracies about which one needn’t theorize but simply observe and describe. 

When the Soothsayer came to warn Caesar about the Ides of March, he wasn’t warning about a conspiracy theory. He was warning about a conspiracy in fact, something that Caesar came to appreciate personally when the fateful day rolled around. Caesar to the Soothsayer: “The ides of March are come.” Soothsayer: “Ay, Caesar; but not gone.”

Carlson’s thesis in “Patriot Purge” is that the extraordinary law-enforcement and intelligence apparatus that had been assembled and deployed to battle terrorism in the wake of 9/11 had not been dismantled after Osama bin Laden was killed. On the contrary, it has been maintained intact and is now being deployed against American citizens who have the temerity to challenge the dominant narrative about the perfidy of Donald Trump and the nature of the January 6 protest. (That Merrick Garland, the attorney general of the United States, should issue a memo directing the FBI, together with state and local law enforcement agencies, to treat parents who challenge their local school boards over the teaching of critical race theory as “domestic terrorists” shows how elastic that enemies list can be.)

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Lindsey Graham Reportedly Called for Officers to Murder Jan. 6 Protesters: ‘You’ve Got Guns… Use Them’

Senator Lindsey Graham reportedly called for law enforcement to murder Trump supporters who were protesting on January 6th.

The shocking allegation was mentioned in an article in the Washington Post about the timeline of events on that day.

In a portion about how lawmakers had to shelter in place when protesters breached the building, the paper describes Graham urging the Senate’s sergeant-at-arms to use guns against the members of his own party.

The Senate and House leaders also had been evacuated by Capitol Police and taken to an undisclosed location, but many lawmakers remained in their chambers for a few minutes before they were led to safety in the Hart Senate Office Building. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham was irate that senators were forced to flee their own chamber. He yelled at the Senate sergeant-at-arms. “What are you doing? Take back the Senate! You’ve got guns. Use them.” The South Carolina senator was adamant. “We give you guns for a reason,” he repeated. “Use them.”

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‘Fed-Protected’ Man Identified As Mystery Instigator Of J6 Capitol Breach

In a House hearing on Thursday, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) questioned AG Merrick Garland about a mysterious man, Ray Epps, instructing protesters to enter the US Capitol building on January 5, and who later shepherded crowds towards the Capitol on January 6.

The story of the mystery man, Ray Epps, featured in Rep. Massie’s video above is in fact far more shocking than even the good Congressman implies in the hearing. It’s a story so strange, and so scandalous at every turn, that it threatens to shatter the entire official narrative of the “Capitol Breach” and expose yet another dimension of proactive federal involvement in the so-called “insurrection” of January 6th. 

If Revolver News’s previous reporting points to a proactive role of the federal government in relation to the conspiracy cases against Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, the Ray Epps story that follows suggests a similar, yet more egregious, explicit, direct and immediate degree of federal involvement in the breach of the Capitol itself.

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Civil Liberties Are Being Trampled by Exploiting “Insurrection” Fears. Congress’s 1/6 Committee May Be the Worst Abuse Yet.

When a population is placed in a state of sufficiently grave fear and anger regarding a perceived threat, concerns about the constitutionality, legality and morality of measures adopted in the name of punishing the enemy typically disappear. The first priority, indeed the sole priority, is to crush the threat. Questions about the legality of actions ostensibly undertaken against the guilty parties are brushed aside as trivial annoyances at best, or, worse, castigated as efforts to sympathize with and protect those responsible for the danger. When a population is subsumed with pulsating fear and rage, there is little patience for seemingly abstract quibbles about legality or ethics. The craving for punishment, for vengeance, for protection, is visceral and thus easily drowns out cerebral or rational impediments to satiating those primal impulses.

The aftermath of the 9/11 attack provided a vivid illustration of that dynamic. The consensus view, which formed immediately, was that anything and everything possible should be done to crush the terrorists who — directly or indirectly — were responsible for that traumatic attack. The few dissenters who attempted to raise doubts about the legality or morality of proposed responses were easily dismissed and marginalized, when not ignored entirely. Typically, they were vilified with the accusation that their constitutional and legal objections were frauds: mere pretexts to conceal their sympathy and even support for the terrorists. It took at least a year or two after that attack for there to be any space for questions about the legality, constitutionality, and morality of the U.S. response to 9/11 to be entertained at all.

For many liberals and Democrats in the U.S., 1/6 is the equivalent of 9/11. One need not speculate about that. Many have said this explicitly. Some prominent Democrats in politics and media have even insisted that 1/6 was worse than 9/11.

Joe Biden’s speechwriters, when preparing his script for his April address to the Joint Session of Congress, called the three-hour riot “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.” Liberal icon Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), whose father’s legacy was cemented by years of casting 9/11 as the most barbaric attack ever seen, now serves as Vice Chair of the 1/6 Committee; in that role, she proclaimed that the forces behind 1/6 represent “a threat America has never seen before.” The enabling resolution that created the Select Committee calls 1/6 “one of the darkest days of our democracy.” USA Today’s editor David Mastio published an op-ed whose sole point was a defense of the hysterical thesis from MSNBC analysts that 1/6 is at least as bad as 9/11 if not worse.S.V. Date, the White House correspondent for America’s most nakedly partisan “news” outlet, The Huffington Post, published a series of tweets arguing that 1/6 was worse than 9/11 and that those behind it are more dangerous than Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda ever were.

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Internal police docs: ‘No good reason for shooting’ Ashli Babbitt

After obtaining over 500 pages of internal documents from the DC Metropolitan Police, Judicial Watch has found that they believe the shooting of Ashli Babbitt, who inside the Capitol during the riot on January 6, was unjustified.

In May, Judicial Watch filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain more than 500 pages of internal documents from the DC Metropolitan Police regarding the killing of Ashli Babbitt.

In the report, eyewitness testimony from a Capitol Police sergeant, whose name was redacted, suggests that while Babbitt did in fact climb through a broken window to enter the Capitol building, she was not carrying a weapon when she was shot by Capitol Police officer Lt. Michael Byrd.

“Sergeant [redacted] observed a white, female protester was climbing through an opened area where the glass pane had been knocked out,” a document from the Internal Affairs Division states.  

“He heard a gunshot and this female fell backwards through the opening. The crowd on the other side of the barricaded east doors, began to step back and some put their hands in the air. Sergeant [redacted] observed Lieutenant Byrd step back just after hearing the gunshot. He did not see anything in the female protester’s hands prior to the gunshot.”

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