Said Albert Watkins, who was the lawyer for Jason Chansley ("The QAnon Shaman"), "‘It’s Appalling’: QAnon Shaman’s Lawyer Says DOJ Lied, Withheld Videos Aired By Carlson" (Daily Wire)
"Looking at the news, half of it is getting mad at Tucker.... What the f— does Tucker have to do with any of this? Except that he was smart enough to get it in our faces.... Whether you’re right-leaning, you like Tucker Carlson, you hate Tucker Carlson, is irrelevant. This is about putting a dagger in the heart of our justice system. And the person holding the dagger and thrusting it with all its might is our Department of Justice. This required collaboration from the top of the Justice Department right down to the Assistant U.S. Attorney lying to me, a fellow officer of the court, knowing I had a duty to put my client in the best position I could based on the evidence.... This is as egregious a violation of the trust as I have seen, with the exception of hiding DNA evidence in a murder case.... If I’m a federal judge and find out that indeed I was played a fool, I was duped by an assistant U.S. attorney that lied to me repeatedly while Mr. Watkins was yelling that no one was more peaceful than Jacob, and I’m making rulings based on what the government is saying, I’d be one pissed off federal judge."
And here's Jonathan Turley's discussion of the topic:
I spoke with Chansley’s new counsel, Bill Shipley, and confirmed that defense counsel did not have this material. In the hearing, federal prosecutor Kimberly Paschall played videos showing Chansley yelling along with the crowd and insisted “that is not peaceful.” That portrayal of Chansley would have been more difficult to maintain if the Court was allowed to see images of Chansley casually walking through a door of the Capitol with hundreds of other protesters and then being escorted by officers through the Capitol. At no point is he violent and at no point is he shown destroying evidence. Instead, he dutifully follows the officers who facilitate his going eventually to the unoccupied Senate floor.
We all knew that Chansley was treated more harshly because of his visibility. It was his costume, not his conduct, that seemed to drive the sentencing. In the hearing, Judge Royce Lamberth noted, “He made himself the image of the riot, didn’t he? For good or bad, he made himself the very image of this whole event.” Lamberth hit Chansley with a heavy 41-month sentence for “obstructing a federal proceeding.” However, the QAnon Shaman was led through the Capitol by officers. Defense counsel could have noted that his “obstruction” in going to an unoccupied Senate floor was facilitated by officers. While the police were clearly trying to deescalate the situation after the Capitol was breached, this is evidence of how Chansley came to the Senate....
At first blush, this would appear a clear “Brady violation” when a prosecutor fails to provide a defendant with any evidence that is favorable or exculpatory to his case.
Turley notes 3 complicating factors: 1. Chansley pleaded guilty quickly, 2. the video was in the possession of Congress, not the Justice Department, and 3. Chansley's plea agreement waived the right to appeal.
The Congress and the January 6th Committee knew of this footage and its relevance to a pending criminal case. Yet, they refused to make it public.
Shameful. Illiberal.
Instead, the January 6th Committee hired a former ABC producer to put on a made-for-television production of highly edited images for public consumption. Countervailing evidence or images were consistently excluded and witnesses appeared as virtual props to support high-quality video packages. Even The New York Times admitted the narrative was meant to “recast the midterm message” and “give [Democrats] a platform for making a broader case about why they deserve to stay in power.”
And they posed as democracy preservationists!
१८५ टिप्पण्या:
And you wonder why Schumer and McConnell are so pissed off?? Their great hoax is falling apart, and the American people are going to see how badly we have been being lied to. Open your minds, open your eyes. The Deep State is deeper than you thought...and they HATE us.
I watched the Carlson segment last night. It was shameful. You know who should be the most embarrassed? Not the prosecutors (who should be jailed), it's the judges. Judges are final arbiters. Their behavior (i. e. no bail, no speedy trial) is/ was despicable.
Are women just unusually bad at judging character? What wasn't obvious from the start.
Shameful. Illiberal.
It's Soviet. The stuff of Gulags. This is who they are...
Those Congressional fuckers who did this- they're still in Congress right? They've been quiet through this exposure. Roaches run from light...
The problem is less the procedural one of giving the defense exculpatory evidence but ignoring the evidence that you yourself have.
Yes, all the video was in the possession of the Congress but obviously DOJ had access to it.
Two things should happen, but won’t.
1. By the trial court’s own motion, he should be released.
2. DOJ lawyers should be disciplined.
Damn your lying eyes!
I saw the Tucker how. He did play video that displayed the violence. He also noted these had been played over and over by MSM.
Then he showed the non-violent portions.
Like a mirror image of "mostly peaceful" while flames leapt to the sky behind the CNN reporter. This was the worst thing since 9/11 (Civil War, etc) while police wander around with the evil shaman.
Damn your fair and balanced!
Couple that with the hand picked J6 representatives and the withholding of evidence from the accused....
Strike "it can't happen here" from your vocabulary.
Trump sought to drain the swamp, but he had no clue that all sorts of swamp creatures were actively working against him in 2016. Then, his election and petty rudeness justified 'self defense' in the minds of every uniparty predator in DC.
At least Trump made us aware -- that is his main legacy. Similar federal agency sleaze and dirty tricks happened under Obama, G.H.W. Bush, Nixon, Johnson, and all prior administrations under the sway of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. It was swept under the rug with patriotic rhetoric.
The question now is whether any federal people will stand up and force the prosecution of the bad apples, or whether we face a future with Spartacus-style slave rebellions and a decline akin to the fall of Rome. Can anyone in establishment media find a way to be honest and fair, or are they 100% fascists and hell bent on genocides against their opponents?
How can you enforce a plea agreement barring appeal when the agreement itself was obtained by denying the defendant exculpatory evidence?
On the separation-of-powers question, as another commenter mentioned in a prior thread, by subpoening the video footage, DOJ wouldn't be legislating, so it shouldn't be considered a violation of separation of powers. Moreover, if DOJ, which Congress created, can't withhold exculpatory evidence because doing so violates the Constitution, the same rule should apply to Congress.
"Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall"
In a functioning democracy, this outrage would result in numerous impeachments and congressional expulsions. And how can the University of Virginia move forward with Liz Cheney on staff?
Based on the lawyer’s comments, I assume he will move for a new trial (to supplant the guilty plea) or dismissal based on a Bradley violation. If so, I wish the Shaman the best of luck after this outrageous railroad job.
Shameful for the DOJ.
More shameful for ABCNBCCBSPBSNYTWaPo. They never even asked for the video, or questioned the propaganda. Hell, they willingly promoted the lies.
Even more shameful now--all of the bastards are now condemning Carlson for bringing to light the perfidy of our government. Which is their sacred duty and obligation.
Unfortunately, this is not a surprise. Who here has voted for Democrats in the past 20 years?
If it wasn't obvious the intelligence deep state had regulatory capture of government institutions, even both houses of congress, before this it should be overwhelmingly obvious now.
Langley and Quantico are running the show. This is pure unacknowledged and unofficial black ops being run inside the USA and on American citizens. Everyone is running around with their hair on fire screaming about threats to or preserving our democracy...
..our democracy has been lost. We are now dealing with post-accountability government.
It appears that we have a conflict between two items. The first is the actual events of 1/6/20 as recorded by this era's ubiquitous digitally clear cameras, and then you have the movie of 1/6/20 as produced and presented on our broadcast media by the Legislative Branch and the DOJ. The movie is what one is supposed to believe if one is to work as a professional in this nation today in any credentialed field, and the version that was not "fixed in post" by the consolidated blob of the DNC/FBI/NYT/WP/NBC yadda yadda is doubleplus ungood and your eyes are lying to you. If you believe this version, you'll never work in this town again.
This was released by a man who has confessed in private to despising the man he defends night after night. The producers of the movie version think that if you know that Tucker hates Donald, it discredits anything he tells you, because he won't play as dirty as they do to make the bad orange man go away and this makes Tucker a hypocrite. This is on the level of my Uncle Harry's excuse why he won't sit next to those hypocrites in church on Sunday in 1964, when we all know that it is because he's too hungover to get out of bed.
What a time to be alive. It's fucked up beyond belief, but it's our world. We go again.
PS - doubleplus and ungood have to be forced into the Google spell checker. I learned something else this morning.
He was tortured into his plea.
Shameful is right, Ann. Right but nowhere near a strong enough word.
Release ALL the footage now.
John Henry
Let's be clear about this at the outset.
Jacob Chansley was not convicted of a crime of violence. He pleaded guilty to Obstruction of a Federal Proceeding. Is there any doubt whatsoever that he did that? Did it, in association with about a thousand or two like-minded maniacs who wanted to stop the electoral process and the peaceful transition of power?
Turley claims, "Lamberth hit Chansley with a heavy 41-month sentence for 'obstructing a federal proceeding.'" Well, the sentence imposed by Judge Lamberth (who Turley acknowledges as an unusually experienced and fine District Judge) was 41 months when the recommended/guideline sentencing range was 41 to 51 months.
Now, what is going on at present legally is that Chansley has fired Albert Watkins; Chansley appealed, and then dropped the appeal, and now is apparently pursuing a renewed appeal. That appeal, because of the nature of his original plea agreement, will now be based on "ineffective assistance of counsel." That is the standard appeal when federal felons are appealing convictions based on plea deals and guilty pleas.
Dems got caught red-handed there. Sure, it is possible to imagine the reverse scenario with GOP crapping on the remnants of due process; but in fact it was Dems. And of course they knew —even morons like them had to have known— that their crime would be discovered.
They knew; and they didn’t care. In fact it’s important that they never acknowledge their crime, never show contrition. Because the Will to Power operates through absolute fearless domination of others’ will, absolute rejection of others’ moral and legal frame.
A great man once said, “Punch back twice as hard.” And so they do.
More revelations.
"Thompson (Chairman Bennie Thompson) said he doesn’t think any of the Jan. 6 members themselves ever had access to the footage — they let only staff view it."
Gives one a warm and cozy feeling about the process, doesn't it?
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2023/03/09/the-chair-of-the-january-6-select-committee-just-made-a-damning-admission-n2620394
Shameful. Illiberal.
My view of what is absolutely and truly "shameful and illiberal" was the January 6 rioters. Ignorant, violent-minded extremists with the wildly false notion that the 2020 election was somehow stolen from Trump and they were going to do something about that.
That is the story, full stop. How a president and a compliant wing of the media convinced millions that the election had been stolen and that something needed to be done.
Quoting blogger Ann Althouse from the time of the Obergefell Supreme Court decision; "It's over. You lost."
Part of the new lows achieved by prosecutors is that they say to the accused: plead guilty quickly, and waive your right to appeal, or we'll get you 20 years for farting in church.
Chuck never gives up. Even after the beat down he and his buddies got in the prior post.
There is no reasoning with them. They have to be eliminated.
One by one. Hopefully at the ballot box.
They knew; and they didn’t care.
And when they were confronted with the evidence they demanded censorship and contrition for exposing them.
Unfit. To. Serve.
I suspect Obstructing a Federal Proceeding, like the Commerce Clause, can come to mean just about anything the feds want. Doesn't sound dangerous at all to me.
The sad tragic outrageous part of these disclosures is there will be no consequences for any of the perpetrators of the J6 hoax. We are truly fucked.
Has Carlson posted the _entire_ Shaman video sequence? That is, as much of his behavior during the rally as they can find, and then a continuous (if possible) chain of videos from the time he entered the Capitol until he left. I think that would counter the claim I'm already seeing, that a video of someone not robbing a bank is not good evidence that they never robbed a bank.
exhelodrvr1 said...
Unfortunately, this is not a surprise. Who here has voted for Democrats in the past 20 years?
3/9/23, 6:40 AM
If you voted for the likes of McConnell, Romney, Crenshaw, Graham and many others...you voted with the Democrats.
"We did not receive that video footage. We asked for it, and not just once or twice." I don't know much about court proceedings. How does that work? How does the case proceed when discovery is not done? Everyone knew there were videos, how do they try the case without them.
I hope all these guys get rich off of this. Where's John Grisham's Innocence Project? This kind of railroading is his catnip...
Chuck, you'd be pissed if the government did this to your client. Anyone who cares at all about due process should be.
So the government charges people for Obstruction of a Federal Proceeding. How is withholding exculpatory evidence in federal court not itself obstruction of a federal proceeding? But the DOJ will never charge its own minions who were carrying out its directive.
'It was his costume, not his conduct, that seemed to drive the sentencing. In the hearing, Judge Royce Lamberth noted, “He made himself the image of the riot, didn’t he? For good or bad, he made himself the very image of this whole event.”' Really? That is a betrayal of what a judge is supposed to be. For his costume?
And senate Majority Leader Schumer is calling on Fox to censor Tucker. The Bill of Rights mean nothing to our electeds, to our press, and to our security state. I’m
"Obstruction of a Federal Proceeding" How is that a felony with a multi-year sentence? It reminds me of the classified documents rules. The government gets to set really heavy sentences - if you mess with them.
Nobody has shown this video yet either. Notice the crowd is yelling "Fuck Antifa, fuck antifa, fuck antifa." Wonder how much Nancy paid them??
https://twitter.com/i/status/1633524631209402372
Isn't it all just so convenient: The attorney isn't representing him any more, so nothing can be done. The judge has sentenced him, so nothing can be done. Why, if you didn't know about the law, you'd think absolutely nothing can be done by any attorneys or judges to repair this injustice.
Except, you know, you don't have to hire attorneys. They can work pro bono. And you don't even have to hire one. Any attorney could file briefs on this man's behalf as friends of the court. Any judge would have jurisdiction to undo this injustice.
But nobody wants to. What if we found out that the QAnon Shaman was himself a government creation? That he's not currently in prison. That it was all a sham?
That might threaten our Democracy.
I don't find Turley's complicating factors all that complicating.
1) Chaney pled guilty to a few years in jail because the government was threatening him with spending most of the rest of his life in jail. A clear case of coercion, particularly given the full facts now coming out.
2) The DOJ may not have known about the material either, but the government--the same government the DOJ represents--was in possession of that material. It shouldn't be Chaney's problem if the government has deliberately kept the left hand from knowing what the right hand was doing. The government should not be able to manipulate cases through administrative trickery.
3) If the plea was coerced and dishonest, then his waiver of a right to appeal should be unenforceable. (All such waivers should be unenforceable, but even if the court would uphold it in some circumstances, it would be a travesty if they uphold it in this one.)
The Shaman was given a choice.
Either go to trial with a potential 20 years sentence.
Or take a plea deal.
Over charging as a way to basically blackmail defendants into a plea deal is another shameful area of our justice system. There is no risk to the prosecution for this type of behavior.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/03/qanon-shaman-lawyer-feds-withheld-exculpatory-video-shown-on-tucker/
Chuck said...That is the story, full stop
You're an idiot if you think your absurd self-serving description of events is "the full story, full stop."
Here's a tip: anybody who says "full stop" is admitting their argument is garbage. They are trying to head off objections because they can't defend it on the merits.
Turley notes 3 complicating factors: 1. Chansley pleaded guilty quickly, 2. the video was in the possession of Congress, not the Justice Department, and 3. Chansley's plea agreement waived the right to appeal.
1.Standard prosecutor conduct. offer a 'deal' before the defense has anything figured out. Hard telling what ever leverage the feds had or claimed they had. The Feds can even tell them straight up they will fabricate evidence.
2. Facts show the DOJ possessed all the video because they used against Chansley. Also they ran it all through Facial recognition. This item also ignores the fact, if DoJ did not have it, did they make the request to congress and were turned down? Did the DoJ than file with the judge to compell congress to turn over evidence? These last two are just mental exercise, because by their actions we know the DoJ had the video
3.Again standard.
But new evidence show the corruption of the DoJ should have Chansely walking free yesterday pending court filings. That hasn't happened, tarring the Judge as being just as corrupt as the DoJ. After watching what Judge Sullivan did the General Flynn, the Judiciary is succumbing to DC corrupt one party rule.
A video surfaced yesterday of McCain's manager Steve Schmidt stating the Qanon Shaman guy should have been shot and killed in the capitol. Chuck nods.
I'm not clear whether Watkins should be trusted. See Bill Shipley's thread about that here: https://twitter.com/shipwreckedcrew/status/1633765952847265794 and his substack here: https://shipwreckedcrew.substack.com/p/jacob-chansleys-guilty-plea-in-january
Did it, in association with about a thousand or two like-minded maniacs who wanted to stop the electoral process and the peaceful transition of power?
Alert! This person claims to be a lawyer.
From memory, open to correction, about 370 persons have been charged/sentenced. Exactly two have been convicted of seditious conspiracy. Chansely is not one of those two
A couple hundred people without a plan or guns, are not a threat the operation of the United States Government.
J6–Potemkin Committee.
Merrick Garland is pure evil.
but then- he is merely a puppet for the old man crook puppet. The cabal of liars.
"Full stop" is the equivalent of "Studies show". Whatever it's attributed to is assuredly garbage. Add the "Science is settled" to the list.
Why did the fable of the insurrection have to be fabricated?
Because the 2020 election was sabotaged. The Democrats are justifiably paranoid that the electorate is going to go after them.
The election wasn’t “stolen from Trump.” The electorate was subject to a multi-year terror psy-ops run by the Deep State and the DNC. The release of the virus. Economic sabotage by shutdown. The torture of our kids. Imprisonment in our homes. The BLM reign of terror.
I don’t begrudge the Dem’s their fear that the electorate will ultimately storm the building and hang them. They’ve got it coming.
Let's be clear about this at the outset.
Let's.
Is it your point, Chuck, that this shaman guy deserved his sentence, and so, however it came about, with whatever violations of due process, justice was done in the end? Because that's an awfully expedient way to do criminal justice, don't you think?
Would you support some friend of yours' being kept in solitary confinement, pressured to plead guilty, presented very publicly and over and over as "violent" saved an "insurrectionist" although the charge against him or her is - as you point out - not a violent one nor mentions insurrection, and denied exculpatory evidence for his or her defense?
If not for one of your friends, why for a stranger? Because you think he's a "maniac" and "ignorant" and besides, you disagree with him?
By that standard, all we have to do is decide at time of arrest whether a person is guilty and how to punish him or her. Simple! Then we can hold a trial to make sure we check that box, but the trial doesn't have to provide any legal protections to the accused, who is, after all, guilty - we've already decided that.
Now, expand the frame. This shaman guy was the face of the "insurrection," it seems. Certainly his image was used that way. And you yourself point out that he was associating with "thousands" (you said) of like-minded "maniacs" (you said).
So our elected officials took this one very recognizable, indeed unforgettable guy and presented him, publicly, in prime time, with great production values, as a violent insurrectionist, and used him as a proxy for everyone who was there that day.
Do you think that might have affected other defendants' cases? How about in the court of public opinion, any effect there?
This is really the system you want?
LLR-democratical Chuck: "Let's be clear about this at the outset."
LOL
Talk about channelling KJP!
Turley notes 3 complicating factors: 1. Chansley pleaded guilty quickly, 2. the video was in the possession of Congress, not the Justice Department, and 3. Chansley's plea agreement waived the right to appeal.
The bolded item points, I think, to a systemic problem with modern prosecutorial practices in the US. Oftentimes they make prosecution decisions on the basis of evidence gathered, sifted, selected, and submitted by companies and individuals, sometimes pursuant to obligations under plea agreements, and sometimes voluntarily in an effort to receive cooperation credit that can help them either avoid prosecution or receive lower sentencing recommendations. This makes sense for prosecutors both because it saves them time and energy actually reviewing and analysing evidence and because it lets them sidestep many procedural hurdles to obtaining evidence (particularly with regard to evidence located abroad, where the mutual legal assistance processes can be quite time consuming and cumbersome). But the end result is that DOJ literally doesn't have exculpatory material to produce under Brady. Instead, they got someone to package up all the inculpatory evidence for them and interviewed a couple witnesses. The exculpatory evidence that might exist somewhere is in someone else's hands -- someone who (because they just got credit for implicating the defendant) -- may not be willing to produce exculpatory documents unless forced to do so.
I don't know the solution, but I do think it's a practical loophole in Brady, and one that (as far as I am aware) has never been considered by the courts.
BarrySanders20: "Chuck, you'd be pissed if the government did this to your client. Anyone who cares at all about due process should be."
No, he wouldn't. Thats because if LLR-democratical Chuck ever had a non-leftist client getting screwed over like that by our dem-stasi government, it would mean Chuck took on the client specifically to assist the government in screwing over his client.
Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger are also pure evil (in the trash heap with Adam Schitt - who should be indicted and jailed. )
In all candor and sincerity...
I want to see the Trump Wing of American politics galvanize around this issue.
I want to see Marjorie Taylor Greene lead a faction of House Freedom Caucus members to the DC jail to visit with prisoners as if they were political prisoners in a third world nation.
I want to see Donald Trump campaign on a promise that he will pardon all January 6 felons.
I want to see 2024 turned into a giant referendum on whether the January 6 riot was a good thing or a bad thing.
Let's have a vote on that.
" The Congress and the January 6th Committee knew of this footage and its relevance to a pending criminal case. Yet, they refused to make it public."
Ann said..
Shameful. Illiberal.
Obsessive Trump-hate turns former liberals (not you) into progressive Soviet Stalinist Dictators
Amazing who and what the current, corrupt leadership of the United States is willing to sacrifice for their own personal power and money.
Elections are corrupt. Our courts are corrupt. FBI and Justice Department are corrupt. The Uniparty is corrupt.
And we will remain on this trajectory as long as white women think abortion until birth is the end all be all of human rights. We’re stuck here as long as our overly credentialed educators (from Kindergarten through PHD) keep pushing Global Warming lies, Vaccine lies, woke lies, transgender lies, racial animosity…and continually support lowering standards.
You have to be a moron at this point to believe anything the MSM tells you. That, or your world view is benefited by the corruption and destruction of a once great America. This is the America being pumped out by our educators. I don’t see much hope in changing course.
boatbuilder said...
"Shameful for the DOJ."
And yet they know no shame. And they would do the same to you in a heartbeat. You will be destroyed. not because you've done anything wrong, but because they don't like you.
Fuck off Chuck.
Jan 6th was a set-up.
Yes - some Trump supporters behaved really badly...
But it was a set up. Make no mistake.
It was used to force Trump supporters to shut up and stand down. It was used to jail people who dissent against the left-wing Stalinist machine.
It was used to portray Trump and his supporters (or even just his voters) as evil tyrannical extremists. It was used as a Reichstag fire-like event - to stir hate among the leftwing faithful.
1. Chansley pleaded guilty quickly,
Is there some time exception specified in Brady v. Maryland I'm not aware of? Does the prosecution get to say, ahh, it's too difficult to get that exculpatory evidence, nevermind.
Pleading guilty would have no bearing on the sentencing phase in any case.
2. the video was in the possession of Congress, not the Justice Department
And here's the rub, under separation of powers they can't force the Congress to distribute it, but Congress has a 14th amendment duty to the accused just as much as the executive branch.
The uni-mob.. It's a Bill Kristol, MSNBC, Biden, McConnell, Pelosi, Kerry, Garland, Kinzinger, Cheney, Schitt-show.
I want to see 2024 turned into a giant referendum on whether the January 6 riot was a good thing or a bad thing.
Actually, it would be a giant referendum on whether our government acted property or not.
And I don't think you want that kind of referendum.
Althouse said Illiberal
The natural trajectory of liberalism was bound to become illiberal. Look how once former hippies and rock stars bowed to the demands of the state when it came to COVID lockdowns, bullshit masks, and a poison vaccine. Look how powerful central governments sacrifice the rights and liberties of their own people.
America's universities have become completely illiberal. Arrogantly illiberal. You can feel us slipping into a totalitarian culture, especially in the last three years.
None of this is the behavior or beliefs of great leaders like Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump, or Ron DeSantis. The people are despised by America's fake intelligentsia (see Morning Joe morons.
Modern illiberals will never wake up.
And, remember, it was the Democrats’ characterization of the events that was manipulative. "It’s Democrats who decided to raise the stakes, hold kangaroo court hearings, and grossly misrepresent the events of Jan. 6.
If you don’t think we’re right about this, try a thought experiment. Imagine if some Democrats felt that a presidential election had been stolen and held protest rallies that turned violent. How would Democrats themselves react? Would they decry it as a threat to the nation? Or would they pass it off as people expressing their first amendment rights in “mostly peaceful” demonstrations?
Oh, wait, you don’t need to conduct a thought experiment."
https://issuesinsights.com/2023/03/09/how-long-before-dems-say-its-time-to-move-on-from-jan-6/
Every DOJ lawyer involved in that case should be flogged for violating Chansey's civil rights. Flogging should be mandatory for any government employee who violates the civil rights of a person. Pour encourager les autres
Dave Begley said...
Two things should happen, but won’t.
1. By the trial court’s own motion, he should be released.
2. DOJ lawyers should be disciplined.
Public execution is what soviets/fascists deserve.
If we are to have a free society people that attack the fundamental principles of equal justice under the law and freedom of speech and association need to be removed from society.
We can ship them to China instead if you all want.
But they can never be allowed to remain. The fundamental forces at play here do not allow people like this to have power in a society.
A high trust free society requires that almost everyone acts in a way that puts the good of others above their short term interests because it serves their long term interests.
Being amoral these shitheads have too many advantages over the the averages citizen and they abuse the trust required to maintain a transparent and honest society.
J6–Potemkin Committee.
You are much closer to accurate than even you can believe
.@BennieGThompson
, former chair of the Jan. 6 committee, said lawmakers were never given that type of access to the footage last Congress. “It’s strictly a new policy that the new speaker has put in place," he told CNN.
Thompson said he doesn’t think any of the Jan. 6 members themselves ever had access to the footage — they let only staff view it. "I'm actually not aware of any member of the committee who had access. We had a team of employees who kind of went through the video."
ALL the Democrat selected committee members did ZERO investigation, examined zero evidence, did no work.
They read from a script handed to them.
Chuck never gives up. Even after the beat down he and his buddies got in the prior post.
Give the guy a break!
He is just doing his job.
I wonder if (like Svelaz on the Turley blog) he is being paid by David Brock or directly by the DNC.
Chuck never gives up. Even after the beat down he and his buddies got in the prior post.
Give the guy a break!
He is just doing his job.
I wonder if (like Svelaz on the Turley blog) he is being paid by David Brock or directly by the DNC.
The Congress and the January 6th Committee knew of this footage and its relevance to a pending criminal case. Yet, they refused to make it public.
Their "defense" is that they just left the videos to staffers to examine them and provide excerpts. Plausible deniability. "Just find us a few minutes of segments that look really violent, and don't send us anything exculpatory." I am not a lawyer, but that doesn't sound like a argument against throwing out the verdict, even if you believe the court was not aware of evidence. Convictions get thrown out all the time when new evidence is discovered after the fact. Never mind the fact that this evidence was obviously there all the time.
Chuck - So glad to see you another Kristol-esque prick in the wall.
A prick who cares little about fairness, honesty, and justice.
No - for you it's all about the spectacle. A gleeful brown-shirt in club Schitt-show.
Ho hum. FBI Special Agent Nicole Miller caught lying under oath and concealing evidence from defense attorneys in the Proud Boys trial.
Just another day in DC gulag operations.
Something tells me Miller can look forward to a large bonus and promotion later this year.
Gusty Winds: "Elections are corrupt. Our courts are corrupt. FBI and Justice Department are corrupt. The Uniparty is corrupt."
Republic End State stuff.
We probably have 1 thin window of opportunity to reverse it but thats about it.
This story has legs because the deselect J6 committee spent two years gaslighting the public about one of the least violent riots of the last few years. The public was interested when city after city gave “space” so the BLM rioters could rampage through 2020 and we were stunned it went on and on. So long that cackling Kamala laughed at us and said “It’s not going to stop” with obvious delight and she was pimping a bail fund for those rioters. So when the dishonest media and democrats claimed “J6 is worse than 9/11” we noticed the vast difference in spin.
Suddenly “mostly peaceful” was not a respectable term. Suddenly we were supposed to hate protesters and condemn it. These mostly peaceful protesters had to be held without bail or charges or contact with counsel. This is far from over.
Chuck,
It's not a question the protest being good or bad, it's a question of the way the legal system is treating the protesters. Which you know, so FOAD.
"He made himself the image of the riot, didn’t he? For good or bad, he made himself the very image of this whole event."
Did he? Or did the prosecutors and the media do that?
"I’m making rulings based on what the government is saying, I’d be one pissed off federal judge."
Remains to be seen. Any judge that still takes "what the government is saying" at face value is a fool. I don't think Lamberth is a fool but he contributed to the circus.
"Chansley yelling along with the crowd and insisted “that is not peaceful.”"
As we all know, yelling threatens to bring down the Republic.
"We all knew that Chansley was treated more harshly because of his visibility."
So we all knew he did not get "equal justice under law"?
"Turley notes 3 complicating factors: 1. Chansley pleaded guilty quickly, 2. the video was in the possession of Congress, not the Justice Department, and 3. Chansley's plea agreement waived the right to appeal."
But 1. and 3. occurred under heavy pressure.
"Shameful. Illiberal . . . And they posed as democracy preservationists!"
OK, I appreciate the sentiment, truly. But this is how the regime has operated for a long time. The illiberality is baked in, and by "our democracy" they do not mean, like, actual democracy.
Instead of the entire media saying "yeah this is a disgrace" ...
NOPE. Instead, The entire hack-D press loyalist-Black Rocks are circling the wagons.
For the sad-fuck Kristol press - it's all about maintaining the narrative and the cult of Trump-hate. and not just Trump-hate- but Trump-supporter- hate. (Chuck provides the clown-show example)
Chuck @ 8:23: “…I want to see…”. Be careful what you wish for.
Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer conspired to obstruct a Federal Proceeding by not providing enough security around the Capitol grounds and then not ejecting the crowd once it entered the grounds. They then failed to eject the ground from the Capitol building once it entered. The Capitol police acted as tour guides not security.
I look forward to the flogging of Pelosi and Schumer for that obstruction. It will be wicked.
Do you even Brady v. Maryland bro?
It seems like a lot of the DOJ and judiciary violated oaths to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States.
I want to see 2024 turned into a giant referendum on whether the January 6 riot was a good thing or a bad thing.
You continue to hold that tight frame, like a Congressional committee putting together a tv presentation for the unwashed masses.
If you were to expand that frame, I might agree with you. Expand it, that is, to include at least:
* the so-called Twitter files
* the message coordination between Democrat party officials at federal, state, and local levels with the media
* the delay of vaccine rollout until after the election (whatever we are now learning about the vaccines, is there any doubt that a pre-election rollout would have redounded to Trump's benefit at the time?)
* the burial at sea of the facts about the provenance and reliability of the Steele dossier
* the FBI involvement in the threat to Gov. Whitmer
* the support, including financial support, of Democrat elected officials for actually violent BLM and antifa rioters
* the drumbeat of "mostly peaceful protests" in the media, with a backdrop of flames and plywood-covered shop windows with happy little murals painted on them
* the vilification of anyone who dared show a full face, even outdoors and alone
* the denigration and near-criminalization of any attempt to suggest novel COVID therapies rather than the at-first-standard ventilation (remember when that was supposedly your best shot if you caught a bad case of it?)...
And let's not forget:
* the changes to state electoral laws and procedures in key battleground states that vastly expanded mail-in balloting eligibility and the time after the election during which ballots would be accepted, while softening identity and eligibility verification standards
* the fact that those changes largely took place extra-legally by the states' own rules
* the fact that any questioning of these changes or election integrity overall was immediately denounced as out of bounds, racist, potentially criminal, and even - here's where your narrow Jan. 6-only frame comes into play - insurrectionist
* the almost across-the-board dismissal of legal requests for election integrity verification measures on procedural, not evidentiary, grounds.
So. Throughout 2020, a broad, but as we are now learning connected, range of actors worked together to bring about "the worse, the better," forced into place, especially in certain key districts, electoral practices that Europe has rejected as too loose for election integrity to be maintained or verified, and left the portion of the electorate who did not benefit from these acts with seemingly no recourse besides the last-ditch Jan. 6 protest.
Which Democrats in the person of Pelosi enabled by denying an appropriate level of security.
Sure. Let's make the next election about all that.
When conduct is indefensible only a lifelong “republican” can defend The Left. Clownworld just can’t quit Althouse. It needs and craves the humiliation it garners here. I’m so impressed by Trump’s ability to inspire clowns to self identify and self immolation. It provides a modicum of entertainment during these troubling times.
Gives one a warm and cozy feeling about the process, doesn't it?
So congressmen don't read bills before they vote and they don't view evidence before they hold hearings. Bob wants to know: "What would [they] say [they] do there??"
1. If Chansley’s plea would have been different if he knew of the existence of the footage he should be free.
2. There were people there intent on fomenting an insurrection. They can rot in jail for all I care.
3. The government has an affirmative duty to share exculpatory evidence. It does not matter if it is not shared do to prosecutorial incompetence or malfeasance. FULL STOP.
"
"He pleaded guilty to Obstruction of a Federal Proceeding. Is there any doubt whatsoever that he did that?"
No, there isn't.
"Did it, in association with about a thousand or two like-minded maniacs who wanted to stop the electoral process and the peaceful transition of power?"
This is hyperbole and mass mind reading. It doesn't comport with the facts as we know them.
All the Jan 6 protestors I've seen or read were actually trying to participate, insisting on participating, in the electoral process. They were not simply demanding that their guy be made President. They sincerely believed that the electoral process had been manipulated. They sincerely believed they were there in defense of the electoral process. They wanted their concerns addressed, not steam rolled. They wanted a real investigation. If a real investigation had taken place, they would have accepted the outcome no matter who won, as they always had in the past.
Trump haters called the outcome of 2016 into question for far less. They rationalized long term projects, both in the government and the media, to obstruct and try to remove the democratically elected administration.
Also, the left had planned and organized widespread rioting in cities across the nation to interrupt the peaceful transition of power and overturn the election results if Trump had been declared the winner. Many Republican officials caved in advance to this threat and went along with the coverup.
The ABC production - they added Baghdad Bob-smoke.
The video is certainly relevant evidence, but to what? It covers the period after the Capitol Police effectively surrendered the building to the rioters who had forced entry and before the building was cleared. In terms of being exculpatory, the obstruction of the official proceeding had already been committed. House and Senate members were evacuated at 2:20pm. Chansley didn’t enter the Senate gallery until 2:52pm, and went down to the Senate floor at some point in time after that. That was the celebration of the crime not the crime itself.
The meat of the offense for which he was convicted is spelled out in section 9 of the Statement of Offense to which Chansley agreed as part of his plea deal:
“The defendant was with the mob that approached the first floor of the U.S. Capitol building on the Senate side. Other members of the crowd broke two windows and crawled inside the building at approximately 2:13 p.m. Those rioters then broken open the door to the U.S. Capitol building between those two windows, setting off a loud alarm. The defendant then entered through the broken door at approximately 2:14 p.m. The defendant was one of the first 30 rioters inside the U.S. Capitol building.”
Is there new evidence that goes to that? I’m not seeing any. Chansley might have a good case for a resentencing if an enhanced sentence was handed down based on the judge’s impression of what happened after the obstruction was committed, but as I understand it the 41 month sentence Chansley received was the minimum under the sentencing guidelines for the offense.
Lets not be naive. The DOJ went after this nobody, this average guy dressed with buffalo horns, and put the screws on him. He was probably threatened with God knows what. And he thrown in the Gulag with no bail. So when they offered him a plea deal of 4 years, he went for it. He probably couldn't tell you the difference between a felony and misdemenour.
And why shouldn't he be allowed to appeal? How does a Proscecutor get to hide evidence and nothing happens? The DOJ and the Federal judges have shown all their talk of "fair trials" and "Rights" is just bullshit. When they have a chance to go after people they don't like, they'll sentence someone to 4 years for tresspassing, and behave unethically.
And Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney, and that stupid fuck from NC Sen Tillis all support this.
Chuck @6:45: "ineffective assistance of counsel."
When the government commits a Brady violation, the problem isn't ineffective assistance of counsel.
Is this the Chuck who claims to be a lawyer?
Worth a note that the outcome of the eponymous case Brady v Maryland was not an overturned conviction but a resentencing of the defendant. I think this complicates the oft-made claim that this video would have made no difference because Chansley plead out to the charges. Brady's murder conviction was upheld but his sentence was commuted based on the withheld evidence being exculpatory to his involvement in the killing.
Watkins does a fine job of directing wrath toward the J6C, and away from his own performance. But there have been a few that have pointed out that his efforts might earn the 'vile' descriptor, too. I've read somewhere that Bill Shipley (@shipwreckedcrew) has taken over the defense efforts and might be on Carlson's show soon to continue the story. Shipley has been taking on quite a few of these cases and is publicly-funded, crowd-funded - and he's been getting some good results on dismissals and minimized sentences. I think some of them have been below guidelines.
In the hearing, Judge Royce Lamberth noted, “He made himself the image of the riot, didn’t he? For good or bad, he made himself the very image of this whole event.”
Didn't the media and the authorities who had control of the recordings have a lot to do with that?
Do we really want the charge, the verdict and the sentence to depend on who has the zaniest, most attention-getting costume?
Doesn't that make the judicial system a little too much like Let's Make a Deal?
"We did not receive that video footage. We asked for it, and not just once or twice. Whether we asked for it or not is irrelevant because the government had an absolute, non-compromisible duty... to disclose that video and they did not do so. And all the while, they were actively representing to the court and the American people that Jake was a leader, leading the charge into the Capitol....They did not disclose that footage because it ran contrary to their rote narrative."
But, but, Amadeus was telling us that he'd already seen all the video before!
You mean the left wing talking points about Tucker Calrson's reporting about what actually happened on Jan 6 is a complete and total lie?
I'm shocked, shocked!!
Chuck asserted: "In all candor and sincerity ... "
Chuck finally admits his previous posts lacked candor and sincerity. No need to tell us, we knew that.
Tucker reminds me of Nazz '68
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apW-fj11T_k&list=RDapW-fj11T_k&start_radio=1&rv=apW-fj11T_k&t=0
Unfortunately, this is not a surprise. Who here has voted for Democrats in the past 20 years?
@exhelodrvr1, besides Ann Althouse, you mean?
Constitutional Repuplic?
distant memory
In honor of Women's day...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01nb7KBjtvk&list=RDapW-fj11T_k&index=2
I would bet that 95% of the "rioters" (contra Chuck) were just there to protest either trump losing or the dems cheating and did not even know there was a federal proceeding going on per se. There was no plan to "disrupt a federal proceeding" at all and they were encouraged to go into the building by Ray Epps and other feds undercover. Pelosi and other top dems wanted a riot to grab more power so they did not call national guard, did not prepare the capitol police, did not barricade the building properly. An insurrection requires a plan. There was no plan. It was a trap.
Chuck said...
I want to see 2024 turned into a giant referendum on whether the January 6 riot was a good thing or a bad thing.
Quit moving the goalposts. The point being made is not that J6 was a good thing but that the government is abusing its power to maintain law and order.
“William Roper: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”
Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”
William Roper: “Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
”Sir Thomas More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!”
Oh, the footage was in the hands of Congress. what a stupid lame excuse. The FBI arrested people based on their review of the footage! Would Congress have denied DOJ a look at the footage? Of course not.
Why bring this lamo excuse up?
Why aren't people upset at these clowns in the Senate and Congress? Instead, they want to play crossfire and debate these absurd legal execuses. The Senate Republicans and Liz Cheney have been CHEERLEADING these nazi-like prosecutions of people like Buffalo horns guy. They were HAPPY when Ashli babbitt was murdered and say so.
I thought poeple would be upset after Jan 21st, 2021 when Biden supported by McConnell Schumer and Pelosi, called in 20,000 National Guard troops to protect them from some mysterious somebodies and ringed the Capital with machine gun nest and snipers. But nobody cares. Just derp, derp, derp.
I guess you either think Congress works for US, or you're a sheep and most people are Sheep.
Thank you. Even if it’s too late for Shaman, there ought to be a way to make sure this injustice doesn’t happen again.
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!!
"Thompson (Chairman Bennie Thompson) said he doesn’t think any of the Jan. 6 members themselves ever had access to the footage — they let only staff view it."
This is maybe even worse. That means that Pelosi picked the staff, picked the committee, and determined exactly what information they could see. Because, it should always be remembered, the Speaker controls the Capital Police. They reported to her, and they controlled the video. The whole thing was a one woman operation, from the turning down the offers of help from Trump and the city police, through controlling the committee, and what they saw, and it was all covered by her daughter who got to produce an exclusive documentary on the events that day.
What was a bit funny to me was Thompson and Pelosi locking up the video right before she lost control of the House for some number of years, apparently for their safety, though they claimed it was for hours. It didnt make sense, because when she passed the gavel to her successor, she also passed control of the Capital Pokice and thus the videos of that day.
The shaman became a symbol of the protest AFTER THE FACT. He got the longest sentence and was featured in the congressional hearings because of something that happened after the protest. He did not lead or inspire or incite. This is pure soviet logic.
In all candor and sincerity...
I want to see the Trump Wing of American politics galvanize around this issue.
I want to see Marjorie Taylor Greene lead a faction of House Freedom Caucus members to the DC jail to visit with prisoners as if they were political prisoners in a third world nation.
I want to see Donald Trump campaign on a promise that he will pardon all January 6 felons.
I want to see 2024 turned into a giant referendum on whether the January 6 riot was a good thing or a bad thing.
Let's have a vote on that.
Trump would get my vote.
Meanwhile, when you aren't of interest to the weaponized FBI, you can keep classified documents from your time as VP anywhere you like. How about Boston? I'm waiting for all the claims of how someone so irresponsible should never be allowed to be President.
You just can't get the Lynch Mob outta the DNC no matter what you do.
Could the details of events that led to the American revolution been much worse that what the January 6th committee and its handmaiden, the Department of Justice, have done here? Unfortunately, as Biden has said, you can't fight the US government with assault rifles. We need many more Tuckers and Turleys and Althouses. Those of us who no longer care if we lose friends, who have incomes at least somewhat independent of their public reputation, or who just don't give a f**ck anymore, must be continuously and public vocal about this.
Blogger Hunter Biden's tax payer funded Hooker said...
" The Congress and the January 6th Committee knew of this footage and its relevance to a pending criminal case. Yet, they refused to make it public."
The chairman of that kangaroo court has now admitted that NO ONE on that committee saw the video. Only staffers were allowed to see any of it.
I'm not a lawyer, but if Congress and the DOJ withheld potential exculpatory evidence from the defense and the sentencing judge, then the whole case sure seems like a miscarriage of justice.
To each commentator here. What have you done today to resist?
Chuck said...
Let's be clear about this at the outset.
Jacob Chansley was not convicted of a crime of violence. He pleaded guilty to Obstruction of a Federal Proceeding. Is there any doubt whatsoever that he did that? Did it, in association with about a thousand or two like-minded maniacs who wanted to stop the electoral process and the peaceful transition of power?
1: They were trying to obstruct the completion of stealing an election. which is a good thing to do
2: Ever single left wing anti-Kavanaugh protester who invaded the Senate, pounded on the doors, or stood up and heckled, was guilty of "Obstruction of a Federal Proceeding".
The Act 10 protesters were guilty of "Obstruction of a State Proceeding"
Let me know when every single one of those people gets the same 41 months in prison plus a year plus in pre-trial closed confinement. Once that happens, we'll know that what happened to Jacob Chansley was simple justice, not the insane persecution by a utterly corrupt Administration that it currently is.
That aside, Federal prosecutors knowingly, willingly, and eagerly violated his US Constitutional rights.
If Miranda et al alley to rapists, murderers, and other violent criminals, but do NOT apply to conservatives, then
1: You are utter scum
2: When the civil war comes, you can look in a mirror and know that you were one of the causes
Michael K said...
Hunter Biden's tax payer funded Hooker said...
" The Congress and the January 6th Committee knew of this footage and its relevance to a pending criminal case. Yet, they refused to make it public."
The chairman of that kangaroo court has now admitted that NO ONE on that committee saw the video. Only staffers were allowed to see any of it.
Neither an excuse, nor a defense.
1: They should have refused to be part of the committee under such rules
2: They've seen it now. Unless they now step forward and decry the denial of justice and corruption, they are accomplices after the fact, even if they want to claim they weren't accomplices before the fact
Our DOJ is corrupt to the core, absolutely corrupt to the core.
"Blogger TickTock said...
To each commentator here. What have you done today to resist?"
You first.
I'm just a tourist in this century. I lived most of my life in the twentieth century and that's where I feel at home. In the good old days, the leftists used to vehemently protest Sacco & Vanzetti and Alger Hiss. They believed in the innocence of the guilty. That's morphed. They now believe and with the same vehemence in the guilt of the innocents. I think if the QAnon Shaman had been given the kind of fair trial that Kyle Rittenhouse had received, he would have been declared innocent. Of course in Washington DC, an OJ jury is always at hand. You can shoot a Republican President and his bodyguards and be found innocent. But in other places he would have been found innocent.....I do, however, agree with the judge. Chansley did himself no favors by wearing that outfit. If you dress up like a madman, people are apt to think you're a madman. That's not the outfit to wear if you want people to think that you're at the Capitol for a peaceful tour.
Not allowing these people bail for TWO YEARS is not miscarriage of justice enough? The republican party is completely complicit in these political persecutions, because, just like the tea party, they want to kill it. Full stop.
My view of what is absolutely and truly "shameful and illiberal" was the January 6 rioters.
Now do the rioters who disrupted the Judge Kavanaugh hearings, and also trespassed by going to the Senate offices. 41 months a piece for each of those women too right?
"2. the video was in the possession of Congress, not the Justice Department...." Bullshit! I admire Turley, but he lets the crooked DOJ off too easy. It strains the bounds of credulity to think that they only had the aggravating video.
Regardless of his current supposed outrage this defense attorney greased the skids for the Shaman's guilty plea. It is not just the justice system being destroyed by Garland's scumbags. It is the adversary system.
Meanwhile, the leftmediaswine and the uniparty bedwetters point the finger at Carlson, the messenger. There is neither truth nor justice in Demokrat America.
More bullshit from Chuck:
My view of what is absolutely and truly "shameful and illiberal" was the January 6 rioters. Ignorant, violent-minded extremists with the wildly false notion that the 2020 election was somehow stolen from Trump and they were going to do something about that.
First, the video did not show violence by the vast majority of the protestors. We do see some violence by Ray Epps' boys when they tear down the fence. How many were federal agents?
Second, about 50% of the country thinks the 2020 election was not on the up and up. I think it was stolen by mail-in vote fraud and some midnight addition of ballots when it looked like there was not enough fraud to overcome Trump's votes. I don't know if Dominion was part of it. Maybe we will learn from this present lawsuit. If it is suddenly settled, that might be an indication.
To each commentator here. What have you done today to resist?
Well, yesterday I reminded my US History classes that the vast majority of American racism was committed by, or supported by, the Democrat Party.
(Can someone explain to me why Washington and Jefferson must vanish because they owned slaves, but it is perfectly acceptable for 95% of Black people to vote for the Democratic Party which defended slavery and imposed Jim Crow on the South?)
At least once a week I chastise them for being slaves to their phones and remind them that all those free apps they're using are selling them as products.
That good enough?
Unfortunately, as Biden has said, you can't fight the US government with assault rifles.
Which is precisely why, under the expressed intent of the writers, and perceived meaning of the voters, the Second Amendment originally gave Elon Musk the right to buy and operate a couple of fully armed and crewed Ford class aircraft carriers instead of buying Twitter.
The judges don't care that they were lied to.
A FISA judge was lied to repeatedly in the Trump/Russia charade.
Nothing happened.
Oh, what's the problem? I mean, they left him in solitary confinement and cut him off from most human contact until he broke and confessed to end the agony. Like withholding key evidence mattered at all. We are well past worrying about such trivialities like cruel and unusual punishment, fair trials, rule of law, and all other those other silly rights. The important thing is all Congressmen can get fat bank accounts in the Caymans and fourth vacation homes.
Shipwreckedcrew (former fed prosecutor) will be on Tucker tonight, appearing with Chansley’s mother. He finds much fault with Chansley’s 1st lawyer.
The cause of the American Revolution was the attempt to take away the rights of Englishmen from English colonists on behalf of the British Empire project. Regulations replaced statutory law in the colonies. A similar attempt is going on now - regulation and procedural violation over law in the service of despotism. But we don't have to give up when we see the abomination rearing up triumphantly in DC any more than did the leaders of the American Revolution when they knew London hated them. We just have to be as clear-sighted as they were and as brave.
I saw Merrick Garland stating yesterday that "5 officers were killed that day", i.e. January 6th. [https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2023/03/08/merrick-garland-on-j6-n2620339] The Attorney General does not know the facts about the deaths of police officers on that day even now.
The chairman of the J6 committee has said that he and the other Representatives did not view footage but left that to their staffs.
Lefty staffs in DC are running the country through Congress and the White House and there will be no investigation into facts about J6, Covid, Hunter Biden's corruption and all the rest because the Attorney General is run by his staff, not the other way around. And the media was for sale, was bought and is now buying large mansions. But everyone hasn't been bought.
Chuck,
Withholding the video evidence from Chansley's defense was an obstruction of a federal proceeding, was it not?
tommeeyesque: "Trump would get my vote."
This is where DeSantis could play a game changing role in cultural and political terms, but I doubt his advisors/funders would allow him to in anyway associate himself with the targeted populations.
"Shameful. Illiberal."
No. Despicable. Criminal. Totalitarian.
But I have little hope. Among the "elite class" I am acquainted with, the general response to this sort of event (e.g. The certification of a contested election by the winning candidate in Arizona) has been "That's good, because the losing candidate has Bad Ideas." I am generally stunned into silence.
I Watched ABC Nightly News for their coverage of the charge that past coverage had been biased against Chansley. They showed one brief, almost subliminal image of him surrounded by police officers in his tour. They then showed a much lengthier segment showing physically angry protesters battering doors and police lines. Chansley was not among those protesters. They did not mention that the J6 committee screenings were produced by an ex-producer of ABC News. The broadcast did not make even the minimal effort to be fair....I think Chansley was guilty of something, but, patently, the media does not report on his case fairly and the DOJ was out to get him.....Chansley is probably nuttier than Hinckley but good luck pleading not guilty by reason of insanity to a DC jury.
Now, for Watkins himself:
I suspect he is a lawyer with all the intellectual integrity that Chuck displays here every single day, and just helped the prosecution rail-road his client into federal prison. This was explain the quick plea agreement. It certainly wouldn't be the first time one of the January 6th defendents were hiring their own opposition. I suspect Watkins didn't try very hard at all to get this exculpatory/favorable evidence, and if I bother looking hard enough, I will find that Watkins has routinely supported Democrats with political donations, like has been found with most of the other lawyers representing these poor miscreants in the D.C. Circuit. Watkins, however, knows how bad that newly revealed video makes his performance as Chansley's defense attorney look, and is now singing a different story.
Chuck said...
I want to see 2024 turned into a giant referendum on whether the January 6 riot was a good thing or a bad thing.
Chuck got the same memo you now see reflected in the establishment retreat since the Tucker Tapes.
Notice the larger "insurrection" narrative is already being abandoned in favor of framing the issue as whether the "riot was a good thing or a bad thing."
That single issue referendum was always the DC establishment goal: abuse the congressional committee system, use media manipulation and corrupt the justice system to make the "insurrection" central in 2022.
But the focus now is on what the DC establishment did before and after Jan 6 to advance their political agenda.
As Chuck concedes, it'll be the Democrats in 2024 who are desperate to run on centrality of the Capitol "riot" four years after the fact, in part to distract from a dismal Biden record.
The Republicans have multiple issues to run on, somewhere down the long list is revealing and correcting the injustices perpetrated by the DC establishment.
The treatment of these J6 protesters is a shameful chapter in America's history. The people involved in withholding this evidence need to lose their jobs. How else to deter these soviet-style tactics?
The question of why police helped Jake Chansley get from the Senate gallery to the Senate floor has some obvious answers. Other rioters were already on the floor and Chansley wanted to join them. Escorting him lessened the risk of further property damage such as him breaking through a locked door. Grouping him with other rioters would make things easier when the time came to clear the building.
RE: Left Bank of the Charles:
Chansley might have a good case for a resentencing if an enhanced sentence was handed down based on the judge’s impression of what happened after the obstruction was committed, but as I understand it the 41 month sentence Chansley received was the minimum under the sentencing guidelines for the offense.
I looked at the statement of offense, but nothing else. If you get to 41 months as the minimum, you're at an offense level of 22, which takes the offense level 14 (base level for 18 USC 1512(c) per 2J1.2 in the sentencing guidelines) and (I assume) enhances it +8 because the offense involved "causing or threatening to cause physical injury to a person or property damage, in order to obstruct the administration of justice." The notes explain that "The inclusion of 'property damage' under subsection (b)(1)(B) is designed to address cases in which property damage is caused or threatened as a means of intimidation or retaliation, (e.g. to intimidate a witness from, or retaliate against a witness for, testifying.)" I'm not sure the statement of offense provides great support for application of this enhancement to Chanley specifically. If you leave him at offense level 14, you get to a minimum of 15 months (with, of course, discretion for a lower sentence, since the sentencing guidelines aren't actually binding on courts.)
Part of the process of plea bargaining is negotiating what's going to go into the sentencing recommendation, and part of the game prosecutors play is threatening to toss in a bunch of arbitrary sentencing enhancements in order to pressure a defendant into pleading guilty. Depriving the defense attorney of potentially exculpatory material seems like it would obviously disadvantage the defense.
That said, it's pretty common to engage in plea bargaining before the prosecutor actually makes all his pretrial disclosures. Any reverse proffers prosecutors make are (for obvious reasons) cherry-picked to make the worst possible case against the defendant -- they get rewarded for convictions, not for walking away from cases they spent a bunch of time on -- and you can still agree to a plea bargain knowing they're giving you a slanted presentation of the evidence. It's just hard to say what the impact really would have been. And it's perhaps significant that the plea seems to be to obstruction of an official proceeding, not trespassing, where a bunch of videos of police helpfully guiding him around the building might be more directly exculpatory.
Regardless of the terms of the plea agreement, it is against public policy to deny an appeal based on prosecutorial misconduct or defense incompetence. If that is not now recognized in the chickenshit DC District Court, it will be when SCOTUS gets hold of the case.
Breaches of Brady v. Maryland likely permeate the J6 cases along with the unconstitutional breaches of the right to reasonable bail.
The Democrats have been doing this same thing since forever. Go back and take a long, hard look at what Woodrow Wilson's America looked like... Secret police. Government-sponsored propaganda. Astro-turfed "mass movements". Planned mob actions. Political enemy lists. Democrats using the machinery of state and all the rest of their "movements" to go after personal enemies.
Remember who founded the FBI? How Hoover ran it for fifty years? How nobody questioned that? It was an open secret in DC that Hoover "knew things", and you didn't want to cross him.
Remind you of Schumer's little speech about "crossing the intel agencies"? Sure looks like he knew what he was talking about, doesn't it? Nobody talks about that, or wants to consider the implications.
This ain't new. It's not unusual; it's business as usual in DC. We "lost our democracy" about the time of Wilson, and haven't gotten it back. What few times the opposition to these people have been running things, they only thought they were. Look at Nixon; he was toppled mostly because he pissed off the bureaucrats running the FBI. Nixon didn't do anything differently than any of his predecessors, other than having an "R" next to his name. Christ, LBJ had FBI agents in Goldwater's campaign headquarters, and Goldwater apparently knew about it.
Republicans are tame lapdogs for these creatures, providing only the outline of some sort of resistance to it all. They're complicit, because they know better and have never discussed this crap with their constituents. FDR did things that were clearly illegal, and yet never once got called on them. Just like LBJ. Or Truman, one of their greatest con artists.
None of this is new. The only new thing is their ineptitude at hiding it. They've gotten very confident and very arrogant. They think they can do anything they like. To anyone.
Chuck asserted: "In all candor and sincerity ... "
Frankly, Chuck, I don’t give a damn…
"We probably have 1 thin window of opportunity to reverse it but thats about it."
National divorce is a more achievable endeavor then reversing course in Washington.
Chuck demonstrating the he and his ilk are truly evil.
I see a commercial with three panels showing video images. On the left is Jan. 6th video of Capitol police escorting people through the Capitol as they take selfies. On the right is video from the raid on Pearl Harbor, police hosing down desegregationist, assassination of JFK and RFK, 9-11, and burning cars from Jan. 21, 2017. In the middle is Biden and members of the Jan. 6th congressional committee claiming Jan. 6th as was "the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War". The video may end with a question, "Have the people in the middle of this video made your own life and town better or worse in the last 4 years?"
Ann:
I'm far from a legal expert. What is the defendant's recourse in such a situation where he was pressured by government to plead guilty, take a plea agreement that suspends his rights, and exculpatory evidence both emerges afterwards AND appears to have been withheld by the prosecution/state?
I looked at the statement of offense, but nothing else. If you get to 41 months as the minimum, you're at an offense level of 22, which takes the offense level 14 (base level for 18 USC 1512(c) per 2J1.2 in the sentencing guidelines) and (I assume) enhances it +8 because the offense involved "causing or threatening to cause physical injury to a person or property damage, in order to obstruct the administration of justice." The notes explain that "The inclusion of 'property damage' under subsection (b)(1)(B) is designed to address cases in which property damage is caused or threatened as a means of intimidation or retaliation, (e.g. to intimidate a witness from, or retaliate against a witness for, testifying.)" I'm not sure the statement of offense provides great support for application of this enhancement to Chanley specifically. If you leave him at offense level 14, you get to a minimum of 15 months (with, of course, discretion for a lower sentence, since the sentencing guidelines aren't actually binding on courts.)
Great comment. You've got it all correct as far as I know.
So the trick, as you note, is in the +8 enhancement. Bumping it up from what otherwise might have been something like 15-21 months, to the 41-51. (He got 41, as we know.)
So where was the violence or threats of violence? Some of it (all of it?) is spelled out in the Presentencing report. Chansley was was clearly seen mixed in with a bunch of violent and violence-threatening guys. Chansley was yelling into his bullhorn at police and others, "Time is up, you motherfuckers!" Chansley left a note on the Presiding Officer's desk in the Senate chamber, "Time is up. Justice is coming." His social media was filled with threatening messages about the election.
If you want to read an interesting document, (as Althouse, like me, is a lover of transcripts) HERE is the DC District Court transcript of Chansley's plea.
Having read it, I really do have some pity for Chansley. My main worries for him are that he'll now be turned into a kind of Kyle Rittenhouse subculture hero. By the Tucker Carlsons and the Alex Joneses. I'm not sure he'll be ready for that. He was already a virtually-abused puppet pre-January 6. Poor shithead. Look at his biographical story as laid out by his counsel. If you read it and begin to share some sympathy, you have got to have some anger toward the Trumpwing bastards who got Chansley convinced that 2020 was a stolen election. (A belief that Chansley has now renounced.)
Yancey Ward said...
Now, for Watkins himself:
I suspect he is a lawyer with all the intellectual integrity that Chuck displays here every single day, and just helped the prosecution rail-road his client into federal prison. This was explain the quick plea agreement. It certainly wouldn't be the first time one of the January 6th defendents were hiring their own opposition.
Yes, but you must remember this is DC. Any jury will be Democrat partisans. Obama packed the DC bench with leftists. A lot of the J6 defendants cannot get lawyers to represent them. The left has declared war on any lawyer who takes a rightist client. Law schools are now turning out leftist radicals. My two kids that are lefties are also lawyers and one is an FBI agent.
I don't know the solution. If voters in LA will elect an angry lefty like Gascon, I can only imagine DC juries.
Btw, this new information that the J6 videos did not have sound, that it was dubbed in to make the videos sound scarier? Is there follow-up on that? If the sound was dubbed in, was it from actual audio from the same event at the same time, or from a WWII movie?
Balfegor, that’s illuminating. The problem for Jacob Chansley is that he was there and knew what happened with the police. His lawyer knew that there might be video and says he asked for it multiple times, but helped his client take the plea before the prosecutors provided the video. It seems to me that this will come down to what the lawyer was told about the video. If Chansley’s lawyer was told there was no video of Chansley, that’s one thing. If he was told it was in the hands of Congress and not the DOJ, I would think he could have subpoenaed it. That brings us back around to the ineffective assistance of counsel claim.
I will revise my earlier comment in one regard. I think the obstruction occurred before Chansley reached the Senate gallery, but arguably it continued until he left the building. So, from that viewpoint, the video would be during the commission of the crime. But we would want to see the video of him being escorted out to see show the obstruction ends. I would suggest it’s telling that Tucker Carlson hasn’t shown that.
If it was shameful and illiberal that the video was not released to the public, Kevin McCarthy hasn’t done that either.
Merrick Garland = Lavrenti Beria.
Any losing client Chuck represented would probably be appalled by what Chuck is saying in these various threads, and probably would take a hard look at suing him for lack of legal ethics and incompetence.
Much has been made of the notion that Republicans and "the right" constitute the stupid party. There is always a degree of truth in characterizing those who wish to conserve traditions as lacking the imaginative flair and cognitive dexterity of those who have discovered that the truly best way to live is to wear one's underwear on one's head and to hop around one-footed.
But there is a particularly big risk in causing the stupid to believe that their society and political order is governed by corruption and incompetence. Once this insight has penetrated the thick skulls of the stupid, it is devilishly hard to get it out of those skulls. And it is the stupid who man your armies, who produce your food, who provide you with your tax revenues, and who would otherwise continue to feel an intense allegiance to their fellow citizens, even though those citizens have the political upper hand, at least for the present.
So many things are taken for granted by our leaders, and with such little basis.
I will simply say that I've seen enough over the past few years, from the Russia Collusion hoax, the entire Covid spectacle (creation, source of virus, lab leak, vax, masks, shutdowns, etc), the 2020 election and the inability to question it without being censored, fired, or jailed, the Afghanistan pull out, the Ukrainian rush-in, the Nordstream II destruction, going after parents at school board meetings, the Twitter Files showing the government, media, and corporations all working to stifle/censor/ and misdirect the American people. The Biden Crime family getting a complete blanket thrown over any coverage of their 'business' actions. And the election shenanigans that seem to be getting bolder, more 'in your face', and more wide-spread.
All of this and more leads me to believe that nothing short of a revolution will clean this thing out. Our UniParty Government is as corrupt as anything we see around the world. We are what we've always pointed our fingers at. At long last, we are them. The banana republic, run by the tyrannical authoritarians who claim to be doing this for the common good. And, working overtime keeping us all at odds with each other.
A Revolution will clean things up a bit. It can happen either at the election booth or in the streets. Your choice. PS- national mail out balloting along with ballot harvesting and 3-4 week voting periods is the sure way to incite a revolution. Sometimes I feel like that's what they want.
Stupid party alert:
"It was a mistake in my view for Fox News to depict this in a way that's completely at variance with what our chief law enforcement official here at the Capitol thinks." - Mitch McConnell
No McConnell. It is a mistake that your not holding the chief law enforcement official that at the Capitol to account for not releasing those tapes to defense counsel. Don't defend the lawlessness of a police state that makes up crimes and denies the innocent access to exculpatory evidence.
Chuck said...
Let's be clear about this at the outset.
Jacob Chansley was not convicted of a crime of violence. He pleaded guilty to Obstruction of a Federal Proceeding.
===========
I am curious whether Federal Proceeding under consideration ever got initiated [e.g. gavel pounding and coming to order by Mr.Pence in this instance] in those AUGUST CHAMBERS that day?
I would be interested in footage of INSURRECTIONISTS ADVANCING and CONGRESS CRITTERS RETREATING
if chambers were vacant I take the view of squatters occupying abandoned premises and
If you are a prosecutor, and you have a high-profile target that you want to make an example, but you have the minimum amount of good faith and ethics, you make sure everything is in order. You do not put the defendant in solitary confinement for no reason other than to be cruel and to try to compel a plea, and you do not withhold evidence. It has been clear that the J6 prosecutions, not just for our American Viking here, have not been performed with the minimum amount of care we would expect from the Justice Department. It matters not if it was technically legal from some point of view in you squint sufficiently. A corrupt entity that follows the letter of the law is just as corrupt.
Stop trying to rationalize this and trying to figure out some way that the DOJ could be in the right here, or the damage is minimal. You cannot rationalize the bad acts of bad actors. They knew what they were doing is wrong, and they don't care.
Joe Smith said...
The judges don't care that they were lied to.
=====
but is that not basic requirement of USA-Adversary-System-of-Justice if the contending don't bring it up? if the team manager [assuming he has/is STANDING] does not get into Umpires face at HOMEPLATE / gets thrown out of game
2: When the civil war comes, you can look in a mirror and know that you were one of the causes
=========
does this mean instead of bayonets reflective surfaces will be presented to enemies by the righteous
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t hide in teh stall
FIFY
rcocean said...
Oh, the footage was in the hands of Congress. what a stupid lame excuse.
=========
I recall mutters about some tape of Obama in LATimes vault
Jacob Chansley was not convicted of a crime of violence. He pleaded guilty to Obstruction of a Federal Proceeding. Is there any doubt whatsoever that he did that? Did it, in association with about a thousand or two like-minded maniacs who wanted to stop the electoral process and the peaceful transition of power?
I do quibble with the word "association" because it implies "coordination" which I haven't seen proven about Chansley.
But that is not my biggest problem with this statement. I recall previous protests in the Capitol where the proceedings were obstructed with the intent to derail the process. I saw people get ejected but I didn't see them get 40+ months in prison. In at least 2 cases elected officials had protestors force their way onto their elevators (violence?) but I don't recall those protestors even being detained.
I recall a case where 2 people handed out Molotov cocktails to less than peaceful protestors - even lit one themselves and threw it into a police car - and bragged about it online. They got 18 months.
You can have a problem with outcomes being unequal and not automatically be a "Trumper" or support what happened on January 6th. I don't object to Chansley having consequences - I object to the scorched earth way the prosecution has handled the cases. They weren't content to just take a "win" - as a result, people who did break the law may be released and convictions expunged because of the way the process was subverted.
Please don't forget Mark Aungst and Matthew Perna, both J6 defendants and victims of horrific injustice, have died by suicide. I will never forget the people who thought this whole J6 production by Democrats and willing "Republicans", victimizing peaceful protesters for political theater, was just fine. Disgusting people.
I don't know why people engage in any sort of conversation with Chuck. He's not here to argue. He's here to shit in the middle of the room and then dance around celebrating the stench.
Just scroll past his shit.
"In Chansley’s case, we should be mindful that what is new to us is not necessarily new to him. Knowing what the proof against him showed, Chansley, represented by experienced defense counsel, voluntarily pled guilty to obstructing a congressional proceeding (namely, the January 6 joint session of Congress at which the state-certified electoral votes were counted and then-candidate Biden’s Electoral College victory was affirmed). His lawyers would have insisted on being shown any potentially exculpatory evidence prior to the guilty plea, and the prosecutors would have been obliged to produce it. I presume Chansley knew about this video, or at least images just like it; after all, he was in the Capitol and knew what he experienced there, including his interactions with the police.
And he pled guilty anyway, because there is nothing exculpatory on the video clips that Carlson has published."
Andrew C. McCarthy
Left Wing Journalist
Andrew C. McCarthy
Left Wing Journalist
Your so-called joke is closer to the truth.
If you're holding up McCarthy as some sort of 'conservative' journalist, you don't know jack about him. Or conservatives in general.
He's a never-Trumper stooge for a never-Trumper group. Both he and National Review have been unreadable for years.
Isn't there grounds for an appeal and possible exoneration? If not, why not?
Jim at said...
"He's a never-Trumper stooge for a never-Trumper group. Both he and National Review have been unreadable for years."
Please spare us your foolish little internal right wing battles. How about dealing with the merits of what McCarthy said?
Darcey 2:09 - so sad.
No one on the left cares.
Mutaman said...
"In Chansley’s case, we should be mindful that what is new to us is not necessarily new to him
Except we know, because he is defense attorney states that it is so, and no one from the prosecution has denied that it is so, that ll that video was withheld from Chansley.
Mutaman, is that because you're a mutant "man" who has no eyes, and no brain?
Andrew C. McCarthy is a former Federal Prosecutor who's spent the last 6+ years constantly writing stories about how whatever corrupt FBI /DoJ person is currently in the news is really a "straight shooter", and would never do anything wrong.
If you're quoting him, you're just showing how pathetic you are
Good God, Andy McCarthy is one of the disgusting people I mentioned above. There is no other interpretation. The J6 defendants are regular people who can't afford to fight this Justice Department and he knows it. Of course they were victimized. Of course what was done to them is an atrocius injustice. Andrew apparently just likes his caviar and wants to keep it coming in his smart DC circles.
Chuck said...
I want to see 2024 turned into a giant referendum on whether the January 6 riot was a good thing or a bad thing.
How about we have a referendum on whether the George Floyd riots were good things? Whether all the people murdered by those rioters deserved to die?
Yes Chuck, let's run a referendum on riots
If you're holding up McCarthy as some sort of 'conservative' journalist, you don't know jack about him. Or conservatives in general.
He's a never-Trumper stooge for a never-Trumper group. Both he and National Review have been unreadable for years.
His book about the "Russiagate" hoax is pretty good. He has a bias toward thinking the DOJ is honest and truthful. It isn't anymore. It mat have been at one time when McCarthy was there but I doubt it.
The reason why that poor dope Chansley pled guilt was the torture of months in solitary. The guy already had a history nof mental illness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gb8APcI985I
A commentary on J6 while watching Joe Rogan.
Very cool channel.
“ I don't know why people engage in any sort of conversation with Chuck. He's not here to argue. He's here to shit in the middle of the room and then dance around celebrating the stench.”
And here - when I’d thought Chuck was doing the Shy Tuna - the SOB was just fanning the stench toward him to prep for a snort.
Mutaman said...
Andrew C. McCarthy
Left Wing Journalist
Everyone here agrees with you. McCarthy is just another Regime lackey.
McCarthy's job is to be held up as a "Good Conservative" so stupid people like you will claim some sort of bipartisan agreement.
I know what is going on is mystifying to someone as stupid as you are though.
Shipwreckedcrew did appear and did a good job of explaining the situation with Jacob Chansley on Tucker. Just wrapped up.
Maybe Begley could take a break from his Frankenstein script and start drawing up Declaration of Independence 2.0
“Andrew C. McCarthy is a former Federal Prosecutor who's spent the last 6+ years constantly writing stories about how whatever corrupt FBI /DoJ person is currently in the news is really a "straight shooter", and would never do anything wrong.”
Yep, I recall how he vouched for that Patrick Fitzgerald fellow who did his best to EFF Scooter Libby way back when…
Yes, Chansley was clearly guilty of police escorted "Parading en Regalia"
When jailed in DC, best to accept whatever the extortionists throw your way.
Chuck wants a media curated referendum in the following spirit:
Chuck said...
"I am afraid you are mistaking me for someone who has an interest in fair treatment of Donald Trump. I'm not your guy. I am interested in smearing him, hurting him and prejudicing people against him."
3/4/16, 4:46 PM
But his vitriol can be diluted with a contribution to his Royal Liquor Send Me Mo account.
To Gahrie,
That's a good start.
If the Althouse Know Nothings are correct and Tucker's video is in any way relevant, Angeli has a simple remedy- move to set aside the guilty plea and the subsequent sentence. But he and his new lawyer won’t do that. They know what evidence the prosecutors have and they’re not going to go to trial. They know that the Tucker video is nonsense.
Enjoy your 41 months in jail, sport. Don’t bend down to pick up the soap.
It's all about the money.
I'd assume The leftwing corruption machine pays-off these people like McCarthy. Same with Drudge.
Mutaman said...
Please spare us your foolish little internal right wing battles. How about dealing with the merits of what McCarthy said?
What McCarthy said was that the defense attorney is lying, but that the fine upstanding and moral prosecutors at the DoJ are just too shy and retiring to come out and say he's lying.
Which is to say: McCarthy said is such complete and utter bullshit that no one with a functioning brain can even pretend to believe it.
Which I guess explains your claims to believe it
Guide to the honest person in the middle, trying to figure things out:
1: The Senate Democrats have compete and full access to all the J6 video. If Tucker Carlson releases video showing X, and 24 hours later Senate Democrats still haven't released a longer video showing the context Carlson left out, it's because Carlson's release was entirely legitimate
2: DoJ prosecutors have official court records of every single thing they gave to the defense. If a defense attorney says "the prosecutors never gave me that, despite me asking for it repeatedly", and 24 hours later the prosecutors have not released court records either showing
a: The defense attorney never asked for that, or
b: we gave it to the defense attorney on x/y
then the defense attorney is telling the truth, and the prosecutors clearly violated the defendant's Constitutional rights
3: Rapists, murderers, muggers, and left wing protestors all have Constitutional rights, and cases are routinely tossed when those rights are violated. Anyone who's claiming it's ok to violate rights when it's right wing protesters is someone trying to destroy America
Be a decent human being. Don't align yourself with the destroyers
And now we proceed forward in time to this revolution. Es muss sein.
Please spare us your foolish little internal right wing battles. How about dealing with the merits of what McCarthy said?
He's a shithead. It doesn't matter what he said. See also: You.
FROM NAOMI WOLF, A FORTHRIGHT JANUARY 6 APOLOGY:
There is no way to avoid this moment. The formal letter of apology. From me. To Conservatives and to those who “put America first” everywhere.
It’s tempting to sweep this confrontation with my own gullibility under the rug — to “move on” without ever acknowledging that I was duped, and that as a result I made mistakes in judgement, and that these mistakes, multiplied by the tens of thousands and millions on the part of people just like me, hurt millions of other people like you all, in existential ways.
But that erasure of personal and public history would be wrong.
I owe you a full-throated apology.
I believed a farrago of lies. And, as a result of these lies, and my credulity — and the credulity of people similarly situated to me – many conservatives’ reputations are being tarnished, on false bases.
The proximate cause of this letter of apology is the airing, two nights ago, of excepts from tens of thousands of hours of security camera footage from the United States Capitol taken on Jan 6, 2021. The footage was released by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson. . . .
There is no way for anyone thoughtful, even if he or she is a lifelong Democrat, not to notice that Sen Chuck Schumer did not say to the world that the footage that Mr Carlson aired was not real. Rather, he warned that it was “shameful” for Fox to allow us to see it. The Guardian characterized Mr Carlson’s and Fox News’ sin, weirdly, as “Over-Use” of Jan 6 footage. Isn’t the press supposed to want full transparency for all public interest events?
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