Tonight in Your Rights: Five years after the insurrection
The rioters have been freed. The prosecutors have been fired, but the history refuses to be scrubbed.
On the fifth anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection, all of the culprits of the violent attempt to overthrow an election are free. Many of them are in power, and their prosecutors have been fired and hunted.
Donald Trump marked the occasion by launching an official White House website as a digital monument to the Big Lie. It lauds the violent rioters he inspired as “patriots,” blames Capitol Police for the “tensions,” and accuses his former vice president Mike Pence of “betrayal.” It’s a disgrace and hallucination, but the hollow propaganda is no match for the testimony of people who still refuse to be intimidated.
On New Year’s Eve, House Republicans dumped the damning testimony of Trump’s prosecutor Jack Smith to be buried by the ball drop.
“The first is the evidence here made clear that President Trump was by a large measure the most culpable and most responsible person in this conspiracy,” Smith said. “These crimes were committed for his benefit.”
Throughout the 255-page transcript, and more than 8-hour video, Smith made clear that he would have preferred his deposition to have taken place in a public session, explaining that he was “proud of” the investigation he led. He made clear that he still couldn’t speak freely about the findings of his Espionage Act investigation into Trump’s handling of highly classified documents in Mar-a-Lago.
Judge Aileen Cannon blocked the release of that volume of Smith’s report before Trump’s second term began.
As Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges, who was assaulted by rioters who tried crushing him inside the door of the Capitol, told reporter and dogged Jan. 6 chronicler Scott MacFarlane: "Five years ago I thought: This has to be the most videotaped crime in American history. It's just so much evidence. There's no way anyone can possibly deny what occurred here. But that's exactly what's happening."
Trump began his second term by freeing Hodges’ assailants and purging dozens of prosecutors.
His Justice Department scrubbed pages filled with basic facts about the Jan. 6 docket, which laid out the mountains of evidence prosecutors amassed, sorted, analyzed and deployed against rioters from every U.S. state.
Smith’s deposition is a relic of Trump’s quest for revisionism and naked vengeance.
As a reporter who covered scores of Jan. 6 cases — and all of Trump’s criminal cases — I could share some reflections of that effort, but the most poignant and eloquent responses to the attempt at rewriting history came from Pamela Hemphill, who was convicted of a Jan. 6-related misdemeanor.
A retired addiction counselor, Hemphill spoke at a panel before House Democrats about why she rejected Trump’s pardon.
“Accepting that pardon would be lying about what happened on Jan. 6. I am guilty, and I own that guilt,” the 72-year-old said.
She recounted traveling more than 2,000 miles from Idaho to the nation’s capital because she had “fallen for the president’s lies just like many of his supporters.” Her voice frequently quaked as she described the police officers as “heroes.”
“They protected the Capitol and people inside the Capitol, even people like me,” she said. “I was trampled on by the rioters, and if it weren’t for the Capitol police helping me that day, I might have died. To the Capitol Police officers sitting, if I may address you for a minute, I am truly sorry from the bottom of my heart for being part of the mob that put you and so many other officers in danger.”
You can watch her opening remarks in full below:
Maduro hires senior Reagan DOJ attorney
A prominent attorney’s name appeared on the docket of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro on Tuesday: Bruce Fein, an associate deputy attorney general in the Reagan administration.
Fein will join a legal team that includes Julian Assange’s former lawyer Barry Pollack.
Lawyer David Wikstrom, who represented a co-defendant in the case against pardoned Honduran ex-leader Juan Orlando Hernandez, was reportedly appointed by the court for Maduro’s appearance.
In case you missed it, I discussed Maduro’s legal team in an interview with Glenn Kirschner.
I also spoke to Brian Tyler Cohen about the international ramifications of Maduro’s case.
My conversation with Michael Popok was in last night’s newsletter.
Thank you, Adam. I watched Allison Gill’s curated selection of Smith’s 7 hours of taped testimony. He is not intimidated and neither should we be.
5 years today and the insurrectionist has been resurrected. Nowadays you have to be a crook a violent felon or a pedophile to get away with everything with the police. The only ones going to jail are Democrats Well I'll gladly sit in the jail cell before I ever vote Republican