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Dems & Media Can't Allow MAGA to Rewrite the History of J6

They are using the new DOJ report to mischaracterize what happened.

Ron Filipkowski Dec 16

MAGA Republicans and Donald Trump are seeking to rewrite the history of what we saw with our own eyes on J6, and the evidence that was presented in courtrooms in hundreds of criminal cases. This is a project they have been at virtually since the day it happened, but now they are weaponizing DOJ’s final report on the insurrection while legacy media and Democrats largely ignore them.

Again.

DOJ’s Inspector General report was released last week. The Biden Administration, AG Merrick Garland, and FBI Director Chris Wray all realized that this report auditing the response and involvement of federal and other law enforcement agencies had to be released before the incoming Trump Administration took office, since they would seek to either kill the report or seriously alter it to omit key facts and truths.

Republican conspiracy theorists and propagandists have seized upon one small section of the report that addresses their long-standing contention, with no evidence to back it up, that the FBI inserted their agents into the crowd that day specifically to incite a riot in order to thwart the plans of representatives and Senators to challenge the results of the election on the floor during the joint session of Congress.

The IG reported stated a few simple relevant facts:

1. There were NO FBI Agents in the crowd that day.

2. There were 26 people who had served or were serving in some capacity as FBI informants in matters unrelated to J6 who were present in DC at a variety of events including the Trump rally, but none of them were instructed by the FBI to be there or do anything.

3. Some of these informants committed crimes that day.

4. The FBI had 4 informants in the crowd that later reported information to them, but only one was there specifically to monitor the situation while the others were there on their own initiative.

5. All 4 were specifically instructed not to go inside the police perimeter or the Capitol building but 3 of them did anyway.

6. None of those 4 actively participated in any violence and each was told specifically not to do anything or get involved in any way.

MAGA Republicans were quick to pounce on this as “proof” that their conspiracy theory was right all along - that the FBI instigated the insurrection to frame Trump supporters. They cited the testimony of FBI Director Christopher Wray, who was repeatedly asked at congressional hearings whether the FBI was involved in instigating J6. But Wray never lied - he testified that no FBI Agents were in the crowd. When asked about informants, he testified that it has been FBI policy never to comment on the use of non-testifying confidential informants in any pending matter. There was nothing that Wray ever testified to that was proven to be false in the IG report.

Republicans seeking to rewrite the history of J6 are conflating the use of informants with the use of agents. An agent is a sworn law enforcement officer who has a badge and works full-time for the FBI as their career. Informants typically either have pending charges that they are trying to mitigate or are being paid by the FBI based on the value of information they provide. They are private citizens who often operate as freelancers (essentially independent contractors) who are rarely under the direct daily supervision of an agent. They typically contact an agent when they have something to report that they have seen or heard, which sometimes initiates further investigation.

It has been disheartening to watch legacy media and Democrats briefly cover or address the initial IG report, then move on as Republicans distort it and lie about it to reset the narrative. People like Ron Johnson in Senate hearings and Clay Higgins in the House have suggested that the FBI brought in hundreds of agents specifically to insert them into the crowd to incite a riot. Higgins claimed that 200 FBI agents were brought into DC in secret “ghost buses” to hide the operation from the public. There are dozens of other members of Congress who have advanced this narrative.

Then you have people like Stephen A. Smith, who just signed a new $100+ million contract with ESPN. Leading up to the signing of the deal and afterwards, Smith has gotten quite a bit more provocative in his show commentary with political statements. He chimed in on this report, despite clearly not understanding all the issues. It also appears he may have relied on social media characterizations of the report when he said he was “tired of Democrats lying” to the public about things like this.

Smith is not a Democrat, but he is a registered independent who says he votes mostly for Democratic candidates. He is also a major, influential legacy media host for a huge company that reaches exactly the kind of low-information voters who don’t follow politics closely and tend to decide close elections like 2024. These are people who don’t read DOJ IG reports - they get their information from people like Smith, Joe Rogan and others. And the information they are being fed is false.

The problem when people like Smith decide to chime in with an ignorant and/or false take is that these are exactly the moments that MAGA Republicans look for and seize upon. They love rants like his, because it allows them to argue that even a major legacy media figure agrees with their lies and propaganda now. Agrees that they were right all along. The clip of these comments by Smith got over 10 million total views on right-wing social media:

“My big issue is that I'm really, really sick and tired of every time I turn around finding something else that the Democrats have lied about or downplayed or misrepresented along the way.”

First, Democrats didn’t lie. The assertion is that Chris Wray lied. Chris Wray is a Republican appointed by Trump. Second, Wray didn’t lie. He told the truth that no agents were involved and explained that he cannot comment publicly on informants because the FBI never comments on informants for many very good reasons. Third, even if you believe he was deceptive in his responses, there is still zero evidence to suggest that anyone associated with the FBI planned to send people into the crowd to incite a riot, which is the main point of this entire exercise.

Legacy media has a responsibility not only to put out an accurate story about it when a report like this is published, but also to follow up and address disinformation and lies generated by the right-wing media echo system and elected officials. But they consistently drop the ball on this while they move to the next story. Democratic elected officials also have a responsibility to continue to push the truth and take the lies on forcefully.

Since they don’t seem interested much in doing any of those things, we will continue to along with other smaller independent media outlets, a handful of politicians who care enough, some dedicated legacy media reporters, and a few TV commentators like Adam Kinzinger. We continue to tell the truth about what happened, over and over and over again, and we pay attention to each and every lie so we can be vigilant about rebutting right-wing propaganda.

Which is what we are doing right now with this article.

You can help too, by sharing it.

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Jamie Raskin Takes MAGA Clown To CLASS Over Xenophobic Stunt

 

Rep. Jamie Raskin takes MAGA clown Clay Higgins to class over a xenophobic GOP bill. Raskin blasts Higgins and the GOP over their latest legislation that would require the U.S. Census to include a citizenship question. Reps. Jamie Raskin and Greg Casar crucify the Republican party for their xenophobic amendment, embarrass MAGA Republicans for knowing nothing about American history or immigration and so much more. For more from TYT Investigates, SUBSCRIBE at: https://www.YouTube.com/TYTInvestigat... You can read our stories at https://www.TYT.com/investigates LIKE and FOLLOW us at https://www.Facebook.com/TYTInvestigates. And connect with us on Twitter @TYTInvestigates 240411__IV01_RASKIN HIGGINS CASAR US CENSUS CITIZENSHIP

Trump Indictment: Scholar of Fascism Says GOP Has Become an "Autocratic Party" Led by "Cult Leader"

 

Donald Trump is set to surrender today at the federal courthouse in Miami to face charges for retaining and mishandling classified documents, including top-secret information about U.S. nuclear weapons programs. Trump's supporters, including many prominent members of the Republican Party, have threatened violence and suggested revolt in response to what they see as a politically motivated targeting of the former president, while Trump himself has claimed to reporters that he is innocent of wrongdoing. His capture of the Republican base is the work of a "cult leader," argues Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an expert on fascism and authoritarianism, adding that today's GOP is an "autocratic party operating inside a democracy." Ben-Ghiat, a professor of history and Italian studies at New York University, also discusses the death this week of former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who she says helped to mainstream far-right extremism in Italian politics.

POLITICO Nightly: The SEC goes to war with crypto

View in browser   BY DECLAN HARTY Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler listens during a meeting with the Treasury Department's Financial Stability Oversight Council. | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images WEATHERING THE STORM — In the always online cryptocurrency universe, there’s a saying among traders: HODL, or hold on for dear life. Originally just a typo of “HOLD,” the phrase has been adopted as a mantra of sorts for crypto investors anxiously weathering wild movements in the market. But the gospel of HODL is about to take on new weight for crypto evangelists if they want to survive the heavy fire coming at the industry from President Joe Biden’s Securities and Exchange Commission. Last week, the Gary Gensler-led SEC sued the world’s largest crypto exchanges — Binance and Coinbase — less than 24 hours apart . The agency alleged that the companies, among other things, were operating unregistered stock exchanges, brokers and clearing agencies — in other words, a mishmash of financial institutions that normally operate separately to avoid potential conflicts and abuse. In the case of Binance, the charges were even more dramatic as the SEC alleged the company, along with CEO Changpeng Zhao, engineered a “web of deception” that misled investors, inflating trading volumes and more. The SEC’s one-two combo opens up what promises to be a pair of brutal courtroom battles. Binance and Coinbase have sworn to fight the agency’s charges. Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal said the company is willing to litigate the charges “for years.” While Binance and Coinbase have rejected the SEC’s claims, many investors, lawyers and even other firms nervously gulped. In the week since the lawsuits, Coinbase shares have plunged, as have the crypto tokens that the SEC labeled as unregistered securities — which include three of the 11 largest in the world. Meanwhile, Robinhood, the stock brokerage that allows customers to also dabble in crypto, said it was dropping the three tokens from its platforms after the SEC’s lawsuits “introduced a cloud of uncertainty ” around the assets. Gensler, after all, has given no indication that the SEC is easing up on crypto firms that resist its authority even after nailing the market’s largest players. If anything, the SEC chair appears more emboldened — and empowered — than ever to go after the “Wild West,” as he has long called crypto. “When crypto asset market participants go on Twitter or TV and say they lacked ‘fair notice’ that their conduct could be illegal, don’t believe it,” Gensler said Thursday in a sweeping speech entitled “We’ve seen this story before,” a reference to the fraud-ridden markets of the 1920s. “They may have made a calculated economic decision to take the risk of enforcement as the cost of doing business.” The Binance and Coinbase actions should be no surprise to SEC watchers. For months, Gensler has warned crypto companies that the proverbial “runway” to comply — or risk squaring off with the SEC’s enforcement attorneys — was getting shorter. And since the downfall of FTX, the crypto exchange founded by the brief Washington bigwig Sam Bankman-Fried, the SEC has followed up on its word — suing a smattering of crypto companies, moguls and even a few celebrities like Lindsay Lohan for allegedly touting tokens illegally. But the industry, by and large, is not yet yielding. Binance and Coinbase have already pushed to frame the coming fights with the SEC as referendums on the broader industry, saying that Gensler’s agency is a rogue actor squashing U.S. chances of becoming a hub for the 15-year-old crypto market at the same time that other jurisdictions like Europe embrace the asset class. Gensler argues that the push for compliance is nothing more than a matter of ensuring that investors are protected and leveling the playing field between traditional finance and crypto. Either way, what’s clearest now is that whatever comes next promises to be bumpy. Hold on. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author at dharty@politico.com or on Twitter at @declanharty .     WHAT'D I MISS? — Washington Post CEO to step down: Fred Ryan, publisher and CEO of The Washington Post, is stepping down , the news organization announced in a statement today. Ryan will remain the publisher of The Washington Post until August, the statement said, and Patty Stonesifer has been appointed interim CEO. Ryan, 68, has served as publisher and CEO since his appointment by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and owner of The Post, nine years ago. Ryan is leaving to lead the newly formed Center on Public Civility at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, the statement said. — Compromise struck to preserve Obamacare’s preventive care mandate: The Texas conservatives challenging Obamacare’s preventive care mandate have reached a tentative compromise with the Justice Department that preserves free coverage for a range of services — from syphilis tests to depression screenings. The agreement, which still needs approval from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, keeps coverage intact nationwide while the case proceeds. The Biden administration, in exchange, pledged not to enforce the mandate to cover HIV prevention drugs and other preventive care services against the employers and individual workers who sued claiming that doing so violated their religious beliefs. This means that even if the Affordable Care Act rules are upheld on appeal, the government can’t penalize the challengers for refusing to cover required services. — PGA tour to senators: You didn’t help us ‘fend off’ the Saudis: PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan defended the decision to join forces with the Saudi-backed rival league LIV Golf in a letter to Congress, saying inaction from lawmakers left him little other choice . “During this intense battle, we met with several Members of Congress and policy experts to discuss the PIF’s attempt to take over the game of golf in the United States, and suggested ways that Congress could support us in these efforts,” Monahan told senators in a letter obtained by POLITICO, referring to the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund. “While we are grateful for the written declarations of support we received from certain members, we were largely left on our own to fend off the attacks.”   GET READY FOR GLOBAL TECH DAY: Join POLITICO Live as we launch our first Global Tech Day alongside London Tech Week on Thursday, June 15. Register now for continuing updates and to be a part of this momentous and program-packed day! From the blockchain, to AI, and autonomous vehicles, technology is changing how power is exercised around the world, so who will write the rules? REGISTER HERE .     NIGHTLY ROAD TO 2024 THE CIRCUS IS IN TOWN — Donald Trump and his aides are eager to have a show of support and force for his first court appearance in Miami on Tuesday on charges related to the retention of classified documents and efforts to obstruct justice. But they’re stressing that they don’t want it to get out of hand , writes POLITICO’s Meredith McGraw. Before departing for Florida, the former president spent this morning at his clubhouse in New Jersey where he spoke with aides and met with a congressional ally. Trump and his team of advisers and attorneys plan to spend tonight at his golf resort in Miami preparing for his court appearance and trying to bolster his legal team. They were aware of pro-Trump rallies planned around his courthouse appearance and amplified calls for supporters to “protest peacefully.” “We need strength at this point. Everyone is afraid to do anything. They’re afraid to talk. They have to go out and protest peacefully,” Trump told ally and conservative provocateur Roger Stone on his radio show on Sunday. Stone called on Trump’s supporters planning protests to “keep it peaceful, civil and legal.” A host of Trump allies are set to descend on the city in anticipation of the arraignment. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), announced he would be holding a press conference in Miami to deliver remarks “on the indictment of former President Donald J. Trump and President Joe Biden’s abandonment of equal justice under the law.” And Kari Lake, the former gubernatorial candidate from Arizona, announced her plans to be “in Miami tomorrow to peacefully and patriotically protest in support of” Trump. But Lake today also issued a warning to anyone who might try to hurt Trump. “They’re gonna have to come through me and…300 million others,” she said. “Most of us are NRA members. That is not a threat; that is a public service announcement.” Other members of Congress have used similarly foreboding rhetoric including Reps. Clay Higgins and Andy Biggs, who declared: “We have now reached a war phase.” GLASS HALF FULL — For weeks, the two frontrunners in the Republican presidential primary have painted current events in increasingly apocalyptic terms, in a fundraising appeal, likening his indictment on Thursday to “watching our Republic DIE.” DeSantis, who had previously suggested the government is imposing a “biomedical security state,” said “the weaponization of federal law enforcement represents a mortal threat to a free society.” Many of the Republicans trailing those two in the polls are working on a different strategy — trying to carve out a less dystopian lane , writes POLITICO’s Adam Wren, Sally Goldenberg and Natalie Allison. Last week, former Vice President Mike Pence cast himself in his campaign announcement as a sunnier, Reaganesque Republican, appealing to “the better angels of our nature” and maintaining he isn’t “convinced our country is as divided as our politics”— despite a mob trying to kill him on Jan. 6, 2021. Doug Burgum, the near-anonymous North Dakota governor, talked about small-town values and “fighting to unite the country” in his campaign launch. And then there’s South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, who has said conservatives are “starved for hope” and that the country is “a more perfect union today than we were yesterday or last year or the last decade.”       AROUND THE WORLD A giant poster paying tribute to former Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi hangs at the Mediaset media conglomerate headquarters in Cologno Monzese, near Milan. Berlusconi died earlier today. | Luca Bruno/AP Photo END OF AN ERA — Silvio Berlusconi, the former Italian prime minister, has died at the age of 86, his office confirmed. Berlusconi, who was a senator and leader of the right-wing Forza Italia party — a junior partner in Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s coalition government — was admitted to a Milan hospital last week. A billionaire media and property tycoon-turned-politician, Berlusconi rose to the top of Italian politics in the 1990s, leading the country for close to a decade during three terms as prime minister. In the mid-1990s, he started planning for the afterlife, write Jacopo Barigazzi and Stephan Faris . On the grounds of his multi-million euro villa in Arcore, near Milan, he began building a giant underground mausoleum where he planned to be laid surrounded by more than 30 other tombs made ready for close friends, family members and romantic partners. The project was typically Berlusconi — lavish, flamboyant, treading the line between the imperious and the absurd. Visitors were escorted past a 100-ton abstract sculpture representing the vault of heaven, down an imposing stairway modeled on pre-Roman burial sites, through a narrow corridor decorated with the things he might need in the afterlife — fruit, bread, keys, a mobile phone — and into an imposing burial chamber at whose center stood a pink marble and granite sarcophagus. Berlusconi was a lot of things. A real-estate developer whose right-hand man was sentenced to seven years in prison for his ties to the mafia. A media revolutionary who introduced commercial television to Italy, establishing a stranglehold on the country’s information ecosystem. The beaming owner of the Italian football club A.C. Milan. Post-war Italy’s longest-serving prime minister. A business tycoon convicted for tax fraud. A disgraced politician brought down by reports of “bunga bunga” orgies and sex with an underage prostitute. Above all, Berlusconi was a seducer. From his early days as an occasional cruise ship crooner to his time as a real-estate salesman to his decades as a politician smiling at Italians from television shows running on the channels he owned, Berlusconi was unabashedly focused on one thing: winning over whoever was in front him. “Think of how many women there are out there who would like to go to bed with me, but don’t know it,” he was quoted as saying in a book about his rise to power. “Life is a problem of communication.” Read the full obituary of the giant in Italian politics here .   STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING : What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president’s ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today .     NIGHTLY NUMBER $290 million The amount that JPMorgan Chase will pay out to victims of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in a settlement over claims the bank profited from sexual abuse that victims suffered and ignored warnings about Epstein. The lawsuit alleges JPMorgan Chase gave Epstein loans while ignoring warnings about Epstein’s abuse between 1998 and 2013. Epstein died in prison in 2019 after he was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges. RADAR SWEEP LONG SECOND LIFE — Mark Zuckerberg made a big bet on his “Metaverse” as the “future of connection.” The online world, thus far, has little to show for it. But somehow, after 20 years, Second Life, a virtual world launched in 2003 (when Facebook was still in its infancy), persists, Simon Parkin reports for The Guardian. The platform has hosted company-wide meetings for IBM, faculties from Stanford and MIT, and has its own economy worth an estimated $650 million. Parkin explores why Second Life lives on as Silicon Valley powerhouses struggle to build their own metaverses. PARTING IMAGE On this date in 1987: President Ronald Reagan speaks in front of the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin, Germany, as he visits the city during 750th anniversary celebrations. The speech became famous for the line "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" referring to the leader of the Soviet Union and the wall that encircled West Berlin between 1961 and 1989. | Roberto Pfeil/AP Photo Did someone forward this email to you?  Sign up here .     Follow us on Twitter Charlie Mahtesian @PoliticoCharlie Calder McHugh @calder_mchugh Katherine Long @katherinealong   FOLLOW US

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Army Veteran DECODES Republican's THREAT over Trump Indictment

 

Army Veteran Fred Wellman decodes a bizarre tweet from Republican Clay Higgins that is more than meets the eye.

Concerns about violence from Trump supporters in connection with federal indictment

 

Rachel Maddow and her MSNBC colleagues discuss concerns about violence from Donald Trump supporters in connection with his federal indictment in Florida given his past incitement of violence and some weirdly worded tweets from extreme Trump supporters Rep. Clay Higgins and Rep. Andy Biggs.

Clay Higgins' Unhinged Rant

 

Captain Conspiracy Clay Higgins' Unhinged Rant  Congressman 😒 Clay Higgins launched into another unhinged rant last week in a House Oversight Committee.  Higgins was not holding insurance executive's feet to the fire for abandoning home and small business owners in his Congressional district after Hurricane Laura. He wasn't railing against the national debt that he increased by voting for trillions in tax breaks for billionaires and corporations.  No, Captain Conspiracy was yelling at former Twitter employees about Hunter Biden's laptop! Higgins' hypocrisy knows no bounds. He voted to overturn an election after his militiamen stormed the Capitol, yet he has the nerve to threaten to imprison employees of a private company for "stealing" the election.  Thank you, Team LA Dems   Paid for by the Louisiana Democratic Party Louisiana Democratic Party 701 Government Street Baton Rouge, LA 70802 United States