After an unruly crowd stormed the capitol on January 6th, the House of Representatives impeached Trump for “high crimes and misdemeanors.” They alleged that Trump had “incited an insurrection.”
The mischaracterization of the incident as an insurrection was the most extreme hyperbole and the allegation that Trump incited it not even rooted in reality.
But the Democrats desperately wanted — even needed — it to be an insurrection, as did they need Trump to have incited it, because they intended to prevent Trump from ever holding elected office again. The Constitution disqualifies any such person who has engaged in insurrection.
After the Democrats failed to get a conviction in the Senate, they hurriedly put into motion a desperate, secondary effort to prevent Trump from challenging them in the future: the formation of the J6 committee.
Unlike their previous failed effort, which depended upon a bipartisan consensus, the J6 committee needed no such consensus. It was comprised exclusively of pro-impeachment, anti-Trumpers, who were all determined to see Trump convicted of a crime he didn’t commit.
The J6 committee’s purpose was to create the crime they wanted to accuse Trump of having committed — inciting an insurrection — and then to create the evidence they believed would be needed to get a conviction. In other words, they weren’t investigating a crime, they were manufacturing one.
But to get a conviction, the committee would have to convince the Justice Department to bring criminal charges against Trump and this required proving that Trump had acted with “corrupt intent.” Because the crime was manufactured, the J6 committee would have to manufacture evidence.
We saw that ‘evidence’ at Tuesday’s ‘surprise hearing.’
While it may have been a ‘surprise’ to Americans, it was the culmination of months of planning by the J6 committee. They had issued a subpoena for testimony from their star witness, Cassidy Hutchinson, on November 9, 2021.
Hutchinson’s ‘bombshell’ testimony on Tuesday was a carefully rehearsed and scripted performance. Her intended audience was federal prosecutors working for Attorney General Merrick Garland.
As promised, Hutchinson’s testimony was a ‘bombshell,’ but not because it made a compelling case against Trump; rather, because it revealed both the Democrats' entire contrived strategy and the source of their inspiration: a 1969 Supreme Court case.
Warning: it’s as desperate and stupid as you’d expect.
Clarence Brandenburg, a Ku Klux Klan leader, had been convicted in Ohio after he gave a speech to other Democrats, in which he alluded to the possibility of “revengeance” if the federal government continued to “suppress the white, Caucasian race,” and announced a plan for the Klan members to march on Washington D.C.
The Supreme Court ruled that the Ohio law, which made illegal advocating "crime, sabotage, violence, or unlawful methods of terrorism as a means of accomplishing industrial or political reform,” violated Brandenburg’s right to free speech.
While the SCOTUS ruled that Ohio’s law was unconstitutional, the opinion also defined when free speech could be prohibited: if it is "directed at inciting or producing imminent lawless action” and is "likely to incite or produce such action.”
Hutchinson’s entire testimony appears to have been literally crafted to fulfill that requirement, which the J6 committee hopes will give the Justice Department enough confidence to prosecute Trump.
Using the SCOTUS case as a blueprint, the J6 committee set out to prove that Trump knew an ‘insurrection’ was imminent and that his actions were directed at inciting it.
Hutchinson’s testimony that Trump ordered security to "take the effing [magnetometers] away and let [his] people in,” was intended to demonstrate that Trump knew supporters were ‘armed,’ and thus wanted them armed, because Trump planned to incite them to lawless activity later.
Had the partisan J6 committee’s purpose been to investigate the facts, rather than sell a pre-planned case for conviction, it might have pointed out, for example, that there were no ‘magnetometers’ present at the mall on Trump’s inauguration day.
Even still, Hutchinson’s own testimony undermined the committee’s narrative. She acknowledged that Trump’s motivation for removing the magnetometers was born from a motivation to ensure that the Ellipse, where Trump would give his speech, was fully packed, and the magnetometers were hampering some supporters from entering.
Despite this, the committee and media are using this testimony about magnetometers to make their case that Trump was conspiring to incite imminent lawless action.
Then there’s the infamous ‘steering wheel story,’ which Hutchinson didn’t even witness. While secondhand hearsay isn’t considered admissible evidence in a court of law, it was welcomed in the J6 committee’s court of lawlessness.
Hutchinson testified that she had been told by Tony Ornato, the then-White House deputy chief of staff, that after Trump had been told he wouldn’t be taken to the Capitol to meet the protestors, he furiously lunged from the backseat of the SUV, attempted to grab the steering wheel from the driver, assaulted the driver, and was stopped by Bobby Engel, another secret service agent.
This improbable tall-tale was met with no skepticism but was accepted as fact, because the ‘surprise hearing’ was a Soviet style show trial, in which propaganda and uncorroborated hearsay were accepted as admissible evidence. In fact, those were the criteria for admissible evidence.
Both the driver and Bobby Engel have categorically denied Hutchinso
Nor did the J6 committee corroborate Hutchinson’s story before the hearing.
The J6 committee isn’t searching for truth. They’re selling a lie; a lie they’re desperately hoping will put Trump in jail.
But like Trump-Russia collusion, Stormy Daniels, and Quid Pro Quo, this too will fail. While the media will continue to claim the committee delivered a bombshell, all they delivered was another dud.
Once again, the Democrats have over promised and under delivered. They have nothing to offer but more lies.
Drew Allen is the host of the popular “The Drew Allen Show”
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