It's been 17 exhausting months since Jan. 6, 2021, the Left's self-proclaimed 9/11. Gas prices are hitting historic highs, inflation is through the roof, and baby formula is nowhere to be seen, but the Democrats are ignoring the compiling crises to televise Watergate-styled House hearings on the Capitol riot.
A majority of sensible Americans have moved on, now worrying about the high cost of living and rampant crime in their communities, but progressives with the obsessive vengeance of career cyberbully and professional victim Taylor Lorenz have beaten the dead J6 horse into the grave. And now the Democrats are commercializing Jan. 6 trauma porn as a lifeline for liberal lawmakers looking to survive the 2022 midterms.
Ring leader House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has tapped anti-Trump RINOs Reps. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), whose Lincoln Project-esque politics now lie left of moderate Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), as the only two "Republicans" to serve on the majority-Democrat investigatory J6 select committee.
The multi-day extravaganza is underway and the witnesses set to testify in the first televised hearing on Thursday seem to be cut from the same cloth. With all the pawns placed on the chessboard, the only piece missing from the game is the opposition. Here are the key figures Pelosi's posse is trotting out for Thursday's primetime media circus, the first of a promised six hearings:
Witness #1: U.S. Capitol Police Officer
Among the panel's initial public witnesses, U.S. Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards, one of the first department members to speak out in the riot's aftermath and was injured on Jan. 6, will be on national display Thursday. According to the J6 committee's online profile of Edwards, the law enforcement officer suffered "a traumatic brain injury," a concussion, that day and patrolled the West Plaza to prevent rioters from entering the Capitol building. Since the Jan. 6 riot, the Capitol cop's injuries have reportedly prevented Edwards from resuming her previous assignment on the USCP First Responder Unit but will return this year after being physically cleared. According to an early February 2021 interview with USA Today, the officer is riot-trained and has full riot gear, including a helmet, but she was sent out on Jan. 6 without her protective equipment.
Witness #2: Documentarian
An Emmy award-winning documentarian who conducted taped interviews with the Proud Boys will also provide testimony Thursday after current and ex-leaders of the group were charged with seditious conspiracy over the alleged planning of the Jan. 6 riot. British filmmaker Nick Quested, whose camera crew documented the chaotic events at the Capitol, will take the stand. The committee is expected to screen Quested's eyewitness footage as well as other "previously unseen" audio files and video clips obtained during the J6 probe.
Quested spent plenty of time during the post-election period filming Proud Boys members, including former chairman Enrique Tarrio, and accompanied the group to pro-Trump rallies in Washington through November and December 2020, according to The New York Times. Quested was also present with a camera squad on the day prior to Jan. 6 when Tarrio reportedly met in an underground parking garage near the Capitol with Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, per The NYT. Quested has called this private meeting the "smoking gun."
Politico reported that the Department of Justice has used Quested's on-the-ground footage to help issue charges against a handful of J6 defendants who allegedly breached the Capitol. Quested said he's been subpoenaed by the Justice Department and was, at first, treated like a co-conspirator of the Proud Boys, although he indicated he no longer feels pressure from the DOJ like he did at the outset of the J6 investigation.
The cameraman spoke for hours to Pelosi's panel in April when he was asked extensive questions. "We walked through my footage in detail," Quested told Politico over the phone. He praised the committee's "incredible amount of hard work" and said the panel has "an exceptional grasp" on the motivations of the rioters.
Quested has called Jan. 6 a day that "will live forever," "the climax of years of lies and hate," and an event that "shook my faith in America." On the infamous day, Quested wrote on Instagram that the "level of anger and venom was unbelievable," questioning: "What would happen at the next rally in a right to carry state[?]" Quested further declared in the same Instagram post on Jan. 6: "This is the legacy of #Trump."
He has defended himself against recent allegations from fellow filmmakers on social media who have accused him of being a bad-faith actor that was strategically embedded among the Proud Boys to instigate.
"I am not a fed or a fed asset," Quested insisted on Twitter late Wednesday afternoon.
Among his other online activities, Quested also solicited "a chat" with far-left extremist Robert Evans, a pro-Antifa writer for Bellingcat, regarding a film he's working on about the Stop the Steal movement. During the height of the summer 2020 uprisings, Evans defended an Antifa arson attack on the Portland Police Association and glorified the burning of the police union hall as "a justified act of protest against a valid target."
Quested's rise to fame can be contrasted with the fate of BLM militant John Sullivan, a self-identified video journalist who was without press credentials on the Jan. 6 scene. Appearing on Anderson Cooper's show and earning hefty payments from CNN as well as MSNBC for video usage, Sullivan temporarily profited off of his footage capturing the fatal shooting of Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt inside the Capitol, but he was later charged with federal crimes for allegedly inciting mob violence. "We did this together. F*ck yeah! We are all a part of this history," Sullivan stated in filmed evidence cited by federal prosecutors. "Let's burn this sh*t down."
'Blockbuster' Production
The political theatre has attracted extensive TV coverage by America's top broadcasters (except for Fox News, whose regular Tucker Carlson-led primetime lineup will likely garner viewership that still outpaces the J6 ratings of the Left's cable news cronies). But congressional hearings don't make for entertaining television, especially on the heels of the national spectacle that was the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard courtroom showdown.
That's why former ABC-TV executive James Goldston was selected to sensationalize the production on a dated subject after a yearlong "bipartisan" investigation into the January 2021 riot. The ex-top ABC News boss has acted as an unannounced "secret adviser" to transform a trove of material into compelling multimedia drama for household screens as if the proceeding were "a blockbuster investigative special," an Axios scoop reported.
Watch Parties And Free Ice Cream
In a similar marketing scheme as the shameless handouts that were offered to America's youth to incentivize COVID-19 vaccinations, J6 extortionists are bribing otherwise uninterested Americans to care about the trial.
The committee's crazed fans are enticing a passive audience with over 90 watch parties organized by activists across multiple states, including a "flagship" soiree at the Robert A. Taft Memorial and Carillon in Washington, where a large screen will be set up and attendees will be rewarded with free ice cream. "It's everything from a family-gathering-in-the-living-room-type event to hosting it in a union hall to hosting it on a big field with a Jumbotron," progressive group Public Citizen's executive vice president Lisa Gilbert told The New York Times.
A sponsor of the January 6 Watch Events, far-left activism entity Demand Progress, called for lenient legal treatment of two lawyers who firebombed a New York Police Department vehicle at a Brooklyn riot in May 2020. Demand Progress is a project of the leftist Sixteen Thirty Fund and was named as a partner organization taking part in the initiative's mission to "demand accountability and ensure violence like this never happens again."
Radical attorney duo Colinford Mattis and Urooj Rahman pled guilty to torching the NYPD car and sentenced last Thursday. In a plea deal struck with prosecutors, the federal government dropped the "terrorist enhancement" threat and requested the maximum sentence of two-years prison time as opposed to the decades behind bars that the Molotov cocktail-throwing suspects faced months ago.
In a June 2020 coalition letter signed by Demand Progress, the leftists condemned the federal prosecution as "excessive and politically-motivated charges," claiming that the Trump administration was "wielding the punitive force of this system against Colin and Urooj, who are Black and South Asian, respectively, in order to chill popular protest against the unjust status quo." The petitioners demanded the "immediate release of Colin and Urooj on bail and for the federal government to drop these excessive charges." Demand Progress also shared the petition on Twitter demanding "justice" for the pair of arson suspects.
The Trump administration is pursuing excessive charges against Colin Mattis and Urooj Rahman, and kept them detained even after judges recommended bail.
— Demand Progress (@demandprogress) June 23, 2020
We demand justice for Mattis + Rahman as they go before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals today.https://t.co/nhIm438Lhe
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