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Turley Weighs in on How Pelosi's Admissions Highlight Credibility Issues of J6 Committee

Rebecca Downs
Rebecca Downs  |  June 12, 2024 3:45 PM

Damning video footage going around of then Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-CA) from January 6, 2021 has been going around, as she admitted "I take responsibility" for not being more prepared for the events of that day. As a result, there's been even more scrutiny of the January 6 Select Committee. 

Law Professor Jonathan Turley had particularly strong words not merely for Pelosi, but for the members of the Select Committee as well, who failed to publicly disclose such footage. It was only just recently released by the House Administration's Subcommittee on Oversight. 

As Turley argued in his post, the event of January 6 might not have gotten so out of had if Pelosi had acted. The members of the Select Committee helped her cover it up:

Had Pelosi and others accepted National Guard support and installed fencing as was done at the White House, it is doubtful that the riot on January 6th would have occurred or any disruption would have been far more limited in scope. The fact that the J6 Committee downplayed this major factor in the riot further undermines how the investigation was framed by the Democratic leadership. Pelosi barred the GOP members selected for the committee, hand picking two anti-Trump Republican members.

The absence of any balance on the committee was evident from the start. There was little effort to present alternative explanations or defenses to critical issues raised in hearings. No opposing witnesses were called who might contradict the narrative put forward by the Committee, including witnesses who would debunk the much-repeated, false claim that Trump wrestled with his driver to gain control of the presidential limo to drive to the Capitol.

With the Speaker admitting on tape that she bore responsibility for the lack of precautions, one would think that the J6 Committee, including then Vice Chair Liz Cheney, would consider that relevant for the public to understand the underlying facts. Instead, it was buried with much other countervailing evidence.

Another key point of Turley's addresses the left's hypocrisy when it comes to the outrage involved. Just months before January 6, Lafayette Square faced out of control protests in the days following George Floyd's death. The National Guard was called in for that situation, with Pete Hegseth detailing the harrowing experience in "The War on Warriors," which we previewed late last month, shortly before the book's release. 

Then President Donald Trump had to be taken to safety, for which he received severe mockery for, with the situation also being the source of misinformation. As Turley also noted:

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What was so curious about the lack of precautions that morning is that the Capitol had just experienced the violence outside of the White House in the Lafayette Park protests.

To this day, the media and many members continue to repeat false accounts of the Lafayette Park. Many still have stories posted that claim that Lafayette Park was cleared for Trump to hold a photo op in front of a church. I discussed those accounts in testimony before Congress and in columns on the clearing of the Lafayette Park area. NPR still has a story on its website entitled “Peaceful Protesters Tear-Gassed To Clear Way For Trump Church Photo-Op.” More officers were injured in the Lafayette Park protests than on January 6th.

As previously discussed in repeated columns, the House Democratic leadership refused to hold a single hearing with key witnesses on what occurred before the riot. After using a “snap impeachment,” weeks went by without calling such witnesses before the Trump impeachment trial. Such evidence would have challenged the narrative and raised questions over decisions made by Congress that left the Capitol vulnerable to such an attack.

In the Lafayette Park protests, White House officials feared that the compound could be breached by violent protesters who had injured dozens of officers and engaged in arson and attacks around the White House during that weekend. They decided to clear the area to install fencing (which Congress only ordered after the Jan. 6th riot). They also deployed the National Guard and the “heavier, less lethal weapons” that the Inspector General found were denied to the Capitol Police.

Townhall and our sister site of Twitchy have been covering how Turley has been speaking out about such particularly damning findings from the Subcommittee on Oversight and its chairman, Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA).

Last week, for instance, we learned that the Secret Service tried to offer testimony for months to rebut star witness Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony about Trump, but that they were "rebuffed" until the day before the 2022 midterm elections.

Loudermilk has appeared on "The Mark Levin Show," Just The News, and Fox Business to discuss the latest development.

While on Just the News, he agreed that Pelosi "should take responsibility," but that he still has questions about such failures. "Why did not her Select Committee investigate that failure," Loudermilk specifically wanted to know, "that turned into simply a Committee that tried to tie Trump to all these failures instead of looking at the failures within the Capitol." 

"I still have the questions," Loudermilk reiterated, speaking about the National Guard. Although Pelosi may have taken responsibility, Loudermilk still lambasted the Select Committee for how "it spends $18 million trying to say that it was Trump's responsibility that the National Guard wasn't there, and that the Capitol was breached."

He also posted that Pelosi's "admission of responsibility directly contradicts their own narrative," as he also called for "#J6Truth."

Larry also did a deep dive analysis word for word of Pelosi's remarks earlier on Wednesday.

"'I took full responsibility?' She never accepted responsibility," Larry argued about Pelosi. "She deflected it the entire time! In fact, I will argue that the entire January 6 Select Committee was designed to cover this up, to hide the truth, to hide the facts about the most seminal, important aspect of the events of January 6, and that is the lack of security, the lack of coordination, the seemingly inappropriate level of protection for Congress that day."

Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), one of the Republican members vetoed by Pelosi, reposted such footage, along with a reminder about why he and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) weren't allowed on the Select Committee. 

Banks was calling out Pelosi's security failures from the start. In a "Fox News Sunday" appearance from July 2021, which we covered at the time, Banks made clear the blame was with Pelosi, noting she "has more control and authority and responsibly over the leadership of the Capitol Police than anyone else in the United States Capitol." He also offered "she doesn't want us to ask these questions because at the end of the day she is ultimately responsible for the breakdown of security at the Capitol that happened on January 6th."

Had he been able to, Banks wanted to ask about the vulnerability of the Capitol on that day, as he noted how "three weeks before January 6th there were intelligence reports that the leadership of the Capitol Police were aware of."

Banks and other House Republicans, including Jordan, also released a report in December 2022 about security failures.