The Democrats paused talking last week about their charade of a committee investigating the 2021 Capitol incursion, if just because the big news was the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.
That doesn’t mean there was any shortage of developments for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s pet panelists.
The latest: According to the Washington Examiner, it’s apparently unlikely that former Vice President Mike Pence will appear before the committee, with a top aide saying Pence wasn’t interested in “relitigating the past” and that it would set “terrible precedent.”
These are both true, but the committee is all about both of those things — it’s inordinately focused on relitigating the past and it’s setting a terrible precedent for how to deal with flashpoint political issues.
(Here at The Western Journal, we’ll keep bringing you the latest developments from the committee, with news and analysis you won’t get from the mainstream media. If you support us, please consider subscribing.)
However, if Pelosi’s grandiosely named “House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the United States Capitol” is terrible precedent, it makes us wonder — how soon will the GOP convene its May 29 committee if and when it retakes the House of Representatives?
Wait, you may be thinking — May 29? Yes, it turns out the left can be just as insurrection-y as the right. It’s just that when violence breaks out where progressives are involved (a sadly common affair), it gets considerably less attention than any hint of misbehavior on the right.
Take May 29, 2020. This was at the beginning of the summer of our discontent, just four days after the death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis.
The New York Times described the scene that night at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave: “Inside the White House, the mood was bristling with tension. Hundreds of protesters were gathering outside the gates, shouting curses at President Trump and in some cases throwing bricks and bottles.
Is the Jan. 6 committee a waste of time?
“Nervous for his safety, Secret Service agents abruptly rushed the president to the underground bunker used in the past during terrorist attacks,” the Times noted.
“The scene on Friday night, described by a person with firsthand knowledge, kicked off an uneasy weekend at the White House as demonstrations spread after the brutal death of a black man in police custody under a white officer’s knee,” the Times continued.
“While in the end officials said they were never really in danger, Mr. Trump and his family have been rattled by protests near the Executive Mansion that turned violent for a third night on Sunday.”
Trump was forced into a White House bunker on May 29, but it’s not like things improved in the days to follow.
On May 31, the protests started out peacefully. In a motif that would play out innumerable times through the summer that was to follow, they didn’t end that way.
The Times noted that, “by nightfall, with hundreds still in the streets, the scene turned more volatile as crowds surged forward against lines of riot police with plastic shields as the two sides vied for control of Lafayette Square across from the White House. Protesters threw water bottles, set off fireworks and burned a pile of wood and at least one car.”
One block away from the White House, a fire may have spread to the basement of the famed St. John’s Episcopal Church. Things got hairy enough that the White House needed to turn off its exterior lights.
#thecoupcontinues is trending. Never forget May 29, 2020. When the leftist mob wanted the president lynched, burned down a church, tried to scale the fences to the White House, burned down a guard post, and injured 60 secret service members. pic.twitter.com/5EgUneBMeF
— Arthur Morgan (@Arthur182Morgan) June 19, 2022
“Mr. Trump remained cloistered inside, periodically sending out Twitter messages like ‘LAW & ORDER!’ until the evening, when he went quiet,” the Times reported.
“While some aides urged him to keep off Twitter, Mr. Trump could not resist blasting out a string of messages earlier in the day berating Democrats for not being tough enough and attributing the turmoil to radical leftists.”
Interesting word choice throughout those sentences, it’s worth noting. Merriam-Webster defines “cloistered” as “providing shelter from contact with the outside world.” Here, it’s being used pejoratively, a sign that Trump was out of contact with the people rioting outside.
What, pray tell, does the Times think would have happened had he delivered himself to those “fiery but mostly peaceful” protesters outside? Or, more critically, what would have happened had the outside world managed to breach the White House?
Those questions are only rhetorical, of course. We’re lucky that we escaped 2020 without any assassinations or deaths by mob — and the mob, it’s worth remembering, was aided and abetted by the left. We now have a vice president who donated money to a fund that bailed rioters out of jail, after all.
But there were never any hearings to determine the left’s culpability in this. Why? Because the mob’s aims were woke, of course.
If they had managed to breach the White House perimeter, well, it was a breach for all the right reasons. After all, this country has been breaching the freedoms of black lives since 1619, leftists would argue. What’s a little incursion at 1600 Pennsylvania?
If we were to follow the precedent being set by the Democrats in the House, we’d have our elected representatives convene a May 29 committee and find out what happened. Did Joe Biden foment the rage that sent then-President Trump to the bunker? How about Kamala Harris?
In a country with an honest government, that would be just a springboard to a broader, thorough investigation of the violence of the summer of 2020.
Which federal lawmakers egged it on? Which state and local officials either stood by and let citizens’ lose property, businesses and even their lives to leftist mobs?
A proper investigation could determine that. But a proper investigation would have to avoid every possible precedent set by the Pelosi panel, which means it would require at least some Democratic cooperation. That isn’t going to happen.
The behavior of the Jan. 6 committee has been driven by rank partisanship and political animosity and the American people have seen it happening.
The Jan. 6 committee got knocked out of the headlines by bigger news this weekend. It’s likely to get knocked a good deal further by the news from the midterm elections.
