Deroy Murdock
Lies, lies, lies.
And might I add: Lies and more lies.
My Fox News colleague Tucker Carlson this week refuted multiple lies that Democrats and their dinosaur-media bodyguards have trafficked since January 6, 2021. Carlson and his diligent staff did so by inspecting some 41,000 hours of security-camera videos captured during that day’s Capitol Hill riot. Untrustworthy Democrats (and their “Republican” stooges) entombed these recordings. Now we know why. Exposing them to the sunlight is disinfecting the virus of rampant deceit that fuels the Left.
Here are five Democrat lies that Team Carlson annihilated, like microbes baked by ultraviolet rays at High Noon.
●Democrats consider January 6 a “deadly insurrection.” They call this Storming of the Bastille 2.0 a bloody attempted overthrow of the U.S. government.
“The crowd was enormous,” Carlson recalled. “A small percentage of them were hooligans. They committed vandalism. You’ve seen their pictures again and again. But the overwhelming majority weren’t. They were peaceful. They were orderly, and meek. These were not insurrectionists. They were sightseers.”
Footage from outside the Capitol shows an initial cadre of violent extremists breaking windows and kicking down doors. “It was awful. We would not defend that,” Carlson said, “We hate vandalism. We hate assault.”
But new video shows hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people who walked calmly between velvet rope lines within the Capitol. Many took photos of paintings in the Rotunda. Two of them quietly perused a literature table and walked away with free publications.
These videos illustrate a vital distinction between a relatively small number of violent thugs, who should be locked up, and a massive wave of people whom President Trump recognized would be “marching over to the Capitol Building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
Many of these unarmed protesters innocently wandered into the Capitol, after overwhelmed guards threw the doors open. Evidently, they believed that January 6 was an open house on Capitol Hill.
Should these people have been there? No.
Were they armed revolutionaries? No.
●Wearing red, white, and blue face paint and fur-wrapped Viking horns, an Arizona Navy veteran named Jacob Chansley was that day’s highest-profile protester. Dubbed the “QAnon Shaman,” the Justice Department called Chansley “the most prominent symbol of a violent insurrection” who was “leading the charge into the Capitol on January 6.”
Former federal prosecutor Paul Butler said on MNSBC: “Chansley is a stone-cold thug.” Chansley, Fortune reported, had the “zeal to possibly kidnap or kill officials.” Trump-loathing Democrat campaign consultant Steve Schmidt demanded: “Shoot him! Shoot him!”
But far from dangerous, security cameras witnessed Chansley on what the New York Post called a “Tour de Farce.” Police escorted him through the Capitol. At least nine officers surrounded him. Two tried to open locked doors for him. None arrested him. Indeed, his armed guides ushered him into the Senate Chamber.
Rather than attack them there, Chansley prayed: “Thank you, Heavenly Father, for taking the inspiration needed to these police officers to allow us into the building.” (Emphasis added.)
Should Chansley have been there? No.
Was he a “stone-cold thug?” No.
●CBS News blamed some 2,000 January 6 rioters for “causing the deaths of five police officers.” MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough claimed that “Donald Trump’s supporters…killed police officers.”
Some rioters, in fact, battled and beat cops. They should be locked up.
“Some [officers] were assaulted. That is true. And their assaults are indefensible,” Carlson said. “We are opposed to assaulting police officers, in any context. We said that on January 6, 2021. And we’ll say it again: We’re against that.”
There were law-enforcement personnel who perished, but “none of whom died at the scene on Jan. 6,” according to FactCheck.org. Four committed suicide — three days, eight days, and two of them six months later, respectively.
Tragic and horrible? Yes.
Did Trump supporters kill them? No.
CNN’s Anderson Cooper said: “Officer Brian Sicknick died after being hit in the head with a fire extinguisher during the fight.”
“Officer Sicknick was killed defending our Capitol from the violent mob on January 6,” then-Congreswoman Liz Cheney (R – Wyoming) claimed via Twitter two days later.
New January 6 video, in fact, shows Sicknick alive, well, and on duty inside the Capitol, after rioters supposedly murdered him outside the building. He wore a helmet, which shielded him from fatal cranial trauma.
Rioters Julian Khater and George Tanios last year pleaded guilty to assaulting Sicknick with pepper spray outdoors on January 6, 2021.
Regardless, “Officer Brian Sicknick died of natural causes,” an April 19, 2021 Capitol Police statement declared. Washington, D.C.’s coroner determined that two strokes killed Sicknick on January 7, 2021.
A depressing and untimely demise? Yes.
Murder by Trump supporters? No.
●According to the January 6 Committee, “On January 5th, [Trevor] Hallgren took a tour of the Capitol with Representative Barry Loudermilk, during which he took pictures of hallways and staircases.”
Lie: George Republican Loudermilk showed the carefully plotting putschists how to succeed. Democrats called this “reconnaissance.”
Truth: Loudermilk took some 15 constituents through the Rayburn House Office Building, across the street from the Capitol. None of Loudermilk’s guests was in the Capitol the next day.
●“Later that day, Senator Hawley fled after those protesters he helped to rile up stormed the Capitol,” said then-Congresswoman Elaine Luria (D – VA), a January 6 Committee member. The panel then presented a recording of the Missouri Republican running down a Senate hallway. The audience roared with derisive laughter. “What a chicken!” the clip suggested.
Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois joined the anti-Hawley pile on. Along with Liz Cheney he was one of only two Republican Trump haters whom former speaker Nancy Pelosi (D – CA) hand-picked to serve on the January 6 Committee.
“Josh Hawley was the first senator to say he would object to the electoral college, causing a cascade of Ted Cruz-es,” Kinzinger cracked via Twitter. “There would not have been as much oxygen to trumps [sic] coup plan without Fistpump McRunpants.”
Kinzinger referred to Hawley’s alleged sprint to safety and his clenched-fist salute to January 6 protesters before violence exploded.
New video captured, by my count, no fewer than 24 people running to safety, as the Capitol Police advised. Hawley was among these escaping lawmakers and is at least the 25th person who sprinted past that security camera. If Hawley were chicken, then two dozen or more lawmakers were more chicken than he was.
Of course, this unraveled the January 6 Committee’s lies. So, they padlocked these videos until a Republican House set the truth free.
Former ABC News President James Goldston reportedly edited some of these images and added sound effects, to increase fear and decrease truth.
“Democrats in Congress, assisted by Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney, lied about what happened that day,” Carlson said. “They are liars. That is conclusive. And that fact should prevent them from ever being taken seriously again.”
Tucker Carlson and his team deserve Emmys and Peabodys for harnessing their talents to tear down the scaffold of lies behind which Democrats have peddled their January 6 fabrications.
Meanwhile, the attorneys for the scores of peaceful January 6 protesters who got sucked into the Left’s whirlpool of anti-Trump recriminations should use these videos to vacate the indictments and convictions that unjustly have persecuted them.
And federal prosecutors who illegally concealed this exculpatory evidence from these defendants should be stripped of their law licenses, disbarred, and sanctioned by federal judges. These tyrants’ legal careers should be kaput.
Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News Contributor.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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