The Epiphanies Keep Coming on Epiphany Day

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari) 

One year ago today, it had been lost on most that the now-historic and infamous riot that had ground business on Capitol Hill to a three hour-long halt occurred on Epiphany Day. Those of us who'd been around the block more than once or twice knew the revelations would continue leaking, if not spilling, out in the months to come. Yet, what should give every American who cares about our republic cold sweats at night is what we don't know even after a year.

    What we already know is the stuff of nightmares.The FBI did a secret threat assessment just before violence broke out at the Capitol without ever once mentioning Trump voters or right wing extremists. (In fact, the FBI found "scant evidence" that January 6th was even planned in advance or coordinated and that whatever threats they came across were "largely aspirational"). To its credit, the same Capitol Police that was so hideously mauled on January 6th did its own intelligence assessment just three days before the insurrection. In fact, unlike the FBI's joke of an assessment, the Capitol Police's intelligence analysts named a name: Louis Gohmert.

     In fact, this is how Politico summed it up just below their lede:

   "The assessment, obtained by POLITICO Wednesday, laid out analysts’ views of danger that lawmakers and law enforcement officers could face during the protests against the certification of President Joe Biden's election. It also noted that the White House was actively helping plan a rally on the Ellipse on Jan. 6. 

     The Jan. 3 assessment noted that Gohmert had sued to try to get then-Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election results. The assessment added that a federal judge had thrown out Gohmert’s suit."

    Yes, Gohmert, a former judge, actually tried to sue Pence into doing exactly the wrong thing during the Electoral College certification on January 6th. And then, when that didn't happen after a judge tossed his suit, Gohmert said, "But bottom line is, the court is saying, ‘We’re not going to touch this. You have no remedy – basically, in effect, the ruling would be that you gotta go to the streets and be as violent as Antifa and BLM.’” (audience laugh track)

     Gohmert's not known for his subtlety but in this case we should make note of it. Yes, technically, Gohmert isn't actually telling people to riot and spill blood but he's certainly leaving that open as an option to anyone who just may be listening in. Plus, he's pre-emptively blaming the courts if it does happen. Which, of course, it did.

     It's the equivalent of Trump saying at the Save America Rally that morning, 

    "And we're going to walk down to the Capitol (emphasis his), and I'll be right there beside you. We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators, and congressmen and women. We’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.”

     Toward his peroration, he added, "I said something is wrong here, something is really wrong, can't have happened and we fight, we fight like hell, and if you don't fight like hell you're not going to have a country anymore."

     Again, a master of word parsing, Trump didn't specifically tell people to break up and break into the Capitol Building or assault police officers with anything and everything they could get their hands on. But when it did happen, he sat frozen in front his TV for three hours and seven minutes in a state of high excitement, plainly not interested in stopping the chaos waged on his behalf.

What About May 16th?

That was the day in 1918 that Congress passed the Sedition Act into law. Nowadays, historians and other scholars generally agree it was a noxious piece of free speech suppression, legislation aimed specifically at Socialists and assorted leftists who opposed our entry into WWI 13 months before. The most famous victim of the Sedition Act was Socialist Eugene V. Debs who exhorted listeners in Canton, Ohio to oppose conscription.

     The federal authorities grabbed Debs and threw him in prison for what was supposed to be a decade and disenfranchised him for good measure. Debs battled his conviction all the way up to the Supreme Court when he ran into Oliver Wendell Holmes who essentially said, "Yes, the First Amendment gives the right to free speech but not always."

    Debs was released from prison after the Sedition Act was axed by Congress a century ago, perhaps not coincidentally the year Wilson left office. So, yes, the Sedition Act is no more in name but large chunks of it, and the Espionage Act, still remain embedded in the US Code. But Debs was a classic pacifist- He opposed our entry into the first world war and the very concept of conscription. He did not try to overthrow the government, interrupt a valid function of government nor tried to exhort others to do the same.

     That's the former guy you're thinking about.

    So, considering the increasing granularity of the evidence that's being collected by the January 6th Committee, more than one person is rightfully asking, "What's taking so long?" True, the government can't prosecute someone under the now-defunct Sedition Act but they can certainly charge them with the language from that and the Espionage Act that remain on the law books.

     Here's the problem. Scholars and laymen alike see the Sedition Act for what it was- A brutal government suppression of First Amendment free speech rights. Despite our brief involvement in the Great War, the government still tapped scores of corporations acting as defense contractors. In other words, criticizing the war was potentially bad for business, especially when there was plenty of war profiteering to be had. World War I was the first mechanized war. Of course we had a Military Industrial Complex to keep happy.

     So charging the rioters with insurrection, for which the government could make a hell of a case if it chose to, would raise the ugly specter of the Sedition and Espionage Acts and the First Amendment rights it had gleefully trampled. Originally, it was aimed with laser-guided precision at left wingers, But try to use the remnants of it now against the right wingers of January 6th, they'll scream government oppression and suddenly will make friends with the ACLU.

     Not charging Trump or any of his thousands of largely nameless goons is a way for the Department of Justice to get in front of a potential flashpoint that could ignite another riot and right wing anger. But trying to get in front of a nonexistent scandal still leaves the DoJ with the problem of doing its job and appropriately charging these rioters and the organizers with the crimes they had, in fact, committed.

     And not doing so and dispensing slaps on the wrist will merely embolden them to do it again. Trump was impeached for the first time in the winter of 2020 for violating the Constitution during his phone call to Ukrainian President Zelensky in which he sought Ukraine's help in throwing the 2020 election. Republican senators, in a supreme display of cowardice and fecklessness, not only voted to a man to acquit Trump (except for Romney on one count), they refused to even allow evidence and testimony from the witnesses. Obviously, that emboldened Trump to do what he would do in less than a year, which resulted in another aborted impeachment.

     So don't take to heart what Garland said yesterday. "At any level" shouldn't mean short of charging them with insurrection.

You Give Them an Inch...

You can dicker and split hairs about when this blatant disrespect and rabid hostility for the government and our democracy actually started but you could make a pretty good case with the Bundys. One can even say that the prologue to January 6 was January 2, specifically January 2, 2016.

    That was the day Bundy and his followers occupied the Malheur wildlife refuge in Oregon in what should've been a comical one day stunt that turned into an ultimately deadly confrontation that lasted over five weeks. As with January 6th, 2021, offices were occupied and trashed, weapons were brandished and officials were convicted in absentia by a self-appointed judge with the intention of arresting them.

     Oh and that occupation occurred after a peaceful rally, Just like January 6th.

     Before all was said and done, they were building crude roads with heavy equipment while local law enforcement and the Portland FBI field office nervously fretted from a respectful distance. For the first month of this tragic clown show, law enforcement gingerly approached the refuge and negotiated with Ammon Bundy as if trying to steal federal property may or not be a crime.

    Maybe the sheriff's department got their marching orders from somewhere or maybe they wrote them. But the end result was a sickening display of laissez faire law enforcement that seemed to take into account just two things- Political ideology and skin color. Essentially, no one wanted another Waco or Ruby Ridge. Water protectors? They don't count. That's something else, entirely.

    The Three Percenters and Oath Keepers, two of the radical right wing groups that were front and center in the January 6 riot, were among the first ones there. It all started with a mining dispute that had nothing to do with them or the Bundys but if Backes and Barclay wanted to take on the feds, that was all they needed to know and they wanted in.

     Why the Bundys and their confederates chose to steal a small, obscure Wildlife Refuge and how they thought they could actually get away with it is anyone's guess. It's as if Ammon threw a dart at a map and let where it hit make his decision. But the main takeaway from that clusterfuck was that a bunch of rednecks tried to steal federal land and law enforcement both at the local and federal levels gave them the illusion they could do just that.

     The Bundys and their followers were eventually arrested and convicted. But their convictions for their 2014 standoff started by Cliven Bundy were, incredibly, vacated by a judge in Nevada. That and the sickening, cringe-worthy hands-off approach to the Bundys in every one of their stunts gave the imprimatur of approval. And others were listening and watching.

     So it shouldn't strike anyone as surprising that those same Oath Keepers and Three Percenters would nearly five years later almost to the day go on to try sacking the Capitol. They didn't just pop up out of a vacuum like the Boogaloo Boys or were relative newcomers like the Proud Boys. The government should know what and who these people are and what they stand for. And beneath the outwardly childish behavior is a deadly serious ideology that states in no uncertain terms, "If you don't give us what we want, we will kill you." Imagine a toddler with a loaded handgun during a tantrum. That's what we're dealing with.

     And if we keep dispensing slaps on the wrists to these lunatics who want nothing more or less than the downfall of our system of government, then there will be other January 6ths to add to the calendar.