Biden’s Valley Forge Theater and the Unraveling of Jan 6

by Julie Kelly

Joe Biden plans to commemorate the third anniversary of the events of January 6 by giving a speech Friday morning near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, the historic site where General George Washington regrouped the Continental Army despite all odds in 1777-78.

After years of comparing Jan 6 to 9/11, Pearl Harbor, and the Oklahoma City bombing, Biden will again desecrate hallowed ground and the graves of the victims—roughly 2,000 soldiers died over a six-month period at the Valley Forge encampment—to prioritize the largely peaceful protest at the Capitol as a pivotal event in American history. Fighting Trump and his supporters, the stunt apparently is supposed to demonstrate, is just like living in subhuman conditions fighting starvation, hypothermia, and deadly diseases to prevail over the British crown. (Ironically, Biden moved up the speech from Saturday to Friday amid bad weather forecasts.)

“The president will make the case directly that democracy and freedom—two powerful ideas that united the 13 colonies and that generations throughout our nation’s history have fought and died for—remains (sic) central to the fight we’re in today,” said Quentin Fulks, Biden’s deputy campaign manager.

What Biden and his history-illiterate team don’t realize in their latest attempt to ratchet up comparisons between America’s most fraught moments and a four-hour disturbance on public property during a Wednesday afternoon where the only people killed were Trump supporters is that Biden is King George III, not Washington or the rebels: an intemperate and entitled ruler clinging to power by intentionally provoking his subjects while using whatever force necessary to crush the opposition.

Biden’s Valley Forge performance also underscores the Democratic Party’s desperation to sustain the January 6 “insurrection” narrative throughout the 2024 presidential campaign; his first campaign ad released Thursday includes several familiar scenes of the Capitol protest. Bearing a dismal record across the board resulting in mass unpopularity even among his own voters, Biden is pinning his re-election hopes on the notion he is General Washington leading the charge to save “democracy” from the imaginary threat of Trump and MAGA extremists.

Dysentery, where are you when we need you most?

Public Support of J6 Narrative Declining

Timing comes as the public’s investment in J6 propaganda continues to slide. According to a new Washington Post poll, only a slim majority of Americans believe January 6 was “an attack on democracy that should never be forgotten,” a figure inflated by 89 percent of Biden voters who agree. Only half of respondents think January 6 was “mostly violent” including just 18 percent of Republicans, down from 26 percent in 2021; less than half agree that Trump should be disqualified from office over the events of January 6.

And despite a steady onslaught of criminal and Congressional investigations coupled with news coverage to bolster the claim that the 2020 presidential election was above reproach, public trust in that election has slipped since January 6. Overall trust in the election fell 10 percent in the past three years even among independents. Only 31 percent of Republicans now say Biden was legitimately elected, a 20 percent drop since 2021.

More bad news could be just around the corner. The U.S. Supreme Court might—and I use that word with uncharacteristic optimism—open a can of whoop ass on Biden’s Department of Justice, federal courts in Washington, and other partisan interests advancing the J6 narrative. Trump and Republican officials separately filed petitions before the Supreme Court to reverse the Colorado Supreme Court’s 4-3 decision to remove Trump from the presidential primary ballot in concluding Trump violated the 14th Amendment by fomenting an “insurrection” on January 6.

Justices eventually will be asked to consider the landmark opinion issued last month by U.S. District Court Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, an Obama appointee, that determined Trump is not entitled to presidential immunity protections in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s four-count criminal indictment against Trump. An appellate panel will hear arguments on Tuesday in Washington, a necessary step before the matter reaches SCOTUS.

Other SCOTUS action could cloud Biden’s Valley Forge moment. As I’ve reported, SCOTUS is reviewing how the DOJ intentionally bastardized vague language in 1512(c)(2), the obstruction of an official proceeding statute, to turn otherwise lawful political activity into a felony offense. The count represents two of four counts in Smith’s J6 indictment and has been applied to more than 300 J6 defendants.

Since four justices agreed to grant “cert” in the case of Fischer v. USA to review a muddled appellate panel’s ruling that allowed the charge to stand, many legal observers expect the court to significantly modify if not outright reverse the appellate court’s decision—resulting in a humiliating defeat for the DOJ, Smith, and nearly the entire federal bench in Washington.

Some of those judges appear to be signaling their concern the count will be tossed. Sentencings for individuals convicted of 1512(c)(2) have been delayed pending SCOTUS’s final decision while some defense attorneys are asking for their clients to be released from jail while the court decides.

On December 31, the attorney representing Pennsylvania woman Sandra Weyer asked for her immediate release from squalid conditions in a Philadelphia prison. Weyer, 60, was sentenced to 14 months for her conviction on the obstruction count and four misdemeanors for her 11 minutes presence inside the Capitol; her attorney, Nicholas Smith, argued that without the obstruction conviction, his client would have already served the average amount of time on misdemeanor convictions.

And the government need not just worry about the highest court. While the court of appeals in Washington has been mostly friendly territory for the DOJ, it has issued a few reversals on J6 cases. A panel will hear the appeal of Thomas Webster, a former NYPD officer convicted of assaulting police and other charges, on February 6. Webster’s appeal strikes at the heart of some of the most egregious abuses related to J6 defendants including the court’s universal refusal to move trials out of heavily Democratic Washington and conceal evidence from the jury.

House GOP Feels the Heat

At the same time J6 cases, including Trump’s, make their way through the court system, some House Republicans are indicating a vigorous interest in investigating the Capitol protest and the misconduct of the January 6 Select Committee. Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), chairman of a subcommittee of the House Administration Committee examining all things J6, said in a recent interview he will accelerate aspects of his current investigation; Loudermilk is releasing security footage of the Capitol and surrounding grounds on a rolling basis.

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