John Eastman’s Lawyers Just Destroyed the Jan 6 Committee and Its ‘Subpoenas’.

They can point out all the Constitutional and procedural flaws in Pelosi’s witch hunt that they want. I’m no attorney, but I doubt it is very difficult to do. It must be kept in mind that Constitutionally finding out what happened isn’t the purpose; creating a political weapon out of nothing is. By virtue of the fact that the party in power specifically refuses to investigate, arrest and hold accountable left wing violent terrorists while trying to invent a political conspiracy of the right. Pointing out how utterly wrong it is for them to do what they are doing won’t stop them; only removing their power to do so will.

Will the Public Finally See What Happened in the Capitol Tunnel?

When Americans finally view the surveillance footage, January 6 will make alleged police abuse at LaFayette Square look like a day in the (federal) park.

For months, Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice has tried every trick in the law books to conceal from Americans a massive trove of video evidence that captured all the activity at the Capitol complex on January 6. Federal judges have played along, approving hundreds of protective orders to keep video clips—particularly footage recorded by the Capitol Police’s extensive closed-circuit television system—out of the public eye.

Time, however, is running out for the government.

Despite numerous discovery delays, Garland’s prosecutors are gradually turning over video evidence to defense attorneys as they prepare for trial. All surveillance video from the Capitol’s security system is designated “highly sensitive” government material; strict rules apply to the handling of every slice of footage.

There’s a reason why. As we have reported at American Greatness for months, one of the most scandalous untold stories about January 6 is egregious police misconduct that, in some instances, amounted to brutality by D.C. Metro and U.S. Capitol police. Had these attacks by law enforcement occured in any other public or private setting against leftist protesters, the national outrage would have resulted in mass firings and immediate calls for criminal investigations.

For example, the House of Representatives held two hearings last year related to its investigation into allegations of excessive force by members of the U.S. Park Police in LaFayette Square, located across the street from the White House, on June 1, 2020. Rioters protesting the death of George Floyd occupied the federal park for days, attacked law enforcement, set fires, and looted nearby property, which prompted the Secret Service to move President Trump to a safe location. An inspector general report later confirmed rioters assaulted federal officers with “bricks, rocks, caustic liquids, frozen water bottles, glass bottles, lit flares, rental scooters, and fireworks.”

But LaFayette Square rioters were portrayed as victims rather than perpetrators of the violence. One activist, Kishon McDonald, a 39-year-old Navy veteran, testified to the House Natural Resources Committee in June 2020 that “police started throwing tear gas and flash-bang grenades at us for no reason . . . We were retreating. Using weapons on us was ridiculous. It just made the situation dangerous.” Officers also were accused of hitting protesters with riot shields and batons.

A similar yet more violent situation played out on Capitol Hill on January 6. Open-source video and testimonial evidence show Capitol and D.C. Metro police officers using flashbangs, “sting balls” filled with rubber projectiles, and excessive amounts of tear gas against peaceful protesters assembled outside the building an hour before the building even was breached. Other first-hand accounts describe physical assaults by police; one clip circulated on Twitter in late November shows several D.C. Metro police officers taking down and beating a protester who apparently breached a security line.

At least one protester, Ashli Babbitt, was shot and killed by Capitol Police Officer Michael Byrd, although she was unarmed and posed no lethal threat.

Hearing from the Defense

Democrats, most Republicans, and the entire corporate news media not only have ignored provable instances of police brutality on January 6 but suggest “insurrectionists,” including Babbitt, deserved their fate. The same news organizations that for years have covered every angle of alleged police misconduct are selectively quiet when it comes to the egregious behavior by law enforcement during the Capitol protest.

But defense attorneys now are prepared to present their evidence about what the police did on January 6 in the court of public opinion, which matters as much as the legal proceedings underway in the D.C. court system. Joseph McBride, a New York-based attorney representing some January 6 defendants, prepared a motion last month that detailed an horrific account of what happened in the lower west terrace tunnel, the site of the most vicious brawls between police and protesters.

In his filing on behalf of Ryan Nichols—a decorated Marine charged with several offenses including assaulting law enforcement that day—McBride, based on his viewing a three-hour segment of surveillance footage, described police officers punching, kicking, macing, and beating with sticks and their fists several protesters trapped inside the tunnel.

One D.C. Metro Police supervisor was especially abusive, repeatedly beating an unidentified woman. “The weapon this officer appears to be using is a collapsible stick, designed to break windows in emergency situations,” McBride wrote of the supervisor. “This stick is neither designed nor to be used against another human being.”

The woman was punched numerous times in the face; blood was pouring out of her face, according to McBride’s motion. When Nichols, who wanted to keep an eye on the targeted woman, sees her attempting to leave the tunnel, “she gets kicked and stomped in the head by an officer. She is screaming, and so are others.”

This still unidentified woman is not Rosanne Boyland, the 34-year-old Trump supporter from Georgia who also died on January 6. The D.C. coroner attributed her death to overdosing on her daily medication of Adderall. But new revelations about the circumstances prior to her death cited in court documents and witness statements raise disturbing questions. Boyland apparently died outside the tunnel around 4:30 p.m. on January 6 amid a fierce battle between police and protesters.

Her body was then dragged through the tunnel by Sergeant Aquilino Gonell, one of the January 6 select committee’s star witnesses, according to his own testimony. Gonell met up with Officer Harry Dunn inside the building; they kept her body at the House Majority Leader’s office until paramedics arrived. Boyland was transported to an area hospital and officially pronounced dead after 6 p.m.

Public Video Evidence Is Crucial

Releasing the footage that McBride cites in his motion is crucial to the public’s full understanding of what happened on January 6. In a separate motion this week, McBride urged the presiding judge to remove protective orders on eight separate video clips associated with his client’s case.

Arguing that the public only has seen cherry-picked videos produced by the government, McBride wrote that “the time has come for the complete tale of January 6th to be told. America will never know the truth about Mr. Nichols or any January Sixer until the sensitivity designations are removed.”

Ironically, the same corporate-media complex that has promoted any number of falsehoods about January 6 and defamed Capitol defendants agrees with McBride. An application filed this week by the Press Coalition—a group representing 16 major news companies including CNN, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal—also asked the D.C. District Court to release the videos in Nichols’ case.

“Because the Video Exhibits are judicial records subject to an unrebutted presumption of public access, the Court should grant this Application and direct the Government to release the Video Exhibits to the Press Coalition,” the group’s lawyers wrote on November 30.

Judge Thomas Hogan ordered the Justice Department to respond to the coalition’s request by December 10.

It is nearly impossible to underscore how devastating the release of surveillance video from the “Gates of Hell,” as McBride described the scene inside the west terrace tunnel, will be to the accepted narrative about January 6. Coupled with other instances of police misconduct that day, including the random and unnecessary use of explosive crowd control devices before any violence took place, January 6 will make LaFayette Square look like a day in the (federal) park.

In Defense of John Eastman

The president’s lawyer must not be sacrificed to the authoritarian impulses of a lawless regime.

We do not issue editorial statements on ordinary public policy matters or controversies. This week, however, we feel compelled to speak out in defense of the rights of all Americans, and in particular John Eastman.

Eastman is a highly respected constitutional law professor who acted as an attorney to President Donald Trump. Eastman has been called to appear before the House of Representatives’ “January 6 Committee.” This committee is an extraordinary departure from the role of Congress and from basic procedural fairness.

The very legality of the committee is in question, as it includes no ranking minority member. It appears to have been stacked by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) with partisans for whom the outcome of the investigation is known before the investigation has begun.

Eastman has very wisely declined to participate in this partisan denigration of procedural fairness, and has invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

No person may be compelled to be a witness against himself in a criminal case. This is fundamental to our republican form of government. The origin of this rule, as illustrated at length by the famous Claremont professor Leonard Levy, is the necessity of forcing the state to produce evidence of a crime, to guard against the political persecution of enemies and the possibility of manufacturing evidence through coercion.

Our legal tradition holds that no inference should ever be made as to guilt by the invocation of this sacred Constitutional right and rule of procedural fairness.

These safeguards are more urgent now than ever before. Every intelligent and educated citizen who is willing to face the truth, to look past the official narratives of the establishment media, can see the facts and the direction in which events are moving.

Our own Julie Kelly—an immensely brave and dedicated investigative reporter—has been at the forefront of exposing the truly frightening behavior of the Capitol Police on January 6, as well as the shocking mistreatment inflicted on the rioters held in the D.C. jail. The details of this scandal are slowly being revealed, despite the intense efforts of the ruling class to keep thousands of hours of video, official reports, and other records secret.

The shocking behavior of our public officials extends far beyond a few Capitol police officers; it includes the FBI, federal prosecutors, and even federal judges, who appear to have little regard for due process, trial by jury, and equal protection of the laws when the accused are considered “enemies of the regime.”

Efforts to harm John Eastman, professionally and personally, are part of this larger effort. Eastman, who is the director of the Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, is being attacked for furnishing legal arguments to a client, President Trump. This confidential advice has been described, preposterously, as plotting a coup.

In truth, it is the Democratic Party that long ago spurned the original limits and structure of the United States Constitution. But while almost all liberals and elected officials used to make public professions of loyalty to our constitutional system of government, that is changing—and changing rapidly. We now live in a political-legal environment where “penumbras and emanations” from the Bill of Rights protect “sacred” rights to, among other things, abortion. But, for those deemed enemies of the regime, no protection is given for the express right to a trial prior to punishment.

The rule of law itself is at stake in this controversy. This growing danger must be firmly resisted now, before it is too late.

Brilliant on its face because it exposes the House acting outside of it own rules…

Mark Meadows Case Against the Jan 6 Committee May End Up Shutting Down Pelosi’s Kangaroo Court

Former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows announced Tuesday that he would no longer work with the US House’s Jan 6 Committee because they were not respecting Executive Privilege and the separation of powers.

The next day the corrupt and partisan committee moved forward with criminal contempt charges against Meadows.

Later that day (Wednesday), Meadows sued corrupt Speaker Pelosi and the Jan 6 Committee and each member of the corrupt committee.

Today Breitbart’s Joel Pollak reported that Meadow’s suit may actually win and shut down the corrupt committee at the same time.

The lawsuit makes some familiar arguments, such as that the committee is violating the Constitution’s separation of powers by encroaching on executive privilege. Former Trump aide Stephen K. Bannon, who is being prosecuted by the supposedly apolitical Department of Justice for contempt of Congress, is making the same case against his subpoena in federal court.

But Meadows goes further, pointing out that the January 6 committee violates the terms of its own enabling resolution.

The resolution, H. Res. 503, provides that the committee “shall” consist of 13 members, five of which “shall be appointed after consultation with the minority leader.”

But the committee only has nine members, seven of whom are Democrats, and only two of whom are hand-picked anti-Trump Republicans. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) rejected the five members chosen by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (D-CA), an unprecedented step to ensure a one-sided inquiry.

Furthermore, Meadows’s lawsuit points out that while the chair of the committee can order subpoenas, that authority is not absolute. H. Res. 503 requires the chair of the committee to consult with the ranking member before issuing a subpoena for a deposition. But the committee has no ranking Republican member, which could make the committee’s subpoenas invalid.

If Meadows’s lawsuit is successful, he could not only block his own subpoena, but could see the entire committee declared invalid. Pelosi and the Democrats would have to start over — this time, obeying the rules, with five Republican members.

Decenber 13, 2021 – Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows sent an email saying the National Guard would be present to ‘protect pro Trump people’ in the lead up to the US Capitol insurrection, according to a new report released by the January 6 committee Sunday night.

It was just one of several new details in the report about Meadows’ actions before and during January 6, as well as his role in attempting to overturn the 2020 election. The report is a key component for the committee to send a referral for charges of criminal contempt of Congress to the Justice Department. The panel informed Meadows last week that it had “no choice” but to advance criminal contempt proceedings against him given that he had decided to no longer cooperate with their investigation.

The panel will meet Monday to formally advance the report to the full floor House vote as soon as later this week. The vote by the full House is the last step before sending the referral to the DOJ.
The report is a key component for the committee to send a referral for charges of criminal contempt of Congress to the Justice Department. The panel will meet Monday to formally advance the report to the full floor House vote as soon as later this week. The vote by the full House is the last step before sending the referral to the DOJ.

Meadows’ lawyer asked the panel Monday to reconsider its plans. In a letter to the committee, Meadows’ attorney George Terwilliger III said the “contemplated referral would be contrary to law” because his client is a senior official who made a “good-faith invocation of executive privilege and testimonial immunity.”

“A referral of a senior presidential aide would also be unwise because it would do great damage to the institution of the Presidency, as restraint in the application of the statute over time attests,” Terwilliger wrote…

https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/12/politics/mark-meadows-january-committee-contempt-of-congress-resolution/index.html

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TRUMP and his ACCOMPLICES did great damage to the institution, Mr. Terwilliger. That’s why they’re being investigated.

If you think this is NOTHING, or somehow IRRELEVANT, you are seriously out of touch with reality.