House Select Committee on 1/6

[goldenvalley]

The Speaker accepted 3 of the 5 Republicans suggested by Minority Leader McCarthy.  Guess who she rejected?  Gym Jordan and Jim Banks from Indiana. She kept the other three who all voted to reject the electoral votes of some states.  McCarthy then withdrew all 5 names.

A visibly agitated Mr. McCarthy called a rushed news conference to condemn Ms. Pelosi’s decision and accused her of excessive partisanship. He pledged to carry out a Republican-only investigation into the events of Jan. 6 — and focus on whether Ms. Pelosi could have done more to protect the Capitol from violent supporters of Mr. Trump.

“Why are you allowing a lame-duck speaker to destroy this institution?” he asked.

I guess he couldn't find a euphemism for the C word to work into his statement.  Seriously, he thought those two would be acceptable?  

Now both parties can condemn the other party for being biased and result oriented in their respective committees.  

[LFC]

Josh Marshall summed it up in a one paragraph piece called The Best Outcome.

The upshot of McCarthy’s decision to withdraw all his nominees from the Jan 6th committee is that the committee will only include people who want to investigate the insurrection. It would have been a mistake not to allow the Republicans to be represented on the committee. But having refused good faith participation, Republicans not being there is a good thing. It’s good that Liz Cheney is there. It would be good if there were other Republicans who were actually in support of a real investigation were there. But McCarthy won’t allow that. So here we are. This is the best outcome.

[pnwguy]

Wasn't Louie Gohmert or Paul Gozar available? How about Matt Gaetz or MTG? There's no shortage of clowns in the clown car.

[LFC]

Jul 21, 2021 23:41:31 GMT pnwguy said:

Wasn't Louie Gohmert or Paul Gozar available? How about Matt Gaetz or MTG? There's no shortage of clowns in the clown car.

Gohmert is too dumb to be used effectively. Gosar is about as dumb. Gaetz is seriously facing potential prosecution. MTG is much like Gohmert in being dumb but is also a massive attention whore who would f*** up the messaging with some QAnon talking points. You may not remember but MTG asked to be named to the committee which is funny since she was thrown off all of the other ones.

[pnwguy]

Jul 22, 2021 0:12:16 GMT LFC said:

Jul 21, 2021 23:41:31 GMT pnwguy said:

Wasn't Louie Gohmert or Paul Gozar available? How about Matt Gaetz or MTG? There's no shortage of clowns in the clown car.

Gohmert is too dumb to be used effectively. Gosar is about as dumb. Gaetz is seriously facing potential prosecution. MTG is much like Gohmert in being dumb but is also a massive attention whore who would f*** up the messaging with some QAnon talking points. You may not remember but MTG asked to be named to the committee which is funny since she was thrown off all of the other ones.

That's why I was wondering if Pelosi could invite them without McCarthy's approval.  It seems most of these F-ups are egotistical enough to defy leadership, with their Dumpster-like addiction to self-aggrandizing.  Give them enough rope to keep demonstrating the worthlessness of GOP politicians.  The base may love it, but the suburban swing voters will get even more disgusted with the party.

[LFC]

TPM called out the MSM, yet again, for it's fail on covering Pelosi's move. The fact is that it was the best of 3 available. The other two were to allow the investigation to devolve into yet another Republican clown show or to fold the committee.

It’s Not the Size Of The Gavel …

A flurry of moves and countermoves over the Jan. 6 select committee left the DC political press badly exposed.

• Nancy Pelosi’s rejection of two of Kevin McCarthy’s picks for the committee was such a power move that McCarthy et al. could only sputter at an afternoon news conference.
• The GOP had already succeeded in avoiding any kind of Jan. 6 reckoning via an independent commission, but Pelosi’s move kept them from turning the select committee into a Jim Jordan clown show.
• Pelosi’s checkmate gave McCarthy few options: In one fell swoop, she delegitimized the 3 remaining McCarthy picks AND whomever he picked to replace her two rejections.

The DC political press has Stockholm syndrome when it comes to the GOP’s aggressive use of power. So it’s as if political reporters can’t quite process Democratic power moves (which are rarer) as anything other than a GOP win.

• Even though any reporter with half a brain knew Jim Jordan was tapped to wreck the committee, there was a lot of lamenting the death of bipartisanship and questioning the committee’s legitimacy. One especially telling insta-analysis, under the headline “Nancy Pelosi just doomed the already tiny chances of the 1/6 committee actually mattering“:

No matter Pelosi’s reasoning, her decision to reject Jordan and Banks, the two most high-profile Republicans put forward by McCarthy, dooms even the possibility of the committee being perceived as bipartisan or its eventual findings being seen as independent.

• It’ll make you crazy, if you let it:

Tim Miller
@timodc

“There need to be people on the 1/6 committee who literally supported a MAGA coup or else it’s not bipartisan” has got to be the stupidest beltway brain bleed take in a while.

The journalistic pearl-clutching over bipartisanship looked especially silly after Liz Cheney – a Republican Pelosi herself appointed to the Jan. 6 committee! – convened a press conference on the Capitol steps (nice symbolism):

• Cheney applauded Pelosi’s move.
• Then she just let it rip, saying McCarthy isn’t fit to be speaker:

Andrew Solender
@andrewsolender
NEW: Cheney says McCarthy should NOT be speaker.

“Any person who would be 3rd in line to the presidency must demonstrate a commitment to the Constitution and a commitment to the rule of law, and Minority Leader McCarthy has not done that.”

[goldenvalley]

I didn't agree with Cheney on much of anything, but she has her head screwed on correctly on 1/6 and on McCarthy.

[Traveler]

Andy's take.

[LFC]

A CNN analyst covers the current political tantrum. They seem to start out in reality.

It's gone beyond whitewashing history. Ex-President Donald Trump and his House Republican enablers are now spinning fantastical inversions to hide his crimes against the Constitution on January 6.

Trump insisted that the mob that marched from his rally on that fateful day to invade the US Capitol were a "very loving crowd" in excerpts from audio interviews released on CNN by two Washington Post reporters in a new book on the ex-President's last days in office.

The audio came out on the same day Trump's mouthpiece on Capitol Hill, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and other Republicans spoke out against authoritarianism and abuses of power -- but they leveled those accusations at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and not the twice-impeached former President.

It was the latest incarnation of a now classic tactic among pro-Trump Republicans and his media propagandists -- an effort to not just excuse the former President's conduct but to comprehensively alter the facts and public perception of the worst attack on Congress in two centuries. The shape-shifting strategy isn't just a political device -- it allows those who promote it to avoid wrestling with the reality of an assault on American democracy.

Trump came across as rambling and wallowing in his own delusions in the tapes released by Carol Leonning and Phil Rucker of their interviews with him for their newly published book "I Alone Can Fix It."

"They were ushered in by the police. The Capitol police were very friendly," Trump told the reporters, referring to the sacking of Congress and assaults on police officers by his supporters.

The latest Washington controversy over the insurrection erupted when Pelosi ejected two of McCarthy's picks for the select committee that will investigate Trump's insurrection. McCarthy responded by announcing a complete boycott of the panel.

[snip]

The President's remarks put the events of Wednesday in a wider context, as much of Washington obsessed over whether Pelosi had committed a tactical error that gave McCarthy an excuse to pull all his choices for the committee and to brand the entire exercise a partisan witch hunt and to ignore its findings. That theory has some merit from a narrow political perspective. The speaker effectively left her rival little option to preserve his own position inside her own party.

But the idea that Pelosi was outmaneuvered relies on the assumption that McCarthy has been acting in good faith in a long tussle about accountability for January 6, when he has repeatedly sought to prevent examinations of the ex-President's conduct. And this is not a minor partisan political spat. America's democratic traditions are on the line.

And the hysterical and hyperbolic reaction by GOP leaders to Pelosi's move also emphasized how the House Republican Party will do anything in its quest to shield Trump from accountability and to prevent Americans -- and ultimately history -- from having a true understanding of what happened on January 6.

If anyone was guilty of authoritarianism, denying the truth and breaking American political institutions, it was the former President, who refused to accept the will of voters -- the most fundamental principle of the US political system. The show of equivalence also shows how Republicans are using Trump's months of lies and propaganda, which have convinced millions of his voters he was cheated out of power, to advance a self-contained -- and false -- narrative.

The GOP response to Pelosi also reflected McCarthy's willingness to adopt any position seen as favorable to devotees of the ex-President who he hopes will show up on the campaign trail in midterm elections and make him speaker. And a news conference held by lawmakers who will now not sit on the committee underscored yet again how made for TV stunt politics pioneered by Trump have become the standard in the House GOP.

But then the both-sideism crops up. Nobody who has followed Republican politics for the last decade plus and has more than 3 firing neurons could write this.

Pelosi, who is rarely above playing politics, should not be immune from criticism. She could have moved more quickly after January 6 to set up a bipartisan probe into the attack. Perhaps if she kept Jordan and Banks on the select committee, she could have preserved a modicum of bipartisan respect for its eventual findings.

Former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who is now a CNN political commentator, said he would have preferred Pelosi keeping Jordan on the panel to make its eventual findings more credible -- even if he caused disruption. Though he did add that the Republican lawmakers should be ashamed of rhetoric that "bordered on inflammatory."

Republicans say that Pelosi abused her power by refusing to allow the minority to select its own members for an official congressional committee. But Democrats point out that they made repeated concessions to the GOP on the makeup of a bipartisan, independent, commission along the lines of the investigation into the September 11 attacks in 2001.

They then shift back to reality but the thought that allowing Banks and especially Jordan to throw bombs would make the committee more "bipartisan" or "credible" would have been naive 10 years ago. Today it's political flat eartherism.

[goldenvalley]

Oh please Pelosi could have moved quickly. There was an impeachment investigation going on and DOJ was combing videos looking for individuals. There was plenty going on at the time. And as time went on it was clear that something beyond individual investigations and charges are needed to get the big picture of what all was planned prior to the day of.

[LFC]

Jul 22, 2021 18:10:22 GMT goldenvalley said:

Oh please Pelosi could have moved quickly. There was an impeachment investigation going on and DOJ was combing videos looking for individuals. There was plenty going on at the time. And as time went on it was clear that something beyond individual investigations and charges are needed to get the big picture of what all was planned prior to the day of.

Back then it was Pelosi can't move too soon because it could interfere with FBI investigations. Now she should have moved sooner. Behold the power of 20-20 hindsight.

And while we're on the subject of moving sooner the Republicans dragged things out and then torpedoed the independent investigation. Let's look at the timeline, shall we?

May 28: Senate Republicans torpedoed the independent investigation.

June 24: Pelosi announced that the House Select Committee would be formed less than a month later.

July 1: Pelosi names committee Democrats.

July 1: McCarthy threatens his caucus if they agree to be on the committee.

July 13: McCarthy tells Faux News that he hasn't decided if he's going to name anybody.

July 21: McCarthy names his nominees and includes in two blatant bomb throwers.

July 22: Pelosi tells him to f*** off.

But yeah, it's Nancy's fault that she didn't move sooner. [sigh] The MSM really is brimming with idiots.

[LFC]

Madame Speaker just dropped the mic on poor, dumb Kevin.

Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and his fellow House Republicans have been attacking the Democrats – and especially Speaker Nancy Pelosi – all afternoon, after she refused to allow two of his nominees onto the Special Select Committee on the January 6 Attacks.

At one point Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), one of those booted from the committee, claimed Democrats were to blame for the 1/6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

McCarthy is now accusing Speaker Pelosi of "playing politics," according to Punchbowl News' Jake Sherman. McCarthy, within minutes of Pelosi announcing the two Republicans could not join the Committee, pulled all his nominees.

The Speaker was asked about McCarthy's "playing politics" attack.

"Perhaps you mistake me for somebody who would care about that." Pelosi told PBS Newshour's Lisa Desjardins.

[LFC]

Kinzinger is in.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on Sunday announced the appointment of Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) to the House select committee investigating the events of Jan. 6, days after Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) withdrew all five of the Republicans he chose for the panel.

“It is imperative that we get to the truth of that day and ensure that such an attack can never again happen. That is why we established the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, which is bipartisan,” Pelosi said. “Today, I am announcing the appointment of Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger, an Air Force veteran and Lieutenant Colonel in the Air National Guard, to serve on the Select Committee. He brings great patriotism to the Committee’s mission: to find the facts and protect our Democracy.”

In a statement issued Sunday, Kinzinger said he has “humbly accepted” his appointment to the select committee.

“Today, I was asked by the Speaker to serve on the House Select Committee to Investigate January 6th and I humbly accepted,” Kinzinger said. “I will work diligently to ensure we get to the truth and hold those responsible for the attack fully accountable.”

No shock but House Republicans are already looking at how to attack the "traitors" who refuse to defend the insurrection. Meanwhile Congressional Republicans, including Pat Toomey, continue to fall in line.

As the House select committee investigating the insurrection gets set to hold its first hearing Tuesday, House Republicans are more closely focused on punishing their two colleagues who have agreed to serve on the committee.

• As foreshadowed for a few days, Nancy Pelosi appointed Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) to the committee, joining Liz Cheney as the only Republicans on the now nine-member committee.
• One unnamed GOP member told CNN: “Supporting Pelosi’s unprecedented move to reject McCarthy’s picks was a bridge too far.”
• A move afoot among Freedom Caucus members to get Cheney and Kinzinger booted from their committee assignments.
• House GOP leadership may not have the appetite for a fight over the wayward GOPers: Pelosi could ultimately restore their committee assignments herself.
• GOP Frosh With A Big About-Face: Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) has gone from outspoken opponent of the Big Lie to quietly falling in line with the rest of the House GOP conference.
• Weak. Outgoing Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), who is not a proponent of the Big Lie, is playing along with the politicization of the House select committee’s work:

Aaron Rupar
@atrupar

Jake Tapper to Sen. Pat Toomey: "What does it say about your party that an investigation into a violent insurrection would reflect poorly upon it?"

Toomey: "I would argue the current POTUS's policies & the damage he's gonna be doing, that's what we should be debating in 2022."

[goldenvalley]

The Republicans seem to desperately want to erase the events of 1/6 from memory.  They want to move on to filibustering Biden initiatives in the Senate and kneecapping them in the House.  But House Democrats won't let that happen.


Suggesting that this is just another witch hunt like the impeachments is the best they can do to expunge the true import of the 1/6 insurrection.  So they'll howl that Cheney and anybody with R behind their names are traitors and that the Democrats are not following "the rules." 

[pnwguy]

Jul 26, 2021 18:29:13 GMT goldenvalley said:

....that the Democrats are not following "the rules." 

<TheRules>
Republicans MUST be in power at all times.
</TheRules>

[LFC]

Here's a preview of what's to come.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), who chairs the House select committee investigating the events of Jan. 6, signaled that the panel is willing to subpoena members of Congress or former President Trump in an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Monday.

Speaking to the WSJ a day before the committee’s first public hearing, Thompson also indicated that the panel will make efforts to enforce the subpoenas in court if need be.

“Anybody who had a conversation with the White House and officials in the White House while the invasion of the Capitol was going on is directly in the investigative sights of the committee,” Thompson told WSJ.

Thompson said that potentially includes issuing subpoenas to compel testimony in addition to records related to phone calls and other communications.

Thompson also made clear that the committee wouldn’t hesitate to subpoena Trump.

“I don’t want to name him, but what I will say is that in the conversations we’ve had as a committee, there’s been no reluctance whatsoever to go where the facts lead us,” Thompson told WSJ.

Trump, who was impeached by the House earlier this year for “incitement of insurrection” but acquitted in the Senate, “may or may not have contributed willingly or unwillingly to the events of Jan. 6,” Thompson told WSJ.

In contrast with the bipartisan Senate probe into the events of Jan. 6, the House select committee’s scope extends beyond security failures to investigate communications between Congress and the executive branch as well as the role of individuals, which includes Trump.

[LFC]

TPM warns us to brace for Republican "counter programming" i.e. propaganda i.e. bald-faced lies (paywalled).

The first hearing of the House’s Jan. 6 select committee starts bright and early tomorrow morning, focused on testimony from key law enforcement witnesses who were defending the Capitol during the mob attack. And we’re expecting varying degrees of hay-making and counter-programming from the GOP.

On one hand, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and his gang of loyalists — including those appointees who walked after House Speaker Pelosi (D-CA) rejected two of his nominees for the committee — will hold a press conference ahead of the first Jan. 6 committee hearing, according to Politico. The aim: try to counter Democrats’ messaging (even though there are actually two Republicans on the committee, just not the kind of Republicans that McCarthy likes).

On the other, further right, less rooted in reality hand, we have four of the big lie’s greatest adherents who are apparently cobbling together some sinister press conference outside the Justice Department; a second, more unhinged prong of the GOP push to distract from the Jan. 6 committee’s investigation. The group will include Trump loyalists Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-FL, under federal investigation for possible sex trafficking), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA, QAnon congresswoman with no committee assignments who didn’t understand the Holocaust until recently), Louie Gohmert (R-TX, who was one of the first lawmakers to suggest that the amorphous “antifa” was behind the insurrection, while it was happening in front of him) and Paul Gosar (R-AZ, who voted to overturn the results of the election, big fan of his state’s sketchy audit).

The group will apparently use the publicity stunt to distract from the committee hearing, but also to demand “answers on the treatment of January 6th prisoners” from Attorney General Merrick Garland, according to a statement from Gohmert’s office.

“Sadly, there exists two systems of justice in our country today: one for former President Trump along with those who support or don’t hate him, and the other for everyone else,” Gohmert said in the statement. “What we are seeing now is harassment and persecution of Trump supporters, many of whom were not even in Washington, DC that day. Even the guilty who committed repugnant acts should not have their rights trampled just to feed the irrational hatred of former President Trump.”

The four also apparently sent a letter to Garland last week, conveniently planning a very public follow up to that correspondence on the day of the House committee’s first hearing.

As Forbes’ Andrew Solender pointed out, while all four have played various roles in promoting conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, all four have also espoused support for a conspiracy that has only recently emerged out of the far-right fever swamps into mainstream conversations (aka Tucker Carlson’s show): that federal agents were actually the ones behind the insurrection.

The treatment of Jan. 6 prisoners is the latest distraction that’s taken hold as Trumpy Republicans attempt to change the narrative surrounding the insurrection in order to take back the House and Senate ahead of midterms. Josh Marshall predicted after Trump first questioned why “so many people are still in jail over Jan. 6” at the beginning of July that it would become a staple of his relevance-stoking rallies moving forward.

Here we are.

[goldenvalley]

Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-FL, under federal investigation for possible sex trafficking), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA, QAnon congresswoman with no committee assignments who didn’t understand the Holocaust until recently), Louie Gohmert (R-TX, who was one of the first lawmakers to suggest that the amorphous “antifa” was behind the insurrection, while it was happening in front of him) and Paul Gosar (R-AZ, who voted to overturn the results of the election, big fan of his state’s sketchy audit).

Really that's the best McCarthy can do to SQUIRREL the situation?  Send out the 4 G's to flap their jaws?  Not even use Double J Jim Jordan?

[jackd]

They've got nothing to talk about; might as well send in the clowns.

[MSheridan]

The aphorism is old enough (versions of it go back more than a century) I cannot present it as even slightly fresh insight, but:

When the facts are on your side, pound the facts. When the law is on your side, pound the law. When neither is on you side, pound the table.

Thus, the GOP has a surfeit of table-pounders for a very good reason. They have knowingly and quite deliberately placed themselves in opposition to facts and the law. All that is left them is to play to the jury and abuse the opposing attorneys.

[pnwguy]

John Heilman mentioned the problem we all understand, on Morning Joe this morning, about the alternative reality media world right wing inhabit, where facts are filtered out.

www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/officers-deliver-emotional-testimony-at-first-committee-hearing-117512773702

[LFC]

Jul 28, 2021 15:37:08 GMT pnwguy said:

John Heilman mentioned the problem we all understand, on Morning Joe this morning, about the alternative reality media world right wing inhabit, where facts are filtered out.

www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/officers-deliver-emotional-testimony-at-first-committee-hearing-117512773702

I wish he had named names. We can case many, of course, but I want the list, the clips, and I want them aired repeatedly and these enemies of America to be called out for what they are. They ARE a major part of the story of American fascism.

[LFC]

Here is TPM's live blogging of yesterday and here are a few snippets from it. It's not wonder the Republicans, after going full metal fascist to downplay and outright defend treason, are doing anything they can to make it go away. Strap in because the committee is charging hard right out of the gate.

And the hearing is off to a start, with Rep. Thompson delivering his opening remarks.

“And while we have a lot to uncover, there are a few things we already know,” Thompson says, adding that the panel knows of “evidence it was a coordinated, planned attack” and that “efforts to subvert our democracy are ongoing, and a major part of the Select Committee’s work will be to find ways to eliminate that threat.”
[snip]
“And while our institutions endured, and while Joe Biden is the legitimately elected President of the United States, a peaceful transfer of power didn’t happen this year,” Thompson said.

He added that that the rioters were “organized,” came “ready for a fight,” and “came close to succeeding.”

Cheney says that part of the committee’s aim is to prevent there from being “another Jan. 6 every four years.”

She adds that the committee needs to use its power to “issue and enforce subpoenas promptly.”

“We must overcome the many efforts we are already seeing to cover up and obscure the facts,” she added, noting that in the days immediately after Jan. 6, most Republicans recognized the reality of what had taken place.

I'd love to see this spun as "I'm not a racist but..."

Dunn is recounting an exchange he had with insurrectionists in MAGA hats, who, he siad, were yelling that “President Trump invited us here.”

One rioter, Dunn said, yelled that “nobody voted for Joe Biden.”

Dunn recalled that he replied to the rioter, “Well, I voted for Joe Biden. Does my vote not count? Am I nobody?”

That led to a torrent of racial epithets.

“One woman in a pink “MAGA” shirt yelled, ‘You hear that, guys, this nigger voted for Joe Biden!'” he tells the committee. “Then the crowd, perhaps around twenty people, joined in, screaming ‘Boo! Fucking Nigger!'”

And then there's this on why they didn't shoot.

Hodges is telling Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA) that he and other officers opted not to use their service firearms in part because they were completely outnumbered and believed that they were outgunned.

Hodges says that there were as many as 9,000 insurrectionists that day, but only hundreds of law enforcement officers. Both he and Fanone have said that they didn’t want to give rioters a pretext to shoot.

“If that turned into a firefight, we would have lost,” he says. “This was a fight we couldn’t afford to lose.”

And this sums up the rest of the House Republicans.

He [Dunn] says that while he “lauds” Reps. Cheney and Kinzinger for appearing on the committee, he doesn’t understand why that required bravery on their part.

“Why is telling the truth so hard?” he asked.

[LFC]

TPM also summarized Five Takeaways From The First Jan. 6 Committee Hearing.

[LFC]

The House Republican Kooky, Krazy Kaucus tried to provide propaganda to counter the truth pouring out of the testimony on Capitol Hill. They failed miserably.

Just as the House select committee on Jan. 6 wrapped up its first hearing Thursday, a handful of Trump’s greatest Big Lie adherents attempted to hold a press conference outside the DOJ to call out the treatment of jailed insurrectionists, whom they deem “political prisoners.”

It didn’t last long.

The press conference featured Reps. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Andy Biggs (R-AZ) and Bob Good (R-VA) — most of Trump’s closest election overturning allies. It was seemingly designed to distract from the Jan. 6 committee hearing, but also to urge the attorney general to address the jailing of those who have been charged with crimes for the insurrection. The group sent a letter requesting to meet with Attorney General Merrick Garland last week to discuss the status of these so-called “political prisoners.”

But the publicity stunt appeared doomed from the start as an unidentified person in the crowd repeatedly blew a whistle as the GOP lawmakers took the podium. Protesters continued holding signs and making noise throughout the briefing, but the four-some attempted to carry on.

“Are we housing political prisoners?” Gohmert asked during the presser.

Gosar soon parroted Gohmert’s rhetoric.

“These are not unruly or dangerous violent criminals. These are political prisoners, prisoners who are now being persecuted,” Gosar said.

After Gaetz complained about “antifa and Black Lives Matter protesters setting fire to the country” and Biggs offered the revisionist take of calling the mob that stormed the Capitol “peaceful protesters,” Greene narrowed in on the whistling protester — who made the GOP lawmakers’ remarks nearly inaudible for most of the press conference.

“To the guy blowing the whistle, we are not deterred,” Greene declared.

But they were.

Traitor Kevin McCarthy is still pushing the "it was Pelosi's fault" trope.

It wasn’t the only GOP effort to distract from the Jan. 6 select committee’s hearing on Tuesday. Shortly before the hearing got underway, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and fellow Republicans held a separate press conference, attempting to shift blame for the insurrection to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).