Trump Allies Took the Fifth to Just About Everything in Jan. 6 Testimony
NewsweekDec 25, 2022
The Facts
Released Thursday, the US House Jan. 6 Committee's 845-page final report — which begins with a chapter titled "The Big Lie," referencing Donald Trump's controversial claims that the 2020 election was stolen — focuses on the former president's alleged role in the Capitol riots.
The report added new details regarding Trump's campaign efforts to allegedly appoint "fake electors" in key states, arguing that they were planning to deploy them whether Trump won certain states or not. The campaign claims they were put in place as a contingency in case states changed course and declared him the winner by the Dec. 14, 2021 deadline.
The Spin
Pro-Trump narrative
Democrats staged two baseless impeachment attempts while Trump was in office, and now they're trying to change the Constitution so that he and his supporters can't even campaign in the first place. What happened at the Capitol was a large, rowdy crowd with little security to quell violent outbursts — something we now know could have been prevented if Nancy Pelosi hadn't denied Trump's request to deploy the National Guard.
Democratic narrative
Though much of this report reiterated previously released information, the details provided put the final nail in the coffin for Trump and his election-denying coalition. Capitol authorities refused to deploy National Guard troops out of fear that Trump would use them to conduct a coup, which could very well have happened given the evidence of treasonous activity shown throughout these 800 pages.
Republican narrative
Jan. 6 may have been disgraceful, but inflation is soaring, working Americans are struggling, and the US is stumbling into diplomatic crises around the world. Meanwhile, Democrats continue to conduct political theater to try and distract from the enormous challenges faced by the nation. All this really does is highlight the hypocrisy of the left, who — in the case of BLM — not only failed to condemn but even encouraged violence, allowing protesters to get away with murder in the name of "justice."
