The partisan January 6 committee is seeking criminal contempt of Congress charges for former President Donald Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, the New York Times reported Monday night.
The New York Times makes several factually untrue statements in its dishonest account of the story.
“Mark Meadows, the last White House chief of staff for President Donald J. Trump, played a far more substantial role in plotting to overturn the 2020 election and fueling Mr. Trump’s efforts to cling to power than was previously known, investigators for the House committee scrutinizing the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol have learned,” the Times claimed.
First of all, there was no plot to “overturn the election.” No one has been charged by The Department of Justice for “insurrection” or “treason.” As Reuters reported in August, the vast majority of those charged were ‘one-off’ cases of violations such as trespassing and parading without a permit.
“The FBI has found scant evidence that the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was the result of an organized plot to overturn the presidential election result, according to four current and former law enforcement officials,” Reuters reported.
“Though federal officials have arrested more than 570 alleged participants, the FBI at this point believes the violence was not centrally coordinated by far-right groups or prominent supporters of then-President Donald Trump, according to the sources, who have been either directly involved in or briefed regularly on the wide-ranging investigations,” the report said.
“Ninety to ninety-five percent of these are one-off cases,” said a former senior law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation. “Then you have five percent, maybe, of these militia groups that were more closely organized. But there was no grand scheme with Roger Stone and Alex Jones and all of these people to storm the Capitol and take hostages.”
The New York Times obliviously continued to push the partisan January 6 committee’s narrative that January 6 was a conspiracy that somehow involved Donald Trump and his supporters.
“From a trove of about 9,000 documents that Mr. Meadows turned over before halting his cooperation with the inquiry, a clearer picture has emerged about the extent of his involvement in Mr. Trump’s attempts to use the government to invalidate the election results,” the Times added. “The documents also shed light on his knowledge and guidance of a plan by right-wing lawmakers to try to use Congress to overturn the election, and how he coordinated with organizers of the rally in Washington that culminated in the deadly riot at the Capitol.”
It is clear what the Times means by “overturning” the election is contesting the results of elections in states that had illegitimately and unlawfully changed election laws prior to the 2020 election. The Republicans who objected to the 2020 election results were following well-established precedent set by Democrats in 2001, 2005, and 2017. This is a constitutionally protected act and is not subject to criminal investigation. The Democrats, nonetheless, continue to act as if it were a criminal act.
Rep. Liz Cheney, an anti-Trump Republican, delivered the news, citing texts made by Fox News journalists, such as Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Brian Kilmeade, who were seeking information about the developing situation from Meadows.
“As the committee prepared to vote, Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and the panel’s vice chairwoman, read aloud text messages sent to Mr. Meadows by the president’s son Donald Trump Jr. and prominent Fox News hosts beseeching him to ask Mr. Trump to put an end to the mob attack,” the New York Times reported on Monday night.
“He’s got to condemn this shit ASAP,” Trump Jr. is said to have texted Meadows, referring to the president.
“I’m pushing hard,” Mr. Meadows responded. “I agree.”
Cheney read another text attributed to Laura Ingraham: “The president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home… he is destroying his legacy.”
Sean Hannity also reportedly texted Meadows, writing: “Can he make a statement?… Ask people to leave the Capitol?”
The second issue with the New York Times’s account is that Donald Trump did condemn the far-right extremists who launched the January 6 riots.
Trump released a video in his first post on Twitter since being locked out of his account. He was later banned from Twitter permanently anyway.
“Like all Americans, I am outraged by the lawlessness, violence and mayhem,” he said and called the attack “heinous.”
Trump said the rioters “defiled the seat of democracy” and added: “to those who broke the law, you will pay.”
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OPINION: This article contains commentary which reflects the author's opinion.