by Sharon Rondeau
(Nov. 13, 2022) — In a column published Friday, Newsmax announced it will air an investigative film, “Shame of a Nation,” focusing on “not only the events of Jan. 6, 2021, but the civil-rights violations against many of the protesters” this evening at 9:00 p.m. EST on its television network.
Asserting what some have claimed since the incursion at the U.S. Capitol, “The civil rights of the Jan. 6 defendants, including those currently being detained, are being violated. Many being held in jail have been held in solitary confinement for prolonged periods and have not received proper medical care,” Newsmax wrote in its article promoting the film.
The article states that the film examines the “Jan. 6 Committee,” formally known as the “Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol” formed to purportedly discover the circumstances and motivation leading up to the incursion which interrupted Congress’s counting of the electoral votes from the 2020 election.
The committee comprises seven Democrats and two Republicans, both of whom will not be serving in the 118th Congress to be sworn in on January 3, 2023. Rep. Liz Cheney (WY) was defeated in her primary earlier this year, while Rep. Adam Kinzinger (IL16) chose not to seek re-election.
During the committee’s hearings earlier this year which were reportedly choreographed by a former ABC executive, no cross-examination of witnesses was permitted and many interviews prerecorded. In a letter accompanying its October 21 subpoena to 45th President Donald Trump, the committee states that it believes Trump “personally orchestrated and oversaw a multi-part effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election and to obstruct the peaceful transition of power.”
Further, the letter accuses Trump of “Purposely and maliciously disseminating false allegations of fraud related to the 2020 presidential election in order to aid your effort to overturn the election and for purposes of soliciting contributions” and “Without any evidentiary basis, illegally pressuring state officials and legislators to change the results of the election in their states,” among other accusations.
On Friday Trump filed suit against the committee and the entire U.S. House of Representatives, arguing he has “absolute immunity” from testifying to Congress.
During remarks prior to Congress’s convening on January 6, Trump called upon rally supporters, which reportedly numbered one million, to “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
After violence broke out within the Capitol, Trump urged those involved to “go home now.” “We had an election that was stolen from us,” he said in a public statement. “It was a landslide election, and everyone knows it, especially the other side, but you have to go home now. We have to have peace…We don’t want anybody hurt. It’s a very tough period of time…This was a fraudulent election, but we can’t play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace…”
The term “election denier” has arguably been elevated by the media to that of “birther,” or those who did not believe Barack Hussein Obama II was constitutionally eligible to serve as president or that he was not born in the United States, as he claimed following credible reports he was born in Indonesia or Kenya.
Between 2011 and late 2016, a probe by the Maricopa County, AZ “Cold Case Posse” found the “long-form” birth-certificate image posted by the Obama White House to be a “computer-generated forgery.” The topic quickly became one the media ridiculed and banned from broadcasting in any serious fashion.
Trump himself was called “leader of the ‘birthers‘” until September 2016, when in a press conference he asserted that “President Barack Obama was born in the United States. Period,” seemingly putting an end to his speculation that Obama’s life story is not as he had more recently claimed.
After the January 6 incident during which an unarmed woman, Ashli Babbitt, was shot to death by U.S. Capitol Police Officer Michael Byrd, major media and many Democrats labeled it “an insurrection,” or attempted overthrow of the federal government. Later that day, Congress reconvened and concluded its counting of the electoral votes which demonstrated that Joe Biden had won the presidency.
The COVID-19 “pandemic” led to changes in election laws outside of those passed by respective state legislatures. In the “swing” state of Wisconsin, the state supreme court in July ruled that outside ballot drop boxes, as were used extensively in 2020 and 2021 to allow voters to avoid crowds, to be illegal.
In its article Newsmax opined that “the Jan. 6 committee created a one-sided narrative to the public to cast former President Donald Trump, his family, his staff, and his supporters in the worst possible light. In the process, the committee is making it impossible for the Jan. 6 defendants to have a trial by a fair and impartial jury.”
“The film includes an examination of the Jan. 6 committee and the unprecedented weaponization of the Department of Justice and the FBI for political purposes,” the column continues.
Since January 6, 2021, the FBI has arrested hundreds of individuals suspected of involvement in the incursion. The organization Look Ahead America has compiled a database of those arrested, detained and charged available here as well as conducted interviews of some of those incarcerated.
Just over a year ago, Fox News’s Tucker Carlson produced a three-part film about the January 6 incident titled, “Patriot Purge.” Another release, “J6 Truth,” was released in June.
No congressional committee permits cross-examination; cross-examination is part of adjudicative proceedings, and not legislative hearings. No committee member was denied the opportunity to examine a witness.
Who claimed President Obama was born in Indonesia?