New York Post, March 17, 2023

Team Biden’s charging 1,000 more with Jan. 6 crimes to perpetuate a fake political emergency

by James Bovard

The Biden administration is planning to charge another thousand Trump supporters with crimes related to the Jan. 6 Capitol clash.

This will perpetuate an atmosphere of political emergency that justifies President Joe Biden’s war on domestic extremism.

But a change in federal judges has turned the Jan. 6 trials into a kangaroo court and makes a mockery of sending nonviolent Trump supporters to prison for threatening American democracy.

More than a thousand people have already been charged with Jan. 6 offenses.

That is equal to almost half of the total number of protesters who entered the Capitol that day.

A corrupt numbers game is at the heart of the Biden propaganda-prosecution campaign.

The more people indicted for Jan. 6, the easier it becomes for the Biden reelection campaign to portray the president as the savior against right-wing tyranny.

Jan. 6 is also Biden’s primary proof America is in grave danger from white supremacy.

The Biden White House has already exploited the Capitol clash to sanctify federal censorship.

Biden White House Digital Director Robert Flaherty invoked Jan. 6 to browbeat Facebook into increasing its suppression of true criticisms of COVID policies and vaccines.

Most of the Jan. 6 protesters who violently attacked police or wantonly destroyed public property have already been justifiably charged by the feds.

But Biden prosecutors are ruining people’s lives for “parading without a permit” near the Capitol that day.

With another thousand cases in the works, will they vilify anyone who allegedly had seditious thoughts within a mile of the Capitol?

Pro-Trump groups had official permits to protest Jan. 6 near the Capitol.

Video from that day shows police and perhaps undercover agents or informants dismantling barriers that blocked protesters from entering prohibited areas.

The full role of undercover federal agents or operatives on Jan. 6 remains secret.

Regardless, collective guilt was speedily attached to all protesters.

Capitol Police Acting Chief Yogananda Pittman told Congress that Jan. 6 involved “a terrorist attack by tens of thousands of insurrectionists.”

Pittman’s statement sounded deranged in 2021 but has since morphed into Team Biden conventional wisdom.

The FBI classifies all Jan. 6 defendants as “domestic terrorists” — even though only a small percentage of the Trump protesters engaged in violence that day, and most have only been convicted on misdemeanor charges.

FBI whistleblowers reveal that FBI bosses “have pressured agents to move cases into the [domestic violence and extremism] category to hit self-created performance metrics,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) recounted.

FBI Special Agent Garret O’Boyle said that “the FBI made him divide one domestic terrorism case into ‘four different cases,’” Fox News reported, “to show Congress an influx of domestic-terrorism cases.”

If the Jan. 6 court cases were heard by juries of the defendants’ peers, federal prosecutors would likely be striking out far and wide.

Instead, all the cases are being heard in Washington with juries stocked with government employees who believe everything they hear on NPR.

At least one judge is blocking Jan. 6 defendants from access to Capitol security footage Tucker Carlson already aired recently.

As of Friday, the new chief judge for the DC federal circuit overseeing all Jan. 6 prosecutions is James Boasberg.

Boasberg was the guardian angel for a corrupt FBI official whose actions helped open the floodgates to political chaos and pervasive distrust.

Former FBI Assistant General Counsel Kevin Clinesmith confessed in 2020 to falsifying key evidence to get a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant to spy on the 2016 Trump presidential campaign.

That investigation spurred a torrent of leaks of classified information by the FBI (including by chief James Comey) and the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller.

His investigation roiled national politics for two years before Mueller admitted there was no evidence to prosecute Trump or his campaign officials for colluding with Russia in the 2016 campaign.

Federal prosecutors wanted the disgraced FBI lawyer sent to prison because his crime’s “resulting harm is immeasurable.”

But Boasberg gushed with sympathy for the confessed criminal: “Mr. Clinesmith has lost his job in government service — what has given his life much of its meaning.” Boasberg gave Clinesmith a wrist slap — 400 hours of community service and 12 months of probation.

The Justice Department inspector general documented many abuses of power and deceit by FBI officials in the Trump investigation, but not a single FBI official has spent a day behind bars.

Does Boasberg believe federal agents have a right to subvert our democracy?

Videos Tucker Carlson released show legions of protestors walking peacefully through the Capitol Jan. 6.

How can federal prosecutors hound citizens who committed no violence after the chief federal judge practically absolved the FBI official whose crime helped open a political Pandora’s box?

We still don’t know all that happened inside the Capitol Jan. 6, and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy promises to “slowly roll out” the 40,000 hours of surveillance footage to every news agency.

But Team Biden’s plan to sacrifice another thousand Americans on the Jan. 6 altar is a travesty of justice and due process.

James Bovard is the author of 10 books and a member of the USA Today Board of Contributors.