After 889 days, two primetime media blowouts, and countless time wasted that could be spent solving America’s real problems, the partisan January 6 comittee made a humiliating confession: The committee likely won’t be making any criminal referrals.
“Our job is to look at the facts and circumstances around January 6 — what caused it — and make recommendations after that,” Chair Bennie Thompson told reporters after a hearing.
When confronted about the committee potentially recommending criminal charges against former President Donald Trump, Thompson replied: “We don’t have authority.”
But this is a much different story than what the predominately anti-Trump Americans tuning into the January 6 hearings are being told.
Thompson said in an NBC News article earlier this year that the evidence already points towards formally requesting the Justice Department launch criminal cases against Donald Trump and his supporters.
“The potential for criminal referrals is there,” he claimed.
January 6 committee members have been stringing the anti-Trump public along with hollow promises of retribution against their common political foe.
“It’s absolutely clear that what President Trump was doing — what a number of people around him were doing — that they knew it was unlawful. They did it anyway,” Cheney said.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who made debunked claims about evidence that Trump colluded with the Russians in the 2016 election campaign, has also claimed that there is solid evidence that could lead to a Trump prosecution over January 6.
However, based on reports from inside the Federal Bureau of Investigation, there is no case to be made that Donald Trump was at the center of a conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. government.
“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 in August.
The New York Times in September published insider texts from January 6 that sowed doubt into any theory that Donald Trump was behind the Capitol Riots. An even stronger case of exculpatory evidence pointed to Trump being innocent of any such criminal conspiracy is the substantiated reporting that he informally sought increased security at the Capitol building ahead of the Electoral College’s joint session of Congress.
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) recently insisted, however, that there was still a chance that the committee could issue criminal referrals.
“The committee has not issued a conclusion regarding potential criminal referrals. We will announce a decision on that at an appropriate time,” she claimed on Twitter.
Rep. Elaine Luria (D-VA) also scrambled to do damage control regarding the possibility that the hearings were a case of misplaced priorities and a giant waste of time.
The Republican Party has been split on how to respond to the Democrats attempting to make January 6 a campaign issue ahead of the midterm elections. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has pledged to fight back against the committee by launching an investigation into its proceedings after the midterm elections, should the GOP retake the House of Representatives.
“We’d like to get to the bottom of why this Capitol was so ill-prepared,” McCarthy told reporters last week.
Ranking Member Rodney Davis (R-IL) wrote a letter to the committee’s Chair Bennie Thompson promising there will be scrutiny of the committee’s operations under any new House leadership.
“When Republicans once again hold the gavel and I am Chairman of the House Administration Committee, one of our first priorities is going to be launching a full investigation into Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Select Committee’s circus,” Davis promised.
Mitch McConnell (R-KY) in the party’s Senate leadership, however, appears intent to focus on economic issues, such as historically high gas prices and rampant inflation. It’s been a winning formula in the past, but the question is will Republicans ever fight back against a Democratic Party that intends to pull out all the stops to retain power.
While the Republican Party leadership is content to stand out of the failing Democratic Party’s way, there are real Americans hurting due to the Biden administration’s disastrous policies. Many are looking for signs that the GOP plans on holding people accountable for the way the Democratic Party has been viciously targeting Donald Trump and his supporters for years.
Syndicated with licensed permission from Becker News. Follow Becker News on Telegram.
Current Founder, CEO and Chief Editor of Becker News. Former Writer & Associate Producer at Fox News for #1 top-rated prime-time cable news show. Former Director of Viral Media and Senior Managing Editor for award-winning startup website IJReview, which grew to a readership of 20-30 million Americans a month. Led editorial and social media team that was #1 ranked news & politics publisher on Facebook for story engagement. Writer whose thousands of digital articles have been read by over 100 million unique users.