6 January Assault on The Capitol and aftermath 2023

2021-2022
Select January 6th Committee Final Report and Supporting Materials Collection

White House goes after Tucker Carlson by name over Jan. 6 coverage
In a rare rebuke of the Fox News ratings leader, the White House said Carlson is “not credible.”
(Politico) The White House joined in widespread condemnation of Fox News star Tucker Carlson on Wednesday, singling out the prime-time ratings king for his misleading portrayal of the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.
In comments shared first with POLITICO, the White House joined Republican Senate leaders and Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger, who a day earlier assailed Carlson’s broadcasts of selected assault footage as being “filled with offensive and misleading conclusions.”
Carlson has taken fire from all sides since House Speaker Kevin McCarthy opted to give the Fox host exclusive access to more than 40,000 hours of video captured on Jan. 6 by Capitol Police cameras. McCarthy has defended his granting of the footage to Carlson. But both he and the Fox host have been widely criticized for presenting slanted and sanitized coverage of the insurrection.
7 March
Despite McConnell’s rebuke, McCarthy defends Jan. 6 tape release to Fox News
Despite a chorus of widespread attacks on Fox News host Tucker Carlson for his portrayal of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — including from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell — House Speaker Kevin McCarthy defended his decision to hand over more than 40,000 hours of related security footage.
Carlson and his team had exclusive access to the security tape surrounding the attack thanks to McCarthy, drawing concerns the host would use it to spread a new wave of disinformation.
McCarthy said on Tuesday evening that he didn’t watch Carlson’s show the night before, where Carlson falsely stated that the attack on the Capitol was “mostly peaceful chaos” and that “the footage does not show an insurrection or riot in progress.”
Fox News Internal Texts And Emails Show Network’s Scramble In Aftermath Of 2020 Election And January 6th: “Maybe Sean And Laura Went Too Far,” Rupert Murdoch Wrote
A huge release of partially redacted text messages, emails and deposition transcripts that dropped Tuesday in the Dominion vs. Fox litigation sheds further light on the scramble among Fox News personalities and Fox Corp. executives to respond to the backlash in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election and then the repercussions after the attack on the Capitol on January 6th.

6 January
The January 6 Attack Is Not Over – America still needs accountability at every level.
By Tom Nichols
On the second anniversary of the January 6 insurrection, Joe Biden decorated Americans for courage during the unrest, while on Capitol Hill, the House of Representatives remained in limbo as many of the same people who tried to overturn the 2020 election bickered over electing a speaker.
(The Atlantic Daily) President Biden today decorated 14 Americans with the Presidential Citizens Medal, an honor established by President Richard Nixon in 1969 to recognize any citizen of the United States who has “performed exemplary deeds or services for his or her country or fellow citizens.” There are, I am sure, people on the right who will roll their eyes at honoring a Democrat such as Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, or a Republican such as the former Arizona House speaker Rusty Bowers (whose long political career ended with censure and a primary defeat from his own party). Likewise, the Capitol Police officers and the election officials who will be honored have already been the target of harassment and threats; their medals cannot make them whole now. Nor can such a posthumous honor restore Officer Brian Sicknick to life. (Sicknick’s family yesterday filed a wrongful-death suit against former President Donald Trump and two of the January 6 rioters.)
These American citizens are all, in fact, heroes. They took risks—not only politically but also by enduring physical threats from unhinged conspiracists—to protect our democracy. It’s easy to forget just how much danger these people were in, and how narrowly we escaped even greater chaos. Imagine what America would look like today if some of the people being honored by Biden had been intimidated or defeated, or if they’d just lost their nerve.
I reached out to Rosa Brooks today to explore that question. Brooks is one of the scholars who convened a group of experts and partisan operatives in late 2020 to game out the “worst thing that could happen to our country during the presidential elections.” She and her colleagues attracted a lot of snippy criticism at the time, but the events of January 6, 2021, proved their prescience. When I asked about her view of the worst that could have happened on that day, her scenario was chilling: She believes that had the rioters caught Vice President Mike Pence, or perhaps some members of Congress—such as the Democrats trapped in the House gallery at the time—they may well have been beaten or killed. “We know what happened to the police officers caught by the mob,” she told me. “Imagine if the mob had caught members of Congress.”
From there, Brooks suggested, more violence might have erupted, with more deaths. With Pence perhaps missing or incommunicado, there would have been no way to certify Biden’s victory, and Trump would have attempted to impose martial law.
Brooks’s most disheartening conclusion was that we escaped this disastrous possible outcome only by sheer luck. “I don’t think some sort of resilience in our system prevented that,” she said. “It wasn’t the supposed ‘guardrails of democracy’ that kept things from getting that bad—it was chance, plain and simple.”
I agree. We might be glad Pence stood firm at a key moment, but Pence had to be free—indeed, alive—to act. We might also comfort ourselves knowing that the clowns and opportunists who tried to overthrow our constitutional order have been outed by a thorough investigation in Congress. We can hope that justice is served, with prison sentences for some of the most dangerous seditionists and violent rioters. But is it enough? As the Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn tweeted this morning: “730 days later. We’re still waiting on accountability.”
Too many of the most important figures in the January 6 plot—and, as we know from the House investigation, it was indeed a plot, and not some random outbreak of violence—have escaped true accountability. From Trump on down to the group that the Washington Post writer Greg Sargent calls the “coup lawyers,” including John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani, we know their names. But severe consequences for such people have been rare.
Meanwhile, most of the Republicans who voted to overturn the election are still in Congress—or would be, if the House could get organized enough to swear them in. (At a ceremony at the Capitol today to mark the anniversary of the insurrection, only one Republican, apparently, bothered to show up.) The White House event to honor those who defended democracy took place at the same time that Representative Kevin McCarthy, just down the street at the Capitol, submitted himself for another few rounds of political bastinado, as the House, for the 12th and 13th times, failed to elect a speaker.
The anniversary of January 6 should remind us that the crisis of American democracy isn’t over, and that we should continue to take seriously what a close call we had in January 2021. (Exhibit A: Twitter’s new boss, the deeply unserious Elon Musk, trollishly chose today to reinstate the account of the disgraced Trump national security adviser Mike Flynn, the man who wanted the military to seize voting machines.)

4 January
Most Americans — but fewer than in 2021 — disapprove of the January 6 Capitol takeover
(YouGov) After the House Select January 6 committee released its final report, the Economist/YouGov asked Americans a variety of questions about the Capitol rioters, former President Donald Trump’s involvement, and the House committee’s handling of the investigation. The results show that approval of the Capitol takeover remains modest but has increased. Most Americans believe Trump is at least somewhat responsible for the day’s events. Two in five Americans approve of the House committee’s handling of the January 6 investigation, and slightly more are supportive of its decision to issue criminal referrals for Donald Trump.
While most Americans disapprove of the January 6 Capitol takeover, the share who approve has increased significantly since the event first took place. Two years ago, just 9% of Americans said they strongly or somewhat approved of the takeover; now, 20% do. The share who approve of the takeover has increased 13 percentage points among Democrats (to 16%, from 3%) and 16 percentage points among Republicans (to 32%, from 16%), with no significant change observed among Independents. However, the share of Independents who say they’re not sure has increased to 25% from 6%.
In addition to its focus on Mr. Trump’s actions, the report went into great detail about a supporting cast of lieutenants who enabled him. Mark Meadows, his final chief of staff, and the lawyers John Eastman, Rudolph W. Giuliani, Jeffrey Clark and Kenneth Chesebro were named as potential “co-conspirators” in Mr. Trump’s various attempts to cling to power.