J6 Defendants: Victims of Shameful Politicization of Justice

By Wendi Strauch Mahoney

The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) has politicized J6 to such an extent that it has effectively withheld exculpatory evidence from J6 defendants and their attorneys. As Mike Davis, former Chief Counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee, pointed out, a lawyer should not have to go to a “room in the basement of the Capitol during COVID” to find a needle in a haystack.
 

Outrageous spin from media claiming videos Tucker showed are “public” or at least accessible to defendants. The idea any defendant or defense atty can easily access the security footage is simply not true (as they’ll tell you) and suggestion all clips can be made public is a lie.

— Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 (@julie_kelly2) March 7, 2023

 
There are allegedly over 40,000 hours of J6 footage that have not yet been made public. Tucker Carlson “destroyed the insurrection narrative” on Monday’s show with video excerpts from the event. Carlson commented, “Taken as a whole, the video record does not support the claim that January 6 was an insurrection. In fact, it demolishes that claim. You would never have known from the media coverage.” President Trump praised McCarthy and Tucker Carlson for the release of the footage.
 

 
Hundreds of people are still being mistreated and held in jails without a trial for entering the Capitol. Many did nothing more than look around. Carlson showed video evidence of Jacob Chansley being escorted around by the Capitol police. According to the DOJ, he is currently serving 41 months in prison “for criminal conduct” that amounted to his wandering around with a Viking hat, a megaphone, and an American flag. His lawyer thinks he may be released soon.
 

I was told the QAnon shaman was leading an insurrection not the one who is being led by police throughout the capital building. No wonder all the footage was kept from us for 2 years.
As always they lied to us all! pic.twitter.com/nzWWIgryiz

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) March 7, 2023

 
On Tuesday, Davis commented on the DOJ handling Chansley’s case on Bannon’s War Room. Davis states
 
“[The] Justice Department has an obligation under the Constitution to provide to defendants exculpatory evidence. Tucker’s video showed clear exculpatory evidence that Jacob Chansley should not be in prison for 41 months.”
 
Davis explained that “it’s not good enough” just to tell attorneys that video footage is available. “There is this constitutional case called Brady where the prosecutors have to turn over to the defense attorneys exculpatory evidence. They didn’t do that here.”
 

 
Meanwhile, Democrats like Sen. Chuck Schumer are condemning Carlson’s “shameful hour” on the Senate floor while asking Fox News to stop releasing the January 6 videos. He says Carlson and others are “lying about the J6 protests” by saying it was not an insurrection.
 

Let this sink in:

Today's Democrats are defending prosecutors' failure to turn over evidence of a defendant's innocence.

A prosecutorial failure that is a clear and very serious constitutional violation.

This is no longer our parents' and grandparents' Democrat Party.

These… https://t.co/k7xAFcM4Et

— 🇺🇸 Mike Davis 🇺🇸 (@mrddmia) March 7, 2023

 
CNN featured commentary from documentary producer Ken Burns, who said Carlson is “rewriting history at the most dangerous level. It’s a huge threat to our republic.” Burns alleges Carlson is lying and evokes Nazi Germany’s Potemkin villages to conceptualize how Carlson’s narrative is merely a façade for the facts. “It’s terrifying; it feels like a Soviet system, the way the Nazis might build a Potemkin village,” said Burns.
 

😂😂😂 World's worst take ever. https://t.co/tqz1jgUVvq

— Catturd ™ (@catturd2) March 7, 2023

 
Adam Kinzinger said Fox is “knowingly lying to its viewers,” but raw video evidence is hard to dispute. Even Elon Musk is beginning to piece the truth together.
 

Besides misleading the public, they withheld evidence for partisan political reasons that sent people to prison for far more serious crimes than they committed.

That is deeply wrong, legally and morally.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 7, 2023

 
Julie Kelly Has Done Her Homework on J6
 
Investigative journalist Julie Kelly has faithfully reported on the facts of the J6 defendants, digging through thousands of pages of evidence and lawsuits and attending court hearings. She says most of the attorneys for J6ers were “forced to sign” requests from the DOJ to protect the department from releasing “most evidentiary material before gaining access to discovery.” Chansley was one of those required to sign the DOJ’s protective order.
 

In March 2021, Jacob Chansley's attorney consented to the DOJs request for a protective order related to most evidentiary material in his case. This is the same protective order all Jan 6ers (with a few exceptions) are forced to sign before gaining access to discovery: pic.twitter.com/5Aky9WYm4V

— Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 (@julie_kelly2) March 7, 2023

 
And for those who adamantly maintain there is nothing to see here, “it’s all public,” they say—Kelly shows evidence of the “strict rules” related to video with “highly sensitive material” that cannot be shared. Kelly first reported on Chansley’s “peaceful interaction” with the nine Capitol Police officers in May 2021.
 

This is for the "it's public!" crowd. The surveillance video was designated "highly sensitive" material in March 2021. Defendants must adhere to strict rules before viewing any security video and those are clips ONLY relevant to their case.

And they cannot be shared. pic.twitter.com/pKTv6Kf4hl

— Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 (@julie_kelly2) March 7, 2023

 
The facts are that some did vandalize property on January 6. Damage to the Capitol allegedly “required the expenditure of more than $1.4 million dollars for repairs.” However, as a whole, the protest cannot be called a violent insurrection, nor was it comparable to 9/11, as Mitch McConnell or Nancy Pelosi might have you believe.
 
It seems as though MAGA protestors were the only ones who died that day—some, like Roseanne Boyland, were violently beaten. It has been extraordinarily difficult to get the word out that Officer Brian Sicknick was not “beaten with a fire extinguisher” but, in fact, died the following day of natural causes. Newly released footage shows “Sicknick walking around after the time the Democrats said he was murdered.”

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