The Patriot Post® · Unequal Justice for J6 Defendants and GOP Donors
Buried toward the end of Arizona Congressman Andy Biggs’s recently released “America First Contract” was a promise made on behalf of his fellow Republicans to conduct congressional oversight and investigation. More specifically, “to immediately form working groups to collect and preserve evidence,” and to convert those working groups “into investigative committees in January 2023, when Republicans retake the majority.”
Not if, but when.
Why Biggs felt it necessary to assure us that he and his colleagues would do their constitutionally prescribed duty isn’t clear, but we were encouraged by two of the specific items he vowed to investigate: abuse of authority by government agencies against political opponents, and due process received or denied by those charged with political crimes.
When we read these items, we think of our federal government’s grotesque mistreatment of nonviolent offenders from the January 6 Capitol riot — a riot that took place 16 months ago, and a riot whose defendants are still languishing in prison cells, still awaiting their Sixth Amendment right “to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury.”
Take Ethan Nordean, for example, who, as journalist Julie Kelly writes, “is entering his 13th month of captivity as a political prisoner in the United States of America.” And if you think Kelly’s description of Nordean’s ordeal is overwrought, put yourself in his shoes:
Arrested in his home state of Washington last February on nonviolent charges related to the Capitol protest on January 6, 2021, Nordean, 31, has spent the past year in jail, mostly in solitary confinement. He hasn’t held his young daughter or hugged his wife and parents for months.
In the eyes of the Biden regime — on a destructive crusade to exact revenge against supporters of Donald Trump — Nordean is a threat to the country, an alleged “domestic violent extremist,” i.e., terrorist, as a member of the Proud Boys. That, of course, is not the group that burned, looted, and actually terrorized thousands of American communities throughout 2020, responsible for at least two dozen deaths and $2 billion in property damages.
Indeed, it’d be one thing if justice were being meted out equally to both Black Lives Matter rioters and January 6 rioters, but it isn’t. What we have here are two tiers of justice: one for the Left, and one for the Right.
Nordean’s crime? On January 6, 2021, he and other members of the pro-Trump Proud Boys “peacefully assembled near the Washington Monument in the morning and then walked toward Capitol Hill.” When some of Nordean’s fellow Proud Boys and at least two FBI informants physically breached a police line around 1 p.m., Nordean wasn’t with them. As Kelly continues: “Surveillance video released in his case by court order — and over the Justice Department’s strenuous objections — shows Nordean walking through an open door on the west side of the building as Capitol police stood by. He neither carried a weapon nor assaulted police officers; the most serious charges against him are conspiracy and obstruction of an official proceeding, two nonviolent felonies.”
And for this, Ethan Nordean, a man with no prior criminal record, has been locked up, mostly in solitary confinement, for more than a year? Since when did nonviolent political protest warrant such punishment? Where’s the outrage from every Rule-of-Law type, regardless of whether they threw a lever for Donald Trump? Where’s the ACLU? (Never mind.) And what of Nancy Pelosi’s “Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol”? Is that rigged committee not the least bit interested in Nordean’s case, or those of his fellow peaceful protesters?
As it turns out, Pelosi, Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, and their Democrat colleagues have bigger fish to fry. They’re continuing to pursue the data and digital communications records of Salesforce, the fundraising vendor for the Republican National Committee, demanding all the company’s records and associated communications between Election Day and January 6, 2021.
As a complaint filed by the RNC’s attorneys notes, the J6 Committee’s subpoena “seeks information on vast numbers of Republican donors, volunteers, supporters, and coalition members. If forced to comply, Salesforce would disclose records regarding whether and how individual RNC supporters have responded to emails, … reacted to specific political messaging, signed any RNC petitions, completed any surveys on specific issues and policy proposals, or responded to specific fundraising appeals.”
What better way to chill Republican fundraising success between now and November’s midterm elections? First, Democrats will gain access to GOP donor information, then they’ll leak it to The Mob. Because that’s what the Left always does. And by leaking it, Democrats will vilify current Republican donors and scare away potential ones.
All this is an outrageous overreach by Nancy Pelosi’s sham committee — a committee which knows it’s on the clock and will soon run out of time. As Kelly writes, “They can’t beat Republicans at the ballot box, so Democrats are using every governmental, legislative, and legal weapon at their disposal to destroy them in court and in the court of public opinion.”
If the American people reward Andy Biggs and his fellow Republicans with the legislative gavels on November 8, investigative oversight should be Job One on January 3.
Updated to include additional insight into the Democrats’ donor-suppression scheme.