OK, so indict him already.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on the Senate floor the first day of the televised Jan. 6 select committee hearings, said: “(Former President) Donald Trump was at the heart of a coordinated effort to overturn the 2020 elections, to overturn our constitutional order, and inflict permanent damage upon our democracy.”

But Democratic committee member Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., when asked about possible Justice Department charges against Trump, said: “Attorney General (Merrick) Garland is my constituent, and I don’t browbeat my constituents. I think that he knows, his staff knows, the U.S. attorneys know what’s at stake here. They know the importance of it. But I think they’re rightfully paying close attention to precedent and history, as well as the facts of this case.” Not exactly full speed ahead.

And the day after the first hearing, committee chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss, said: “(Criminal referrals to the DOJ are) not our job. Our job is to look at Jan. 6. What caused it and make recommendations after that. … We don’t have the authority.” Committee member Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., disagreed, tweeting, “The Committee has not issued a conclusion regarding potential criminal referrals. We will announce a decision on that at an appropriate time.”

Trump, on Jan. 6, in his speech before the riots, said, “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” Two days earlier, according to Alec Schemmel of the Media Research Center: “A Capitol Police timeline of the days and weeks surrounding Jan. 6 shows former President Donald Trump’s Department of Defense (DOD) offered the National Guard’s assistance in the days leading up to the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol, validating claims from Trump administration officials that were said to be false by liberal fact-checkers.”

A first-year law student knows the DOJ has no hope of getting a conviction, even with a partisan Washington, D.C., jury, one of which cut loose Michael Sussmann, a Hillary Clinton lawyer who escaped conviction even though he clearly lied to the FBI. He falsely told the FBI he was acting as a private citizen when he delivered thumb drives with false claims about a Trump-Russia collusion. Yet he billed Hillary Clinton for “work and communications regarding confidential project” on the day of the FBI meeting and for the thumb drives he purchased six days earlier. The jury let him walk.

By the way, where were these nouveau proponents of law and order during the bloody and violent summer of 2020?

In June 2020, Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of Black Lives Matter, said: “People are at their wits’ end with the lack of accountability and the ability for police to continue to kill, abuse, maim and torture black people. And so George Floyd’s murder is just the tipping point.” She added: “I think people are upset. They’re angry. They have been for a long time. I think these protests will last for a long time.”

They did.

The violent “insurrections” that summer resulted in the death of at least 25, thousands of arrests, 2,000 cops injured and, according to Axios, during May 26 to June 8, 2020, “at least $1 billion to $2 billion of paid insurance claims.” RealClearInvestigations concluded the riots resulted in “15 times more injured police officers, 30 times as many arrests, and estimated damages in dollar terms up to 1,300 times more costly than those of the Capitol riot.”

Because of the false narrative that the police engage in “systemic racism” against blacks, cops have abandoned from “proactive policing,” a pullback that has caused “excess” deaths. A Thomson Reuters data scientist concluded: “… if you add up the estimates of murders from the different studies in various cities and time periods, you get something in the neighborhood of 2,500 additional murders on the lowest end…”

All of this, of course, will be dismissed by many as “whataboutism” — a term, tactic and rhetorical device often resorted to by the intellectually dishonest Left when they’re called out for their hypocrisy, double standards and selective outrage.

COPYRIGHT 2022 LAURENCE A. ELDER