With a New J6 Probe, MAGA Again Shows How Bonkers It Is

Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes attends the House subcommittee hearing on January 6 on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. Jose Luis Magana/AP

One of the biggest failings of mainstream media and the Democrats in the Trump era is not fully conveying to the American public how bonkers much of MAGA is. Trump’s cult of personality is fueled by paranoia, conspiracism, and irrationality. From birtherism to Pizzagate to QAnon to the Big Lie, core elements of Trump’s movement—and the Republican Party—are predicated on outlandish nonsense and dangerous bunk. I was reminded of that this week as I watched the first hearing held by the new House Judiciary Select Subcommittee to Investigate the Remaining Questions Surrounding January 6, 2021.

Yes, there is such an official committee that was set up by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) to continue Trump World’s never-ending crusade to rewrite the history of the January 6 riot to absolve Trump of wrongdoing and blame the Democrats, antifa, the Deep State, the media, or anyone else you can think of for the horrific melee at the Capitol. To mark the fifth anniversary of the assault on Congress, the White House unveiled an absurd website that called the marauders “patriotic Americans,” faulted the Capitol Hill police for instigating the violence, and hailed Trump’s pardon of the 1,600 domestic terrorists. But this new surge of gaslighting doesn’t stop there. The subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), intends to investigate the previous House investigation of January 6 to do whatever it can to bolster Trump’s bogus narrative.

This is exactly what Trump and the GOP did with the Russia investigations. In the face of the ironclad findings that Moscow attacked the 2016 election to help Trump and that Trump aided and abetted the assault by echoing Vladimir Putin’s denials, Trump and his Republican handmaids have spent years assailing the investigations to smother the truth and hide his profound betrayal of the nation. In fact, they are still at it today, with the Justice Department pursuing a criminal investigation against Obama administration officials involved in the original Trump-Russia inquiry, including former CIA Director John Brennan.

The goal of J6 revisionism is to convince Americans not to believe what they saw: an insurrectionist riot mounted by Trump supporters whom he incited with his false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him. One critical move for the J6 deniers is to delegitimize the FBI and the Justice Department for their pursuit of the rioters. That’s why Loudermilk’s first shot was this hearing that was supposed to focus on the case of the pipe bomber who planted explosive devices at the respective headquarters of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party prior to the January 6 assault. The bureau’s years-long failure to catch the perp has been a black mark for the FBI and a source of much conspiracy-mongering on the right.

Last month, the FBI, after reviewing evidence it had previously collected, finally arrested a suspect: Brian Cole Jr., a 30-year-old Trump supporter who believed Trump’s lies about the 2020 vote tally. Case settled? Not for the J6 deniers. There are legitimate questions about how the FBI handled this investigation and why it took so long to nab a suspect. But Loudermilk’s hearing did not stick to that worthy subject and instead became a forum for bat-crap crazy.

As witnesses, the Republicans served up former national security professionals who presented an assortment of alternative-reality accounts. Thomas Speciale II, who says he was a former senior intelligence collection strategist at the National Counterterrorism Center, claimed the FBI, during the Biden years, never “truly” pursued the pipe bomber because it was “singularly focused after January 6 to prevent Donald J. Trump from becoming president and to cripple, intimidate, and silence his allies and supporters.” The FBI, he charged, was too fixated “on covering up lies, criminal misconduct, and election interference” and too busy “hunting Trump supporters”—meaning the J6 thugs. That is, the FBI was working to protect the evildoers who rigged the election against Trump and essentially let the pipe bomber go.

Over the years, MAGA conspiracists have conjured various tales about the pipe bomber: He was an anti-Trump activist, and the FBI was covering that up. He was part of an inside job mounted by the FBI, and the FBI was covering that up. She was a Capitol Hill police office, and the FBI was covering that up. With the apprehended suspect a Trumper, it’s been hard for these folks to fit that into a MAGA-friendly narrative—which may be why some MAGA stalwarts are now insisting that Cole is not the real bomber. But that’s another story.

At the hearing, John Nantz, a former FBI agent and a right-wing commentator, accused the FBI of failing to catch the pipe bomber for years because it was “myopically focused” on “violent white extremists” and squandered its resources on “persecuting Trump supporters.” He tossed out much of the usual MAGA fare about a politicized FBI and claimed the bureau had started the Trump Russia investigation due to “a thin tissue of preposterous fictions spun by operatives of the Clinton campaign.” (That was false. The FBI launched the investigation on its own initiative, not because of any supposed Clinton chicanery.)

But Nantz really dived into the deep end when he described the January 6 riot. He insisted the demonstration at the Capitol was “peaceful and civilized” until “radical elements wearing the uniform of antifa anarchists began a campaign of agitation and vandalism which drew a minority of the more gullible into criminal acts.” Huh? There’s no uniform for antifa.

Nantz went on to say that the “objective” of J6 was obvious: “To stigmatize Republican protesters and bludgeon President Trump and his supporters with bigoted labels, such as white supremacist, white nationalist extremists.” So antifa, in unforms, managed to provoke hundreds of Trump supporters into beating the hell out of the cops, breaking into the Capitol, and trying to stop the certification of the electoral vote count so Trump supporters could be denigrated as racists? This is (sadly) laughable.

Speciale blamed the Capitol Hill cops. He noted that many in the crowd were military veterans and former law enforcement officers. “Veterans are trained to do one thing and one thing only—that is, fight tyranny and fight injustice,” he testified. “So when the Capitol police began CS-gassing the crowd, the veterans and the law enforcement stepped forward to protect the crowd.” You see? Rioters were only trying to protect other rioters from the bad cops. Of course, this doesn’t explain why these fighters-against-injustice then broke into the Capitol, shouted “Hang Mike Pence,” and searched for members of Congress so they could thwart the certification. (I’d like to see him apply this, uh, logic to BLM and anti-ICE protests.)

The hearing, though, showed that the problem wasn’t with the witnesses. It’s with the Republican legislators. They were nuttier than the conspiracists at the witness table.

Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) angrily denounced the original J6 House committee, calling it a “sham” that “set out to destroy Donald Trump and the MAGA movement.” He pointed out that its final report mentioned the Proud Boys 218 times but only referred to antifa on 20 instances. (The Proud Boys smashed into the Capitol. Antifa activists did not.) He then loudly repeated a preposterous conspiracy theory about Ray Epps, an Arizona man who was in the crowd at the Capitol who MAGA loons claim was a secret government agent who engineered the whole thing. This dumb notion was soundly debunked years ago. But Nehls is still championing it. He played a video about Epps that declared, “This was an operation.” More baseless Deep State hokum.

Nehls was outdone by Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.). He performed something of a dramatic reading that accused the FBI of orchestrating the riot. And it all began with Covid:

The government oppression America suffered in the Covid era leading up to the November election cycle of 2020 was unprecedented. The Biden FBI did penetrate legitimate First Amendment communications in groups of American patriots who had the audacity to object to government oppression. The Biden FBI, trained to manipulate and agitate, did foment rage within these groups of American patriots. The November 2020 election cycle was compromised. The Biden FBI did have undercover agents and confidential informants embedded within the rally crowd on J4, J5 and J6. The Biden FBI did conspire to entrap MAGA Americans prior to J6 and then successfully entrapped several hundred Americans on J6. The Biden FBI and the DOJ did unrighteously persecute, arrest and imprison entrapped Americans.

Can you spot the little problem with Higgins’ soliloquy? He asserts the Biden FBI concocted the January 6 riot so it could “entrap” and arrest hundreds of Trump supporters. There was no Biden FBI until January 21, 2021—that is, after J6. The government oppression and purported FBI wrongdoing he assails happened with the Trump FBI. What buffoonery. If you’re going to give us a conspiracy theory, please, please check your dates and make sure they line up with your loony idea. It’s the least you can do.

Higgins asked Nantz why the FBI had failed for years to crack the pipe bomber case. Nantz replied it was due to poor leadership at the bureau. But Higgins had his own theory about that, too: “How could the FBI be that inept? I believe it was purposeful. I believe they identified the suspects in the 200 [cellphone numbers the bureau had collected of possible suspects] and none of them fit the profile of the so-called white supremacist MAGA activist. So they stepped away from that investigation.” The bureau dropped the investigation because it could not pin it on a white nationalist. That’s some fantasy—especially given that the fellow recently arrested is a Trumper. (He’s likely not a white nationalist, though; he’s Black.)

Higgins also dismissed the previous testimony of police officers who described how they were brutalized, beaten, and bloodied by the January 6 mob as “highly scripted” accounts from “Trump haters.” A true law-and-order, back-the-blue stance. In the front row of the audience sat Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, wearing a black cowboy hat, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy for his role in the riot. Also in the house was a bevy of J6 attackers.

Other Republicans on the panel suggested the FBI pipe bomber case involved a nefarious plot. Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) said he believed something foul had been afoot with the FBI probe. And Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) even hinted that Cole was not the real suspect, suggesting that the FBI—run by Kash Patel and (until recently) Dan Bongino—was up to no good. Loudermilk poked at the FBI, saying “resources were shifted over” from the pipe bomber case to the prosecution of the January 6 rioters.

The one witness called by the Democrats on the committee was Michael Romano, who was deputy chief of the Justice Department section that prosecuted the January 6 rioters. He tried to inject some sanity into the proceedings. He told the legislators:

The rioters understood their conduct in political terms. I saw this repeatedly in the evidence we gathered. I saw rioters circulate in advance, via Facebook, a picture of the US Capitol with text superimposed over it: “Occupy Congress. If they won’t hear us, they will fear us. The great betrayal is over. Election Fraud is Treason. January 6, 2021.” Rioters sending these messages planned to storm the Capitol; their conduct wasn’t spontaneous. One rioter I prosecuted, Cody Mattice, recorded himself as he marched to Capitol Hill, saying, “We’re going to go fuck some shit up. It’s about to be nuts.” On reaching the Capitol, he said (of the building), “We’re getting up front, and we’re taking this shit.” He was not peacefully marching to the Capitol.

Mattice recorded his co-defendant, James Mault, asking officers to stand down because “We had your guys’ back when you were under attack,” and promising that “your jobs will be here…after we kick the shit out of” Members of Congress. He was not instigated by the police. The evidence showed me that the mob shared their sentiments. The mob had a purpose: to prevent the certification of the electoral college vote through violence, or threats of violence. After smashing their way into the building, rioters demanded of Officer Goodman: “Where are they counting the fucking votes?”

Romano denounced Trump’s pardon of the rioters. His testimony contained a powerful warning;

The pardons were permission for political violence, in the future, in support of this president and his administration. And from what I have seen, the rioters understand the pardons in these terms. Indeed, last week—on the five-year anniversary of January 6—I saw that formerly convicted felons traveled to Washington, DC, and recorded themselves taunting the same police officers they attacked five years ago. They know that if they do violence again, in support of the president, the president will have their back. They know because he did have, and has had, their back.

This is the message the public needs to hear repeatedly, as Trump and his reality-denying henchmen try to wipe out the truth of January 6. “Nothing will ever whitewash the indelible facts of that day,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee who served on the original House January 6 committee, said at the hearing. But Trump’s crusade to do so is unrelenting.

This opening session of the subcommittee to whitewash January 6 was a potpourri of paranoid derangement but nothing out of the ordinary for MAGA, a land of unhinged and extreme Manichean beliefs, all derived to serve and protect Dear Leader and cover up his transgressions. Romano was right. There’s a profound danger within the lunacy. If Trump and his apparatchiks celebrate the J6 rioters and countenance this use of political violence, the odds are that it will happen again.

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland.corn@gmail.com.

Remember how odd it was that Todd Blanche, Trump’s onetime defense lawyer whom he installed as deputy attorney general, trekked to Florida in July to have a little chat with Ghislaine Maxwell, who’s serving 20 years for being Jeffrey Epstein’s partner in sex crimes? It was even odder that a week after that tête-à-tête, Maxwell was transferred to a cushy prison camp for white-collar criminals and nonviolent offenders. Inquiring minds wanted to know why that happened. The Bureau of Prisons would not say.

In search of an explanation, I filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the BOP seeking all documents—emails, memos, etc.—pertaining to Maxwell’s transfer. The BOP dragged its feet, and on Wednesday, we sued. That is, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, a nonprofit that provides legal resources to journalists, filed a lawsuit for us to compel the BOP to respond to the FOIA request. You can read more about that here. I’ll let you know what happens.

If you appreciate my efforts to pursue stories like this, please support this newsletter by signing up for the premium version. It’s a few bucks a month. You get lots more features and reports. Most important, you help us keep the lights on. Without premium subscribers, Our Land would cease to be. You can sign up here. (Many thanks to those of you who have done so.)

The judges wished to recognize this week a remark that wasn’t dumb but that was a reminder of previous ignorance. Responding to ICE’s war of terror, podcaster Joe Rogan huffed,

We don’t want militarized people in the streets, just roaming around and snatching people up, many of which turn out actually to be US citizens. They just don’t have their papers on them? Are we really gonna be the Gestapo? ‘Where's your papers?' Is that what we've come to?"

Joe, it is what we’ve come to. If Rogan had been paying attention prior to the election, he would not be surprised by this. How else do you conduct the “mass deportation” that Donald Trump vowed to enact, while being advised by Stephen Miller? The racism and cruelty were always there. Rogan and his pals in the manosphere willfully ignored it.

Returning to dumb—really dumb—remarks, we have Kyle Rittenhouse, who became a MAGA favorite when in 2020 he shot and killed two people in Kenosha, Wisconsin, during protests against police violence. He gave us RFK Jr.-like science:

Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.) made an appearance in the last issue for an idiotic and cruel remark about the murder of Renée Good in Minnesota. He said: “If you impede the actions of our law enforcement as they seek to repel foreign invaders from our country, you get what's coming to you. I do not feel bad for the woman that was involved.” Fine is back this week with a comment on his proposed bill to make Greenland the 51st state:

The fact of the matter is that Greenland sits between us and Russia. And to put a strategic barrier between Russia’s interests and the United States helps America…We need to make sure we assert our dominance over the Western Hemisphere…The last thing we need is Greenland to become another Venezuela where we have huge problems we have to deal with in the future.

Does Fine not know that Russia is only 55 miles away from the United States across the Bering Strait? And please tell us, Congressman, how Greenland, with its large land mass and population of 55,000, could become “another Venezuela”?

Honorable mention: Fox host Maria Bartiromo for responding to Fine, “That’s a great point!”

So many stupid remarks from Trump these days about...well, everything. The judges highlighted this one for its incorporation of juvenile hatred: “Democrats, they say, ‘I don't know if we should have done Venezuela. I don’t know.’ Anybody that says that hates our country.”

This hardly even rates as a schoolyard taunt. On the same subject, Trump added, “They asked us to help them. There’s 50 million barrels of oil. They said take it.” Who the heck are they who said the United States should expropriate Venezuela’s oil? Does he believe Venezuelans are saying that?

As for dumbass statements loaded with hate, Stephen Miller is always a stalwart in that category:

More juvenile crap. Did anything like this happen in Clinton's eight years, Obama's eight years, or Biden's four years? Miller keeps searching for different ways to say the same thing: I hate Black and brown people, and you should, too.

In yet another competitive week, Fox host Will Cain triumphed with this gem:

There's a weird kind of smugness, by the way, in the way that some of these liberal white women interact with authority. Most guys early in life learn that every confrontation has a sort of escalation chain. A joke, a push, an argument can eventually turn to violence. We spend a lifetime reading the signs, knowing when we’re getting close, knowing when to pull back, knowing when we’re on the edge of violence. These protesters seem completely oblivious. Or they think they have a hall pass.

More blaming the victim for Good. She was just an arrogant white liberal woman with no common sense but a boatload of bourgeoisie entitlement. These misses don’t know how to deal with authority. If they’re shot in the face, it’s their own darn fault. For punditry inane even by Fox standards, Cain takes the cake—and the trophy.

There’s much angst and sorrow among Our Landers regarding Good’s death and the ongoing ICE crisis in Minneapolis. Reacting to my recent piece on Trump’s promotion of violence, Lisa Undercoffer wrote:

You drove home the point that they want us to know they will kill dissenters with no compunction—which I agree with. My gut feeling after seeing the footage was that this is a turning point for the worse. But to take this point further—in a rather chilling manner—look at what I read on Facebook. The poster noticed in Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s press conference that the podium had a placard on it with the slogan “One of Ours / All of Yours” and connected that to the Nazi idea of atonement killings. I don’t know whether that phrase was an actual slogan used by Hitler’s minions or not, but I do know retribution murders were something that Nazis did to terrorize populations and force compliance. As we know, MAGA can be pretty explicit about their intentions to those who are paying attention, so we must definitely see this as a warning to take seriously.

Apparently, that Facebook post was wrong, and there was no such Nazi phrase. But DHS has been very explicit in using nativistic sloganeering that is reminiscent of fascist states, including Nazi Germany. When I saw that placard, I thought of the QAnon motto, “Where we go one, we go all.”

Stan Green complimented the recent issue that defined the Trump doctrine as “violence is us.” But he had a question: 

Aside from agreeing with you, what can an ordinary citizen do? Calling my Congressional rep doesn’t work. He agrees with me. I already contribute to him and the ACLU.

Keep giving to the ACLU and others. Help migrant communities where you are. Volunteer. Become involved in local political races. Make sure you talk to all friends, relatives, and colleagues about what's happening. Find a disengaged person and attempt to engage them. Attend a protest. No act is too small or too minor. There are no silver bullets or magic solutions—or magic beans. Try anything and everything.

Lana Muraskin observed:

The situation you describe here is almost identical to the Jim Crow South. This rest of the country stood by and allowed it for a century.

Karen Turley had a similar thought:

I've been thinking about the Medgar Evers assassination a lot lately—about how the Black communities in the South were terrorized for years. I think the whole country is getting to experience that now. The Confederates and KKK have morphed into the rest of society. They've taken over a lot of churches, which was a goal that was discussed in a History Channel film on the KKK, and some have moved into law enforcement. I'm scared shitless, and not at all sorry that I'm old. I hope we can get out of this somehow.

The point of using terror is to scare the hell out of people. That's what the KKK did. It's what ICE thugs are doing now. Standing against such intimidation is never easy, but it's necessary. 

David Belknap emailed:

This would be a good time to address the question (again) as to why is this nation driven to too much forgetting?

If I had a clear answer to that, I’d share it. I think that question deserves a room full of historians and a few cases of wine—or vodka. But there are some big holes in our civic culture, and that includes a true understanding of our past.

“Happy Birthday, Moxie. How does it feel to be 14?”
“What’s a number?”
“I get it. You’re really in good shape and as young as you feel, right?”
“No. I mean it. What’s a number?”