Where's El Rushbo When We Need Him?

What made Rush Linbaugh indispensable. even though he was well past his prime by the time he died, was his ability to reason past individual data items and see a bigger picture, which more often than not was funny. Nobody now on the scene combines a sharp intellect with a sense of humor, which always softened the blow of what he was actually saying.

Let's take a slowly emerging cluster of data points that hasn't been well examined in the public forum, those being that prior to the 2016 presidential election, Joe Biden made a deliberate decision not to run. Instead, soon after he left office as vice president in January 2017, he began an intense fundraising campaign, not for political office, but for personal aggrandizement. The Penn Biden Center has so far emerged as the most visible manifestation of that campaign.

For reasons that so far haven't been fully examined, Joe had relied for some years on his dissolute son Hunter as his chief confidant, having notably credited him with the advice to run for vice president in 2008,

Listing those he sought out for counsel, he mentioned his wife, Dr. Jill Biden, his mother, Catherine “Jean” Biden, his late son Beau Biden, “and I had my son Hunter, who’s the smartest guy I know.”

What intrigues me, and what nobody so far has pointed out, is that Biden's decision to undertake a major personal fundraising campaign in 2017 coincides almost exactly with Hunter's spiral into the worst phase of his addiction. Even as of mid 2016, Hunter had been severely addicted to cocaine, and that autumn he'd been on a notorious trip to LA and then rehab in Arizona, where he and his brother Beau's widow had decided to become an item.

He filed for divorce from his then-wife in December 2016, which became final in April 2017. A month later, Burisma cut his director's fee. At about that time, he began negotiating with Chinese energy officials, the arrangements for which involved, according to a May 2017 e-mail, 10% to be held by Hunter “for the big guy.”

So far, even without the Treasury Department providing the access Chairman Comer has demanded to suspicious activity reports on Biden family transactions, details have nevertheless been dribbling out:

Comer also dropped a big tidbit about what they had been able to discover to date in their investigations. They had subpoenaed bank records from three Hunter Biden associates, including Rob Walker. They’re now reviewing 14 years of SARs from Bank of America.

. . . According to Comer, Walker was wired millions by CCP-connected individuals two months after Joe Biden stopped being vice president. The money was then distributed to three Biden family members, including a Biden family member whose name has never been included previously as a recipient of any monies. Comer said that he couldn’t identify any related business and that it appeared to go into their personal accounts. He said that he believes it’s influence peddling, and that raises questions about people then being foreign agents.

. . . Interestingly, Comer wasn’t giving up that third name and then he repeated there was a “problem” with figuring out what they were doing to get such sums of money from the CCP-connected people.

Now, what's likely to come out from all this is simply what's going to come out, and so far, it looks like more of the same -- multimillion-dollar wire transfers to Biden intermediaries that don't even have the beard of respectability they might have as campaign donations. They're just payments from a grateful world to Bidens for being Bidens. And there may be subsidiary questions about whether those payments were declared for tax purposes, or whether the Bidens were properly registered as foreign agents -- and I assume they'll work themselves out in whatever way.

But here's the set of inferences El Rushbo is no longer around to make: Joe, by the accounts we've had, made a deliberate decision not to run for president in 2016. Instead, by the same accounts, he and Hunter, with outside advice, decided to set up an operation consciously patterned after the Clinton Foundation to take donations from whomever on the basis that Hillary, in that particular case, would run for and be elected president either in 2008 or 2016, just get in early and you'll get what you want at a discount.

(Let's leave aside that the Clinton Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit, but the Biden family is just a bunch of people with their hands out -- the principle is the same. Joe and Hunter seem to have decided they didn't need to waste the time even to look like they were observing the proprieties.)

But even looking toward a presidential run in 2016, Joe was 74 that year, but he decided not to run. At the time he made his decision in 2015, Jeb Bush was the likely Republican nominee, while Hillary was the favorite for both the nomination and the general election. If Hillary had won especially, the conventional wisdom would have had her in office until 2024, when Joe will be 82.

Yet Joe and Hunter decided to defer a run for the presidency until 2020 or 2024, when Joe by any conventional standard would have been too old. They nevertheless decided to undertake a massive personal fundraising operation to secure payments, mostly from foreign donors, in anticipation that Joe would win a general presidential election campaign, quite possibly as early as 2020.

What led them to make this decision? That's the kind of question El Rushbo would be asking. I have a feeling his answer would be funny, and beyond that, he'd be right.

The Proud Boys Trial

One of the January 6 trials that's had less notice is the Proud Boys Trial currently under way:

In Washington, D.C., members of the Proud Boys are on trial related to their alleged actions surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. It is the second major seditious conspiracy trial related to the insurrection following one late last year involving members of the Oath Keepers.

This hasn't been well covered, in part because so far, it hasn't been a slam-dunk for the government. The AP has more details:

The former Proud Boys national chairman is standing trial on the most serious charge that has been lodged in the U.S. Capitol attack. That’s seditious conspiracy, which is the same offense that two Oath Keepers leaders were convicted of weeks ago.

It’s the third such trial in the massive prosecution of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot that forced Congress to adjourn as lawmakers and staff hid from a violent mob. Opening statements began on Thursday [January 12, 2023], and the trial is expected to last at least six weeks.

Prosecutors in the case against former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and four lieutenants will try to prove that the extremist group plotted for weeks to use force to keep then-President Donald Trump in power. Tarrio wasn’t in Washington on Jan. 6 — he was arrested in a separate case two days earlier — but authorities say he helped put into motion the violence and cheered on the riot from afar as it unfolded.

Even at the start of the case, one of Tarrio's alleged co-conspirators, Ethan Nordean, had to be released on bail when a judge determined he wasn't a specific threat:

“Mr. Nordean’s alleged membership in the Proud Boys does not make him a danger to others or the community,” his defense team had written to the court. “While the government devotes a portion of its lengthy memorandum to the statements and actions of other alleged members of the Proud Boys, none of the footage suggests that Mr. Nordean himself was involved in anything more serious or sinister.”

In Nordean’s case, prosecutors tried to argue he had a passport at the ready that was of another man, and had expressed interest in moving out of Washington state. But his defense attorney on Monday argued that didn’t show he was ready to flee – and that the passport belonged to his wife’s ex-partner, whom he didn’t closely resemble.

This account of the trial indicates it's been contentious throughout:

The Capitol riot trial for Proud Boys leaders promised to be a historic showcase for some of the most compelling evidence of an alleged plot by far-right extremists to halt the transfer of presidential power after the 2020 election.

One month into the trial, there have been plenty of fireworks, but mostly when the jury wasn’t in the courtroom.

Lawyers representing the five Proud Boys charged with seditious conspiracy have repeatedly sparred with U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly during breaks in testimony. At least 10 times, those lawyers have argued in vain for him to declare a mistrial.

The calls for a mistrial have only increased with the Tucker Carlson release of January 6 film and especially, the testimony of an FBI agent, Nicole Miller:

Lawyer Roger Roots is representing Dominic Pezzola and has moved for the court to not merely dismiss the case, but to pause all Jan. 6 prosecutions pending evidentiary hearings, the Epoch Times reported.

Fueling Roots' request is an exchange from the testimony of FBI Special Agent Nicole Miller. Attorney Nick Smith, who represents Pezzola co-defendant Ethan Nordean, revealed classified FBI emails that included an order to Miller that she remove an FBI agent from the informant report and destroy 338 pieces of evidence outright.

According to Politico,

The lawyers also cited several other exchanges they viewed as fishy: a message from one agent asking that his name be edited out of a report concerning a meeting with a confidential human source; an FBI agent’s opinion about the strength of the Proud Boys conspiracy case; and a message from an agent discussing an order to destroy 338 pieces of evidence in an unidentified case.

Defense attorneys said they should be permitted to grill Miller about each of these topics when the trial resumes this week. The hidden messages sparked an uproar on Thursday, when Nicholas Smith, attorney for defendant Ethan Nordean, began questioning Miller about them. Prosecutors objected and later indicated they believed there had been a “spill” of classified information in the messages — a claim the defense lawyers worried was a pretense to shut down their review. U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Kelly called the trial off for the day Friday to give the Justice Department and the defense a chance to clarify the issues.

Robert Gouveia, a criminal defense attorney, has given an entertaining review on YouTube of both the defense and prosecution arguments submitted to Judge Kelly on Sunday, here and here.

My memory is long enough to take me back to the Chicago Seven Trial over the 1968 riots at the Chicago Democrat Party convention, which was better publicized (likely due to media bias in favor of the defendants) and, it would seem, more entertaining. But it strikes me as covering similar political ground. According to the Wikipedia link,

The Chicago Seven, originally the Chicago Eight and also known as the Conspiracy Eight or Conspiracy Seven, were seven defendants—Rennie Davis, David Dellinger, John Froines, Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and Lee Weiner—charged by the United States federal government with conspiracy, crossing state lines with intent to incite a riot, and other charges related to anti-Vietnam War and 1960s counterculture protests in Chicago, Illinois, during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The Chicago Eight became the Chicago Seven after the case against co-defendant Bobby Seale was declared a mistrial.

All of the defendants were charged with and acquitted of conspiracy; Davis, Dellinger, Hayden, Hoffman, and Rubin were charged with and convicted of crossing state lines with intent to incite a riot; Froines and Weiner were charged with teaching demonstrators how to construct incendiary devices and acquitted of those charges. All of the convictions were later reversed on appeal and the government declined to retry the case. While the jury deliberated, Judge Julius Hoffman convicted the defendants and their attorneys for contempt of court and sentenced them to jail sentences ranging from less than three months to more than four years. The contempt convictions were also appealed, and some were retried before a different judge.

As I write this, Judge Kelly has yet to rule on the arguments the prosecution and defense submitted to him Sunday. But no matter how he rules -- unless he declares a mistrial, for which the likelihood is at least greater than null -- the circus is likely to continue, and I strongly suspect the eventual outcome will be much like that with the Chicago Seven.

A Glimpse Into Dr Fauci's Brain

In a rambling article that takes maybe 1000 words to get anywhere near the point, Jeffrey Tucker at the Brownstone Institute finally provides a shocking insight into Dr Fauci's thought processes:

In August of 2020, Fauci co-authored a major article for Cell that received very little attention. The article offers up the general theory that the underlying cause of all infectious disease is human contact, which is another way of saying society itself. “In a human-dominated world, in which our human activities represent aggressive, damaging, and unbalanced interactions with nature, we will increasingly provoke new disease emergencies.”

Tucker then quotes Fauci:

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic reminds us that overcrowding in dwellings and places of human congregation (sports venues, bars, restaurants, beaches, airports), as well as human geographic movement, catalyzes disease spread. . . . Living in greater harmony with nature will require changes in human behavior as well as other radical changes that may take decades to achieve: rebuilding the infrastructures of human existence, from cities to homes to workplaces, to water and sewer systems, to recreational and gatherings venues. [ellipsis Tucker's]

He quotes another passage:

Newly emerging (and re-emerging) infectious diseases have been threatening humans since the neolithic revolution, 12,000 years ago, when human hunter-gatherers settled into villages to domesticate animals and cultivate crops. These beginnings of domestication were the earliest steps in man’s systematic, widespread manipulation of nature.

The view of humanity as an invasive species is currently fashionable, and as I've said here, I think it can be traced to Thomas Malthus, whose 1798 An Essay on the Principle of Population predates the 1867 Das Kapital, and whose influence on bourgeois opinion has been much underrated. In fact, I almost wonder if the empirical failure of Marxism-Leninism has revived Malthusianism as a fallback. Mr Tucker comments,

One might suppose it would be top headlines that the man who crafted the Covid response for the world was merely using this as the lever to reverse 12,000 years of human history. Indeed in that sense, “going medieval” is a mere step in a long road back. Forget the Constitution. Forget the Enlightenment. Forget even the golden age of the Roman Empire. Fauci wants to take us back long before there are any actual historical records: a conjectural Rousseauian state of nature where we lived by foraging for food around us and nothing more.

This view is generally consistent with Malthusianism, as outlined by Wikipedia:

Malthus observed that an increase in a nation's food production improved the well-being of the population, but the improvement was temporary because it led to population growth, which in turn restored the original per capita production level. In other words, humans had a propensity to utilize abundance for population growth rather than for maintaining a high standard of living, a view that has become known as the "Malthusian trap" or the "Malthusian spectre". Populations had a tendency to grow until the lower class suffered hardship, want and greater susceptibility to war famine and disease, a pessimistic view that is sometimes referred to as a Malthusian catastrophe.

Wikipedia suggests that, "As an Anglican cleric, he saw this situation as divinely imposed to teach virtuous behavior," such that if the poor were more assiduously to observe the Sixth Commandment, humanity wouldn't find itselt in such a reproductive pickle. But it isn't such a big step to conclude that human beings will overreproduce and be a threat to the planet no matter what. Thus they should be controlled by the authorities just as the authorities exterminate zebra mussels or as they would like to exterminate pet cats.

But I wonder if the neo-Malthusian foundation of modern public health theory contains a contradiction. There was at least a minor theme among environmentalists in the wake of the lockdowns that as long as fewer people went to work, the air quality was improving -- and to some extent, that's the basis of Dr Fauci's argument that we need to self-isolate more as a species. But if we're led to self-isolation as a result of disease, aren't we all better off if more of us sicken and die? But if that's the case, why do public health at all if the planet will improve once more of us are dead?

The question I have is how sincere Dr Fauci is in these views. Mr Tucker raises a relevant question:

And by the way, during the pandemic period, the net worth of the Faucis doubled. The radical reconstruction of human society that is being proposed here turns out to be personally lucrative for its proponents.

The sicker we got, the richer Dr Fauci got. The healthier we are, the worse off the planet, but the poorer are the Faucis.

The problem for Dr Fauci now is that since his retirement, not only are all his policy prescriptions throughout the pandemic, lockdowns, mask mandates, closures, vaccines, coming under criticism, but so is his claim that COVID's origin was not a lab leak -- which is to say in different words that the whole crisis was the fault of Fauci and his favored grantees for conducting gain-of-function research in the first place. Thus his latest logical pretzel:

In the months after the pandemic began, Fauci had discounted the theory that the virus had emanated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The 82-year-old now said he was still keeping a “completely open mind” to the origin of the virus, while explaining how a lab leak still could be considered a “natural occurrence.”

“A lab leak could be that someone was out in the wild, maybe looking for different types of viruses in bats, got infected, went into a lab and was being studied in the lab and then came out of the lab,” Fauci told anchor Jim Acosta.

I don't think he really knows what the heck he believes about anything.

Too Much Doesn't Fit

From Newsweek on January 7, 2021 (he was arrested January 9 in Phoenix):

One of the most visible and prominent QAnon supporters among the violent crowd of extremists who stormed the Capitol building has been forced to deny he is antifa after a number of radical conspiracy theorists turned on him following the unprecedented attack.

Jake Angeli, also known as the Q Shaman or QAnon Shaman, was widely photographed inside the building during the riots wearing his fur hat and horns and face painted in red, white and blue.

. . . The Q Shaman is one of the most recognizable figures in the QAnon movement and has frequently appeared at right-wing rallies showing support for Donald Trump and disputing the election results.

From PolitiFact on January 7, 2021:

Hours after supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol, several of his allies in Congress and the media baselessly claimed anti-fascist provacateurs were to blame for the violence.

Some suggested, without evidence, that the crowd backing Trump’s efforts to overturn the election was infiltrated by antifa. Antifa stands for "anti-fascist," and it is not a group but a broad coalition of activists.

Others focused on specific protesters who forced their way inside the Capitol and were shown in photographs, such as a bare-chested man who wore face paint and a horned fur cap.

. . . But the mysterious man in horns is not antifa-aligned. The man, Jake Angeli, supports Trump and is a well-known supporter of the baseless QAnon conspiracy theory. He goes by the moniker, "Q Shaman," and he told the Arizona Republic he uses his unique outfit to stand out.

Let's leave aside that video has resurfaced showing antifa activists changing into MAGA outfits on the morning ofJanuary 6 -- we really don't need to have an antifa false flag to make a point. I remember attending a contentious campus meeting during my misspent youth, wherein protester wannabes worked to stir up enthusiasm for taking over one or another college building.

At the time, the late 1960s, there were still faculty members who were young enough to have escaped the Nazis, emigrated to the US, and resumed academic careers here. One of them was at the meeting, and prefacing his remarks with "I haff seen Hitler myself," went on to say that if any of the speakers were a provocateur, he would have said exactly what any of the agitators was saying in the meeting.

Chaos ensued. Several shouted out, "What's a provocateur?" and the prof had to detour into that explanation. Then others shouted, "You're accusing us of being provocateurs!", but the prof answered, "No, I don't even need to say that. I'm saying only that if any of you were a provocateur, he would be urging exactly what you are saying, to take over a building and incite an overreaction from the authorities."

But meetings of agitator wannabes being what they are, nobody needed to decide anything in the meeting, and while some of us listened to the prof and eventually left in disgust, the wannabes prevailed and took over the building the next day anyhow.

But I've carried the prof's point with me to this day -- Jacob Chansley didn't need to be antifa. In fact, if you subscribe to the idea that antifa aren't provocateurs -- I'll leave that one to the reader -- Jacob Chansley doesn't need to be either antifa or a provocateur. He's simply doing what a provocateur would be doing, regardless of his motive.

Keep in mind that Mr Chansley has a decades-long history of mental problems, and he'd made himself bizarrely visible in his horned headdress for months at Arizona events prior to January 6. I can't get around the idea that someone -- and definitely not someone connected to the Trump re-election campaign -- decided this guy was going places, he had a future. Given Mr Chansley's mental condition, I don't think we'll ever get a clear picture of what happened to propel him to the position he reached on January 6, but I simply can't imagine it was his own charm, integrity, determination, and hard work.

Let's take the potentially parallel case of Marinus van der Lubbe, the half-blind Dutch drifter who fancied himself a communist, the only figure convicted and executed for setting the 1933 Reichstag fire. Was he a provocateur? Certainly he didn't imagine himself one, he thought he was acting for the proletariat. But he may as well have been, the only people who benefitted from the fire were the Nazis, who were able to use it to convince the senile Hindenburg to suspend civil protections. The professor who'd lived through this saw how these things worked very clearly.

Look at the version of the QAnon tableau at the top of this post. Prominent there is a bullhorn, which Mr Chansley carried throughout his involvement in the January 6 events. Why did he have a bullhorn? What entitled him to speak through it, to urge people on, to give them orders? He was just a mentally disturbed guy wearing a horned headdress, no more, no less. He wasn't even assistant deputy vice president of the Arizona MAGA Committee or something. He had no authority, credibility, or prestige other than his headdress and face paint, which if you give it a moment's thought ought to detract from, not add to, his ability to influence a bunch of Republicans.

But someone seems to have thought this entitled him to a personally escorted tour by Capitol Police officers through corridors and up stairwells right to the Senate chamber, where the photo above shows -- wait, isn't that odd? There's a bearded Trotskyite weirdo standing behind him in furs that match Mr Chansley's own, but over the furs he appears to be wearing a tactical vest that says POLICE. Isn't that weird? How many other undercover officers do you think might be in that little gaggle? Just asking.

Based on this Wikipedia timeline of January 6, it appears that the peculiar, clearly organized, photo shoot featuring Mr Chansley outside the Senate chamber took place about 2:42 PM. But a video has now surfaced showing Mr Chansley in his QAnon role addressing an audience outside the Capitol quoting President Trump's tweet telling the demonstrators to go home, which was made at 4:17 PM.

So he's present at a scene in which he's characterized as violently taking over the Senate chamber at 2:42, but by 4:17, he's telling everyone to go home. In someone's eyes, this is a key actor in the whole show, or at least that's a narrative a lot of people wanted to maintain.

By January 9, he's under arrest and put in solitary. The judge denies him bail. By September 3, his lawyer gets him to plead guilty and waive all rights to appeal. By November 17, he's sentenced to 41 months. Such a deal!

But hey, he isn't antifa. This isn't a false flag. He's no provocateur, no, nothing like that. As the old prof who'd seen Hitler said, he didn't need to be any of those. Still, someone thought it would be a good idea to give him a bullhorn.

Where Did They Get Rasputin?

The more I dig into the QAnon Shaman case and the surrounding issues, the more questions I have. The iconic image of the January 6 whatever-it-was is the one above, with Mr Chansley, shirtless, screaming at the ceiling next to some guy who looks like Rasputin as a Capitol Police officer remonstrates in a gesture that brings the viewer right into the scene. But let's ask a few questions. We now know that for several minutes, two Capitol Police officers escorted Mr Chansley to the Senate chamber -- and in most of those vignettes, Mr Chansley is alone with the officers as they progress through the empty halls.

In fact, more detailed accounts of their progress indicate that the officers escorted him through a maze of corridors and up two flights of stairs to get to the Senate chamber. And all of this is captured on adequate, though not well-lit or high-quality, video. Let's briefly reprise the photo from yesterday's post.

The more famous photo, unlike the security footage, is well-lit and remarkably well-composed, and there's a whole new character, Mr Rasputin, standing next to Mr Chansley. Although Mr Chansley himself is behaving like an utter wacko, nevertheless he's standing in a tightly composed tableau, taken by someone with a media-quality camera. This is not security footage. Who took the photo? By Capitol Police Lt Johnson's account, the Senate chamber had been evacuated by the time Messrs Chansley and Rasputin got there.

And where did Mr Rasputin come from? We know from the security footage that he didn't arrive with Mr Chansley. Escorted or not, he took an entirely separate route.

Another photo of the QAnon-Rasputin tableau suggests that again, it was tightly composed and tightly cropped, and the participants may well have been shepherded into place by the photographer. Here, Mr Rasputin is doing the raving, while Mr Chansley remains quiet, almost at loose ends. Are they following the photographer's instructions?

But this photo, from a wider angle, shows a few additional nerdy middle-aged guys who didn't suit the narrative and were cropped out of the final version with QAnon doing the screaming. In any case, the wider angle shows fewer than a dozen people in the entire scene, with several being Capitol Police officers, and a row of listless guys lined up in front with various props, posing in docile fasion for the photographer.

I noted the other day that Jonathan Turley perhaps unintentionally remarked that Mr Chansley might as well have been sent in by Central Casting. Mr Rasputin could have been his understudy, but once the photos were reviewed, he didn't give scream as well as Mr Chansley, so he wound up just a bit player, a little like the Apostle Jude at the Last Supper. It's hard not to conclude that there were several takes that led up to the final version of the famous photo.

Some guy named Mike Miller at Red State gives the current conventional wisdom on the January 6 events:

Let the gratuitous attacks begin, but the entire pretense that the whole thing was peaceful is flawed.

Barricades were broken down, windows were smashed, threats to “hang Mike Pence” were made, and untold numbers of protesters forced their way into the building.

So if I’m the undermanned Capitol Police inside that building, and these people are already inside, what am I supposed to do? Start arresting them, leading to an escalation of what was occurring outside? Or, attempt to diffuse the situation by allowing those already inside to walk around at will, while remaining with them to assure no further damage? I’d pick “b” every day of the week and twice on Sunday.

Miller treats the whole day as if it were a single event. But what we see here isn't "untold numbers of protesters". We have fewer than a dozen people, one of whom (and I'm sure by no conicidence the most bizarrely dressed) was quietly escorted into something that looks very much like a photo session, where at least one photographer said, "Stand here -- can you maybe wave your arms? Thanks! (Click)", and the rest look bored. Somebody picked those guys out of the crowd and took them inside, if indeed they weren't selected for their roles even earlier. Miller thinks this is the storming of the Bastille:

[I]f these people are already inside the building, do the Capitol Police stand their ground in front of the Senate chamber doors, or do they continue attempts to de-escalate? (Pick “b.”)

Agsin, as an OP: Live fan, I see de-escalation all the time. De-escalation is when an officer chooses to stick with a taser instead of drawing his firearm. De-escalation is not appeasement. If they're trying to de-escalate a domestic dispute, they spend a lot of time urging one partner to spend the night in a motel and leave the volatile situation -- they don't just let the pair go at it again. The officers -- like the blonde guy in glasses at the top of this post -- are posing for photographers, not de-escalating anything.

I could certainly be mistaken, but the bottom line so far seems to be that the existence of security footage that contradicts the prosecution narrative, combined with the increasing likelihood that it was withheld from the defense, will turn out to be a massive embarrassment for the government. But it's still worth asking whether this was a burning of the Reichstag type moment.

Darn Right There Needs To Be An Investigation

In this morning's news,

Georgia GOP Representative Barry Loudermilk, chairman of the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight, said on Wednesday that his panel is launching an investigation into the January 6 Committee to find out if important information about the day’s events was hidden by the panel.

Let me put in a plug for one of my favorite TV shows of all time, On Patrol: Live on the REELZ channel, a clone-reboot of Live PD. which was paused but never revived by A&E in the wake of the BLM riots. If you want to check it out, it's on at 9PM Eastern tonight.

As a shameless OP: Live/Live PD junkie, given the photo above, which is just one vignette from the Tucker Carlson footage of QAnon Shaman's progress through the Capitol on January 6, I've become familiar enough with police procedure to have a whole bunch of questions about this scene. And we'll drop any issues of context, for instance, what hundreds of screaming rioters may have been doing outside the building -- let's just focus on the officers and Mr Chansley in the photo.

First, the guy is dressed in a bizarre outfit, he's behaving strangely, and he's carrying a flag on a four-foot spear, which many observers have characterized as a weapon. He's also weaing a horned headdress that could easily turn into a weapon as well. Normally, police officers would interview a subject like this to assess what's going on -- the guy could well pose a danger to himself or others. At the bare minimum, they would, as politely and courteously as they could, separate him from his potential weapons, for their safety as well as the subject's.

This is standard procedure that OP: Live viewers see maybe half a dozen times on a given episode. There are two officers with Mr Chansley. Separating him from potential weapons would be a first step for even Barney Fife of the Mayberry police, leaving aside Mr Chansley was headed for the Senate chamber. It didn't happen in this case. This nut job could presumably turn on either officer and attack him with that spear or the horned hat at any time, but apparently they trusted him not to do this.

In fact, under the circumstances we see in the vignette above and throughout the rest of the Carlson footage, leaving aside even the riot outside the building, a pair of officers investigating a bizarre dude carrying a spear wearing body paint and a horned headdress would place him in handcuffs -- as OP: Live viewers frequently see, the officers would be saying words to the effect, "You're not under arrest, you're just being detained, we're placing you in cuffs for our own safety while we investigate. These cuffs come off as quickly as they go on."

Didn't happen. At minimum, as far as I can see, Barney Fife would get a stern talking-to from his sergeant over neglecting the training he's been given for his own safety.

Next question: these officers had radios. Barney Fife would have called his dispatcher to report, "I'm at Route 15 and Main. Stopping a subject in body paint and a horned headdress carrying a spear. Can you send another unit?" In fact, there would probably have been an ongoing radio exchange between the patrol officers and their supervisors throughout the incident. For that matter, I would almost guess the officer on the left in the photo is holding a radio microphone in his right hand and communicating with someone as they walk along.

I would assume these radio exchanges are recorded. Rep Loudermilk, I hope, is already on this. And this goes to the question of why, in another vignette, Mr Chansley walks past seven other Capitol Police officers, escorted by two of their brother officers, under riot conditions (why would seven officers be in a small group in the hallways otherwise?), in body paint, carrying a spear, wearing a horned headdress that looks kinda dangerous in itself, unrestrained.

Sounds to me as if there was radio traffic informing the force that this was nothing to get excited about. Otherwise, wouldn't one of the seven watching the little parade say something at minimum like, "Fred, what's up? You need any help with this guy?" Not a peep, at least in the footage we see.

Politifact claims to have debunked the Carlson footage:

Carlson claimed Capitol Police officers "helped" Chansley and "acted as his tour guides."

Available evidence rebuts this claim. Chansley was among the first rioters to force their way into the building through a door other rioters had broken. Officers repeatedly asked Chansley to leave the building. This is corroborated by the plea agreement Chansley signed and an officer’s account of the events.

The Capitol Police chief called Carlson’s claim "outrageous and false," and said officers used de-escalation tactics to try to talk rioters into getting each other to leave the Capitol.

While there's no sound with the Carlson footage, the scenes we've seen don't appear to show any verbal exchange between the officers and Mr Chansley. As an OP: Live viewer, I see de-escalation tactics all the time -- that's pretty much what patrol officers have to do their whole shift with domestic disputes, raving homeless people, or violent offenders resisting arrest. De-escalation involves a lot of talking. It involves the cop putting his body between the subject and what the subject wants to attack. It involves disarming the subject, first and foremost for officer safety.

On the face of it, Mr Chansley was carrying a dangerous sword-like item, and he was wearing a horned headdress that could quickly have become a weapon. De-escalation would have involved the two officers who were with him throughout the Carlson footage at minimum disarming him and, given the circumstances, restraining him, especially since for much of the time, they were alone with him, and such a scene wouldn't have provoked the crowd.

There are lots of questions that still need answers.

Is A Comparison With The Reichstag Fire Overblown?

According to Wikipedia,

The Reichstag fire (German: Reichstagsbrand) was an arson attack on the Reichstag building, home of the German parliament in Berlin, on Monday 27 February 1933, precisely four weeks after Nazi leader Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany. Marinus van der Lubbe, a Dutch "council communist", was the apparent culprit; however, Hitler attributed the fire to Communist agitators. He used it as a pretext to claim that Communists were plotting against the German government, and induced President Paul von Hindenburg to issue the Reichstag Fire Decree suspending civil liberties, and pursue a "ruthless confrontation" with the Communists. This made the fire pivotal in the establishment of Nazi Germany.

. . . Shortly after 9 p.m. on 27 February 1933, the Reichstag building was reported as on fire, and firefighters were dispatched. Despite their efforts, most of the building was gutted. By 11:30 p.m., the fire was put out.

. . . Walter Gempp was head of the Berlin fire department at the time of the Reichstag fire on 27 February 1933, personally directing the operations at the incident. On 25 March he was dismissed for presenting evidence that suggested Nazi involvement in the fire. Gempp asserted that there had been a delay in notifying the fire brigade and that he had been forbidden from making full use of the resources at his disposal. In 1937, Gempp was arrested for abuse of office. Despite his appeal, he was imprisoned. Gempp was strangled and killed in prison on 2 May 1939.

. . . In July 1933, Marinus van der Lubbe, Ernst Torgler, Georgi Dimitrov, Blagoi Popov, and Vasil Tanev were indicted on charges of setting the fire.

. . . The Leipzig Trial was widely publicized and was broadcast on the radio. It was expected that the court would find the communists guilty on all counts. The trial began at 8:45 on the morning of 21 September, with [v]an der Lubbe testifying. Van der Lubbe's testimony was very hard to follow as he spoke of losing his sight in one eye and wandering around Europe as a drifter and that he had been a member of the Dutch Communist Party, which he quit in 1931, but still considered himself a communist. Georgi Dimitrov began his testimony on the third day of the trial. He gave up his right to a court-appointed lawyer and defended himself successfully. . . . During the course of his defence, Dimitrov claimed that the organizers of the fire were senior members of the Nazi Party and frequently verbally clashed with Göring at the trial.

The outcome of the trial was that only Lubbe, the incoherent drifter whose knowledge of German was limited, was found guilty and sentenced to death. The presiding judge acquitted the others on the basis of insufficient evidence.

The result of the fire was the near-destruction of the German parliament building, equivalent to the US Capitol, and use of the episode as the basis for suppressing civil liberties, all of which worked to the benefit of the Nazis. While the historical record still isn't completely clear, it's certainly possible to surmise that the fire was in fact organized by "senior members of the Nazi paty", which clearly benefitted from the whole event, with Lubbe as a convenient patsy.

This brings me back to the problem of Jacob Chansley, the QAnon Shaman. The image from the Tucker Carlson January 6 footage that sticks in the mind is, as law professor and criminal defense attorney Jonathan Turley puts it,

Chansley being escorted by officers through the Capitol. Two officers appear to not only guide him to the floor but actually appear to be trying to open locked doors for him. At one point, Chansley is shown walking unimpeded through a large number of armed officers with his four-foot flag-draped spear and horned Viking helmet on his way to the Senate floor.

Yet the highly selective and now clearly orchestrated accounts of January 6 portray Chansley, again in Turley's words,

to the Capitol riot what Rosie the Riveter was to World War II. Howling and “chanting an unintelligible mantra” on the Senate floor, he is the embodiment of the unhinged rage that led to one of the most disgraceful attacks on our constitutional process in history.

In other words, January 6 was something maybe not as severe in its historical impact as the Reichstag fire, but certainly a highly publicized and heavily exploited attack on democratic values. And it's starting to look as though Chansley is a scapegoat functionally equivalent, mutatis mutandis, to Marinus van der Lubbe. Given the somewhat more humane values of the contemporary US, he wasn't sentenced to death, but he's doing 41 months, partly in solitary, for an offense, obstructing an official proceeding, for which most others aren't even prosecuted, much less jailed.

I have two problems with the narrative as it's unfolded this week. In addition to the odd consideration that the Capitol Police give Chansley, there's the question of how disorganized the force was elsewhere while these events took place. Tucker Carlson's Tuesday show carried an interview with former Capitol Police Lieutenant Tarik Johnson, a supervisory officer on the scene that day:

Johnson told Carlson that his bosses had failed them, saying the Capitol Police commanders were ill prepared and did not answer when he radioed seeking guidance.

'Around 2 o'clock I hear an officer say the Capitol was breached. So I ran inside to assist,' said Johnson, adding that he locked doors to keep the political leaders safe.

He then radioed his bosses for help.

'I said something to the effect of, we need direction,' Johnson said.

'"What do you want me to do?" Nobody responded.'

Johnson continued: 'I was requesting permission to evacuate the senate side, the senate chambers, because I had a clear line of sight to get them out the senate door, and I didn't get permission.

'The dispatcher called a couple times to see if I could get permission.

'No response.'

So the picture we're beginning to get is on one hand, complete disorder, the senior management of the department AWOL as the crowd threatens to overrun the Senate chamber, while a mid-level supervisor, Lt Johnson, feels compelled to exceed his authority to order the chamber evacuated -- which is what took place.

As far as I can tell, very soon after the chamber was evacuated on Johnson's order, two other Capitol Police officers escorted Chansley into that same chamber, which by that time was empty of senators. But what would have happened if the senators had still been inside? At best, Chansley -- quite possibly with the assistance of the same two officers -- would have reached the vice president's seat in an atmosphere of much greater confusion, and the visuals would have been even more compelling, with the tall and bizarre QAnon Shaman presumably ranting right at both sitting senators and the presiding vice president. At best. It could have been a lot worse, and indeed, with Capitol Police senior management AWOL, it might well have been without Johnson's unauthorized order. Was the nonfeasance of Capitol Police management deliberate?

The odd thing, as Prof Turley implies several times, is how well cast Chansley was for his role.

An out-of-work actor, Chansley instantly became a sensation by appearing in his animal headdress, horns and red-white-and-blue face paint.

Had he merely worn a MAGA hat and chinos, he would likely have been given a fraction of this sentence.

Chansley did not appear to be a leader of any group that day as he wandered about the Capitol. The only people with him were often two attending and remarkably attentive Capitol police officers.

I think we have more to learn. But if a high-level cabal organized a QAnon Shaman tableau with Chansley as a mentally handicapped patsy, I think their mistake was to portray him as a hippie type. They needed to find someone much more like a brown shirt.