WorldNetDaily is still trying to downplay the seriousness of the attempted insurrection by peddling conspiracy theories and disproven claims in order to make rioters look peaceful and law enforcement look bad.
By Terry Krepel Posted 6/3/2024
Last year, as part of its Capitol riot revisionism, WorldNetDaily hyped the release by Tucker Carlson of cherry-picked video from the Capitol riot, even though experts pointed out that the selectively edited footing of rioters not rioting doesn’t negate all the footage of them, you know, rioting. Bob Unruh hyped the most recent version of this in a Nov. 17 article:
The House Subcommittee on Oversight on Friday announced a new online viewing room where the thousands of hours of surveillance video from the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, is being made available to the public.
Some portions had been released to a few recipients earlier, and we know because of that, for example, that many of those accused of breaking the law to enter the Capitol during that protest-turned-riot actually came through a wide open door that was left unguarded.
The congressional announcement said:
“Today, Rep. Barry Loudermilk (GA-11), Chairman of the Committee on House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight, announced that United States Capitol Police video footage from January 6, 2021 will be made available to the public through two methods, a new online viewing room and in person at the subcommittee’s offices in Washington, D.C.
“Starting today, all video footage previously released to media outlets will be uploaded to an online viewing room for public access. This includes all videos released to Tucker Carlson and other media. Following the initial tranche of footage, the Subcommittee will continue to populate the viewing room with additional footage for public view.”
Of course, the fact that a door to the Capitol was allegedly left unguarded did not make it OK to enter that door since doing so broke the law whether or not it was guarded. Unruh went on to repeat bogus claims from Carlson’s video release:
At the time, video aired showing Capitol Police officers escorting one protestor, the “QAnon shaman,” through the halls of the building. Tucker Carlson also showed video of Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri being escorted with other members of Congress from the Capitol, saying the Jan. 6 Committee selectively edited it to target Hawley.
In fact, prosecutors said of that cherry-picked footage that the “QAnon Shaman,” Jacob Chansley, was “facing off with officers for half an hour outside the Senate chamber or when Chansley refused to be escorted out of the Capitol by an officer and only left after being forcibly removed,” adding that “Chansley was not some passive, chaperoned observer of events for the roughly hour that he was unlawfully inside the Capitol.” Unruh went on to whine about the riot being called an insurrection:
The controversy that erupted that day still continues, as Democrats are using “lawfare” to try to make certain President Donald Trump cannot win the 2024 presidential race. He’s far and away the leading GOP candidate, and recent polls have shown him leading Joe Biden, the presumed Democrat nominee despite his extensive history of mental flubs, fumbles and failures.
Democrats claim that day was an actual “insurrection,” in which a mob was intent on destroying the current government and replacing it with a government of its own making, in a scheme that would involve taking over control of the military.
Experts have said that’s unrealistic, and it actually was a protest that turned into a riot by hundreds who broke doors and windows and vandalized parts of the building.
Democrats, however, make the “insurrection” claim because they believe then that Trump is barred from holding office again, an argument multiple judges and most experts have rejected as inapplicable.
Notice that Unruh pits “Democrats” against “experts,” though he names none of the “experts” allegedly denying that it was an insurrection.
WND also republished a Nov. 19 article by the discredited Gateway Pundit hyping the cherry-picked videos, baselessly insisting that they mean “the bogus narrative propagated by the government and mainstream media surrounding the ‘insurrection’ is crumbling.” An anonymously written Nov. 21 article served up more cherry-picked clips:
A multitude of reports have been coming out since the House Subcommittee on Oversight recently announced that surveillance video from the U.S. Capitol during that Jan. 6, 2021, protest-turned-riot was being made available to the public.
For the first time, Americans have an opportunity to see for themselves what happened, not just what Democrats on Nancy Pelosi’s partisan committee investigating that day decided to show.
[...]
One video posted online shows officers shooting a tear-gas grenade. And while it was aimed at the crowd, the winds apparently blew the gas back onto officers, leaving them scrambling for air and coughing.
It also likely triggered the crowd to move, too, as the gas swept across the concrete plaza at the Capitol.
But it’s not news that tear gas was used during the riot — it was reported the day of the riot. The anonymous writer went on to complain that “Another video reveals protesters being fired upon by police with no warning”:
The poster said, “J6 protestors were fired upon with NO warning. USCP Chief Waldow lied saying he gave warnings but never did.”
It records officers demanding, “more f****** munitions,” and telling each other to “F******* shoot them!”
“Shoot! Shoot!” an officer is telling another.
The anonymous WND writer did not explain why that is not a reasonable response to a violent mob by law enforcement, or why such a mob deserves a warning before action is taken to disperse them.
A Nov. 29 article by Unruh tried to rehash an old conspiracy theory revived by a right-wing writer:
There’s growing evidence that violence by police officers themselves triggered the crowd of protesters, some of whom later turned into rioters, during that infamous confrontation at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Those are the events Democrats continue to claim were an actual insurrection, a plot to take over the government, its operations, its military, and install new leaders, as an insurrection is defined.
They make those claims in their lawfare campaigns to try to prevent Donald Trump from running for president in 2024, a race that so far he leads by significant numbers.
To cover up the officers’ violence, according to key Jan. 6 investigative reporter Julie Kelly, police created the story line that officer Brian Sicknick died as a result of the riot.
[...]
Kelly concluded that police were desperate to cover up their own “brutality” that day, and so they launched the Sicknick death claim, “a fabricated story” and “intentionally” planted to cover up the deaths of four Trump supporters that day.
Unruh did not note if Kelly had any actual evidence that early reports regarding Sicknick’s death were intentionally fabricated. He continued:
One of those was Ashli Babbitt, who was shot point-blank by a police officer and died. Three other Trump supporters also died, and Kelly explained at least two of those deaths were due to “police excessive force.”
Then authorities cremated the victims’ bodies, without family permission, so that no evidence would remain.
In fact, Babbitt’s body was not hastily cremated; her body was held onto by authorities until investigations could be completed, then was cremated according to her wishes. No family member is on record as complaining about her cremation.
As the anniversary date arrived, WND kept up its revisionism. An anonymously written Jan. 5 article whined that President Biden wasn’t playing along with the right-wing revisionism narrative:
Joe Biden, who appears to be claiming that his qualifications for the presidential election in 2024 are that the other guy is bad, lashed out Friday in a campaign speech that charged that, “We nearly lost America” on Jan. 6, 2021.
And President Trump, the leader so far among candidates for both parties in that race, responded.
A report from Fox News said he accused Biden of being the “true threat to democracy.”
“The Democrats rigged the last election and they are trying it again,” Trump told the network. “But it won’t work because they have shown how bad and incompetent they are.”
[...]
Twitchy noted, “Biden’s faux concern about ‘democracy’ while his DOJ tries to throw a political opponent in jail is something else.”
The commentary explained, “Biden has in the past mocked the idea of people who don’t have fighter jets being able to take on the government but now he wants everybody to believe an unarmed mob and random trespassers almost overthrew the entire nation? This might be Biden’s biggest whopper ever, and that’s a high bar to clear.”
On Jan. 7, WND republished an article from the discredited Gateway Pundit whining that people will continue to face accountability for their actions that day (bolding in original):
Matthew Graves, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia on Thursday held a press conference on the 3rd anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol protest.
“It’s been three years since a violent mob attacked our Capitol,” said Matthew Graves, a Biden appointee.
[...]
Graves then said the DOJ is now going to target THOUSANDS of Americans who were around the Capitol on January 6 – but did not enter the building.
He continued, “But, if a person knowingly entered a restricted area without authorization, they had already committed a federal crime. Make no mistake, thousands of people occupying the area that they were not authorized to be present in in the first place.”
One day after Matthew Graves’ press conference where he threatened to arrest thousands of peaceful Trump supporters who didn’t enter the Capitol building, Joe Biden was near Valley Forge bragging up locking up J6rs.
Biden bragged about pro-Trump protesters being sentenced to 840 years in prison.
The article — which named no rioter who was actually sentenced to “840 years in prison” — then made an attempt to whitewash the violence: “Most January 6 protestors peacefully strolled through the Capitol after being waved in by police but they were arrested and charged by Biden’s corrupt Justice Department anyway.”
WND also republished a Jan. 8 article from the right-wing Daily Signal uncritically repeating Republican Rep. Clay Higgins’ unsupported claim that “the FBI had 200 undercover assets both inside and outside the building.”
Unruh was in full revisionism mode in his own Jan. 8 article that tried to both justify and downplay the riot:
One of the Democrats’ big claims against President Donald Trump over the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol was that he wanted to go there, intended to go there and threatened to go there.
That was the day thousands gathered to hear him speak and a small number of those went to the Capitol, many to protest the adoption of the 2020 Electoral College victory for Joe Biden, which they viewed as the result of corruption.
Of those, a few hundred rioted.
What is known now is that that election was the result of two significant undue influences on voters, one being the $400 plus million that Mark Zuckerberg handed out to various elections officials who largely used it to attract Biden supporters. Never before in American elections has that sum of money been handed out, outside of the structure of election expense rules.
The other was the FBI’s interference, when it instructed media corporations to suppress reporting about the Biden family scandals as revealed in a laptop computer abandoned by Hunter Biden.
Turns out those reports were accurate, and the FBI knew at the time it was telling publications to keep them hidden from voters. A subsequent polling showed that scheme alone likely turned the election from Trump to Biden.
Unruh offered no proof that the Zuckerberg money was “largely used ... to attract Biden supporters” — probably because that didn’t happen. The “subsequent polling” about Hunter’s laptop was done for the Media Research Center, which paid two right-wing pollsters, including Trump’s own election pollster, to manufacture results that advanced that right-wing narrative. Unruh continued:
Democrats long have claimed that Trump planned to be at the Capitol with his supporters, based on statements from some Trump aides who recalled to Nancy Pelosi’s partisan committee looking into actions that day that Trump “might” have wanted to go to the Capitol.
Further, Ex-Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson “claimed in a disputed account based on hearsay that on the way back from his speech Trump lunged at the driver of the presidential limo to commandeer it and take it to the Capitol. The Secret Service and Trump deny that happened, and no evidence has emerged to validate Hutchinson’s claim. That did not stop the account from making its way into mainstream media,” reported Just the News.
But the report said the publication reviewed Secret Service documents and found “no plan” for Trump to be heading to the Capitol that day.
As ConWebWatch has documented, the Secret Service agents whom Hutchinson said told her of Trump’s actions — who have been identified as Trump loyalists and yes men — declared they would testify to the January 6 Committee that Hutchinson was lying, but then quickly lawyered up and refused to testify; when one finally did testify, he conveniently couldn’t remember key details. Meanwhile, other witnesses corroborated key parts of Hutchinson’s testimony.
Unruh complained in another Jan. 8 article that former Vice President Mike Pence believes the FBI about their lack of involvement in the riot, uncritically repeating Higgins’ unsupported claim to the contrary:
Just as U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., confirmed he believes “there were easily 200 FBI undercover assets” instigating the crowd during the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, former Vice President Mike Pence has suggested another viewpoint.
While Higgins revealed there were FBI “assets” operating in the crowd, outside the Capitol, embedded into groups that entered the building and having “provoked’ protesters, Pence says he believes the FBI’s “repeated assurances … that they were not involved and I take them at their word.”
According to a report from Politico, Pence disagrees with President Donald Trump’s assertions that the FBI played a role in instigating protesters who turned their opposition to the events that day into a riot.
“I’ve heard the many repeated assurances from the FBI that they were not involved, and I take them at their word,” Pence told CNN.
Unruh offered no evidence that Higgins should be taken at his word when he has offered no evidence to back up his assertion.
WND also cheered the real-world results of its revisionism misinformation. Unruh touted in a Jan. 4 article:
A new polling from Suffolk University/USA Today reveals that nearly 4 in 10 respondents now believe that those protesters who disrupted Congress’ planned schedule on Jan. 6, 2021, “had a point.”
The polling also shows that the American public is losing confidence in the electoral processes that installed Joe Biden in the White House that month, and a huge majority worry about threats to America’s “democracy.”
Unruh repeated his false claim that Zuckerberg money was “largely used ... to recruit Biden supporters.”
More dubious riot claims
WND devoted other articles to dubious claims about the riot that tried to both downplay the violence and portray it as a secret government conspiracy:
WND also republished a Dec. 17 article from the extremely discredited Gateway Pundit complaining that Nikki Haley “slammed President Trump for his response to the January 6 fed-surrection," featuring Jim Hoft ranting in response with tired and discredited talking points:
Haley said nothing about the police officers starting the riot – firing on an innocent crowd of children, seniors, veterans, men and women, without warning.
Haley said nothing about the FBI buses that met at Union Station that morning filled with FBI assets dressed as Trump supporters.
Haley said nothing about Pelosi and Mayor Bowser calling off the National Guard just days before the riot.
Haley said nothing about the HUNDREDS of patriotic Americans who had their homes raided at 6 in the morning for WALKING INTO the US Capitol.
Haley said nothing about the four Americans who were killed that day after police started firing rubber bullets, exploding gas cannisters and then beat one protester to death as she lay unconscious on the US Capitol Steps.
How does Nikki Haley expect to win over the Trump voters when she is so ignorant on facts and issues?
Meanwhile, Jim Darlington spent his Dec. 14 column demanding that all riot-related footage be released immediately and all at once:
The enormity of the task of sifting through the J6 “43,000 hours” of video from the day of the alleged “insurrection” would seem to be before us now. The new speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, has authorized the release of all the January 6th video, and the nation breathes a sigh of relief. At last! Right?
No. Not really. Not quite. Sorry, Mr. Speaker, but we are trying really hard not to be stupid. How many times has this been announced, so far? We get excited and a month goes by before we learn there is a special process to be followed for national security reasons. It all has to be painstakingly reviewed, some faces need to be blurred, care must be taken that nothing top secret gets past the team of faithfully woke editors working diligently in the third sub-basement of the National Archives. No need to hold it for 50 years. Just take your sweet time till the national attention span has expired. Till after the 2024 election. Till after the convictions. Till Trump goes away.
Maybe it would get real if a million of us promised to withhold our contributions to the RNC, the Republican National Committee, pending delivery. Of all of it. All at once. Now.
Speaker Johnson ordered the utterly meaningless slow release of this material, so there is no honest question as to his authority to just let it rip! FREE the VIDEO! ... ALL of IT! ... NOW!
[...]
How important is the J6 video evidence? Its potential, if exposed, collectively analyzed and wisely presented, is immense. The insane narrative of a Trumpian inspired “attack on our democracy” is on the bottom tier of a house of cards, which supports the great lies of the “most secure election in American history and its attempted overthrow by white supremacists.” It has been used to justify the tyrannical suppression, intimidation and lawless jailing of the conservative opposition to an administration bent on our nation’s undoing.
Darlington didn’t explain how the existence of footage of rioters not committing crimes disproves the footage of rioters who did. He also glossed over how, allegedly, “some faces need to be blurred,” skipping over the fact that the goal of doing so is to protect criminals from being held accountable.
Bob Unruh had a new spin on an old Capitol riot conspiracy theory in a Feb. 14 article:
There long have been suspicions that there were a multitude of federal agents at the U.S. Capitol during that riot on Jan. 6, 2021, egging on protesters who eventually did break a few doors and windows and left behind other evidence of vandalism.
The fact the federal government repeatedly has refused to provide details about those provocateurs just adds to the concern there was such an agenda.
Now there’s another situation that raises eyebrows: A man apparently climbing a scaffolding and firing a handgun into the air on the fateful day, but no evidence of his eventual arrest.
NBC outlines the details stemming from “newly unearthed footage from Jan. 6.
It “appears to show a rioter — a man identified in an NBC News story nearly two years ago — firing a gun into the air outside the Capitol during the attack. Online sleuths who have aided in hundreds of Jan. 6 prosecutions say he is the same man they identified to the FBI, who is currently individual no. 200 on the bureau’s Capitol Violence page, which he first appeared on three years ago. Videos and photographs from the Capitol on Jan. 6 showed him with what appears to be a gun in his waistband. As NBC News previously reported, that man, John Emanuel Banuelos, told Salt Lake City police that he was at the Capitol and had been captured on film with a gun. ‘I was in the D.C. riots,’ he told the investigators, according to a police transcript. ‘I’m the one in the video with the gun right here.'”
But, the report noted, he’s not been arrested or charged in any way for actions on that day.
Needless to say, Unruh offered no evidence whatsoever that Banuelos was a “federal agent” serving to provoke rioters into violence — he’s just offering an old, discredited story. He also failed to note that this discredits a longtime narrative by those seeking to dismiss the riot that nobody there was armed with a weapon and merely broke a few doors and windows.
Unruh also spoke too soon. A few weeks after his article was published, Banuelos was arrested in relation to his actions at the Capitol that day. Unruh — along with everyone else at WND — has yet to do a story about that.
A new report reveals former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney’s Jan. 6 Committee suppressed evidence President Donald Trump pushed for 10,000 National Guard troops to protect the nation’s capital on that fateful day in 2021.
According to a a previously hidden transcript obtained by the Federalist, “Cheney and her committee falsely claimed they had ‘no evidence’ to support Trump officials’ claims the White House had communicated its desire for 10,000 National Guard troops.
“In fact, an early transcribed interview conducted by the committee included precisely that evidence from a key source. The interview, which Cheney attended and personally participated in, was suppressed from public release until now.”
The report says on Jan. 28, 2022, Deputy Chief of Staff Anthony Ornato was interviewed by the committee, during which he told Cheney and investigators he overheard White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows press Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser to request as many National Guard troops as she needed to protect the city.
Ornato testified Trump had actually specified the number of 10,000 troops should be in place to keep the peace at protests scheduled for Jan. 6, 2021.
He also said the White House was frustrated with Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller’s slow deployment of help on the mayhem-packed afternoon of Jan. 6.
“Not only did the committee not accurately characterize the interview, they suppressed the transcript from public review,” the Federalist reports.
[...]
“The former J6 Select Committee apparently withheld Mr. Ornato’s critical witness testimony from the American people because it contradicted their pre-determined narrative,” said U.S. Rep. Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., chairman of the House Administration’s Subcommittee on Oversight.
“Mr. Ornato’s testimony proves … President Trump did in fact offer 10,000 National Guard troops to secure the U.S. Capitol, which was turned down.”
“This is just one example of important information the former Select Committee hid from the public because it contradicted what they wanted the American people to believe,” Loudermilk said.
“And this is exactly why my investigation is committed to uncovering all the facts, no matter the outcome.”
This is all pretty much false. As ConWebWatch documented when Newsmax peddled the same narrative, Ornato’s interview transcript wasn’t suppressed by Cheney; the Secret Service stopped release of the transcript and that of other Secret Service employees until sensitive security information could be redacted. Further, Trump never made an “offer” or any other formal request for National Guard troops for that day — Trump had authority over merely 2,000 Guardsmen, so he could not have offered 10,000 troops even if he had actually done so — and troops that were being talked about in informal discussions were for the protection Trump and his supporters, not the U.S. Capitol.
Unlike Newsmax, however, Kovacs has made no effort to correct his erroneous article. Narratives are more important than the truth at WND, after all.
Unruh repeated these bogus claims in a March 12 article:
Democrats long have claimed Trump actually tried to grab the wheel of his Secret Service vehicle to go to the Capitol that day. And Democrats, as now is known, suppressed confirmation that Trump offered to have 10,000 troops at the Capitol to protect it.
Democrats long have denied that, even though the records that already have been made available show Democrats responsible for the building refused his offer.
The report explained it was the House Administration Oversight Subcommittee, led by Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., that made public transcripts and more in an interim report that confirmed Pelosi’s committee “withheld from the public evidence that contradicted its final conclusions.”
