New York Post

Egregious denial of due process

- Miranda Devine mdevine@nypost.com

FOR more than two years, while they controlled every lever of power in Washington, the Democratic Party and their media allies told a onesided story about what happened at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

For more than two years, the surveillan­ce footage from the 2021 Capitol riot, aired this week by Tucker Carlson, was kept from the American public by a Democratic Congress so a false narrative became cemented in the public consciousn­ess.

For more than two years, footage that could have exonerated Jan. 6 defendants was kept from their legal teams.

People are in prison because of that cover-up.

Take the footage aired by Carlson Monday night of so-called “QAnon Shaman” Jacob Chansley being escorted around the Capitol by police officers who help him open the door and enter the empty Senate chamber.

It is hard to reconcile these calm and even cordial scenes with the nearly four-year prison sentence Chansley now is serving for “obstructin­g an official proceeding.”

Contrary to what apologists have been saying since Carlson began airing the footage, all this material has not previously been made available to the Jan. 6 defendants, some of whom have been jailed without trial for two years, in violation of their constituti­onal right to a fair and speedy trial.

Grounds for appeal

New York lawyer Joseph McBride, one of the few heroes of this ugly saga, represents six J6 defendants and says a significan­t proportion of the 41,000 hours of surveillan­ce footage House Speaker Kevin McCarthy released to Carlson was kept from his clients and should give them “grounds for appeal.”

Chansley lawyer Bill Shipley, also told Fox News legal analyst Jonathan Turley that his defense team “did not have this material.”

McBride says the Jan. 6 committee’s deceptions and pejorative comments about “MAGA Republican­s” from President Biden “have poisoned the DC jury pool beyond repair,” which also is grounds for appeal.

“It is egregious the way these people have been treated, for as much as two years pretrial, before any finding of fact. When people find out what has been going on in the DC gulag, it is going to shock the American conscience forever,” the lawyer said.

A new book about the Jan. 6 prisoners, “Due Process Denied,” tells a tale of hell in the Washington, DC, “gulag,” the Central Detention Facility in southeast Washington where most have been housed. Cynthia Hughes writes poignantly of one defendant who committed suicide rather than go back to jail.

The defendants have been kept in a separate unit with mold on the walls, brown water and generally unsanitary conditions, are subjected to 23 hours a day of solitary confinemen­t, denied adequate food, medical treatment and religious services. Their only solace is that every night at 9 p.m., they gather to sing the national anthem.

Hughes is a New Jersey mother of four, the aunt of a Jan. 6 prisoner and founder of a nonprofit organizati­on, Patriot Freedom Project, which helps the families, who in many cases have lost their breadwinne­r, and help contribute to their legal defense.

She says every other legal defense fund has turned their back on these pariahs.

“Children have endured their homes being torn apart” in FBI dawn raids, she writes. “These people who are supposed to protect them putting their daddy in handcuffs and dragging him out of his home. This is the last image they have of their fathers, as these men have been imprisoned with no access to visits for over a year.”

She points out that “the majority of Jan. 6 defendants in the DC jail were active or reservist military or veterans” and she describes a horrific scene on Veterans Day 2021.

“There was a dispute over a mask between a female guard and a Jan. 6 detainee. This female guard became so enraged with the detainee because he wouldn’t wear a mask that she unloaded several cans of Mace . . . and filled the entire pod with fumes. She had a gas mask on, but the men were dropping to their knees and several of them were taken out on stretchers.”

The Capitol riot was ugly and the behavior of those who attacked police was shameful. But that does not justify this unjust and cruel treatment, and the lengthy pretrial detention of nonviolent defendants.

For more than two years, the deplorable­s who went to Washington, DC, that day have been vilified and demonized as domestic terrorists and, absurdly, white supremacis­ts. They are all guilty until proven innocent, even if they did not enter the Capitol that day.

Nancy Pelosi lied that Trump supporters had defecated all over the House floor. There is no evidence that any such thing happened.

“There’s defecation and all that kind of thing . . . It could take time to clean up the poo-poo that they’re making all over,” Pelosi said gleefully in a video from the day released by the Jan. 6 committee. Just another casual defamation.

Pelosi engineered the Jan. 6 committee to her political advantage. It had access to the surveillan­ce footage and deliberate­ly withheld the truth from the American people about what happened inside the Capitol that day.

Democrats cherry-picked footage and tailored the evidence to support their political witch hunt. Their show trials were designed to “Give Democrats a Chance to Recast Midterm Message,” as The New York Times declared.

Multiple editions of the Jan. 6 committee’s final report were rushed into print over Christmas. To this day, they remain on Amazon’s bestseller lists.

Holiday bestseller

Through the holiday season, Barnes & Noble’s flagship Fifth Avenue store in Manhattan had seven different editions of the report piled high on a prominent display table. Their glossy covers were decorated with the names of such celebrated liars as Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff and Jamie Raskin, who wrote forewords to further weaponize the committee’s attacks on their political adversarie­s.

The Capitol riot was a gift to Democrats and Trump-deranged Republican­s. They didn’t care about the perversion of justice or the human toll of their political game.

If this were happening in an authoritar­ian overseas country, the State Department would rightly decry the injustice. The shabby treatment of the Jan. 6 defendants is a stain on this country’s reputation that has not gone unnoticed around the world.

 ?? ?? THE TRUTH: Video aired this week by Tucker Carlson tells a very different Jan. 6 story — including how “QAnon Shaman” Jacob Chansley (inset) was escorted by Capitol Police.
THE TRUTH: Video aired this week by Tucker Carlson tells a very different Jan. 6 story — including how “QAnon Shaman” Jacob Chansley (inset) was escorted by Capitol Police.
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