I've seen too many videos of the murder that took place Wednesday in Minneapolis, when an ICE agent shot an unarmed woman in the head as she tried to walk away from him. Nothing I've seen matches what Trump administration officials said afterward. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem called the dead woman a domestic terrorist. Vice President JD Vance called her “a deranged leftist.” President Trump said she “violently, deliberately and brutally” ran over the ICE officer.
Likewise, I have seen too many videos of the violence and bloodshed unleashed on the Capitol five years ago by a pro-Trump mob determined to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Nothing I have seen matches what was posted on the White House website on Tuesday to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the terrible event: “Democrats masterfully reversed reality after January 6, calling protesters patriotic.” peaceful as 'insurrectionists' and framing the event as a violent coup attempt orchestrated by Trump.”
It is shameful the extent to which the Trump administration is trying to make light of what one former federal prosecutor called “the most documented crime in American history.”
Orwellian efforts to erase the memory of January 6 include the Justice Department eliminating the public database that tracked criminal cases resulting from that day's violence. References to the day as “riots” or “insurrection” have disappeared from government websites, replaced by descriptions of “peaceful protests.” The FBI removed its wanted posters for unsolved cases from January 6. And, of course, there are the blanket pardons of more than 1,500 rioters, many of whom brutally assaulted police officers.
I think a line can be drawn between Wednesday's murder in Minneapolis and the January 6 riots: People who follow Trump's orders know they have nothing to fear from the justice system and may even be rewarded for their behavior.
The ICE officer who killed Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old poet and mother of three, walked away from her car as her bloodied body slumped over the steering wheel, got into a van and drove away. Trump and his supporters are already portraying him as a victim. I hope we eventually see some kind of presidential medal for him.
Pardoned J6 criminals who consider themselves victims want to sue the government for damages, no doubt inspired by the $5 million payment to the family of J6 rioter Ashli Babbitt, who was murdered while trying to storm a barricaded door and enter the House Speaker's lobby at the Capitol.
Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio has already filed a $100 million lawsuit against the government, alleging wrongful imprisonment, among other things. Until his pardon, he was serving a 22-year prison sentence for seditious conspiracy. On Tuesday, Tarrio was in D.C., leading a march to commemorate Babbitt and other protesters injured in the clashes, but not the police officers whose subsequent deaths were attributed to the riot, nor the approximately 150 officers who were injured in the hours-long melee and who still suffer to this day.
At this sickening moment in our history, I was encouraged, and even a little surprised, to witness a hearing called Tuesday by House Democrats to mark the anniversary. Witnesses included representatives, police officers, prosecutors and at least one person who participated in the violence and now deeply regrets it.
Pamela Hemphill, 73, was dubbed the “MAGA Grandma” for her role in the January 6 attacks. He livestreamed the attack on Facebook and, in 2022, pleaded guilty to demonstrating, picketing, or parading in a Capitol building. She was sentenced to 60 days in jail and 36 months of probation, and ordered to pay $500 in restitution. When she was offered a pardon from Trump, she rejected it.
“What I did was wrong,” Hemphill told the House panel. “I pleaded guilty to my crime because I committed it. I received due process and the Department of Justice was not used as a weapon against me. Accepting that pardon would be lying about what happened on January 6. I am guilty and I own that guilt.”
Imagine that.
Republican leaders, many of whom blamed Trump for inciting the riot before bending the knee once again, declined to participate in the Jan. 6 commemorations. Instead, Republican members of the House of Representatives gathered at a Kennedy Center retreat, where Trump brazenly blamed former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for the violence. (“God forbid if you ever put this president under oath,” Pelosi told House Democrats on Tuesday. “Your people know never to do that.”)
House Speaker Mike Johnson is so afraid of Trump that he has refused to hang the plaque approved by Congress in 2022 to honor the officers who saved them from the J6 mob. It was supposed to hang on the west front of the Capitol, where some of the heaviest fighting took place. “His heroism will never be forgotten,” he says. Sure, sure.
(On Thursday, the Senate voted unanimously to hang it in a temporary location until, presumably, Johnson can locate its column.)
I suggest that those who insist on remembering January 6 as a day of peaceful protest should examine NPR's new visual archive dedicated to the events. Even five years later, the violence continues to impact.
While our president and his apparatchiks try to rewrite history or lie about an ICE shooting, the rest of us have a moral obligation to tell the truth and call them out. Believe your eyes, not their lies.
Blue sky: @rabcarian
Rags: @rabcarian
