COMMENTARY: January 6 revisionists are traitors to their country
One of the worst days in American history is being rewritten to hide the truth
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By Christopher Flowers
Donald Trump is a sad, pathetic man. To have that much power — TWICE! — and use it to inflict such pain and misery on the world in both literal and metaphoric instances too great to enumerate is a tragedy. That the voters allowed this con-man back into a position of global leadership is even more tragic. It was Bob Dylan who said, “When you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose.” Already 34 times a felon, with more surely to come, desperate to escape the same fate as Jeffrey Epstein — expiring in a prison cell — Trump did whatever he could to return to the White House. It worked. The lies were repeated so many times they became truth… at least, if you wear a red hat with white letters.
Hell froze over on Jan. 20, 2025 — and I’m not talking about the Washington, D.C., wind chill. After lying and libeling his way back to the top, the newly-installed 47th president pardoned all who had been convicted of crimes committed at the attempted insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
What happened on Jan. 6, 2021?
I was on a conference call with other reporters giving status updates on our work that day when it happened. A voice on the line interrupted our discussion: “They broke the barrier!” It was at that moment the MAGA faithful had started scaling walls, knocking out windows, attacking police officers, and prowling the halls of Congress looking for politicians. Broken glass. Yelling. Politicians hiding. Shots fired. A woman died for Donald Trump.
And, of course, there are dueling versions of what happened that day. Here’s what Encyclopedia Brittanica says:
January 6 U.S. Capitol attack, storming of the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, by a mob of supporters of Republican Pres. Donald J. Trump. The attack disrupted a joint session of Congress convened to certify the results of the presidential election of 2020, which Trump had lost to his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden. Because its object was to prevent a legitimate president-elect from assuming office, the attack was widely regarded as an insurrection or attempted coup d’état. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and other law-enforcement agencies also considered it an act of domestic terrorism. For having given a speech in which he rallied supporters to storm the Capitol in a violent attack that threatened the certification of Biden’s victory, Trump was impeached by the Democratic-led House of Representatives for “incitement of insurrection” (he was subsequently acquitted by the Senate).
Sounds simple enough, right? Sadly, though, it’s not that simple. Now, they have the power to rewrite history. Here’s what the official White House website says happened:
President Trump took decisive action to pardon January 6 defendants who were unfairly targeted, overcharged, and used as political examples. They were not protected by the leaders who failed them. They were punished to cover incompetence.
On his first day back in office, January 20, 2025, President Trump issued sweeping blanket pardons and commutations for nearly 1,600 patriotic Americans prosecuted for their presence at the Capitol—many mere trespassers or peaceful protesters treated as insurrectionists by a weaponized Biden DOJ. He fully pardoned most, commuted sentences, and ordered immediate release of those still imprisoned, ending years of harsh solitary confinement, denied due process, and family separation for exercising their First Amendment rights.
Is presidential pardon power too strong?
The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law is a nonpartisan law and policy organization “that works to reform, revitalize, and defend our country’s systems of democracy and justice.” Michael Waldman writes that the president is constrained by the weakest legal rules in history:
Start with that immunity ruling, Trump v. United States. Before that, presidents knew they could be criminally prosecuted if they looted the government. Chief Justice John Roberts’s ruling all but stops any bribery prosecution before it starts, by preventing any inquiry into the president’s motivations, even when the act looks and smells like a bribe. Justice Amy Coney Barrett noted that the ruling would “hamstring the prosecution” in a case such as bribery. (Having critiqued the misguided majority, Barrett then mystifyingly voted with it.)
Insider trading laws are weak, in any case. The Securities Exchange Act of 1934 prohibits using nonpublic information to guide stock trading, but its application to elected officials remains murky. In 2012, Congress passed the Stock Act to prevent insider trading among members of Congress, but the president and vice president remain exempt.
The victors rewrite history
The Department of Justice “removed from its website news releases about criminal cases related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, calling the information about the prosecutions ‘partisan propaganda.’” From the Associated Press:
After a journalist on Friday observed on the social media platform X that the Justice Department was “quietly” removing news releases on its website that were related to the Jan. 6 attack, including about a Texas man who pleaded guilty to assault and also faced separate state charges of soliciting a minor, the department responded through its “rapid response” account that there was “nothing ‘quiet’ about it.”
“We are proud to reverse the DOJ’s weaponization under the Biden administration. We will do everything in our power to make whole those who were persecuted for political purposes,” the post said. “This includes stripping DOJ’s website of partisan propaganda.”
Among the releases removed from the site were those concerning seditious conspiracy cases against members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, far-right extremist groups. The Justice Department, in an unopposed motion last month, asked a federal appeals court to vacate those seditious conspiracy convictions, a request that was granted Thursday. The department on Friday moved to dismiss the cases against the group members.
Attempted slush fund
When news of the president’s attempt at slush fund for Jan. 6 criminals arrived, most outlets rounded up — leaving us all to wonder the significance of $1.8 billion. It was such an arbitrary amount, and as it would turns out, actually dumber than we thought — it was a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund.” It’s our 250th birthday, and what better way to celebrate than having taxpayers fund a new, better way of life for cop beaters and vandals.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland), Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, released a list of 10 reasons the fund is illegal. Here are the top 3:
Violates Article I and Usurps Congress’s Appropriations Powers. The creation of the $1.776 billion federal slush fund violates Article I of the Constitution by usurping Congress’s exclusive power to appropriate federal dollars. It purports to draw from the Judgment Fund, but $1.776 billion in tax dollars will go into a slush fund to pay out third parties with no connection to the lawsuit settled by the President.
Violates Article III and Usurps Powers of the Judiciary. Congress has not vested the President and five Administration appointees with the power to distribute any money based on their own definitions of terms like “lawfare” and “weaponization.” Absent congressional authorization, the five-member fund violates Article III of the Constitution, which gives the Judiciary exclusive power to decide legal “cases and controversies.”
Violates the 14th Amendment’s Prohibition on Paying Insurrectionists. Establishing a fund that compensates convicted January 6th rioters, insurrectionists and seditious conspirators violates Section 4 of the 14th Amendment, which says the United States shall not “assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States” and “all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.”
Click here to see the rest. It’s off the table for now, but if voters do not hold the Republican Party accountable in the midterm elections, the president will try to make it reality.
Can January 6 insurrectionists be trusted?
NBC News reports that “a young man who pleaded guilty in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and apologized for his ‘foolish’ actions during what he said was ‘without a doubt one of the most embarrassing days in modern American history’ now works at the Defense Department.”
Elias Irizarry “is a qualified, patriotic young professional, and we are proud to have him as a political appointee,” per a Pentagon press statement. His job was not specified. Irizarry was a 19-year-old student at The Citadel military college in South Carolina at the time of the riot. From the article:
Federal prosecutors presented images of Irizarry entering the Capitol through a broken window while he held a metal pole and making his way into a conference room before he entered the rotunda.
“Irizarry joined the mob for many hours. After he armed himself with a metal pole, Irizarry watched as rioters violently assaulted officers who were trying to make their way through the crowd,” prosecutors wrote in court documents related to his case. “He then climbed scaffolding to reach the upper West terrace and encouraged and directed rioters by excitedly waving rioters up the stairs to gain access to the building.”
He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds and was sentenced to 14 days behind bars.
Irizarry apologized for his actions in a five-page letter to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, telling her he had “brought great shame upon myself, my family, and, unfortunately, my country.”
“I have come to appreciate, through all this, how fortunate we are to have a stable government,” he wrote.
Additional reading:
Why 2026 Matters: The Midterm Elections and America’s Future (Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School)
Why voting matters (University of Connecticut School of Social Work)
Register to vote (Commonwealth of Pennsylvania)