(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . 3 Years After Jan. 6: The Conspiracy Is Still Not Cracked. Are We Prepared for 1/6/2025? [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-01-05 Today marks the three-year anniversary since we Americans were treated to sights we should never have had to witness. For example, this one: x Guns drawn in the Capitol Building as Trump supporters have stormed inside. 📸 @drewangerer Jan. 6, 2021. pic.twitter.com/0DPxOb4vdM — Complex (@Complex) January 6, 2021 All of our national elected officials—Congressmen, Senators, and the Vice President—were in that building, or scheduled to be in it, that day, except for Donald Trump. The Capitol building should have been one of the most secure places in the world on that day. Instead, a mob of thousands forced their way into the building, with the potential to kill large numbers of those elected officials, and was fortuitously stopped by emergency security efforts such as the one you see pictured above. How did it happen? We still don’t know. Investigation Status As of today, the key facts in the investigation are as follows: The DOJ has prosecuted many hundreds of the rioters who entered the building. This effort has culminated in the conviction of Proud Boys leadership, most of whom were boots-on-the-ground during the attack, for seditious conspiracy. However, no evidence of a plan to storm the Capitol was presented during the trial, indicating either that there was no plan, or more likely, a serious gap in the DOJ’s evidence collection (which I will discuss below). Former President Trump, a declared candidate for President in 2024, has been charged by the DOJ’s Special Counsel with various crimes related to attempting to overthrow the election. There are six unindicted co-conspirators who, as of today, remain unindicted. The charges are said to follow in large part the outline of the case against Trump made by the Congressional Jan. 6 Committee. In related news, Fulton County, GA District Attorney Fani Willis has charged 18 defendants, including Trump, with attempts to overthrow the election in Georgia, using the RICO framework. As of this writing, she has secured multiple plea deals from among those defendants. Various other states are pursuing criminal charges against fake electors, all at the state level. Assessment The fact that the DOJ had no evidence of any plan by the Proud Boys to storm the Capitol means they did not have (and I suspect, still don’t have) much if any evidence to incriminate higher-level conspirators for the Jan. 6 conspiracy. The reason why they don’t have this evidence is, quite likely, because they delayed the investigation into the conspirators for a year, allowing ample time for evidence to be deleted. While it is good that Donald Trump has been indicted at the federal level for crimes related to January 6th, it is not clear we will learn a whole lot more at his trial than we have already known for a long time. I do not expect we will learn who made the plans and gave the instructions for the attack on the Capitol—because it does not appear that the DOJ knows this. I would be happy to be proven wrong. But at this point, baseless hope is not appropriate. We are three years out, and we must not lose sight of how much we as a country still do not know at this time. The Case Not Solved Here are some of the key questions about Jan. 6 that remain unanswered: Three years after the attack, the answers to these questions should be known and in the public domain. The fact that they are not represents a total failure to protect our national security. Even if the answer to each question is the “null” answer (“Nope, no conspiracy, just a bunch of random acts by angry people which amazingly occurred at the same time and place”), there should by now be public knowledge of what happened to show that. (And it’s quite unlikely.) Where This Leaves Us If all current indictments were to conclude with guilty verdicts for all currently charged parties, the dangerous serpent that lay behind Jan. 6 would likely still be at large, and very, very much ready to strike again. Note the discussion of a “Red Caesar” among right-wing communities. It would be ideal if a new Attorney General, one who would properly apply Department resources to complete the investigation with urgency, could have been appointed about two years ago. Unfortunately, that did not happen. The buck stops with President Biden. In the big picture, Biden remains the best way to defeat Trump at this time, and so we do need to support him. But we need him to do more about Jan. 6 than make speeches using the word “democracy”. We need his administration to get this investigation done. It should have been their #1 priority from the start, and it has not been. That needs to change. The Red Caesar is Waiting If we as a country do not do these things, we are all in danger. In the course of the 2024 election, President Biden himself may realistically face personal danger from the forces behind Jan. 6, just as Mike Pence and others did previously. But what is at stake is bigger than one person. It is our liberty as Americans, to prevent a “Red Caesar” from taking our liberty and putting us under a dictator, by finishing what they attempted to start on Jan. 6, 2021. What Next? What does it take to get action on this? Do we as a country not deserve answers to these questions? Is it not in the nation’s power to obtain them? That is a question for President Biden. [END] --- [1] Url: https://dailykos.com/stories/2024/1/5/2201252/-3-Years-After-Jan-6-The-Conspiracy-Is-Still-Not-Cracked-Are-We-Prepared-for-1-6-2025?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/