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Congressman: Jan. 6 Commission Is a ‘Sham’; Congress Should Protect Justices, Churches, Pro-life Centers

June 11, 2022

The primetime January 6 Commission hearings are a “sham,” focusing on issues that voters find irrelevant, while doing nothing to protect churches and pro-life women’s centers from a rising tide of violence, a Republican member of Congress has said.

A total of 24 pregnancy resource centers and 18 churches have been attacked since the leak of the Supreme Court’s draft decision in the Dobbs abortion case, according to a count made by Family Research Council. In some cases, pro-abortion activists hurled Molotov cocktails at the pro-life advocates’ headquarters. Vandals spray-painted numerous attack sites with the same threat: “If abortions aren’t safe, you aren’t either.” Yet the federal government has shown little interest in protecting pro-life women’s centers or churches, which have increasingly been vandalized, desecrated, or set ablaze by pro-abortion activists.

“Rome is burning and they’re focusing on a sham witch hunt,” Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.) told “Washington Watch” on Friday. “This is all about keeping President Trump off the ballot in 2024, and it’s nothing but political theater. They’re using our tax dollars,” and “it’s nothing but an attack on President Trump,” who was “beloved by us because he was a bold fighter.” Over the last year, Democrats have repeatedly attempted to legally bar duly nominated Republicans from running for office on the grounds they participated in an “insurrection.”

But the Left has little concern for preserving democratic norms when they would turn back its radical agenda, Miller said. “House Democrats keep talking about the attacks on our democracy, but just this week, they refused to protect our Supreme Court justices from these left-wing terrorists that are trying to assassinate judges, because they want to prevent court decisions that they don’t like.”

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) insisted that “no one is in danger” despite the attempted slaying of Kavanaugh, whose family still lacks police protection, on Wednesday. (The families of congressmen already receive police protection.) Pelosi announced the House will not vote on the Supreme Court Police Parity Act, which would shield justices’ families and which has languished in the House for more than a month, until next week.

Miller faulted incendiary words from Democratic officials for inciting a potentially deadly atmosphere for conservatives. “Senator Chuck Schumer’s language, his rhetoric, is outrageous, and I do think that it may have contributed to the recent assassination attempt of Justice Brett Kavanaugh.” President Joe Biden joined the fray on Wednesday, warning that if voters enact pro-life protections for the unborn, it will touch off “a mini-revolution.”

None of that language — or the spate of violence against pro-life centers from New York to Oregon — will come up before the January 6 Commission, which Miller derided as a smokescreen to divert viewers’ attention from the Biden administration’s failing policies.

“I don’t think it’s going to be a successful distraction,” she predicted. “I’m certain we’re going to take back the House” in this fall’s midterm elections due to Biden’s inattention to the American people’s “well-being and their ability to run their businesses and, basically, to live life.”

Chief among those concerns are inflation, which for months has hovered near a four-decade high, and high gas prices. The national average price of a gallon of gasoline reached $4.99 a gallon on Friday and will likely exceed $5 over the weekend. Diesel fuel costs even more. The week of Joe Biden’s inauguration as president in January 2021, gasoline cost $2.37 a gallon, and diesel averaged $2.69 a gallon.

“We’re farmers, and all of our equipment is run on diesel,” said Miller, whose family works in agriculture. “This is very scary.”

Nearly two-thirds of voters say the economy and inflation are the most important issues to them in a ABC/Ipsos poll last week. That confirms a Monmouth University survey released in May, which found voters’ top issues are “abortion (35%), immigration (33%), gun control (32%), economic policy (31%), and health care (30%).”

No poll has the Capitol riot of January 6, 2021, figuring prominently among voters’ concerns.

To date, the January 6 Commission has produced no evidence that Trump or anyone in his circle had anything to do with the afternoon riot. Lawmakers have also not shown video footage of Trump telling attendees at the “Stop the Steal” rally to begin “marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” He then put out a separate Twitter video after vandalism broke out, telling protesters, “You have to go home now. We have to have peace.” Twitter and Facebook then banned the 45th president from their social media platforms indefinitely, purportedly on the grounds that his account might incite violence.

The January 6 Commission hearings resume on Monday.

 

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.