[ad_1]
Veteran journalist and current System Update host Glenn Greenwald flawlessly explained how Nancy Pelosi’s January 6 congressional committee defied hundreds of years of precedent while debating left-wing streamer Destiny.
The argument over the committee after Destiny accused conservative journalists of downplaying the minor riot on January 6 by selective use of video footage. “The first people to breach the barricades broke them down. Nobody was let into a new initial area because the Capitol Police let them in,” the streamer said. “They were only sometimes ushered through the building because there were more defensible positions, which is obvious if you’ve watched any of the video footage available of that day, besides the selected clips that people like Tucker Carlson or Glenn Greenwald want you to watch on Twitter.”
In response to Destiny’s claims, Greenwald laid out the timeline of January 6 footage releases. “At the beginning, for two years, all of the information that we got about January 6th was controlled by a partisan commission filled with effectively Democrats, the people Nancy Pelosi let on to the Commission Liz Cheney Adam Kinzler hated Trump almost more than any Democrat,” he said.
Pelosi did reject nominees from then-House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), a list that included Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Jim Banks (R-IN) and Kelly Armstrong (R-ND). This defied hundreds of years of investigative committee precedent, as the opposition party has always been allowed to nominate members of their choosing.
Instead, Pelosi chose Reps. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) and Liz Cheney (R-WY), both of whom either retired or were voted out due to historic low approval ratings among Republican voters. The committee — which used Hollywood producers to edit their primetime hearings — selectively played video clips that portrayed Trump supporters to be violent and unruly while ignoring clips of peaceful protesters.
The committee also released closed-door testimony from hundreds of individuals, though the deposition tapes are nowhere to be found. Most recently, the committee was found to have deleted more than 100 encrypted files just days before the GOP took the majority in 2023.
“Nancy Pelosi was the first ever speaker of the House in 225 years to reject the nominees by the opposing party to serve on an investigative commission. It had never happened in the history of the United States. She was the first one to do it,” Greenwald said.
In response, Destiny claimed that the committee was going to be analyzing the behavior of Banks and Jordan specifically, sidestepping Greenwald’s point about precedence. He went on to claim that McCarthy knew January 6 was an “insurrection” and allowed Pelosi to select Cheney and Kinzinger in order to tank the committee’s credibility.
“First of all, I’ll say one more time. Never before in the history of the Republic did Nancy Pelosi, any Speaker of the House or Majority Leader do what Nancy Pelosi did. The prerogative of the minority party to pick their own members to serve on that commission was never subject to the approval of the opposing party until Nancy Pelosi, while the Democratic Party always claims it’s upholding norms and health and tradition, decided to block the choices,” Greenwald went on to say.
“And as a result, Nancy Pelosi ended up choosing those two Republicans. They were the ones willing to serve when the rest of the Republicans weren’t, and it became a partisan farce. Had she allowed Kevin McCarthy’s numbers the way every other speaker for 225 years had done, you would have had an actual bipartisan commission,” he continued.
Greenwald went on to list examples of cherry-picked videos and stories that were spotlighted by the committee, including the thoroughly debunked lie that police officers were murdered by the crowd on January 6. He also pointed to the hours upon hours of footage released by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), which shows Capitol Police officers firing tear gas into a peaceful crowd, assaulting peaceful protesters, and escorting peaceful protesters throughout the halls of the Capitol Building after opening the doors for them.
