Head Of 'Jan 6th Committee' Claims Using 5th Amendment Implies Guilt

P. Gardner Goldsmith | December 6, 2021
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Mississippi Congressman Bennie Thompson (D) is making the most of his 15 minutes of taxpayer funded fame.

Actually, thanks to the incessant narrative-pushing of the pop media and the overall strategies of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to make the January 6, 2021 chaos on the Capitol seem like it was something it was not, Bennie is getting more than 15 minutes – and he’s burning a lot of taxpayer cash as he runs his little show.

The most recent indicator of how desperately unhinged he and his fellow storytellers are from reality and from the Constitution he swore to uphold is his recent claim that should former Trump Administration Department of Justice (DOJ) official Jeffrey Clark, or anyone else, invoke and use their right to remain silent -- aka their right not to engage in compelled speech -- as is protected by the famous FIFTH AMENDMENT, that he and the others are “part and parcel guilty.”

As Tim Hains writes for RealClearPolitics:

Rep. Bennie Thompson, chair of the January 6th Committee, told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on Wednesday what it means that former Trump DOJ official Jeffery Clark says he plans to invoke the Fifth Amendment when he testifies.

Get ready for “guilty before proven innocent” (of what?) as the baseline, coming in three, two, one…

’We will give Mr. Clark his right to assert his Fifth Amendment before the committee if he chooses. We're doing everything we can to show we're not partisan. But you know, if you say you haven't done anything wrong, but on the other hand, you want to assert the Fifth Amendment in terms of self-prosecution, it says that you have something to hide.

Related: Philadelphia Poll Watcher Allegedly Representing Trump Denied Entry into Polling Place

Actually, Mr. Thompson, it doesn’t say that. You say that, and, as expected, Rachel Maddow laps it up like Joe Biden consuming a cone, never wondering at the near radioactivity of your nonsense.

Doubling down on his astounding claim, Thompson said, "If he is saying, 'I'll come but I'll plead the Fifth,' in some instances that says you are part and parcel guilty to what occurred."

No, it doesn’t say that, and even if it DID, what, precisely, are Thompson, Pelosi, and their ideological ilk claiming was the crime?

As I have noted for MRCTV, not a single person apprehended (and most still are being held in terrible conditions, as they wait and wait for trials) has been charged with “insurrection." They were charged with unlawful entry, trespass, destruction of property, and resisting arrest, among other much more minor charges – and even those charges must be heard in court.

So, what’s this about when it comes to Jeffrey Clark?

Well, it has to do with something else on which Mr. Thompson is incorrectly grandstanding, even as he tries to mold public opinion. The subject about which the Dems want Clark to “testify” (in deposition or before Congress) is his work with former President Donald Trump to look into election abnormalities and possible violations of state election laws following the official day of the 2020 Presidential election.

Clark served as acting head of Trump’s Justice Department Civil Division at the time, and the Dems are trying to target his post-election-date work checking into whether state presidential election statutes were violated (a possible example, in Pennsylvania, where the state Attorney General Josh Shapiro allowed absentee ballots to be counted beyond the date allowed under state statute).

Of course, there isn’t anything illegal about that work, but the Dems are not only claiming that it was wrong, they also have infused the activity with a hint of racism, claiming that Trump and Clark were trying to “disenfranchise” minority voters. And they claim that Trump and Clark’s attempt to check into the irregularities (of course, the Dems don’t acknowledge any possible problems in Pennsylvania, or Georgia, or Arizona, or Nevada, or Michigan) was a trigger to convince folks on January 6 to engage in the big “insurrection” that wasn’t an insurrection at all.

See how it all ties together? Grab some popcorn, because the Jan. 6 Committee is one long fantasy presentation, and it has grave implications for the separation of powers doctrine that has suffered at the hands of collectivists for years.

The specifics of Clark’s immediate conflict with Congress were spelled-out December 3 by Joseph Clark, for The Washington Times, and are worth covering simply for more context, before we dive into the big, big lesson…

Former Trump Department of Justice official Jeffrey Clark has postponed his scheduled deposition before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol due to a medical condition, the committee announced Friday.

Committee spokesperson Tim Mulvey said in a statement that Mr. Clark informed the panel through his lawyer of an ailment ‘that precludes his participation’ in the deposition scheduled for Saturday. Mr. Mulvey said Mr. Clark ‘provided ample evidence of his claim.’

‘Chairman Thompson has agreed to postpone the deposition until December 16th,’ Mr. Mulvey said of committee Chairman Rep. Bennie G. Thompson. ‘Chairman Thompson wishes Mr. Clark well.’

Which leads us to Thompson appearing with leftist television hosts like Maddow to start preemptively misconstruing Clark’s possible use of the Fifth Amendment.

Related: Speak No Truth to Power: CBS Goes Cupcake With Pennsylvania AG on Vote Counting

Which leads us to the big lesson, about both these exhausting and shallow “insurrection” and “election tampering” narratives, and about the more fundamental and long-term problem: the supposed power of “Contempt of Congress.”

This Pelosi show trial appears to have been set up for two purposes. First, they're extending the false narrative of "insurrection" and the associated implication that many conservatives and small government boosters are "radicalized" and dangerous "domestic terrorists." Second, they want to specifically target certain people, bind them up in Congressional subpoenas and then, when those people don't answer or don't answer in a way that the Dems want, the Dems can cite them for "Contempt of Congress" or try to get them legally for "perjury" before Congress if they DO answer something incorrectly.

There is no provision in the Constitution for "contempt of Congress." None…but never underestimate the desire of Congress members to expand their power. So in 1857, Congress members passed a statute claiming the power to find someone in "criminal contempt" -- a statute that completely contravenes the Bill of Rights' assurance of a jury trial and also breaks the separation of powers, since a finding of guilt or innocence on anything is supposed to be done through the Judicial Branch. Instead, folks like Thompson say they can imprison the "accused" and will hand their finding of “contempt” to the DOJ for prosecution, and if there is a jury, it will be a Grand Jury, not a regular jury.

Get it? It’s “justice, Washington-style,” and all in the service of the narrative and the goal of targeting specific people that the Dems want to bind in costly legal procedures.

Essentially, this is a Star Chamber power they are adopting. 

And Rachel Maddow seems very supportive of the idea.

One wonders what she would say if it were Trump and his allies in power…

 

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