BREAKING: DOJ To Pay $5 Million To J6 Family / Charges Dem With Pardoned Crime

The weaponization of Trump's Justice Department is in full swing.

UPDATE: As if the J6-related stories couldn’t get worse, Trumps U.S. attorney for New Jersey (and former personal attorney) Alina Habba has charged Democratic Congresswoman LaMonica McIver for allegedly assaulting law enforcement officers outside an immigration detention facility last week.

Needless to say this is troubling on a number of fronts. 1) This is the same charge many J6 insurrectionists were found guilty of, only to be pardoned by Trump. 2) Charging a sitting representative on such flimsy evidence is a giant escalation of political intimidation by the MAGA Justice Department — a weaponization they falsely accused the Biden Administration of engaging in.

If you don’t know the backstory, McIver and other officials went to the facility to protest ICE detentions and demand access to check on conditions, which they are legally allowed to do. A bit of a tussle broke out. It was (of course) nothing like January 6, but video does show the Congresswoman pushing an ICE official.

There’s certainly not enough to the tussle to merit charges, but both intimidation and the normalizing of the idea of bringing charges against political opponents on flimsy grounds. It may not sound like a big deal.

But, it is.

The J6 Shame Continues

One of the first and most disgusting Executive Orders signed by Trump on his first day back in office was the pardoning almost every single insurrectionist who attacked our Capitol in his attempt to overthrow the 2020 election — even many of the most violent criminals.

Less covered was his additional order to also pardon rioters who were found with illegal guns in connection with the attack. He then paved the way for J6 criminals to be paid back by the government for any fines they suffered in the destruction of property.

Now he’s paying the family of Ashli Babbitt $5 million to settle a wrongful death lawsuit they brought against the U.S. government last year. For those of you who might not know the name Babbitt was on the forefront of the gang of violent insurrectionists who breached the Capitol that dreadful day.

She tried to climb through a broken window of a barricaded door to get into the House chamber as members and staff were still trying to escape the mob. Officers inside repeatedly warned Babbitt and her fellow terrorists to stop their advance — specifically warning that they would shoot if they would not stand down.

They didn’t and Babbitt was shot and killed trying to get through. It’s all on tape and went down exactly like that. Multiple warnings issued, a criminal not heeding them, and a criminal killed with completely justified deadly force.

But, over time, as Republicans slinked back to Trump’s side and became more supportive of Trump’s Big Lie about the insurrection, Babbitt became an Orwellian poster child for the violent police narrative.

Like so many, profiles of Babbitt after she was killed told a familiar story of someone who was once rational but became radicalized by the MAGA movement and the disinformation and online conspiracy theories. An Air Force vet who once voted for Obama, in a few short years she had been fully brainwashed. From Wikipedia:

In November 2019, Babbitt tweeted about Pizzagate, a conspiracy theory that senior Democrats were operating a child sex-trafficking ring. By February 2020, Babbitt publicly supported QAnon, a broader far-right conspiracy theory that expanded Pizzagate's claims by adding the concept of a worldwide cabal of Satan-worshipping child abusers whom Trump is secretly fighting. One customer recalled having stopped doing business with Babbitt's company in 2020, after Babbitt unexpectedly delivered a political rant over the telephone.

There’s no doubt that Babbitt’s death was a tragedy — but not like Trump or MAGA media portrays it. Babbitt was simply a more violent version of millions of people that many of us know — forever lost down a rabbit hole of lies and disinformation.

We can simply NEVER forget January 6^th — I would argue even more than 9/11.

This was a coordinated attack from within, the only breach of our Capitol since the War of 1812 and the most serious threat to our Democracy since the Civil War.

Everything happening now flows from that mountain of lies and the coordinated propaganda that followed.

If we don’t make it as a Democracy one of the primary benchmarks on that road to ruin will be January 6. Not just that so many people were able to be turned to violence by Trump on that day — but that so many more were then convinced that it wasn’t important or made to believe that reality wasn’t real.