By Noah Rothman
Wednesday, January 07, 2026
It would be one thing if the Trump administration were
merely peddling in its spare time a self-serving revisionist history of the
January 6 riot so libelous, so brazen in its contempt for established record
that it would have made a Soviet propagandist blush. It’s quite another to
enlist all of us in that project by committing taxpayer dollars to it,
disseminating the president’s alternative version of events on digital public
property.
The former is despicable. The latter is obscene.
The story the president is promoting on the White House’s
official website is
comprehensive. The rebuttal to it must, therefore, be similarly extensive.
The document goes off the rails at the outset — in the
introduction, to be exact. In it, Trump’s aides hail the president’s “blanket
pardons” of the January 6 convicts. Trump “ordered immediate release of those
still imprisoned, ending years of harsh solitary confinement,” the White
House’s account reads, “denied due process, and family separation for
exercising their First Amendment rights.”
In fact, the majority of the January 6 convicts were
found guilty of misdemeanors and sentenced only to probation. The
only people that Trump could spring from prison were those who had been
convicted of more serious, even violent, offenses. And there were a lot of
them. As I wrote at the time:
Devlyn Thompson attacked a police
officer with a metal baton. Robert Palmer bludgeoned another officer with a
fire extinguisher, among other items of debris he could find strewn about the
ransacked Capitol steps. Julian Khater shot pepper spray into the faces of
three Capitol Hill police officers. David Dempsey used all these weapons and
more in his frenzied attack on law enforcement. They are free today, along with
those who were convicted of seditious conspiracy for the preparation and
planning that culminated in that premeditated act of mass violence.
In addition, federal courts have rejected the claim that
some of the criminal charges brought against the rioters represented a
violation of their First Amendment rights. As U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly wrote in the case of the Proud Boys
defendants, “There were many avenues for defendants to express their opinions
about the 2020 presidential election.” Whatever the “expressive aspect” of
protests might have been, “it lost whatever First Amendment protection it may
have had” at the outset of the violence.
The introduction proceeds to blame former House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi for the extent of the violence that this document simultaneously
argues was no big deal.
Pelosi is supposedly undone by her own daughter’s
documentary footage, which allegedly features her “repeatedly acknowledging
responsibility for the catastrophic security failures,” the White House
claimed. “‘We have totally failed’ and ‘I take full responsibility’ for not
having the National Guard pre-deployed,” reads the speaker’s imagined
confession.
The authors must assume that you won’t watch the video of the exchange
they are describing. In it, Pelosi laments her own failure to impress upon
the White House the need for more proactive measures to defend the Capitol,
and she explicitly concedes that she lacks the authority to deploy the National
Guard. That makes sense because no member of Congress has such authority over
the U.S. armed forces. That is the province of the executive branch.
The timeline as established via congressional testimony
is instructive. Just after 1 p.m., as the melee on the Capitol’s steps
intensified, Capitol Hill Police Chief Steven Sund approached House Sergeant at
Arms Paul Irving, asking him to request an emergency Guard deployment. “During
a tense phone call that began 18 minutes later, a top general said that he did
not like the ‘visual’ of the military guarding the Capitol and that he would
recommend the Army secretary deny the request,” the New York Times reported. “Pentagon approval finally
came at 3:04 p.m.” At 3:36 p.m., Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany announced that the “National Guard is on
the way,” but the first troops did not arrive at the scene until about 4:17 p.m.
“In truth,” the introduction concluded, “it was the
Democrats who staged the real insurrection by certifying a fraud-ridden
election, ignoring widespread irregularities, and weaponizing federal agencies
to hunt down dissenters, all while Pelosi’s own security lapses invited the
chaos they later exploited to seize and consolidate power.”
That delusional narrative is rendered more
incomprehensible by the president’s own statements on January 6 — reluctant
though they almost certainly were — that his administration had pursued all
legal avenues to challenge the election results. Appropriating the language
that liberty-loving democracies use to describe genuine tyrannies might agitate
the excitable sort, but it cannot erase the record.
With the introduction concluded, the White House’s
January 6 page introduces a series of flash cards that delineate its timeline
of key events. If you thought the introduction was crazy, you haven’t read
anything yet.
The first several of the 15 cards establish the banality
of Trump’s intentions, his emphasis on peaceful protest, and the “orderly and
spirited” nature of the crowds. Their only goal was to “protest the
certification of the fraudulent election.” If there is a villain in this tale,
it is the Capitol Hill police.
“Capitol Police aggressively fire tear gas, flash bangs,
and rubber munitions into crowds of peaceful protesters, injuring many and
deliberately escalating tensions,” the missive read. “Video evidence shows
officers inexplicably removing barricades, opening Capitol doors, and even
waving attendees inside the building — actions that facilitated entry — while
simultaneously deploying violent force against others,” it continued. “These
inconsistent and provocative tactics turned a peaceful demonstration into chaos.”
So, the CHPD was, in this telling, both too trigger-happy
and, also, too permissive and de-escalatory in the face of a mass of rioters.
No honest broker would dare contend that the crowds did not force their
way into the building — one overwhelmed checkpoint notwithstanding. (The
conspiracy theory that this was the work of an “inside man” has also been debunked.)
The Government Accountability Office found that there
were at least 174 violent assaults on police officers, including 114
Capitol Hill police and 60 Metropolitan Police Department officers. Many of
those assaults you can watch for yourself. Those videos feature stomach-churning
displays of reptilian brutality. To blame the police for their own assault is
the sort of thing you might hear from a progressive “defund” activist, not the
self-described “law and order” administration.
At this point, the flash cards speed right past a period
of conspicuous inactivity on Donald Trump’s part, fast-forwarding to the point
at which he issues a video message calling on the rioters to disperse. “He
consistently promotes nonviolence despite the attack on attendees and emotions
running high,” the website alleges.
In fact, it took quite a lot of coaxing from the
president’s inner circle — allies, aides, and family members alike — to get him
to make those statements. “He’s got to condemn this sh** ASAP,” Don Jr. wrote
in one harried text message to then–White House Chief of Staff Mark
Meadows. “I’m pushing it hard,” Meadows replied. “I agree.” But no remarks were
made. “We need an Oval Office address,” Don Jr. texted again. “He has to lead
now. It has gone too far and gotten out of hand.”
Trump had to take more than one swing at that initial
message. “I know your pain. I know you’re hurt,” Trump said in the first,
swiftly deleted address to the rioters. “We had an election stolen from us
— it was a landslide election, and everyone knows it, especially the other
side.”
Moving on to the point at which rioter Ashli Babbitt was
“murdered in cold blood,” the website accused Capitol Police Lieutenant Michael
Byrd of acting “without warning as she climbs through a broken window toward
the Speaker’s Lobby. No weapon was found on her, and she posed no threat.”
A Justice Department investigation of the incident cleared Byrd of acting to
“willfully deprive Ms. Babbitt of a right protected by the Constitution or
other law.” Indeed, “The actions of the officer in this case potentially saved
members [of Congress] and staff from serious injury and possible death from a
large crowd of rioters,” read an after-action
report conducted by the Capitol Police’s Office of Professional
Responsibility.
The notion that Byrd declined to warn the mob that was
beating on the security glass protecting a restricted area of the Capitol in
which Congress members were taking shelter is betrayed by video of
the incident. While it is hard to hear the officer, it isn’t hard to hear
members of the mob warning each other that he “has a gun” — not that the
firearm dissuaded the attackers from ripping down the security glass and
rushing through the breach like a zombie horde. Byrd fires his weapon several
seconds after the protesters become aware of it, are unmoved by it, and proceed
to scramble through the hole in the security door they created.
“Three other Americans were also killed,” the White House
website notes. “Rosanne Boyland, Kevin Greeson, and Benjamin Philips. Zero law
enforcement officers lost their lives.”
Rosanne Boyland was trampled to death by the January 6 rioters. Kevin Greeson and Benjamin Philips both suffered fatal medical emergencies
during the attack — emergencies to which first responders could not react with
sufficient speed because of the ongoing riot. The White House appears to be
implying that the lopsided body count tacitly indicts the conduct of the
officers who responded to the attack. Again, they hope you’re not too
interested in the details.
“Vice President Mike Pence, who had the opportunity to
return disputed electoral slates to state legislatures for review and
decertification under the United States Constitution, chooses not to exercise
that power in an act of cowardice and sabotage,” the White House’s wild
reinterpretation of events defamatorily continued. “Instead, Pence presides
over the certification of contested electors, undermining President Trump’s
efforts to address documented fraud and ending any chance to correct the
election steal.”
Shameless does not begin to describe the effort to
promulgate this long-ago discredited theory of constitutional law. As Trump’s
secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said in the riot’s aftermath, “Vice presidents
can’t simply decide not to certify an election.” Indeed, Republican lawmakers
and Republican voters alike, as shown in a late 2020 Quinnipiac poll, did not believe that Pence had the authority to
invalidate the elector slates sent to Congress. They were correct at the time.
That they’ve retroactively conditioned themselves into believing a more
politically expedient untruth does not change that.
The year “2020 is considered the greatest election theft
in U.S. history, with widespread fraud deliberately ignored by courts,
officials, and the media,” the White House’s missive added. Again, Trump’s
televised January 7 admission that his campaign “vigorously pursued every legal
avenue to contest the election results” betrays the lie in the claim that the
courts summarily “ignored” his appeals. One of Trump’s attorneys was disbarred for his role in the effort to deceive the courts
and American elected officials. The president’s people weren’t denied a
hearing. They just lost.
“At least five J6 defendants took their own life [sic]
while facing prosecution,” the White House notes. That is tragic. But so, too,
are the suicide deaths of at least four of the police officers who were traumatized by their
experiences on that day. Some of their survivors explicitly attributed their suicides to the events of January 6. If we
were going to count the suicides of the accused as casualties, we should be
consistent and do the same for the members of law enforcement whom the
president of the United States is defaming for doing their jobs.
The White House concludes its timeline of the events of
January 6 with a nod or two to some of the online right’s favorite conspiracy
theories. It notes that “the FBI had at least 26 (and likely dozens more)
confidential informants and assets embedded in the January 6 crowd.” Indeed,
the FBI “undertook significant efforts to identify domestic terrorism
subjects,” Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz concluded after a four-year investigation.
But no confidential human sources (CHS) were “authorized to enter the Capitol
or a restricted area, or to otherwise break the law on Jan. 6,” the report
added, “nor was any C.H.S. directed by the F.B.I. to encourage others to commit
illegal acts on Jan. 6.”
The White House makes several other references — that’s
all we can call them — to leading conspiracy theories. Among them, a nod to “figures like
Mike Epps, who was caught on video repeatedly urging people to go ‘into the
Capitol.’” Epps, who was sentenced to one year of probation for his role in the
riot, has long protested the allegations against him. He sued Fox News over
onetime host Tucker Carlson’s accusation of his involvement in a scheme to
provoke violence — a suit that was dismissed on free speech grounds. Federal prosecutors have
nevertheless affirmed that Epps has never been a government employee or
agent, save for the four years he served in the Marine Corps.
The White House’s grievances with the investigations into
January 6 are myriad, but they culminate in a triumphalist narrative for Trump
— one that could not be more bonkers.
“Despite relentless Deep State efforts to imprison,
bankrupt, and assassinate him — all designed to sabotage his political comeback
through fabricated indictments, invasive raids, and rigged show trials —
President Trump emerges triumphant.”
Is the White House’s official position now that the two
figures who made attempts on Trump’s life — the enigmatic (and furry-adjacent) Thomas Matthew Crooks and the unstable
left-of-center activist Ryan Wesley Routh — were agents of the “deep state”?
Are we to disregard the evidence presented at Routh’s criminal trial, in which
he was convicted, and the hours of reporting on Crooks’s
background? Are we sure Israel didn’t do it?
This is Candace Owens–level pathological paranoia. The
only thing more disturbing than the realization that the White House is not
above marshaling this level of irrationality toward its own ends is the
possibility that the president’s subordinates might believe it.
This odious document should never have been published,
much less on a taxpayer-funded website. It is not archival. It is a
falsification of the historical record — an attempt at mythmaking so fanciful
that it bears more resemblance to Carlson’s bad-faith reimagining of one of the most thoroughly
investigated riots in U.S. history. It is unhinged, divorced from anything
resembling our shared reality, and a deliberate effort to radicalize the
impressionable at the expense of national comity.
No one forced the administration to use the fifth
anniversary of the January 6, 2021, Capitol Hill riot to compose and publish a
fantastical multiverse version of that day’s events. Nothing else explains the
White House’s unsolicited effort to rewrite history but the shame of its
indelible association with the riot. At least there, the White House’s motives
are understandable. There is much to be ashamed of.
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