As Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Jan. 6 commission show trails are underway this week, a House ethics panel has opted not to investigate Georgia Rep. Hank Johnson, who recently got arrested during a protest.
A protest, by the way, that was literally on Capitol Hill, the same Capitol that was breached by protesters on Jan. 6, disrupting a joint session of Congress that had convened to certify the 2020 election.
In the case of Johnson and the other representatives who have been arrested in such stunts — yes, Johnson isn’t even the only Democrat to be arrested on Capitol Hill — this was apparently barely a blip on the radar both to the House ethics panel and the establishment media.
Yet when former President Donald Trump openly and specifically called on protesters to not break the law on that fateful day in January, he was booted from social media, impeached and six months later, the whole thing is being rehashed in a partisan, anti-Trump hearing for the full enjoyment of the establishment media complex.
You seriously cannot make this stuff up.
On Friday, the House Ethics Committee said that it would not be investigating Johnson, who was arrested by the Capitol Police last week for participating in a protest at the Hart Senate Office Building which was staged to object to the fact that the minority party can filibuster the Democrats’ precious voting “rights” bill.
According to House rules, when a member is arrested, the panel is required to either launch a probe or explain to the chamber why they have opted not to, The Hill explained.
“The Committee has determined to take no further action in this matter, and upon publication of this Report, considers the matter closed,” the Ethics Committee explained in a statement.
Well, then. That’s that, I guess.
A defiant Johnson was arrested on July 22 along with several other protesters as they blocked an entrance to the building, later boasting on Twitter that he got in “#goodtrouble” like the late Rep. John Lewis, a Civil Rights-era activist.
I got arrested on Thursday fighting for voting rights and filibuster reform and against efforts to suppress the vote. This is our country. We built this country. Now it's up to us to save this country. #goodtrouble #OIurMessageOurPower pic.twitter.com/l3DSs8BlNQ
— Hank Johnson (@ReElectHank) July 24, 2021
Had he been on the House side of the Capitol Building a week later, he could have been arrested for not wearing a mask.
Capitol Police say @RepHankJohnson and the others are demonstrating without a permit and blocking the door and will be arrested pic.twitter.com/uUP9xSLXj2
— Tia Mitchell, AJC’s Washington Correspondent (@ajconwashington) July 22, 2021
As it happens, Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas was arrested a week later, this past Thursday, but it wasn’t for defying Pelosi’s new rules on masking. No, Lee’s face was obediently covered when she was led away by Capitol Police in riot cuffs for protesting at the Hart Building.
I will NEVER stop fighting for Voting Rights! The time is NOW to move the voting rights bills in the US Senate forward!! Enough is enough. #GoodTrouble pic.twitter.com/XmwNrjgpuX
— Sheila Jackson Lee (@JacksonLeeTX18) July 29, 2021
A week before Johnson’s arrest, Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty of Ohio, the chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, set the trend.
Meanwhile, when laypeople stormed the Capitol building on Jan. 6 to disrupt a joint session of Congress that was preparing to certify the results of an election they didn’t like, then-President Trump was blamed for it despite being a mile away from the building at the time, and actively calling for peace both before, during and after the fact.
“I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful,” Trump posted to Facebook on Jan. 6 before being kicked off the platform. “No violence! Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order — respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you!”
Yet Trump has consistently been treated as though he not only actively encouraged the protesters, but led them in there himself.
Not satisfied with setting multiple historical precedents for impeaching a president not only after his term, but for the second time, Pelosi and Capitol Hill Democrats have dragged out their Jan. 6 panel to feed the eager media more sound bites about the “insurrectionists” that were “incited” by Trump in yet another attempt to paint him as the most dangerous threat to our nation — despite his being safely tucked away in Mar-a-Lago without access to Twitter.
Meanwhile, sitting members of Congress themselves were actually arrested at the Capitol and there’s barely a peep from the media and absolutely no accountability from Congress for their actions.
I’m afraid we’re going to wear out the word “hypocrisy” in this day and age, we use it so often to characterize the way the political and democratic establishments have treated our 45th president.