On January 22nd of this year, John Daniel Davidson, Senior Editor at The Federalist, delivered a talk on the topic of January 6th – the so-called insurrection that the media and the Left are still very much worked up about. Even Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who wasn’t even inside the main Capital building where the breach took place (she was the Cannon House Office Building), claimed she was almost killed by the “insurrectionists,” as if The Proud Boys had cornered her in a dark alley but Batman leaped into action and saved her just in the nick of time.

I maintain that Davidson’s opening remarks are very much worth reflecting on. Here they are:

Just hours after his inauguration on January 20, President Trump pardoned more than 1,500 people convicted of offenses related to the events of January 6, 2021. He commuted the sentences of fourteen additional people whose cases for a full pardon are still under review.

Earlier that morning, to less fanfare, President Biden had issued “preemptive pardons”—a type of presidential pardon with no historical precedent¬—to all the members and staff of the House Select Committee on January 6 and to all the U.S. Capitol and D.C. Metropolitan police officers who testified before that committee. [Why would President Biden do that?]

What could better illustrate that what happened at the U.S. Capitol on January 6 has become a political Rorschach test on which Americans remain deeply divided?

Partisans on the Left accept the official narrative of the Democrats and the corporate press, believing that January 6 amounted to an insurrection and a violent attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Partisans on the Right believe that however bad the events of that day were, the federal government’s reaction has been even worse, amounting to a weaponization of the Department of Justice to criminalize certain political views.

Many ordinary Americans are left wondering what to believe. With those Americans in mind, it is helpful to sift through what we have learned about January 6 over the past four years—and to note the things that we still don’t know.

With that, Davidson deftly sifts through the known and the unknown. I will give a summation below.

Here is what we know:

• For those of us who would turn to the official report of the House Select Committee, an 800-page tome, to gain an understanding of what really happened, forget it. The report was steeped in anti-Trump bias from the get-go. We know this because when the House Minority Leader, Kevin McCarthy (a Republican) appointed two strong Republican congressmen to the committee, Nancy Pelosi (a Democrat) refused to allow those two Republicans to serve. What she did instead was select two anti-Trump partisans who are Republican-in-Name-Only to serve on the committee instead, that way the entire committee, even with Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger (both of whom have an “R” by their name, and both of whom have a level of hatred toward Donald Trump that can only be described as psychotic) would be Trump-haters.
• We know the Select Committee’s report, issued in December 2022, deliberately omitted important information about January 6 – indeed it concealed important information that did not support their objectives, which they stated included pursuing criminal charges against Trump and that Congress must bar Trump from ever again holding federal office.
• We know the Select Committee showed a blatant disregard for facts when it claimed, falsely, that Trump was aware of violence at the Capitol for more than three hours—187 minutes, to be exact—before he took action to intervene. That was a deliberate lie on the part of the Democrats serving on the committee. The truth is, according to a timeline of events compiled by The New York Times (and corroborated by The Washington Post), no more than 25 minutes passed between the reported breach of the Capitol at 2:13 p.m. and Trump’s first tweet addressing the situation at 2:38 p.m., when he wrote, “Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful!” About 30 minutes later, Trump again took to Twitter to address the demonstrators: “I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence! Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order—respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you!”
• We know that serious questions were never even investigated by the Select Committee. For instance,

Why did Democrat congressional leaders turn down repeated offers of National Guard troops to protect the Capitol that day?

Why was security so lax outside the Capitol despite expectations of a large demonstration?

How many FBI informants and other undercover federal law enforcement officials were in the crowd?

What communication did the FBI or FBI informants have with protest organizers ahead of the event?

Why wasn’t then-Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund told there were federal informants in the crowd?

Why did the U.S. Capitol Police open the doors and allow demonstrators into the building, and even escort some of them through the building with no effort to stop them?

Why did federal law enforcement authorities demand cell phone location data for the thousands of people who were outside the Capitol but broke no laws?

Defenders of the official narrative accuse those who ask such questions of being conspiracists. But until those questions are answered, our understanding of January 6—no matter our political leanings—will be incomplete.

And that, my friends, is the latest elephant in the room.