Photo: Guardians of Democracy
Jenna Ryan, the real estate broker from Texas, who helped storm the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021 was arrested and charged. That was covered earlier in this blog post. The result was my commentary that a person's freedom to speech ends at the destruction of the U.S. Capitol. When the inhabitants of the Capitol building were under threat, freedom of speech was thrown to the wayside.
Threatening a U.S. Senator is a crime. What about a physical threat? Why is the current environment of debate surrounding the riot at the U.S. Capitol so easily questioned? Clearly, President Trump engaged in charging the crowd up and releasing them to kill 5 people at the U.S. Capitol.
Now, Jenna Ryan is claiming that she was betrayed by the President of the United States. She states that she was only following the president's orders to move to the U.S. Capitol. Well, claim all you want. The fact of the matter is that the defendants are now claiming all sorts of pleas given that each now faces jail time.
In a recent Washington Post article, the suggestion of different motives for rioting was presented. Among them, the financial problems of the accused seem to run clearly through their history. Here is an excerpt worth reading and considering when forming an opinion on the subject:
The group’s bankruptcy rate — 18 percent — was nearly twice as high as that of the American public, The Post found. A quarter of them had been sued for money owed to a creditor. And 1 in 5 of them faced losing their home at one point, according to court filings.
The financial problems are revealing because they offer potential clues for understanding why so many Trump supporters — many with professional careers and few with violent criminal histories — were willing to participate in an attack egged on by the president’s rhetoric painting him and his supporters as undeserving victims.
While no single factor explains why someone decided to join in, experts say, Donald Trump and his brand of grievance politics tapped into something that resonated with the hundreds of people who descended on the Capitol in a historic burst of violence.
“I think what you’re finding is more than just economic insecurity but a deep-seated feeling of precarity about their personal situation,” said Cynthia Miller-Idriss, a political science professor who helps run the Polarization and Extremism Research Innovation Lab at American University, reacting to The Post’s findings. “And that precarity — combined with a sense of betrayal or anger that someone is taking something away — mobilized a lot of people that day.”
The above reasons could be a large motivating factor. Although, on any given basis, there exists a portion of Americans who in desperate (and financial) situations. That doesn't excuse them from taking the lives of 5 Americans. Nor does the above excuses give them a pass on the ability to threaten the lives of the Chambers of Congress.
Each participant at the U.S. Capitol that day needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent. That includes the former President of the United States who was responsible for the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol - Donald J. Trump.
Unfortunately, the weak Republican Senators gave President Trump an acquittal this weekend from serving again in the office. Hopefully, our criminal justice system is not as weak and cowardly as the Republican Senate has shown to be. Hold President Trump accountable for the 5 dead American citizens.
