Trump DOJ Proudly Rewrites History By Deleting January 6 Insurrection Press Releases
from the ministry-of-truth-back-on-its-bullshit dept
History is written by the winners, they say. But it can also be written by losers.
Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. In response, he told everyone the election had been rigged, if not actually stolen. He said some of this to his faithful MAGA followers the morning the election results were to be certified. The rest is, as they say, history. His supporters stormed the Capitol building for the sole purpose of preventing the election from being certified. They broke into the building, assaulted police and federal officers, forced the Senate into hiding, and walked off with whatever souvenirs they could.
Many of these insurrectionists were ultimately arrested, charged, and convicted for their crimes. When Trump was elected president for a second time, one of the first things he did was issue pardons to the people who broke the law on his behalf back in 2021.
As awful and self-serving as that move was, it wasn’t the end of it. Playing both sides of a lawsuit, Trump managed to secure a revenge fund via a “settlement” by the IRS over the leaking of his tax files years earlier. Trump claims it’s an “anti-weaponization” fund meant to soothe the nerves of supposedly politically persecuted members of his MAGA flock with cash rewards for criminal acts.
Of course, he didn’t say exactly that, but everyone knows how this $1.776 billion slush fund is going to be used. The court handling the lawsuit seeking to dismantle the fund knows it as well. Whether or not it can find a way to shut it down remains to be seen. There’s not a whole lot of precedent on transparent self-dealing by a sitting president, mainly because most presidents (and their cabinets) are generally a little more careful to obscure their true motives.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is continuing to erase history it doesn’t like. This project started far from the White House, forcing national parks to take down anything that presented America as anything less than perfect. This effort, however, takes place on the administration’s home field. Rather than simply allow history to exist, the DOJ is proactively deleting evidence of the agency’s past actions.
A review by NBC News found that the vast majority of press releases pertaining to Jan. 6 defendants have been removed from the DOJ website as of Friday evening.
The move to wipe hundreds of press releases from the official government site is the latest attempt by the Trump administration to reframe the Jan. 6 siege and to paint the rioters who participated in it as victims.
It’s not like the DOJ or administration gave anyone a head’s up that this purge would be happening. It took regular people noticing it for the government to respond. And respond it did, as only this administration can: by gleefully admitting it was engaging in the sort of memory-holing we used to condemn foreign autocracies for doing.
Washington Post journalist Meryl Kornfield pointed out the “quiet” disappearance of January 6 indictment press releases from the DOJ’s website. The DOJ’s “Rapid Reponse” X account jumped in immediately to gloat about its destruction of the public record:
Nothing “quiet” about it.
We are proud to reverse the DOJ’s weaponization under the Biden administration. We will do everything in our power to make whole those who were persecuted for political purposes. This includes stripping DOJ’s website of partisan propaganda.
There it is: yet another middle finger to Americans from an administration that claims no one loves America as much as it does. Sure, press releases may contain statements from government prosecutors that contain as much opinion as facts, the rest of the releases generally just state the facts as dryly as possible so there’s little room for interpretation.
The question is where the DOJ goes from here. Is it willing to start destroying court records and/or placing these under seal where they’re inaccessible to the general public? Will it deliver a fresh set of non-facts to replace all of the history it’s erasing?
While this makes it more difficult to trust the DOJ to maintain its own records, it doesn’t change the fact that most things on the internet are forever, whether you want them to be or not. What’s been deleted has already been archived. Even if this government is willing to block sites like the Internet Archive from preserving history as it happens, it can’t keep dozens of other people from preventing this administration from simply wishing all of its wrongdoings into the internet cornfield.
Lawfare is just one site that’s making sure the permanent record remains permanent since this administration is objectively opposed to letting its history speak for itself. The results of its ongoing efforts to prevent Trump, et al. from simply pretending this never happened can be accessed here.
What’s detailed in the deleted documents isn’t evidence of “partisan propaganda” or “DOJ weaponization.” What happened actually fucking happened. The DOJ is supposed to handle federal crimes and it did exactly that. The truth is that Trump supporters committed several crimes in an effort to undermine — if not actually destroy — the democratic process. This was one of the darkest moments in American history. It should never be minimized, much less discarded just because it makes the people in power (and the people who support them) look as awful as they actually are.
These are the acts of a dictator and his enablers. It’s the antithesis of the independence that’s going to be celebrated by the same people who are busy destroying everything this country is supposed to stand for. It’s not something to be tolerated. And it should never be forgiven.
Filed Under: doj, donald trump, election denialism, erasing history, evil, insurrection, january 6, trump administration
Comments on “Trump DOJ Proudly Rewrites History By Deleting January 6 Insurrection Press Releases”
Shit like this is exactly what needs to be reversed when Trump is finally out of office for good.
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Not to mention arresting people. I bet this violates a dozen Congressional records laws.
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You cannot reverse shit like that. Once official records are gone, they are gone.
Any saved copies are not official and no longer authenticable. Anyone could write them up, and you would just be replacing one fake history with another.
But the intentional destruction of such records should be prosecuted as the crime against the American People that it constitutes.
This sanitation of the insurrection attempt is actually straightforwardly intended to lend aid and comfort to the enemies of the U.S.A.
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And paired with consequences for those who aided and abetted. We will need an equivalent of the Nuremberg trials – where “following orders” doesn’t get you off the hook.
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Not just reversed, but have the removal noted on the site
“We are restoring these documents because they were removed in an attempt to rewrite history and whitewash crimes”
If you break bread with Republicans, you’ve already forgiven it.
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There was no insurrection, it was just a riot (much milder than some BLM riots)
Biden lied to you. Deleting that is not deleting “history”, it is deleting lies.
BTW, like 5% of people care about the capital hill riots. (that’s an actual survey) If you think this is some super important thing, congrats, you’re the fringe left. Yes, that’s most of you here.
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Meanwhile right wing press outlets like Infowars described events they were involved in, in real time, as the capital falling with absolute glee, and right wing groups like Turning point went from gloating to deleting as many posts about how they bussed people in for it the second they realised they’d failed to steal the election. Everyone on your side knew exactly what they had done at the time and it took months for you to get the narrative together you have now, and nobody bought it then either.
Also 5% of who? 5% of who? Which poll? Which provider? What was the sample size and who was it taken from? Big claims require big proof, Or in this case, any.
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You do know who was president of the United States on January 6th 2021? Biden was not in the White House until several weeks later and not in a position to shape any official narrative.
And Biden was not in a position to shape the words of Mitch McConnell who condemned the rioters and Trump in sharp words but refused to join impeachment efforts because he said the justice system should deal with it (and then Trump successfully ran out the clock on justice).
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that’s an actual survey
A survey of a handful of Redtards isn’t really indicative of anything, other than presenting you as the pieces of shit you are.
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Riots don’t seek to overturn the results of an election.
But at least you’re admitting it’s a riot rather than an innocent act of tourism. Progress I guess.
Even when there’s violence at a protest, it’s usually against property, not people. January 6th involved people seeking to kidnap and potentially murder elected officials and did involve many law enforcement officers getting beaten. And yes, there were weapons in the crowd, including firearms. Suspects weren’t apprehended en masse during the event, so the number of firearms present isn’t known, but some were found to be so armed.
But again, again, again, your weak moral relativistic argument that “x is okay because bad people did y” isn’t a good argument. And it works in your mind because you see BLM protesters as equal and opposite people on “the other team” as if everyone you oppose is the same and anything anyone does justifies people on “your team” doing worse.
Biden could be the literal antichrist and it wouldn’t mean it’s okay for Trump to commit any of the unethical, immoral, corrupt, and unconstitutional acts he’s committing.
Definitely need a citation for that. A quick search finds significantly greater numbers of people in the last two years who still seem to take it seriously, thought different surveys ask different questions.
You do this thing where you pretend the propaganda you absorb is the only truth and you share it without citation like a creepy cult member sharing the unholy gospel of your doomsday cult with the world.
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The investigation into Jan 6 was started by Trump’s DOJ and FBI on Jan 7.
So the same people who were investigating it under the Trump administration continued the investigation under the Biden administration.
What is surprising is that it took more than an year to remove any official content that would incriminate the current administration…
… Oh okay, got it, “weaponization” wasn’t a word few weeks back, but now it exists, it’s a big deal.
So now I’m waiting for “leftization” in November.
Can't pardon something that didn't happen
If Jan 6 didn’t happen, then the pardons must be revoked.